One of the pleasures of professional services is the chance to meet and work with people and businesses of many kinds.  I recently had the chance to work with a group of actors turned consultants and trainers.  First, they were clients of mine and then I of theirs, so I got to see them from two perspectives. Whatever the angle, they were different . . . decidedly so.

They understood little of the technicalities of business, be it of banking or of bankruptcy.  For all they knew a POS system had something to do with batteries, an NPV might get a ticket for driving in the wrong lane on the expressway, and SOX is a baseball team.  They understood little of the economic logic or organizational design of corporations.  This meant that they would miss some simple business facts that other professionals would grasp without being told.

You might wonder how consultants could make a go of it without this basic ability.  They did it with an uncanny ability to size up another human being almost instantaneously.  When a client talked, they might miss a business issue, but they heard every nuance of tone or pitch.  They noticed every change in expression and posture.  And through these lenses they captured what the speaker was all about as a person.   In this, they were far ahead of the other professionals I work with, and, for that matter, ahead of me.  It is a powerful skill.

I am accustomed to working with Type 1 Listeners, those who listen to a client’s technical needs, and helping them become Type 2 Listeners, those who seek to learn about the client’s business needs that dictate technical changes. 

For example, I might work with civil engineers to go beyond finding ways to increase the employment count and parking on a mature site to seeing that the client needs to add personnel to rapidly increase market share and seize dominance for a new product.  I also work with Type 2 Listeners, who listen to understand a client’s business needs, helping them to become Type 3 Listeners, those who seek to understand the client as a person.

It has always progressed in that order, Type 1 to Type 2 and Type 2 to Type 3.  What am I to do with people who start out as Type 3 Listeners who must move in the opposite order?  As I figure that out, I am learning a lot.

*******************************

Order your copy of Ford Harding’s new and revised edition of Rain Making, called ”…an essential guide for anyone responsible for business development in the professional services industry…” - Mark Mactas, Chairman and CEO Towers Perrin
 

Event: Live webinar with Ford Harding

When: Thursday, March 13, 2008, 2:00-3:30 PM EST

Register: Register with Rain Today $99

Description: Every business leader knows that he or she needs new business to sustain and grow a firm. But how do you do it? Many firms lean on their “rainmakers” - that is, professionals who bring sufficient work into a firm to leave their colleagues in awe. In this RainToday.com webinar, business development expert Ford Harding leads a presentation on what is required of individuals to develop business at a professional services firm.

Like many other firms, a client of mine is having trouble getting those employees just below the partner level to sell. The firm serves the healthcare provider industry and works for major medical centers. It has grown rapidly over the past fifteen years by dint of hard work, high quality service and good management. Five years ago the executive committee made a decision which contributed to the firm’s growth and profitability: They decided to work only for the largest medical complexes. They also set a lower limit on the size of fee the firm would accept, resulting in their turning away a lot of small projects from small clients. Though there was much grousing about this decision, the committee held it’s ground, and the wisdom of the decision was soon apparent. Firm revenue increased by 35% the following year. A significant share was attributed to replacing small clients and assignments with large ones.

But cutting away the small clients caused a problem that hadn’t been expected. Young professionals had learned to sell by pursuing work that senior partners weren’t interested in. In other words they practiced on the small client, where it was safe. When a small client gave the work to a competitor, the consequences were minor. The same partners were unwilling to let their young colleagues pursue the big accounts where so much money was at risk. When I interviewed several of the firm’s rainmakers, they told me that they, too, had learned how to develop business by going after small prospective clients. In the earlier part of the careers, the firm had been much smaller and there were fewer large medical centers to sell to, so selling to small clients made more sense.

And just where are the future leaders of the firm to hone their selling skills now? Can they be licensed to sell a limited number of cases to small clients? Will the senior partners commit to mentoring them more diligently than in the past, allowing them to learn while pursuing work at larger accounts? No one has the answer yet. Unless, of course, you look beyond the narrow field of selling professional services.

Over the past quarter century, General Electric has been consistently among the best developers of executive talent. As GE and its business units grew the company ran into an analogous problem to the one we are contemplating here. The businesses were just too big and the stakes too high to be left to green managers. So, where were new managers to learn to manage? GE’s answer was the lemonade stand. The term was company argot for small businesses, often acquired as part of bigger businesses. Instead of selling these assets off as unneeded, some would be kept as training schools for new managers. If a new manager screwed up, it didn’t matter much. After all, it was just a lemonade stand.

I believe in setting lower limits to project and client size. It’s a great way to increase revenues and profits. But let young professionals learn to sell where its safe. Let them practice selling two or three pieces of business at small accounts before you ask them to sell something big to a huge one. If they lose such a sale, it doesn’t matter much; it’s only a lemonade stand!

Actuaries and engineers aren’t known for their sales ability. They are seen as an introverted lot, more comfortable crunching numbers than with the kind of socializing that selling requires. Though there is limited truth to this stereotype, we have found that some actuaries and engineers quickly become effective business developers. This is true of some quite introverted and technical ones. Some outperform professionals one might expect to have greater interpersonal skill and so more of a sales bent, such as strategy consultants or executive recruiters. Some become rainmakers.

Professionals are smart people and run the risk of confusing understanding with mastery. Once they understand something, they want to move quickly to the next challenge. Though understanding may equal mastery in some areas, it’s not true of selling. Selling is a performing art, more like playing the piano. Understanding how a piano works is easy, but mastery requires practice. It requires going back to basics again and again. Engineering and actuarial sciences require a similar discipline. While there is room for creativity, rigorous attention to procedure is also essential if the actuary is to make sure that his numbers add up and the engineer that his bridge won’t fall down. They aren’t above doing routine and repetitive activities.

Selling requires meeting and a call discipline, which is also based on routine and repetitive effort. Some groups, which are perceived to be more dynamic than actuaries and engineers, are put off by such routines or feel compelled to vary and reinvent them. They require constant mental stimulation, if they are to remain engaged. Lacking that, they quickly abandoned their efforts. But the actuary and engineer keep at it, with a routine of calls and meetings, which eventually leads to a sale.

Let’s hear it for old fashioned hard work and those willing to do it to find a new client!

When selling, professionals have an annoying habit of trying to show how smart they are.  Instead of letting the client talk uninterrupted about her problem, the over-eager professional interjects ideas, anecdotes and other commentary designed to show off his intelligence.  Instead of trying to look so smart, he would be better served by appearing wise.
 

Think about the words associated with “smart:”
 

• Sharp—Ouch!
  Bright—Light draws attention to the source (and away from the client)
  Clever—Too clever by half!
  Quick—Perhaps even quicker than the client.
   

There is a competitive aspect to smartness not associated with wise and which is not appropriate.  We see people compete on the basis of their smarts in school and on game shows.  (The thought of a game show to see who is wisest is almost comical.)  To show how smart they are, professionals, at the very least, compete with the client for air space.
 

It’s not that brilliance is unwanted.  As a client I certainly want smart professionals working on my matters, but I want them working for someone who is wise.  I need smarts every day to get work done quickly and well, but at critical moments I need wisdom to make sure the right things get done.  I don’t want my business to end up like Enron; built with smarts and then brought down by lack of wisdom.  I want to work with smart people, but I might be willing to bare my soul to a wise one.  And that is the person I am most likely to hire.
 

Words associated with “wise” are reassuring in a tentative ally.  They show the traits we need to appear wise:
 

• Disinterested:  A wise person gives me advice that is based on my needs rather than hers.
  Prudent:  By being discreet and by avoiding undesirable consequences during the sale, she shows me what it would be like to work with her.  For example, she asks in preference to telling.
  Patient:  She listens patiently and attentively, so that when she does talk, she says just the right things.
   

From rainmakers and other senior professionals, clients expect wisdom, and rightly so!
 

Yesterday I debriefed a client who had lost out to a competitor on the chance to work for a prestigious client. When the client gave him the bad news, she said that his presentation didn’t seem as attuned to her company’s needs as the competitor’s. Specifically, he had said almost nothing about what she considered a major issue. I asked how he had made such a mistake, and he responded that he knew a lot about the industry in question and thought the client was misreading the issue’s importance. It was clear that he hadn’t asked a critical question: What are the major issues you expect to face in getting this problem resolved? (more…)