In an earlier post, I described how to write a professional bio. In this one I will describe how it can be used as a career planner.

The New Year is here, always a good time to do a little planning. Go to your computer and bring up your professional bio. Print two copies and update one of them. How do the two compare? Have you made progress in building your credentials and reputation this year?

Next, on the back of the updated bio, list what you want it to say at the beginning of 2010 that it doesn’t say now.

Things like:

• Added one new chemical company client
• Published one article
• Gave two speeches

Put the two copies of your bio in a file and, from time to time during the year, take it out and look at your list of things you want it to say you have completed at the end of the year to see what progress you have made.

Repeat this process every January. A well written bio summarizes your accomplishments in your profession. Use it to make sure those accomplishments are growing, and so, increasing your stature in your field.

(Blogger’s Note:  Some readers may note that both Ian Brodie and I use the term Rainmaker Resource. I for a category of post and he for the title of a blog.  In case anyone is curious, we are both aware of this sharing of the term and agree that it bothers us not at all.)

Readers use this blog and others to learn how to make rain, stay current with new ideas or to refresh knowledge.  I hope you get those things from this blog and feel honored by your confidence.  It is only fair to tell you that this blog or any other, or any book or newsletter or video isn’t always the best place.

That’s because, as I mentioned in an earlier post, Rainmaking = Doing, if you go somewhere that people network, you can watch them do it and then try it, yourself.  And try it again.  This is what professional associations are for. (Well, one of several things they are for). I was reminded of this in a recent post by Mark Buckshon about the value of working associations to get close to prospective clients.

When I knew nothing . . . nothing about business development, pros like Nancy Cameron-Egan, Karen Randall and the late Oscar Megerdichian showed me how at association meetings.  In an earlier post I described how I observed Dennis Donovan, then a skilled competitor, network with speakers at such events.

When I was first given a senior management position at a consulting firm, I had the good fortune to attend an Association of Management Consulting Firms (AMCF) meeting.  I learned more there about running an office and a practice and helping to direct a firm than I could possibly have learned anywhere else.  I could ask questions and get answers that would have been impossible within the confines of the firm I was with.  If I were a new senior executive at a management consulting firm, that’s an organization that I would make time for.  I make time for it today, too, and don’t regret a minute spent there.  Some of the most senior executives of some of the largest consulting firms also make time for AMCF in their busy schedules.  Something must be happening there, don’t you think?

The Society for Marketing Professional Services (SMPS) is a critical resource for anyone involved in business development at architecture, engineering and construction firms.  I have gone to as many meetings of this organization and to as many of its chapters as any association I belong to.  I don’t believe I have ever come away from an SMPS meeting without learning something of value or without meeting someone helpful to know.  In the built environment professions, where winning a project depends so much on who has better information and who is on the right teams, operating without access to the information and people that flow through SMPS meetings borders on professional business development malpractice.

Different organizations are valuable at different times and in different ways. For example, AMCF is for midsized to large consulting firms, while the Institute of Management Consultants (IMC) is focused more on sole practitioners and consultants at small firms.  When I started my own firm and was struggling with a financial accounting issue, responses to a casual question that I posed over dinner at an IMC meeting provided a raft of information that saved me hours of work and out-of-pocket expenses—and I enjoyed the company and dinner, too.  A small project won on a referral from an IMC member resulted in content that clients find helpful and challenging ten years later.

I don’t know the Legal Marketing Association (LMA) or the Association for Accounting Marketing (AAM), but get favorable reports on them from those who do.

Some clients whom I recommend participating in these associations respond by saying that they could probably give a lot more than they learn at such gatherings.  Maybe so, but I have devoted much of the past thirty years and all of the past fifteen to learning about selling professional services, written three books and dozens of articles on the subject, given many speeches and worked with hundreds of aspiring rainmakers and I feel that what I get from such groups far outweighs what I give.   Maybe it’s a matter of knowing what you are looking for.  I’m a believer!  Can you tell?

Well, now that I have that rant out of my system, it’s time to turn in for the night.

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.

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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…)