(Two earlier posts, Networking Up, Part 1 and Part 2, described how rainmakers network with executives, who are their seniors in age, authority and income.  Here is another on the subject.)

Few of us can shanty up to a senior executive’s office and just pop our heads in to say hello.  These are busy people and they have little time for casual visits.   Gatekeepers bar entrance to those who might fritter away the executives’ time.  So, even if you meet a senior executive during the course of your work, maintaining contact is hard.  To do so requires knowing more things of substance to share with her than most of us do.  And, if you don’t maintain contact, you will lose the relationship.

Carl whose slow, easy-going manner masked a fast, hard-charging mind, was easy to talk to and even easier to underestimate.  He built relationships with senior execs and so a successful practice, also cross selling many of his firm’s other services.  The execs learned that he was an astute observer of their organizations and so, worth talking to.  He was well briefed on matters that were just beginning to filter up to the executive suite.  His way of coming up with insights into client organizations, like many successful rainmaking techniques, was simple:  He drank a lot of coffee and listened to gossip.

“People want to target the big guys in an organization and not waste time on people in lower levels. They forget that you can’t just buy a senior executive a cup of coffee and have a chat, but you can with someone lower in the organization.  Those people will tell you what is going on and what you need to know to talk with someone higher up,” Carl explained.  “Talk with enough of them and you can learn about anything you want to know.”

Of course, Carl isn’t the first to discoverer of this technique.  In modified ways, it has been used by professionals for a long time.  In some current cases, LinkedIn replaces coffee as the medium through which information is passed.  But the underlying method is the same and forever being rediscovered, because it works so well.

Two years ago I was coaching a young German strategy consultant.  When I asked him to make some calls, he refused, arguing that later in the week he had a meeting with the general manager of a major business unit of his biggest account.  “I need to spend my time figuring out what I am going to say,” he protested.  I asked if he knew people working in the business unit with whom he could gossip a bit.  He did and agreed to call and talk with them.  Half an hour later, he came back beaming; one of the people he had talked to had laid out an agenda for his meeting with the boss.

Coffee and gossip, that’s not a bad way to spend some time each day!

The managing partner of a firm once told me about a dinner that he and his boss had with a client in Chicago long ago. The boss, whose name is Bob, was the founder of the firm and a prodigious rainmaker. Much of his prowess was based on a detailed knowledge of certain aspects of the insurance industry. That knowledge allowed the firm to compete with larger firms with stronger reputations and deeper pockets.

Like Bob, the client had spent all his career in insurance, so all through the dinner they regaled each other with stories about people they knew in the business. The client, like Bob, could trace people then prominent in the industry back three or four jobs and describe how they had made their careers. They matched each other, story for story, from the appetizer through dessert.

After leaving the client, as Bob and future managing partner were walking back to their hotel, Bob said, “Didn’t we learn a lot!” His young colleague was baffled by his enthusiasm.

Three weeks later the two men were attending an association meeting where they were introduced to someone who had been the subject of one of the client’s stories during the dinner. “Oh, your so-and-so! I’ve heard so much about you,” said Bob. “Didn’t you . . .” and he proceeded to tell the man he had just met about one of the man’s early successes. “I’d love to get together with you some time,” Bob concluded. “Sure,” said the man, without hesitation. “Give my secretary a call and we’ll set something up.” He handed Bob his card.

If someone whom you had never met told you something about your past in detail, wouldn’t you be curious? Wouldn’t you be inclined to give the person a meeting?

In other posts, I have written about the benefits of specialization. One such benefit is the affinity it creates in your network. As in this example, the knowledge you get from one network member has interest to others that isn’t the case in low affinity networks. You do better work and you get better work because of this knowledge.

Because this blog is written for professionals, I have avoided using examples from product sales. But I like this story, and it makes a point.

My friend, Dan Morley, who always has a twinkle in his eye, owns a furniture dealership that was recently asked to bid on furnishing a corporate headquarters. Dan’s firm was shortlisted to present its capabilities along with several competing firms. His firm was given the last slot of the back-to-back presentations, an hour in the middle of the afternoon. Deadly!

Dan and his team arrived at the client site in time for lunch and went to a restaurant across the street. The waitress, obviously in her element, was talking with each of her customers and leaving most of them laughing. Harriet, for that was her name, asked Dan what his team was in the area for, and when she learned, she said, “That’s simple! Just tell them that the furniture is BE-U-TIFUL, that the price is REA-SONABLE, and that everyone will be HAPPY!”

Later, when Dan stood up to introduce his team, he was faced with four men with their ties loosened and sleeves rolled up sitting at a table littered with old coffee cups and stacked with materials left by his competitors. The clients looked exhausted. On the spot, Dan ad libbed, “We can give you the forty-five minute presentation you asked us to prepare or I can give you the five minute synopsis. Which would you like?” The clients stared at each other. They had been listening to presentation after presentation all day. They were sick of sitting and listening, while the dealers all praised themselves and their products. To a person they opted for the synopsis.

So, Dan told them about the waitress and how she said the job was simple. “And,” he concluded, “I’m going to tell you what she told us to say: The furniture is BE-U-TI-FUL, the price is REA-SONABLE, and everybody will be HAPPY!” Everyone laughed, and the rest of the meeting consisted of an informal give and take. The clients gave Dan’s firm the business, and the next day, Harriet received a large basket of flowers.

Here are some lessons from this story:

• Take pity on the clients you present to and remember that most presentations are long-winded and repetitive. The words Dan borrowed from the waitress made the same point that other firms had taken an hour to make.

• The clients didn’t doubt the ability of Dan’s firm (or any of the other firms) to meet their need. That being the case, they were now looking for someone they would like to work with. That is often the case when final selections are made. So, give them a sense of what you would be like to work with during your presentation.

• A client who laughs is half sold.

• A rainmaker recognizes good advice when he hears it, regardless of the source.

Dave was one of the most successful managing partners of a professional firm that I have known.  When he first took the job, the firm was in desperate shape, losing both money and talent.  He turned it into a highly profitable firm with a reputation for having one of the best cultures in its profession.  When he retired, it was many times larger than when he had taken the top job and still growing.

And on top of this, he made it pour.  Among the new business attributable to him was a steady flow of work from one account that ranked as one of the firm’s top three clients year after year.  By the time he retired, he had been working the account for almost thirty years and had a close relationship with the man who was now chairman of the client company that went back almost as far. 

They had met early in both their careers when Dave was given responsibility for handling a matter at the client company.  The person in charge of the client team was a young, high-potential manager assigned to the task as a way to give him experience rapidly.  The man impressed Dave by his competence and ambition.  Dave decided to stay in touch with him after the initial matter was settled.

I asked Dave how much time this took.  Very little, he responded.  Most years he was doing other work at this client and would have breakfast or lunch with him every six months.  In the few years that he didn’t have work at the client, they would have a short phone conversation twice a year. 

When the man became president and later CEO and chairman, their relationship went back over twenty years.  The chance that a competitor would take this account away were slim.  How different it would have been, if Dave had let the relationship go cold for fifteen years and then sought to rekindle it when the man became president!

How many rising stars do you know?  Don’t lose sight of them for an instant!

A few years back a professional I was working with came to a meeting looking as if he had been rolled around in a cement truck for an hour.   He had just returned from a client meeting from hell. 

Every point the team of professionals had made before the client’s executive committee had been challenged, both facts and conclusions rejected.  The team was virtually starting the project over again, but the clients they would be working with were now predisposed to be difficult.

Later that day, I ran into the managing partner of the firm, a prodigious rainmaker, and asked if he had heard about the meeting.

 “I was there, through the whole thing,” he replied, his usual chipper self. 

“Was it a bad as I was told?” I asked.

 “Yes and no,” he answered, adding that it had come out all right in the end.

 “I didn’t hear about a happy ending,” I said. 

“Well, I’m referring to my quiet conversation with the CEO.  I drew him aside and said that the meeting had been a bad thing for both our firms, and that he and I had to see to it that it didn’t happen again.  He agreed to meet with me the evening before each Executive Committee Meeting to make sure that he and I are in agreement before anything goes before the committee.”  His eyes twinkled, and I knew a punch line was coming.  “So now I am meeting with him twice a month, both at the committee meeting and one on one the night before!”

The firm rebuilt the relationship, which, if anything, became stronger for going through a rough patch.  And the managing partner used his time with the CEO to good effect, listening to the CEO’s plans, identifying areas where his firm could help and selling more and more work. 

As I reported years ago in my book, Creating Rainmakers, most rainmakers are optimists.  This is the best example I have seen of optimism in action.  And I have remembered the rainmaker’s words to the CEO and recommended that others use them. 

This has been a bad thing for both of our firms, and we have to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Optimists stress the one area of agreement with the client at such a moment. They note that what happened was a disaster for both firms, and focus the discussion on the future by stressing  that it’s important to all concerned to get it fixed. I have had favorable reports from everyone who has used the rainmaker’s words when faced with a similar situation.

I hope you never find yourself in a difficult situation like this, but if you do remember the words the rainmaker used with this client.

About a dozen years ago, an old friend, Joan Jorgenson, hung out her shingle as a retained search recruiter.  Within a year she was winning the choicest searches in her niche, most coming through referrals from her network.  She built this network from a core of people into the best in the niche within a year. 

I have never seen anyone build such a productive referral network in so short a time.  Being interested in such things, I asked her how she had done it, to which she responded with a steely determination, “One person at a time.”

That is how networks grow.  You meet someone.  You get to know what interests them, so that you can stay in front of them.  You make judgments, about personal fit and your ability to help each other to pick the keepers.  And you stay in front of them some more. 

Recruiters have advantages over other professionals, because sourcing and interviewing candidates and checking references give them more reasons to stay in front of their contacts than most of us have.  At least, they have these advantages once they get hired to conduct some searches.  A sole practitioner, Joan couldn’t rely on searches sold by others in the firm to stay in front of people.  She had to come up with something else, until she won enough searches for the contacting-through-searches to kick in.

Because recruiters need larger networks than most of us, this meant she had to come up with numerous reasons for calling her contacts.  The reason for these calls had to be plausible and offer her a chance to provide value to her contacts.  The approach she developed did all of this and made her a better-informed recruiter into the bargain.

The industry that she recruits for was undergoing a massive change.  Strategies that worked for three quarters of a century were losing their effectiveness. People in the industry across the country were struggling to find new ways to meet their objectives.  The new paths were more diverse than in the past, there was little literature on many of them and what literature there was dated quickly.

To recruit effectively, Joan needed to know about these new approaches.  She found herself developing lists of people at the cutting edge of their development.  Calling them to learn about their approaches, she discovered that each was interested in what she had learned from the others. In this market, it was acceptable to pass such information on.  The more she did this, the more she learned and passed on and the more valuable she became both as a contact and a recruiter.

She began to refer to the people she called as her “brain trust” and the term stuck.  Members had a rough idea of who the other members were.  Outsiders who learned of it aspired to membership and would reach out to bring her information. When someone was needed to recruit cutting edge talent, she became the obvious choice.  This process and the brain trust at its center have been the foundation of her search practice.

I know of other professionals who have developed networks comparable to Joan’s brain trust.  A German strategy consultant, for example, created such a group from firm alumni now working within the industry he specializes in.  This group actually meets several times a year.  “I can find out anything I want to know about what is happening in the industry through this group,” he has said.
One thing that those who create brain trusts have all noted: When you ask someone to be a part of your brain trust, they seldom say no.

I have been reading Shawn Callahan’s blog ever since he commented on one of my early posts, Sadder but Wiser, about the use of an anecdote to show you had really learned something. The Anecdote is a well-known blog, one seen as successful. Among blogs it has a Google page rank of five, something for the rest of us to aspire to. So, I thought it might be useful to see if he has turned up any business through it.

Shawn’s firm, Anecdote, consults on the use of business narrative and collaboration techniques “to redesign and improve the way people learn, share information, retain knowledge and build resolve to make changes in the workplace.” Asked what that means, he gave this example:

One of our clients is a leading financial institution and they have just completed an organizational culture inventory. These survey instruments can be a little dry and difficult to understand so we are helping them collect stories that illustrate the culture and then working with people in the company to design and implement initiatives that will shape their organizational culture.

The firm has served many large corporations and departments of the Australian government.

Shawn has been blogging since 2002, the Pleistocene by blog standards, and The Anecdote blog is his third, so he had two earlier ones to shake the ticks out of his approach. That accounts, in part, for its professional look and content. The Anecdote dates back to November 2004.

Callahan reports that he gets lots of leads traceable to the blog. Because I have not found many blogs that generate a significant number of leads for a professional firm, this becomes an important case. Here are the reasons that I think he has been more successful than so many others.

First, he had the insight to get in early and the persistence to keep at it. Yes, I mean that the blog’s high productivity probably results, in part, from its age, a factor of much importance in a network, as described by Albert-Lázlo Barabási in Linked: The New Science of Networks [Perseus Publishing 2002].

Second, it is also, in Barabási‘s terms fitter, because it has masses of content and lots of links. Type in “knowledge strategy,” “business narrative” or “storytelling training” into Google and you will find Anecdote on the first page.

More importantly type these terms in with a geographic location such as Melbourne, Canberra or Australia and it’s number one. That this may be a more significant differentiator in Australia than it would be in the US or Europe, because the nearest alternative, outside resources are likely to be a ten-hour plane ride away, does not diminish what Shawn and his colleagues have done. We all must adapt what we do to our local conditions for better or for worse. I mention it because each of us must determine what will make our blogs fit in our market places, meaning we cannot expect to succeed in exactly the way he did, using his approach as a recipe. Remember that Callahan had two blogs prior to this one. That experience undoubtedly helped him make this one fitter from the start. We, too, will have to do some experimenting.

The third reason his blog is so successful has to do not so much with the blog, itself, as it does how Shawn takes inquiries he receives on it and turns them into consulting assignments. Turning an inquiry from someone who has first heard about you on the web into new business costing the client a large sum is a big aspiration for a professional and a bigger increase in commitment than most people buying services are willing to make.

Callahan and his colleagues have addressed this problem by inserting a step between the client making a query on the basis of something read on the blog and asking him to sign for a full-blown consulting engagement.

In my book, Cross-Selling Success, I call this a portal service. In Anecdote’s case, it takes the form of courses that the representative of an organization can attend for a modest fee. During the course, the consultants get to show what they can do and what they would be like to work with. They also learn a lot about the client and its issues. After the client and the consultants take this small step together, both have learned a lot about each other and the client is more likely to sign up The Anecdote team to help them run their own business narrative projects.

It took between two and three years for the blog to evolve into an effective lead generator. It proved valuable in other ways earlier. Shawn praises the discipline it creates to get ideas down on paper and finds it a useful place to store and access ideas and information, a consultant’s stock in trade. Says Callaghan, “I often send links to specific blog posts to clients and prospects to keep in contact and show we care about them and their business.”

It’s not all fun. Like other bloggers, he feels the stress of perpetual demand for content (I can identify with Shawn’s concern: I feel that my blog sits at my feet all day, moaning, “Feed me. Feed me.”)

To address this problem, he has developed a set of posting categories: the quick link and short comment; the mini idea (a couple of paragraphs); the foundational idea (4-10 paragraphs). Assigning ideas he has for posting gives him a sense of how much time he must devote to producing the postings. Keeping his posts short, he can distribute ideas over more days When there is nothing substantial to say, he links to other people’s blogs which not only provides content for his readers, it also increases his social network.

In spite of the demands, Shawn is clearly hooked on blogging. He says, “I really love blogging because the more I think about how things connect, the more connections I make. The blog posts become conversation topics and you are rarely lost for something interesting to say while at the same time you become attentive and mindful for new ideas and perspectives.”

Here are some valuable takeaways from Shawn:

1. A blog is a major commitment, in which a professional will have to invest up to two years before you start seeing a return in the form of new business. I hope that some of my readers can prove me wrong on this, but I doubt it.
2. In addition to time, your blog’s success as a lead generator will depend on its fitness. What constitutes fitness will vary from market to market, but at the very least it means good content frequently posted—and probably the right links to other blogs and sites, as well.
3. Rather than trying to convert a lead generated by the blog into a full-blown client, it is probably better to have a small sample of what you do that clients can try first. A blog, like any other marketing technique, can’t just be glued onto the side of your practice. To be successful, it must be integrated with other things you do.
4. Blogs have many small uses as places to store information and to refer clients and prospective clients who are looking for a bit of information.
5. Blogging is fun and can be addictive.

And, now that I’ve had my jag for the day, I can stop writing. 

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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

(This posting is adapted from the second edition of my book, Rain Making: the Professionals Guide to Attracting New Clients, which will be published in February of 2008. About 40 % of the content in this edition will be new.)

Thanksgiving is right around the corner. Thanksgiving makes me think of big meals, and when I think of big meals, I think of David’s breakfast.

Opportunities to meet and spend time with senior executives don’t come often. You must take full advantage of them, when they do. David Nadler, the founder of Mercer Delta Consulting and now Vice Chairman of Marsh & McLennan Companies, tells this story:

I was asked to give a speech at a conference for a lot of senior executives at the Homestead resort in Virginia. I went down to breakfast the morning of the speech, went through the buffet line and sat down at a table with other people attending the meeting. We all introduced ourselves, and I found out that I was eating breakfast with six very senior executives. After we finished eating and got up to go, I realized that it would be a long time before such an opportunity came again. So, I went back through the buffet line and sat down at another table. I had three breakfasts that morning and probably put on pounds, but it was worth it.

(This is part of a series of rainmaker stories. To read the earlier posts, see the category Rainmaker Story.)

Would-be networkers find developing relationships with senior executives challenging. The imbalance in age, wealth and power makes it so. This is the story of one who rose to the challenge.

Each year, our firm coaches many professionals to help them become rainmakers. It is human nature to predict at the start which will succeed and which won’t. Over the years I have found myself to be, charitably, only a middling predictor. But there was never any doubt about Jane.

Jane is a young recruiter at an executive search firm, who specializes in searches for a glamour industry. In this industry where emotions run high and your future may hinge on a sudden change in consumer tastes, she stands out for her integrity, professionalism and a plain speaking manner that she learned growing up in a small western city. She is bedrock reliable, and her clients are loyal.

Like all young professionals she was challenged by the need to develop relationships with senior executives.

She solved this problem when faced with a smaller and more immediate one. One of these loyal clients asked her to buy a table at an association luncheon he was in charge of, and, of course, she did. Needing to fill six seats, she called a client, the CEO of a well-known firm, and invited her. To her surprise the client accepted and asked if she could bring a colleague. The colleague she brought was a dealmaker, who knew everyone in the industry.

With acceptances from two players in the industry, Jane felt more confident at inviting others. In the end she brought two highly visible CEOs, the dealmaker, a person out of work and looking for the next job as a president, the president of a smaller company and the head of human resources at yet another big firm.

This one event had many beneficial consequences. She got to know all of them better. Each one of her guests saw that the others respected her opinion, increasing their own opinion of her. She has become a true trusted advisor to two of them. And everyone at the event was curious about this young woman sitting at the table with so many heavy hitters. Many, who had never heard of her before, knew her by the end of the lunch. When the unemployed president found a job, she relied on Jane to do much of her recruiting. The deal maker has become a source of referrals.

So, what can learn from the story of Jane’s lunch?

First, senior executives find an invitation by a young professional to an association lunch acceptable and appropriate (plus, they might just come!)

Second, if they want to bring a guest, it is likely to be someone worth knowing.

Third, if an executive sees you with other senior people, it will improve his regard for you. If you are sitting with a group of senior executives, total strangers will want to find out who you are.

Fourth, someone who is looking for a job is especially appreciative of this kind of invitation that provides so many opportunities to meet people.

I am sure there are still other things to learn, but will leave it at that. I will conclude with one other piece of information: Jane got promoted the following fall.

Most of us are afraid to turn down a client, fearing that if we do, we will never have another chance. I did, too, until David told me the story of the Amazing Flip.

David worked for a creative firm that I will not describe in detail, in order to protect its identity. I will call it Cool & Awesome. The firm was founded on the belief that to have the best firm you had to hire and retain the best people and that to get the best people you had to offer them the most interesting work. This belief was put into practice by allowing any professional in the firm to turn down work she disliked. This meant that before anyone sold a project to a client, he had to make sure he could find people willing to do it. Each project had to be sold twice, once to the client and once to the firm’s professionals.

David, who is among the most accomplished rainmakers I know, was new with the firm and still adjusting to this peculiar two-way selling, when I first met him. One day an executive from a Fortune 100 company called to discuss several projects he want David’s firm to do. As he listened to the descriptions of the projects, David realized that he wouldn’t be able to sell them inside. Still, it wasn’t everyday he got a call from a company that big from an executive that senior. So, instead of telling him no over the phone David flew to the client’s city and took him to dinner.

Over dinner he told the client about the firm’s unusual practice of letting its professionals turn down work. “For any of them being willing to do it,” said David, “it either has to be technically challenging, have high visibility, or do significant good to society. I don’t think I can sell your projects internally. I think you would be better served by going to another . . .” Here, the client interjected, “Are you trying to say that our projects aren’t cool enough?” All David could do was shrug his shoulders.

A week later the man called David, asking to meet with several of the key members of the Cool & Awesome professional staff. The day of the meeting the man stood before the Cool & Awesome talent and put up his first slide. It read:

Why XYZ Corporation
Wants to Work With
Cool & Awesome
And Why
Cool & Awesome
Should Want
To Work With XYZ

That was the Amazing Flip: Roles had reversed. The client had become the seller and the professional firm had become the buyer!

Having learned that saying no can make you more attractive, rather than less, the very next week, I called a client and told them we would not be pursuing work with them that they had asked us to bid on. The client paused for a moment and then responded, “Well, if you don’t want to work with our New York teams, let me tell you how it would work in Boston.”

Flip!