Business Network International (BNI) published a review of Rain Making in their April issue of SuccessNet.

Read the BNI review here. 

(Don’t miss the Letter of Introduction Free Book Offer at the end of this post.)

Hoping to obtain a meeting with a senior executive, you have drafted a letter of introduction and rewritten it a dozen times, whittled and honed it down to three terse paragraphs.  Without wasting a syllable it states who you are, what you want, and why the client will want to give it to you.

At the end of the first paragraph, which describes your firm, you have written,
”I have attached __________________.”  Uncertain what to include, you have not completed the sentence, but the letter must go out today, and so you must decide.

If you send the letter electronically, the choices are:

• A link to your website, which includes a client list, partner bios, descriptions of work done by the firm, a list of services and other information
• A link to an electronic reprint of a an article you wrote
• A link to the firm’s newsletter
• A one page description of a case or project the firm worked on, also available on the website.

If you send a paper letter of introduction, your choices are:

• A twelve-page glossy brochure
• A client list
• A one page description of a case or project the firm worked on
• A list of firm publications available on request
• Your bio and those of others in the firm 

What would you send?Here are some guidelines:

1. Less is more.  The less you send with a document, the more it looks like executive-to-executive correspondence.  More attachments make it look more like a pitch or a mass mailing. Don’t send the brochure. DON’T send the brochure.
2. more senior the executive, the more that less is more, if you follow my drift.  Just in case you don’t, let me repeat that in other words.  Very top executives don’t read a lot of marketing collateral; they don’t have time for reading through mass-mailed documents or anything that looks like one.  So with letters to senior execs, you really want to reduce enclosures to a minimum.  Consider sending your letter without any attachments.
3. If the receiver has never heard of you or your firm, it sometimes helps to send some form of external validation, such as an article about you or your firm or a reprint of an article you have published in a journal he would recognize. But keep it small, because less is more.  An exception might be a copy of a book you or a colleague from your firm has written, because, by its nature it appears substantive rather than salesy.
4. If your objective is something other than getting a meeting, you might want to attach a little more.  A letter sent primarily to remind an executive of who you are and what you do may benefit from a short attachment, like a reprint of an article that mentions you, a reprint of an article you wrote of relevance to the person you are writing to. But skip the brochure.
5. You have more flexibility if you send an email, because you can create links to your website that are subtle because they look like a standard link appearing in all your documents.

And when should you use the brochures, you might ask?  Many find that they are really good for toasting marshmallows.

My Letter of Introduction Free Book Offer:  I am looking for examples of good emails and letters of introduction used by professionals.  After changing or blocking out any names of people or firms that you wish to keep private, please send your best samples by April 21, 2008 to fharding@HardingCo.com. 

I will send copies of one of my books, Rain Making-2^nd Edition-Attract New Clients No Matter What Your Field or Creating Rainmakers to the two people who, in my opinion, provide the best examples.  Be sure to include your name, mailing address and phone number with your submission.

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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
 

Management Consulting News just published an interview with me. We discussed the new edition of Rain Making, how the Internet has changed the way people sell, “call discipline,” and more.

See Ford Harding on Rainmaking for Consultants to read the whole interview.

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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

Suzanne Lowe just posted a review of Rain Making on her professional services blog The Expertise Marketplace.

See Rainmaker, Rainmaker, Make me Some Rain.

By the time a client asks you for references, she is close to hiring you. Instead of easing off, this is the time to sprint harder to ensure you come in first. That means picking the right people to give the reference and then preparing them for the call.

There are three kinds of people when it comes to giving references:

1. those who want to help you win
2. those who want to give unbiased answers
3. those that want someone else to win

You want all of the people you give as references to come from the first group. Even though you want them to be truthful, their version of the truth will differ from that of the second group, because it will seek to put you in the best light, rather than seeking to be totally objective.

The client asks, “Did they meet the schedule?” The advocate answers, “It might have run a bit over, but frankly we weren’t as focused on that as much as we might have been. They came in under a very tight budget—they were stars at that and that’s what we really cared about.”

In contrast, the unbiased reporter responds, “They brought it in three weeks late. We had a generally had a good experience, but meeting the schedule wasn’t their strong point.” Both are honest responses, but the first one will help you win, both because of its content and because of the enthusiasm it communicates. The second answer could easily cost you the job.

When picking someone to provide as a reference ask yourself these questions:

• How good was the work we did?
• Will the prospective client view it as relevant to her own situation?
• How much does the person whose name I am giving like me?
• Is he the kind of person to extend himself to make it sound positive?  Subsidiary questions to this one include: Is he naturally enthusiastic? Has he sold a lot and so knows what a “good reference” means?

Just picking the right people to provide references isn’t sufficient; you must make it easy for them to help you. They, of course, know nothing about the client or her needs. Giving them this information allows them to prepare an answer. Tell a contact, “she is concerned about our ability to stand up to some strong-willed people, and you are in a good position to comment on that.” With advance warning, he may mention your ability in this area before the question is asked.

Next, if at all possible, give him the names of the person who will be calling to take the reference and of her company. That way, he is more likely to take her call when it comes in.

Also, remember that he is unlikely to recall the exact work you did for him and its outcome as well as you do. Be prepared to brief him. For example, you might say, “They need to cut turnover, so we thought the fifty percent reduction in turnover among pickers and packers at your Scranton facility would mean a lot to her.” There is very little chance that your contact remembers this turnover rate reduction for long after your work is completed. But if you brief him this way, he is likely to repeat the statistic when giving the reference.

Finally, when the pursuit is over, whether you won or not, call your references, advise them of the outcome and thank them again. If they like you, learning that they helped you will make the feel good. You owe them that pleasure.

* * * * * * * * *
This post was excerpted from the new edition of my book, Rain Making: Attract New Clients No Matter What Your Field. This is a new edition of my earlier, bestselling book, with about 49-percent new content.

Suzanne Lowe has published the results of her second mini-survey Are PSF Marketing and Business Development Functions Stuck in a Rut? This survey asked if firms were making their marketing and business development functions more strategic.

In her analysis, Suzanne notes “These findings highlight a critical concern for PSFs that are working to evolve their Marketing and Business Development functions: the need to better balance cultural initiatives with formal structural changes.  It appears — at least for these respondents — this isn’t what’s happening.”

Professionals often struggle to find ways to meet the senior executives who are most likely to give them business.  At the accounts where they are working they feel blocked by the person they report to.  Some feel so awkward about approaching a top executive, they don’t even try.

Rainmakers are not deterred by these obstacles.  They get in front of the people they want to know.  For the past fifteen years we have interviewed rainmakers and people who have worked closely with them to learn what they do and how they do it.  How they meet the executives they want to know is a question we ask.  We’ve tallied their responses to find the most frequently-used approach. 

And the answer is . . . . . they ask someone to introduce them.

I can almost hear the moans of disappointment at what appears to be an anticlimax.  I imagine you’re feeling tempted to surf away to somewhere else on the web. But over time, I have come to really like this answer.  I like it because it’s relatively easy, and I learned years ago that there are no extra points for getting new business the hard way.  I like it because it’s direct and straightforward.

If you time your request for a moment when your principal contact is happy with something you have done, it can a simple request for a favor.  I have covered this in an earlier posting, Asking for Referrals. 

Still, it’s not always as easy as it first appears. Sometimes you must get in front of the top executive before you have even started the work.  To do that you must make it clear to your principal contact why getting you access to the senior executive is essential. Here are three examples, all shortened and simplified to make the message clear:

Need for High Level Sponsorship:  One professional looked at the executive who wanted to hire him and said, “You and I both want to get this done, but to make it work we will need the buy-in of the whole management team.  Frankly, neither of us has the clout to ensure we get it.  The only way to be sure we get their support is to get [the president] to sponsor the effort.  If he owns it, we can get it done.  Can you get us in front of him for half an hour?”

Need to Overcome High Level Resistance:  Another said, “It’s apparent from her comments that your boss doesn’t like consultants.  This is something we must resolve quickly. Thanks for offering to talk with her, but no intermediary can make her comfortable with me.  I need to meet her and talk this through.  Can you arrange it?”

Need to Understand Goals:  And another:  “If we go ahead with this work without clarity about [the CEO’s] goals, we could end up with an end product that doesn’t match what he wants.  That’s true whether he knows what his goals are today or not.  What will happen if we go ahead assuming he wants red, and then six months from today he decides he wants green?  What will it cost us then to fix the problem?  The way around this is to help him think through the problem so that he can clearly state his goal now.  Can you arrange for a meeting with him, so that we can help him do that?”

If you don’t ask, you don’t get.

(You may also be interested in Networking Up, Part 1.)

There is a saying among architects that the design of a building is done when the project manager pulls drawings from under the designer’s pen. So it is with books. They are never really done. Rather, they represent the author’s thinking at the time the manuscript was shipped off to the editor.

My first book, Rain Making: the Professionals Guide to Attracting New Clients first appeared in 1994, and a lot has changed since then. It doesn’t even mention the Internet. An acceptable gap just fourteen years ago, it is a gaping hole today.

Also, I have had fourteen more years of helping professionals learn to sell. That gives me the benefit of working with hundreds of people in an array of professions* and also the chance to learn from my colleagues, Mimi Spangler and Gary Pines.

The new edition covers subjects I could not have touched fourteen years ago, such as:

• how to network with senior executives,
• how to network with the connectors who everyone else wants to network with,
• how networks change depending on the markets they service, such as distressed companies, the wealthy who have estate, investment and tax issues, corporations planning to move, pension and benefits providers, municipal water-and-sewage-treatment departments and others,
• how to generate more leads from your networks,
• how to shorten a sales cycle,
• how to turn away unwanted clients,
• what a sales strategy does,

and many others.

You can order the book on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other online booksellers, as well as the SMPS bookstore.

* The professions include actuaries, architects, auditors, chemical engineers, civil engineers, construction managers, corporate lawyers, economists, electrical engineers, executive recruiters (retained), human resource consultants, industrial engineers, intellectual property attorneys, interior designers, investment bankers, labor attorneys, litigation support consultants, litigators, mechanical engineers, psychologists, publicists, recruiters (contingency), strategy consultants, structural engineers, technology consultants, valuation consultants, and workout specialists. During the past fourteen years we have consulted to professionals in almost twenty different countries.

Larry Bodine as a good post on the Law Marketing Blog called Law Firm Requires New Associates to Have Sales Background.

My reaction is that there are many potential advantages to hiring sales attorneys. The history of this approach in other professions, suggests that there are a number of hurdles to overcome to make it successful. These include:

1) Making sure that the new position is designed into the fabric of the firm and not just glued onto the side. This means that everybody’s job is affected in some way by this new approach to business getting. A firm that doesn’t note this and educate its other attorneys is likely to suffer from at least two outcomes:a) Some attorneys will think that because someone else has responsibility for sales they can abandon most of their own efforts, b) Other attorneys will freeze the new sales force out in the belief that they own certain accounts.

2) Making sure the new position and the people in it are respected members of the firm. There is a tendency for professionals to feel that anyone who doesn’t practice the profession in the traditional way is an ineffectual, contentless dweeb. The best sales attorneys will not stand for this and leave. There needs to be a career path for these people that includes partnership and practice leadership.

Also, the more movement there is between the traditional career path in the firm and the new sales career path, the better, because it reduces the them-versus-us mentality that plagues dedicated sellers in professional firms.

Networking takes time, and for professionals, time is scarce.   Lack of time can force us to pass up an opportunity to help a network contact.  Because help is the coin of networkland, these missed opportunities lessen our value as networkers.  Miss one such chance and no great harm will be done. Miss again and again and the cumulative harm will be substantial.

Here are three things to have ready to give, so that you don’t have to take time to get them each time you want to give them to a contact.

1. The Key Resource

Clients often ask their professional advisors for referrals to other providers. If a specific kind of provider is requested frequently, it pays to vet a few of them, so that you can quickly and comfortably refer them in the future.  Whether or not these providers can also refer clients to you is of secondary importance. 

A management coach, a PhD psychologist, frequently gets requests for referral to counselors who can help a client’s family member or friend with personal problems.   She has verified two or three psychologists who do that kind of work and to whom she can refer these clients. 

Clients sometimes ask a structural engineer for advice on problems in residential buildings, not his specialty.  He developed a list of engineers who did do residential work whom he could refer.

Note in both these cases, the need for help is probably urgent.  When the need is urgent, the value of the referral is high.  You don’t want to come up empty handed when the contact turns to you at so critical a moment.

2. Note Cards

When a client is ill or has a death in the family, you may want to send a sympathy card and feel an electronic one too impersonal.  When a client has a birthday, gets promoted, or has a new child, you may think of sending a card of congratulations.  You have every intention of buying a card, but don’t get around to it and the moment passes. 

This may seem a small thing; but it’s not.  We all appreciate it when a friend recognizes our successes and our tragedies.  Doing so with a card takes little effort and is good manners, whether or not the person is a network contact.  With network contacts it helps advance a relationship. 
But, we seldom go out and buy the needed card, we are so busy and distracted.  You are far more likely to write a personal note, if you have the card in your desk in anticipation of needing it. 

The next time you visit an art museum or high-end stationer, buy some all-purpose, conservative cards and keep them in your desk.  Having them at hand allows you to draft a quick note immediately on hearing news from a contact that warrants so personal a response.

3. The Special Book

Books make excellent gifts, because they have low cash value, but high intrinsic value to the right reader.  If you find yourself recommending a book often, buy a few copies so that you have them ready to send as gifts.  Some of the books I do this with include:

1. The New Strategic Selling by Heiman and Sanchez.  This guide to planning and monitoring a complex sale is best-in-class and an important resource for professionals and others who sell.
2. Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman.  The author helps people overcome thinking habits that get in the way of their success.
3. A Primate’s Memoir: A Neuroscientist’s Unconventional Life Among the Baboons by Robert M. Sapolsky. I give this book to those who have suffered and enjoyed the difficulty of cross-cultural communication.  It makes them laugh and so is among the kindest gifts a person can make.
4. My current favorite business book. When I read a book that I think has an important message, I will send them to contacts I think will appreciate them.  For example, I have done this with:
   o  The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen
   o  The Logic of Failure by Dietrich Dorner et. Al.
   o  Strategy and the Fat Smoker by David Maister, which I reviewed here.

(I would be interested in hearing what books you give or recommend to your contacts.)

A little foresight will make you a better networker, because you will be able to give more and in networking, you have to give to get.