(As in previous years, I will only be posting once a week in July and August.)

The word etiquette has a dated, your-great-Aunt-Martha sound.  Not that etiquette, itself, is out of date; the need for it is greater than ever.  But the word is seldom used today, replaced by the planer manners, or by some circumlocution.  Etiquette is no longer taught in school, though behavior or conflict management sometimes is, and a good hunk of that subject turns out to be etiquette, barely disguised.

So, I was surprised to find speaker, Rachel Wagner, listing herself as an etiquette coach on the agenda of a meeting of the SMPS Oklahoma Chapter.  Can one actually make a living using those words to describe yourself, I wondered.  I also reflected on the importance of etiquette in selling professional services.  When  you are selling professional services, at the very least it:

•    Ensures you show all you deal with appropriate respect,
•    Helps you get through potentially awkward situations,
•    Shows you to be a socially adept, considerate person.

This made me want to talk with Ms. Wagner, even more.  (I would normally have called her simply Wagner at this point, but because I am writing about an etiquette, I decided to err on the polite side and include the Ms.)  In this post, I will share our initial interview.  In a second, to appear in about a month, I will present her with several potentially awkward selling situations to see how she would react with no time to prepare.  After all, an etiquette expert should be able to deal with unexpected, tetchy situations with aplomb.  She, good sport, has accepted the challenge.

Q: How did you get interested in etiquette and become an expert in it?

Wagner: Etiquette has always been a topic of great interest—my office bookshelves are proof! So, after a successful teaching career, I traded my 8th grade classroom for the corporate training room.   My ultimate goal was to attend the Protocol School of Washington (PSOW) in Washington, D.C. which I did in 2006 and received certification as a Corporate Etiquette and International Protocol Consultant. I consider myself a continual learner in all areas of business etiquette, and I work hard at keeping up with the most contemporary, universally-accepted business etiquette, especially in fast-changing areas like on-line communications.

Q: How does etiquette differ from manners?

Wagner: Manners is really all about “being mindful” of others and making them feel respected and valued. Etiquette is more or less the “how to” of manners—knowing what to do, how to do it, and when to do it. To illustrate, let me give you several examples. We all know it’s “good manners” to make business introductions. The “etiquette” is to say the name and firm of the most senior person first. It’s good manners to give a handshake. The etiquette is to extend your hand with the fingers out and thumb up and connect web to web with two firm pumps (no limp fish handshakes!). It’s good manners to entertain a prospect for lunch. Proper etiquette includes seating your guest correctly (to the right of the host), navigating the place setting (start with the outer silverware and work in), making menu suggestions to discreetly show the limits of your hospitality, and insuring that your guest’s order is taken first.

Good etiquette skills are vital for any firm to be competitive—to get new sales and to enjoy strong repeat business. These are the skills that set professionals apart and firms apart from their competition, no matter what service they offer.

Q: Do the terms professional etiquette and sales etiquette have any special meaning to you and to what extent does each differ from regular old etiquette?

Wagner: Professional etiquette and sales etiquette are both subsets of business etiquette. Especially in today’s economic climate, it’s vital that every member and associate of a firm have a fully equipped tool box of business etiquette knowledge.  “Professional etiquette” refers to ways you deal with others in your profession, such as the way an accountant, whom a client has replaced with another firm, provides information on the account to his replacements.  “Sales etiquette” refers to how you manage sales interactions, such as how you talk with a prospective client whom you meet at a social gathering and who is not looking for a sales pitch. “Regular old etiquette” is vital for a polished image, and includes sending appropriate thank you notes, standing for a handshake, and knowing when and how to offer your business card.

Q: Can you cite an example where etiquette made a difference in the sale of a professional service?

Wagner: I chose not to use a certain financial planning firm after my initial phone inquiry did not result in a timely call back with the information requested. Not only that, another associate of the firm was repeatedly unresponsive to my emails. In fact, I finally had to call and ask if my email questions had been received.  Of course, this is poor service, but it is also inconsiderate.  Even if a professional isn’t interested in a person’s business, proper etiquette dictates that the person receive a prompt and polite response.  Poor “tech etiquette” resulted in a poor first impression of this firm. I’m sure they would have done a fine job of managing my portfolio, but that initial first impression kept them from having the opportunity to prove themselves, because few of us will knowingly select an inconsiderate person to do costly and sensitive professional work.  Little things, such as timely tech-communication skills, do matter in giving a positive image of a firm!

Q: Do you think professionals are held to a higher standard of etiquette than other business people?

Wagner: I think it’s assumed that anyone wearing a suit has a high etiquette IQ—and most do. Because professionals are highly educated, expected to be intelligent, and are perceived to hold high status positions, lapses in etiquette can be seen as arrogance or patronization.  You don’t want to get labeled as a stereotypical arrogant, elitist, self-absorbed professional.

Not everyone who climbs the professional career ladder in a firm is necessarily equipped with the etiquette and social skills to match their new level of influence and leadership. For example, at a Chamber of Commerce event, I observed professional higher-ups with less than impeccable table manners. These same professionals also rudely pecked away on their BlackBerry during the meeting and in a face-to-face conversation with someone.

Q: What rules of etiquette would you most want a professional about to attend an association event to remember?

Wagner: Research shows that approximately 75 percent of us have anxiety about attending an event in which we must meet and greet and make small talk with others. These four rules of etiquette can help make association events less stressful and can enhance your visibility, credibility, and profitability.

1. Remind yourself that you go to the event as a representative of your firm, a walking, talking demonstration of what it might be like to work with.  Yes, greet your peers, but don’t hang out with them all evening.   Remind yourself that it is your responsibility to make sure the people you talk with come away feeling good about you and the firm.  This is usually more a function of asking them questions about something they are interested in, addressing them by name, making sure that everyone in a group has a chance to be heard, than saying something profound yourself.
2. Prepare for the event.  There is proper etiquette for introducing yourself and others, for starting conversations, for breaking into groups, for taking your leave from a conversation, and for dinner table conversation, as examples.  Look into how to handle these things if you are unsure.  My e-newsletter, The Savvy Professional (which you can sign up for at www.EtiquetteTrainer.com), covers many such topics and there are a number of good books on the subject.
3. Don’t head straight to the food and beverage area when you arrive. First mix and mingle. The food is secondary. And when you do go through the food line, never pile your plate. It’s better to eat something before you go than to appear too hungry. An additional tip is to hold your food or beverage in your left hand so that your right hand is always free for a handshake when you meet or greet others.
4. Afterwards drop quick notes to people you met, showing that you remember something special about them.

Q: How do you determine appropriate etiquette in fast changing areas like the internet and social networking?

Wagner: You have to observe, read and research.  (A good book on the subject is The Hamster Revolution: How to Manage Your Email Before It Manages You by Mike Song, Tim Burress and Vicki Halsey.)  I have three suggestions that will help you steer a course even in this rapidly changing area:

1. Don’t be misled by the reputation that email and other forms of electronic communication have for informality.  They are rapidly gaining formality, at least in business circles. When in doubt, err on the side of more formality for a positive image of your firm’s brand–in your emails and on professional networking sites such as LinkedIn.
2. Recognize which of two kinds of exchange you are engaged in, either a conversation with a lot of rapid back-and-forthing or a more deliberate correspondence.  The latter requires more formality. But, good writing style is mandatory in all business emails, including proper spelling (that includes no texting language), grammar, and punctuation.
3. Don’t mistake informality with lack of personal consideration.  Always begin an email with a salutation, if only the person’s first name.  As a best practice, include “dear” or “hello” before the person’s name, especially to business associates, prospective clients, and clients. Except in rapid exchanges, such as when you are back-and-forthing over a meeting date, always include at least a brief personal note, such as It’s good to hear you are doing well or Congratulations on the … or Give so-and-so my best or the like.  Always close with your name.  There are many more tech etiquette rules and the number of those rules is expanding rapidly.

(As in past years, I will only be posting once a week in July and August.)

During good times many professional service firms shun government work.  They don’t like the procedures required to go after the work, nor those required for compliance if they get it.  Most of all they dislike the lower profit margins and billing rate limitations of some government work when compared to work for the private sector.

But when times are tough and private sector work dries up, that government work looks mighty attractive.  Firms that spurned it in bygone years flood the market, resulting in dramatic increases in the number of bidders on requests for proposals.

The outcome, I think, remains much the same:  those firms which always won government work continue to do so and those which didn’t come away empty handed.  That’s because the firms which specialize in government work know the procedures and the players and have the right qualifications and the newcomers don’t.  To win you have to know the market.  If you don’t, that government RFP is more chimera than real opportunity.

That’s what usually happens.  But not always.  I recently learned of a firm with only limited government work experience winning a stunningly attractive project.  If they handled this opportunity correctly, it could be the foundation on which they build a whole government practice.

So, when is a piece of government work worth pursuing if you don’t have a history in that sector?  Before taking the expensive leap of responding to a government RFP, answer the following questions:

1)    Do you really want this work?  If the money is all you are after, it will show, and you will lose.

2)    Are there any reasons why you are especially well suited for the work?  The winner will have some special qualification either with the matter at hand or in the form of a special relationship with the buyers.

3)    Do you have either early warning of the client’s need or better access to information about it than most competitors?  These allow you to build your case more effectively than others do.

If your answer to any of these questions is no, think twice before proceeding.  If you answer no to two of them, drop that pursuit like a bad habit.

Many professional services are event driven, meaning that a planned event creates a need for services.   For example, the movement of an operation can create needs for real estate brokers and attorneys, architects, engineers and others.  A downsizing often creates needs for actuaries and labor attorneys.  Unplanned events can do the same thing.  This might be a crisis, like a spill of hazardous materials, or result from a government action, such as a change in the law or in an administrative procedure.

Once the event becomes public, every eligible professional goes after the work it creates, especially in today’s economic environment.  Clients are swamped with so many offers of help from so many firms, that they put up barriers to protect their time.  It is often the professional who was tipped early of the coming event and so approached the client before everyone else and before the barriers went up, who gets the work.

The best way to do this, of course, is to have a close relationship with someone in the client organization who tips you.  But there are others.  Over the years I have known a number of people who read the help-wanted ads, having realized that a sudden increase in staff in a specific area often signals an impending event.  So, a company that is looking to increase its facilities staff may be planning a new building.  One hiring a number of human resource specialists is likely expecting major change in staff size.

My question today is:  What are other early signs that clients may soon have a need for your services?

Professionals learning to develop business often struggle with finding a reason for calling clients and other important network contacts, when there is no urgent matter to discuss.  You can have frequent conversations with a network contact, as long as the net value of the sum of those conversations is sufficiently high to meet her hurdle rate. If it doesn’t, she won’t return your calls or will find other means to use her time more productively.  The hurdle rate varies from contact to contact and tends to be higher with the more desirable contacts, such as senior executives.

Note that most contacts will not mind the occasional low-value conversation, as long as the net value of the sum of all exchanges with you is high.  This logic presses us to find ways to provide the needed value.  With some contacts the personal relationship is strong enough that interest in each other provides sufficient value.  For the rest, we must constantly be looking for information and ideas that our contacts would find valuable.  That can be a challenge.

Joe Flom of the law firm, Skadden, is one of the world’s greatest rainmakers of the past half century. I find it revealing that he used to hit upon a conversation topic that he would use with his business contacts for a while, and then come up with another.  His colleagues used to refer to these topics as his flavor of the month.  Over the years I have seen other rainmakers do the same, though they seldom have a name for it.

Not having had the opportunity to observe Flom over time I can’t describe the characteristics of his flavors of the month.  From broader experience, I think a flavor must:

• Be a valuable insight or piece of information tied at least peripherally to your business
• Be topical enough that it is easy to bring into conversation
• Lead easily to a question that gets the other person talking

Recognizing a promising flavor is a knack worth developing.  They come to you more frequently than you might imagine, if you are looking for them.  To build the habit, from time to time ask yourself the following questions:

• Is there a contrarian story to a current trend?
• Do you have an example of an interesting solution to a common problem?
• Do you know how a leader in a field does something that others struggle with?
• Is there an impending change in technology, regulation, competitive environment of other area your contacts need to be advised of?

I was reminded of this subject recently when I found myself discussing flavors of the month with several contacts over two weeks.  The subject of flavors of the month had become my flavor of the month.

As in past years, I will only be posting once a week in July and August, instead of my usual twice a week, to take advantage of the lazy days of summer.

We recently won some business from a firm we had been pursuing for six years. With little encouragement from the client, I had remained optimistic all this time of winning them, believing that when they were ready, we would get a shot. It is a fine firm with good people, a valuable set of offerings and attentive service. How could I be so certain that they would one day be ready?

My confidence was based on experience with other firms which suggested that this one would, one day, find itself lead hungry. The firm had enjoyed a steady flow of leads generated by an institutional marketing effort, and the firm’s partners would convert enough of them into assignments to keep their professionals working hard. Living off this lead flow, the firm’s partners had never learned how to generate leads on their own. When the institutional lead generation ceased to work, these partners didn’t know how to go out and dig up their own.

I have seen this happen at firms as large as the late CSC Index and at small firms. I have seen it happen at firms as different from each other as strategy consulting firms and structural engineering firms. And I have seen it happen to whole firms or just one practice or studio.

That we at Harding & Company flag over reliance on an institutional lead source as an indicator of future need for our services should be a caution to any firm heavily reliant on such a source. And it should be a caution to anyone rising through the ranks of such a firm without learning how to bring in business.

In the corporate world, as people rise though the ranks, they often move away from front-line sales activity. In the professions, the opposite occurs at most firms; the higher in the organization you go, the greater are the expectations that you will bring in work. If this is not happening at your firm, there are two possible consequences. For the firm, the failure of the institutional lead source will cause a crisis which your senior people will be ill-equipped to solve. That could result in buckets of red ink.

The individual partner set free from such a firm is likely to find prospects for employment within professional service firms limited. Other firms will expect people at that level to be able to bring in business. Unless there is strong evidence you can do that, they won’t want you.

Institutional lead flow is a great asset to a firm, practice or studio. But it can be seductive. It should never be allowed to replace the requirement that partners go out into the market and bring back business for the firm.

A participant at an Association of Management Consulting Firms (AMCF) workshop asked if it is possible to create rainmakers.  This is a frequent enough question that I decided to address it here.  As the author of a book entitled Creating Rainmakers and as a person who makes his living by helping professionals learn how to bring in business, I have an obvious bias.  Still, my colleagues at Harding & Company and I, have as much experience in this area as anyone, and so ought to have something to say on the subject.

So, my answer is yes, but one’s success at creating rainmakers will depend on the following:

• The desire of the professional to learn.  This desire, of course, must come from the individual professional, but there are things a firm can do to influence that desire.  For example, it is harder to create rainmakers at a firm where all of the heroes are technical experts, creatives or other deliverers of the firm’s services, than it is at one where business origination skill is highly respected.  It is easier to create rainmakers at firms which celebrate, even in small ways, the winning of a new assignment than at those where it is treated as a non-event.
• The earlier in the professional’s career that she is made aware that business origination is expected of every senior person in firm.  Those who, after years of working for a firm, find out to their shock that professional firms, like any other business, must sell have a harder time learning how to do it than those advised from the earliest days in their careers that they will have to sell to advance to partner.
• The ability of the professional to learn by winning small assignments before having to win big, more complex ones.  The professional who must bring in $30 million assignments from day one has a harder time than one who can start small.  At many of today’s big firms, partners learned to bring in business years ago when the firms were smaller and willing to take smaller assignments from much smaller clients than they work with now.  The young professionals coming up underneath them must go straight into major league play, a tougher requirement.
• The flexibility of a professional’s personality.  I would much rather work with an introvert who can flex his behavior to act like an extrovert when needed or an extrovert who can act like an introvert than with either an inflexible introvert or extrovert.

There are also some things that don’t make much difference.  The profession in question is one.  Yes, you may have a chance of creating more rainmakers from a randomly selected group of executive recruiters than from a randomly selected group of actuaries, but the distinction has little relevance in fact, because actuarial firms don’t compete with recruiting firms, they compete with other actuarial firms, so the playing field is even within a profession.

In short, firms which integrate the development of business origination skill and behavior into their organizational fabric are more successful at creating rainmakers than those which don’t.  That is hardly surprising.  The surprising truth is how few do so.

At those which don’t, partners often assume that rainmakers must be born, not made, and then set up barriers to learning that ensure their experiences confirm their expectations.

(This post in another in our series of Rainmaking Problems. We invite your comments on this problem and would also welcome any problems you would like to s to get comments form other readers.)

I recently met with a client adjusting from the heady days of a boom economy to the current bust. Several of its professionals argued that they hadn’t been in a sellers’ market. Competition for large projects was always tough, they said, and though they had won a lot, they had lost some, too. True enough, but their firm’s major competitors had grown at rates over 20 percent per year and the firm, itself, faster than that, while maintaining or increasing prices. Sounds like a sellers’ market to me.

There is good reason to clarify this point, because recognizing when one is tipping from a sellers’ to a buyers’ market or vice verssus has important implications for many professional firms. That’s because the price of many professional services is quite elastic with demand. Boom turns to bust quite suddenly (see my post, Selling Professional Services in a Downturn, for an explanation of why), and you have to drop prices quickly, if you want to keep winning work. The market teaches this quite effectively, when too many firms compete for too few projects or assignments and clients play them off against each other to get the best deal.

When the tide turns to boom again, clients aren’t nearly so quick to help you see that you can raise your rates. This means that prices tend to go up more slowly in good times than they go down in bad. The firm which recognizes when it can charge its clients more generates much higher profits than its competitors.

My question is, how will we know when this downturn is over and we can begin to push up rates?

Wouldn’t it be nice if I could work on only the most interesting assignments in my profession!
Wouldn’t it be nice if I could do the work at a fat profit!
Wouldn’t it be nice if these assignments were delivered to me without my having to exert any effort!
Wouldn’t it be nice if they were delivered in a steady flow without any work overloads or gaps!
Wouldn’t it be nice if they were given to me in preference to my firm’s most prestigious competitors!
Wouldn’t it be nice if someone in the firm delivered them to me without expecting anything from me other than high quality execution!
Wouldn’t it be nice if I could spend my career that way, steadily advancing in both rank and compensation!
Wouldn’t it be nice if people recognized that delivering the work is what I am good at and didn’t expect me to learn how to sell, which I don’t like and am not good at!
Wouldn’t it be nice if . . .

. . . but I can’t and they aren’t and they don’t and . . . so I work hard at developing business and help win interesting work for myself and others in the firm and, over time, I have learned to like what I must do and take great pride in it.

(This post in another in our series of Rainmaking Problems. We invite your comments on this problem and would also welcome any problems you would like to s to get comments form other readers.)

An attorney, whom I will call Larry Polonisen, has sent in the following problem, one common enough in networking and well worth reflecting on.  How can he continue to take, if he has nothing to lend?  What would you do?

Hello, I am a faithful reader of your blog.

I have a suggestion for a post there (which I need to frankly admit is also a request for free advice).  The question is what to do when a contact gives you a couple of good referrals of business, and makes known (appropriately) that he expects referrals in return, but such reciprocal referrals are unlikely to ever happen (for lots of reasons not the least of which is that other better sources are in line for reciprocals before this person).  

The choices seem to be 1) tell the referral source that reciprocals are very unlikely, 2) actively search for things to refer, 3) assure the person (honestly) that if something comes along that can be referred to him it will be.  The first choice seems good in the abstract but horrible in the real world as it likely cuts off a referral source.  The second is again great, except that there is a higher priority for any referrals in this area and also because I get hardly any of matters in the referrers area (or I would be in that area myself).  The third seems the best, but if nothing gets referred, the referring lawyer ends up feeling taken advantage of.

I suppose that there might be a fourth choice (at least in my jurisdiction) is to offer the referrer a (legal) referral fee (perhaps coupled with the explanation under alternative 1).  What do you think?

Thanks very much.  I enjoy and use the information on you blog.