Professionals often see identifying a target set of clients as a first step to developing business.  It becomes a time consuming analytical process in the quest of increasing the efficiency of their rain making.

I’m not against targeting or increasing efficiency.  I am in favor of a sense of urgency about bringing in business, which dictates that you get out into the market now.  (See the posts Rain Making = Doing and Bah to Brochures for more on this subject.)  The need to find business is too urgent to go on hold while you do weeks or months of market analysis.  Targeting often serves to delay activity, when it needn’t.

You can start calling and meeting with people now, before you develop a target list and do it without much loss of efficiency.  You can do it by lumping, instead of targeting.   That means you take a few moments, or even up to half an hour, to identify those organizations and people who obviously belong in your target market and start with them, now.  You can continue your analyses of less obvious candidates as an ongoing task.  But you don’t need more than a lump of good targets to start making calls and having meetings.

The head of a small regional office of a larger firm did this with his leadership team.  He reported, ”We switched our thinking.  We used to try to figure out who would be best to do business with and then spend a lot of time trying to find a way in.  Now we look for who we have an entre with that we would obviously want to do business with and go after them.  It’s transformed our business development efforts.  We are doing much better.”

Sounds pretty efficient to me.

When two people who haven’t worked much with each other first go on a sales call together, one often dominates the conversation with the prospective client. When two people go on a sales call together and one is much senior to the other, the senior one tends to do most the talking. Anyone who sells with Maxwell Flushover (name changed—actually, this could be one of a dozen different people I know) learns that he will do most talking. In cases like these, what is the second seller to do?

She (or he) has several options:

1> Sit silently trying to look wise and interested. This may be good for starters, but if it goes on too long, the client may wonder why she is there.

2> Take notes. Good, but if it is all she does, the client may perceive her as junior help.

3> Fight with the colleague for airspace. This will alienate both the client and the colleague.

4> Take the role of monitor, carefully watching and listening to the client for visual or verbal cues that her colleague may miss during the exchange. When she sees one she will insert a question, like:

• I sense that you aren’t comfortable with that idea. Is there something you could share with us?
• You said there were three reasons you want to do this. Did we miss the third one?

It is, of course, this last alternative that I am advocating. As anyone with a lot of selling experience knows, a monitor can contribute hugely to a sales meeting. Every firm should have an understanding that anyone not speaking goes immediately into monitor mode. Everyone should know that the monitor will speak seldom, but when she does, everyone else backs off immediately.A good monitor can make the difference between winning and losing. The furrowed brow of the General Counsel, unnoticed by the first seller who is speaking to the CEO, may veil a concern that will go unspoken until later, unless an observant monitor draws him out. And the concern only voiced after you leave the room is the most hurtful to your cause.

Establishing the monitor’s role as an important one in all sales meetings counters the implicit and insidious bias that important people talk during sales meetings, while others listen. The job can be done by the most senior person on the team—and should be whenever someone else is speaking. Indeed, to instill the role in a firm, senior people must model it. And they must complement those who have effectively monitored their exchanges with a client.

There are no second sellers.

In an earlier post (Seeing Events Through a Rainmaker’s Eyes, Part 1) I described how rainmakers tend to see things differently from the rest of us. In that post I provided examples of two things that we might see as negative that a rainmaker is likely to see more positively. They also tend to see as positive things that we hardly note at all. Here are three examples of that:

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An extra person from a client organization turns up for a meeting about our work.

• How we might see it: A need for an extra set of the documents we provided
• How rainmakers see it: Another person in the client organization for me to know and a potential future client, herself

A client calls, asking for a small amount of additional information.

• How we might see it: A need to provide a small additional service within the scope of our work or another to-do list item
• How rainmakers see it: A possible reason to go see the client and for a conversation that can cover other things I want to hear about, too

A break is called at a meeting attended by many members of the client organization.

• How we might see it: A chance to check email and voicemail
• How rainmakers see it: A chance to meet and advance relationships

As before, it is not that the rainmakers are right and the rest of us are wrong. All of the interpretations listed are reasonable. But rainmakers see opportunities for small advances in developing relationships that may lead to more business. By taking advantage of many such small opportunities, they sometimes get an assignment. We can, too. If we work at it, we can teach ourselves to see these opportunities, too.

For the past two days this blog has had technical problems which have not allowed me to publish anything nor you to comment. I am sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused. It seems to be working fine now.

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

I received the following question from a reader in Singapore.  He was responding to Rain Making Problem #9: Lead Generation when Your Back is to the Wall to which he refers several times.  What would you suggest?

Hi all,

Ford, I just want to say first that I think what you’re doing is great. I was so unhappy with my previous firm, I set up my own practice last year with just one client. From what the client told me before I quit, I was going to be extremely busy just servicing them. However, for various reasons they have sent me only about one-quarter to one-third of the work they indicated they would send me before I quit, so your books and your website have been a life saver for me.

I’m sorry that I don’t have any tips for Lenore, but I do have a question which relates to Mel’s point on focusing on serving rather than winning. I like to think I provide first-rate service. I’m not aware of anyone else in my geographical region and area of practice who provides service and does work to the standard I do. The only trouble is, how does one show that to a potential client? The way I see it, the scope for doing this is pretty limited: you can only go so far in writing proposals, and you may be limited to just one, or if you’re lucky, two meetings with the potential client to talk over their needs, etc. Otherwise, “We’re great. Our service is awesome and we’re much better than everybody else” just sounds like another sales pitch that the potential client also heard from the competition. It is only when you actually land the work that you can show what you do.

So, do you have any tips to share on focusing on servicing during the sales process? Thanks in advance if you do.

In a sling in Singapore,

Willem

Of course, I am responsible for the in-a-sling close. Forgive me Willem; I couldn’t stop myself.

For most of our clients, business is hard to come by these days.  When coaching in this environment, we first look for the quickest and easiest sources of new business.  To this end, we ask a series of simple questions:

•    Where did your last five assignments come from?  Your last ten?
•    Where did your first new client from?
•    What worked before that you haven’t done for a long time?
•    What worked once that you have never tried again?

We have learned to ask this last question through years of experience.  When I first started coaching, I was surprised when I learned of a tactic that worked well once and had never been tried since.  Not any more.  It has happened too often, and I have even caught myself letting a good tactic get forgotten this way.

People get busy.  They get distracted by other things in their lives.  A tactic which can’t be repeated immediately for some practical reason gets replaced by others.

Well, it’s time to dust off those old tactics.

One consultant I know put together what he calls a road show, a short educational session on his specialty, and took it on a trip to large clients located off the beaten path.  Underserved by others, they welcomed the attention.  Ten visits resulted in three new clients (though not immediately).  That was three years ago, and, until now, he has been too busy to repeat the effort.

Guess what.  He’s on the road again.

John was a young professional assigned to work with a team at a client’s office complex.  Late one Friday afternoon he stopped by the office of Bill, the Vice President in the client organization to whom John and his team reported.  He had a question that needed an answer if he was to keep his team working the following week.

Bill seemed busy, but the question was important enough that he took time to pick it apart with John until they found an answer.  As John turned to leave, Bill said, “Have you got a minute more?  I’d like to ask you a question.  I have my monthly meeting with Tom Monday morning, [Tom was the EVP to whom Bill reported], and I’d like to go over something I plan to say to him.”  For the next hour, John helped his client work through how he would handle some tough issues with his boss the next day.  This was, of course, outside the scope of his assignment.

The following Monday John ran into Bill in the hall and asked him how the meeting had gone.  Bill, obviously happy, gave him a quick summary of what had happened.

This was the first time that John had ever provided career coaching to a client and he liked it.  He realized that his stature had risen in Bill’s eyes.  He also learned things about what was going on within the client organization and about important people who worked there that he might never have known otherwise.  Later in the month, he was able to use some of this information in the way he responded to a question that EVP Tom asked during a meeting.  Without having to disclose that he knew something that was not generally known, the knowledge helped shape his work and the way he spoke with his client.

Bill had told him that he had a monthly meeting with Tom.  Noting that the men had met on the first Monday of the month, John found an excuse to drop by Bill’s office the Friday night before the first Monday of the following month.  Sure enough, Bill asked for John’s reaction to something he planned to say to Tom the next Monday.

The matter that John and his team were working on ended months ago, but they are all still there working on other assignments for the client.  And on the Friday afternoon before the first Monday of every month, John stops by Bill’s office to go over the meeting that Bill will have with Tom.  This has never been formally arranged and it’s outside the scope of any of John’s work.  But both men have come to expect it and both get a lot out of it.

A member of the audience of the Washington, DC chapter of the Society for Marketing Professional Services (SMPS) asked me if I had any opinions on brochures. He shouldn’t have gotten me started! My comments on brochures always start civilly enough and end with me ranting and foaming at the mouth. In this case, they went something like this:

Brochures have their place . . . but not on the planet!

Excuse me, I forget myself.

Brochures have their place, but they aren’t the foundation of a marketing effort that some people seem to think they are. They aren’t essential first steps in founding a firm or a practice or a studio. To the contrary, time spent writing (and bickering) about a brochure is time away from the market and, especially when you are starting up, you need to be out in the market talking with people, not in the office writing. Spend the time you would spend writing a brochure out in the market talking with people and you have a good chance of turning up some business.

Of course, that’s one of the comforts of brochure writing; you can postpone having to go out and talk with people. But time is precious during the early days of building a business. If you aren’t generating business you’re draining cash. Unless, you talk with people, you’ll never sell anything! That’s the only way you will generate cash flow. In that light, writing a brochure is like planting a flower garden when you are running out of food! Like planting flowers when starvation is staring you in the face! Instead, you should be out in the forest stalking . . .

Excuse me, I got carried away.

With modern desktop publishing technology, you can rapidly put together a presentable leave-behind document and get out in the market immediately. Offerings tend to shift rapidly during the early days of a business, and you can change your desktop document easily and cheaply as you adapt your service and the way you talk about it to the market. You can’t do that with a four-color glossy brochure, can you? No, those $3-a-pop wonders will become obsolete in a year and then sit on the shelf collecting dust. Then you’ll be sorry you . . .

Ahem.

Better still, before you prepare any document, do some market research. Take four or five potential or past clients to lunch and ask them to comment on you business concept and offerings and the way you intend to talk about them. You will get some great ideas and will have, in the context of the meetings, educated four or five buyers about what you do.

But don’t, don’t waste precious time and money writing a #*$!!>&^ brochure! The whole *(?>&%!@# is a *&^%)_? ?**&#!! and . . .

At this point, the man who had asked the question cautiously stood up and said, “Yes, but what I really want to know is, do you have an opinion about brochures?

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

Over the past twenty years a handful of companies have prospered by running what I call lead junkets. A class of corporate manager; human resources managers, facilities managers, financial managers or some other group; are invited on an expenses-paid trip to a resort or on a cruise ship for an event with some educational content. In return they agree to participate in a set number of short meetings with people who would like to sell to them. The sellers pay a fee to attend and also get a set number of meetings with the buyers with additional opportunities to rub elbows with all attending buyers at receptions, meals and the like.

These can be pricey events, costing a seller over $10,000 plus travel expenses.  In return they are promised twenty uninterrupted minutes to pitch their wares to each of the twelve buyers. Though some sorting and matching of buyers and sellers may be done by the organizers, the sellers do not get to pick whom they meet with. Also the organizers restrict attendance by sellers who compete with each other.

The appeal of the lead junket is having prospective clients delivered to you with little effort on your part. It all seems so painless, compared to cold calling, attending association meetings, giving speeches and all of the harder ways to generate leads.

I acknowledge that I have never attended a lead junket and my skeptical view of them is reflected in the term I use to describe them. In my experience, those who want their firms to send them on these jaunts are usually those most uncomfortable with other kinds of lead generation. They are looking for fixes with a minimal feeling of rejection.

I get asked about lead junkets four or five times a year.
My question is, when, if ever, are lead junkets worth the cost? In your response, please note whether or not you have ever attended one. If you have had good or bad outcomes, I would like to hear them.  Please do not name the operator of the event in your comment.  Also, if you work for or are an investor in a firm running this kind of event, please state that in your response.

(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!