The answer is a definitive maybe.  It depends on whom you are calling, why you are calling, and how many calls you have made previously over what time frame and on the reason for your call.  With this many variables to combine in different ways, there are thousands of different situations, each one requiring decision on whether or not to leave a call.  Let’s try some simplifying guidelines:

1. The bias is to leave a message. If you leave a messages, you remind the contacts that you are still out there thinking about them.  They see you in their minds eye, however briefly.  That is one thing you are trying accomplish by calling in the first place.  Within limits, people are not troubled by periodic messages, even if they don’t return them.  When you do finally reach them, most people apologize for not returning your call.  (The appropriate reply to such an apology is, “Oh, please don’t apologize.  I just hope my calls haven’t been a nuisance.”  Listen carefully to the response to this statement.)
2. When leaving a message, make clear how urgent the call is.Here are three sample messages: a) It’s not at all urgent, but if you . . . b) It’s not desperate urgent, but it would be a huge help if you can . . . c) If at all possible I would like to talk with you today. . . . Declaring the level of urgency helps avoid the discomfort of the contact seriously inconveniencing herself to return your call, only to find it was for some matter of little importance.
3. Leave a message which states clearly not to call you back if you know she won’t be able to reach you. This reduces her frustration and your discomfort, but still wins you a brief moment of connection.  (“It’s Ford Harding.  I do have something I would like to talk with you about, but I am traveling, so you won’t be able to reach me.  I will call again when I get a break to see if I can catch you.)  This allows you to call back again later, and if your contact still doesn’t answer, you can leave another brief message again.  (It’s Ford Harding again.  I have a break, so I am trying to catch.  You won’t be able to reach me, so I will try again when I get another break.)
4. Assume that many contacts will know who called, even if you don’t leave a message.  Caller identification lets the contact know who is calling, whether you leave a message or not.
5. Do not leave a message when you have called several times over a short period and left messages already.
6. Leave no message when there is a clear probability that the call may be misinterpreted.Clear probability is a high standard.  Better than leaving no message is a statement that you are calling for some other reason.  (“This is Ford Harding.  I am not calling about the proposal.  We are hiring at an entry level and was hoping that with your university contacts, you might be able to suggest a candidate.”)

Different consultants, seeing the same client situation through different disciplinary lenses, can come up with strikingly different guidance. Three of us, all of whom consult to professional firms, thought it might be interesting to see how our different orientations influence the advice we would give to a client about the same topic: Things you shouldn’t say or do at a competitive presentation of your services to a potential client.

We are: a) presentation coach Sims Wyeth who can show a wet blanket how to set itself on fire when on a podium, b) marketing consultant, Suzanne Lowe, author of Marketplace Masters: How Professional Firms Compete to Win, who can get a burlap bag full of cats, dogs and canaries humming the same tune, and c) me. Our firm helps professionals becomer rainmakers.

I decided to establish criteria by which submittals (all from me) for inclusion in my list of Five Biggest Presentation Don’ts could be rated. To do the rating I assembled a committee of fifteen totally objective judges carefully selected to ensure inclusion of representative members by gender, education level, geography, political leanings, age, race and ability to hold their liquor. After assuring myself that all fifteen could meet the last criterion, I asked them to rate 114 entries for the things you shouldn’t say in a presentation of your services to a prospective client. Each submission was rated on three criteria, which are:

a) Relevancy: Thou shall not talk about things of no interest or importance to the client.
b) Redundancy: Thou shall not say things said by your competitors.
c) Believability: Thou shall not tell any whoppers, or anything that sounds like one.

Ranked from weak to laughable, the committee chose the following five things not to say:

1. We are organized into seven practices (or studios). Only one judge rated this entry, the others falling immediately into a deep sleep upon its being read to them. The insomniac judge’s mark was for lacking relevancy. As he dozed off, too, he muttered, “The client doesn’t care. Tell her about the part of the organization relevant to her and skip the rest.”
2. We want to be your partner on this matter. Three judges revived enough to give this claim three marks on believability. As one judge said, “The last time I tried that one, the client said, ‘Really? How much money do you plan to put up?’ This is just an inflated way of saying you’ll give good service.”
3. You will be our most important client. “I bet you say that to all the girls,” said one judge in falsetto. The other judges tittered quietly at that comment, while the funny one added his mark to five others on the basis of believability. Said another, “Even if it’s true, what will happen to your other clients, if I hire you? If a client comes along who is even prettier than I am, what happens to us.”
4. We are the oldest and largest . . . This got ten marks. The first six for being totally irrelevant. Again a judge said “The client doesn’t care.” To which I said, “What if there are many fly-by-night competitors in this field and you want to show you’re different from them?” “Then tell them that,” snapped a judge. “Say, ‘In a field where a lot of companies come and go, we are committed to being long term providers, and the age and size of our firm prove it.’” One judge also gave a mark each for redundancy and believability, saying, “I once attended competitive presentations where two firms claimed to be oldest and largest. Because their definitions of what they were oldest and largest of differed, both were telling the truth. The selection committee members weren’t impressed.”
5. What makes us special is our people. Every member of our totally objective panel rolled on the floor at this one. One laughed so hard, he rolled under the conference table, and we had to listen to his sporadic te-he-he’s for the rest of the meeting. The other judges marked this one down by 38 points, giving it the lowest score in recorded history. (I know, there were only fifteen judges, but they had become drunk with their power by this time and insisted they had to have more than one mark each to give this one the rating it deserved.) Thirty of these marks are for redundancy. One judge exclaimed “Don’t ever say those words! Don’t ever say them, because everyone does at every presentation!” She began to mimic presenters, saying the overworked words again and again in different tones of voice with mock sincerity, causing a howl of laughter once again. “Your people’s specialness must be in a way that is important to the buyer or he doesn’t care,” explained one. The final mark is for believability. The oldest judge said, “It sounds like so many warm words to me. I don’t want warm words. I want meat.”

We all adjourned to the cafeteria for lunch.

If you would like to submit additional things that shouldn’t be said or done in a presentation, Suzanne, Sims and I would be glad to pass them on to our totally objective board of fifteen judges for rating. To see a marketing expert’s choices for presentation don’ts, go to Suzanne Lowe’s blog. To see a presentation coach’s choices, go to Sims Wyeth’s blog.

How would you react, if the following happened to you over the course of a month as you tried to develop new business?

• Three unreturned phone calls to the same former client.
• Being stood up for meetings two weeks in succession.
• Learning that a former client has a new project only after it has been awarded to someone else.
• Four losses in a row to competitors.
• Realization that you have been calling and meeting with contacts at a large prospective client for a year without winning any business.

If you work at developing business long enough, you will have a month like this.  Events like these don’t bother rainmakers.  Where other people would blame themselves and get discouraged, rainmakers depersonalize such events.  They know that their luck will soon turn and they will start to win.

“You never know where the next piece of business is going to come from.”  I have heard those exact words from at least a dozen rainmakers I have interviewed over the years.  For all the targeting and prioritizing that we do when selling our services, there is still room for some healthy opportunism.  These unexpected opportunities remind us how imperfect our judgment is when picking targets and result in us winning some major assignments.  Here are three people who have unexpectedly given me opportunities and lessons to be learned from each.  Names have been changed.

Stephen

If you passed Stephen in the street, you wouldn’t notice him.  He is short, quiet and lacks pretension.  He seems shy by nature, though he engages easily one on one and has taught himself to work a room. 

I first met him doing just that at an association meeting.  There he focused on other people, getting them to talk about something that interested them, so that later, reflecting on the conversation, I was more likely to remember the person doing the talking, than to remember Stephen.

On the last day of the conference we found ourselves the first to arrive at a breakout room to hear some speaker I have long since forgotten.  He asked me questions and, like others I had seen the night before, I was soon talking about myself and finding it a pleasant subject, while he sat there quietly, a twinkle in his eye. He suggested that we get together some time after the meeting.

That was twelve years ago.  I didn’t believe then or for quite some time that his firm would hire us.  But it did.  It took him four years to get us in, but he did it. Since then he has become a friend.  I have boundless respect for this man, as do many others.  Still, if you put him in a crowd, he will become inconspicuous, almost as if he had protective coloration that helped him disappear into his surroundings.

Lesson:  Stephen is a reminder that substance is more important than show, something we all know, but need reminding of from time to time.  He is also a good example of how valuable it is to have a sponsor in a client organization.
 

Rachel

I also met Rachel at an event, this one sponsored by a team that consulted to law firms from a Big Four accounting firm.  Not having learned how to get a good seat at such an event (see posting of  June 2007, entitled Three Ways to Get a Good Seat.), I took pot luck by grabbing an unoccupied seat between two other participants.  Rachel sat on my left.  She worked at a mid-sized law firm as director of marketing.  The firm didn’t sound like one we would be eager to work for.  Still, she seemed a nice person, and to me that counts for something.

I sent her one of my books and called her a few times.  She wanted to bring us into her firm, but clearly lacked the influence to do so.  I put her into the call-twice-a-year category and went about my business.

Three years later, I answered the phone and it was Rachel.  She had moved to a prestigious firm and brought us in to what was a strategically important account.

Since then I have gotten to know her.  She has dealt successfully with things that would bring most people down, and remains irrepressibly optimistic.  She is truly heroic.  But it took me a long time to learn that.

Lessons:  People move around.  Someone who is a poor fit in one company may be a star at another.  You can’t always recognize a hero when you see one.
 

Jake

A partner at a large firm, Jake was under pressure to sell more work.  To help him, the firm put him into one of our programs, and I worked with him for six months.  He was openly skeptical, but did what we suggested.  He took direction, worked hard at developing business, and hung in there for six months.  But the business didn’t come.  Not long after our program ended all his hard work began to pay off.  I learned this from others and called to congratulate him, but he didn’t respond to my voicemail message, nor to any other message that I left him. 

I did a lot of work for his firm, and when I was in town would stop by his office.  When he was available, he was cordial, but undemonstrative, the conversation was stilted.  He left the firm and I called him at his new employer.  Again there was no response. I didn’t try again.

Last year I got a call from someone in his firm asking us to come pitch our services.  The oman said that Jake was among their most successful rainmakers and had recommended us.  One of my colleagues went for the sales call.  Jake introduced him to the assembled crowd, saying that if they followed our advice, they would eventually win work, that by following our teachings, he could confidently generate the revenues he was equired to, year after year.  We got the assignment and are still working with his colleagues.  With that kind of endorsement, it is no surprise.

I called to thank him, and we had another stilted conversation. Since then he hasn’t returned my calls.

Lessons:  I am reluctant to say, “Expect the unexpected,” because you might puke.  Other than that, all I can say is thank you, Jake.  You may not have returned my calls, but you were there for me when it counted.  To the rest of you, all I can do is point out that you never know where the next piece of work will come from.

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!

To finesse a sale is to maneuver around facts that might hurt your chances of winning the prospective client’s business were she to know the whole truth. Those who know the term use it to describe words or acts which are legal but deceptive. We can legitimately call finessing a sharp practice. Or is it?
The Lowest-Common-Denominator Finesse (hereafter referred to as “the LCD Finesse”) is, perhaps, the most common. Many a rainmaker uses this finesse effectively to win work. They use it most often to make past client work seem relevant to the current prospect when she might not see it that way, if she knew the whole truth. If we are selling to a bank and have limited experience with banks, we might describe work we did at an insurance company as being for “another large financial institution.” When talking with a prospective client from a Zurich-based bank about work we did for a pharmaceutical company based in Geneva, it becomes “another large Swiss company.” By this logic, hotels and airlines are lumped together as travel-based businesses.

A little of this is innocent enough. After all, the descriptions we give are true. But we are withholding information which might make the client uncomfortable with our credentials. How far can this go before we cross the line into unethical behavior? Years ago, while pitching to a precision aircraft parts manufacturer, I referred to a former client in an anecdote as “another metalworking company.” This was an exceedingly low common denominator. The company in my story made the metal straps that tie goods to pallets to for shipping. The two companies had almost nothing in common, and the aircraft parts manufacturer would almost certainly have discounted my story, if I had told him the whole truth.

But the story did have a message, one important for the client to hear and that was relevant to his situation. Was I wrong to tell the story in a way that made it compelling to him? I am not sure. Would it have been better to tell it in a way that made the differences between his company and the one in the story blatantly clear and in doing so risk his rejection of a point that was imprortant for him to hear? That doesn’t feel right either. I can say that we did use the LCD in the story we told, he hired us and later provided us with a good reference many times.

A few rainmakers break selling rules and still get hired more times than not.  They talk too much and too much about themselves.   They stress features rather than benefits.  They arrive late for meetings.  And they get away with it! One management consultant I know will tell his client that something is red.  No, the client says, it’s green.  Yes, I agree with you, replies the consultant, it is red.  And he gets away with it!  Another professional whom I observed many times would threaten prospective clients of the immediate failure of their business, if they didn’t hire him and march to his orders.  And he got away with it!

The reasons for these aberrations, I think, are specific to each case.  The red-is-green consultant is one of the most charming people I have ever met.  People want to agree with him.  The do-as-I-say professional sold effectively only to those clients which were paramilitary in style.  His talent was finding them—so many of them.

But most of us don’t have boundless charm and don’t feel comfortable ordering our clients about, or a reputation that puts us beyond questioning.  We must listen to what they say.  We must not be arrogant or imperious.  We have to follow the rules.

Has anyone else a good example of a rainmaker who broke basic rules of selling?

Writing and publishing articles helps differentiate you from competitors and colleagues. It helps you sharpen your own thinking on a subject, making you more articulate when speaking with clients. Publishing can transform a career. I know it has transformed mine. You could say the same thing about many more prominent rainmakers, including accountant and management consultant, James O. McKinsey; management consultant, Peter Drucker; architect Phillip Johnson; engineer, Frederick Winslow Taylor and many others.

While not a required activity—there are many rainmakers who have never published—publishing articles offers enough benefits that it warrants all professionals’ consideration. Those with an urge to publish find time to do so. Those who don’t are put off by the perceived time required to get something written.

This posting will show that by using a specific formula, it is relatively easy to write a short article suitable for an opinions column. The articles for such columns are almost always written by outside contributors, like you, and appear towards the back many periodicals. The columns bear such regrettable titles as As I See It, or The Last Word or My Point of View. (As a significant service to the language, political correctness has forced the abandonment of one of the worst of the column titles, One Man’s Meat.)

Many of the entries in these columns express contrarian views on some trend or happening. For example, at the height corporate scandals kicked off by the implosion of Enron, The Wall Street Journal ran an article entitled “Cross-Selling Will Outlast Enron and Anderson (August 13, 2002: Page B2). The title captures its message. Let’s look at format for this piece.

The first paragraph links the article to a current event. This was essential for WSJ, a newspaper, but not required for a magazine. The event in this case, the sale of Pricewaterhouse Cooper’s consulting business to IBM, resulted from all the bad press accounting firms with large management consulting practices were getting for cross selling. This bad press reversed a trend for big service firms like PwC to add more and more services to feed to their clients. This old, bulking-up trend and its demise were described in a couple of paragraphs, including a paragraph about how the trend was sweeping not just accounting firms, but also law firms, and human resources consulting firms.

Six short paragraphs followed which agued for cross selling as essential and, in many cases, desirable for the client as well as the service provider. One paragraph shows how innocuous a lot of cross selling is. And a final paragraph summarizes the argument and states that cross selling is here to stay.

It can be outlined as follows:

1. Introduce issue and argument
2. Link to current event and its relevance to readers.
3. Introduce counter argument
4. Discuss aspects of counter argument
   Aspect #1
   Aspect #2
   Aspect #3
   Aspect #4
5. Summary
6. Conclusion

Knowing the subject, the author found this article easy to write. Pick a subject you know well of a trend going too far and see if you can make up a similar outline.
Let’s say, for example, that were predictions of the demise of mid-sized firms in your profession, and that you felt that this concern was exaggerated. Your opinion piece would be structure as follows.

1. Introduce Issue: Predictions of disappearance of mid-sized firms are both common and exaggerated. Such firms will be around for a long time.
2. Link to event: The sale of Firm X reinforced the claims that mid-sized firm can’t possibly compete with large ones.
3. Counter Argument: These predications are made periodically by people who don’t understand the profession. Reasons to feel that mid-sized firms will survive include:
   - Argument #1, Low Barriers to Entry
   - Argument #2, Room for Niche Players Where Big Firms Can’t Compete
   - Argument #3, Mid-sized Firms Often Sold as Exit Strategy of Founding Partners, but Historically a Few Firms Succeed at Growing into Large Ones
4. Summary: Predictions of demise of mid-sized firms are exaggerated
5. Conclusion: Clients, job seekers and suppliers to midsized firm need not be concerned about their long-term viability.

Now try to do the same with a claim that you disagree with. If you want to send a draft of your article for me to review and send back with annotations, please feel free to send me a copy. Please include the words “Article for Review” in the title of what you send me. I will be happy to review and return it to you.

Remember to keep it short. Opinions pieces typically run between 750 words (about the length of this posting) and 1,000 words.

Yesterday I saw George and Ira Gershwin’s musical, My One and Only, in Stratford, Ontario. The show must have collected every professional tap dancer in Canada. The twenty-person cast tapped its way through three delightful hours.

Tap dancing may be alive and well in Stratford this summer, but it’s on the decline elsewhere. For many of us, the last tap dancer we have seen was Gregory Hines, and there is a whole generation which has never heard of the man. Today, we use the term, “tap dancing,” metaphorically far more often than we use it to describe a real dance. And that lead me to wonder, why do we use the term “tap dancing?”

The metaphors we choose tell a lot about our view of whatever it is we use them to describe. “Tap dancing” is a good example. We use it to describe the deft handling of a risky and difficult inquiry. We might say, for example, ”You really had to tap dance your way out of that one.” In this sense it connotes survival of a near disaster. When used this way, it often draws a laugh, usually a laugh of relief and the pleasure of having gotten away with something. That’s because it may also suggest a less than full disclosure of the facts or at least walking a fine line between truth and misrepresentation.

Usually, it is used as a complement, though it can have a negative slant when used to describe how a person maneuvered himself out of a mess he had needlessly gotten himself into.

The term interests me because it is used so frequently to describe what happens in a difficult sales meeting. It might be used to describe the answers to such difficult questions as:

1. Isn’t it true that XYZ Corporation replaced you midstream on their project?
2. Why should we buy the same solution from you that you have already given to our competitors?
3. Do you mean that you have never done a project like this one before?

The ability to address questions like these, especially when unexpected, is highly valued by professionals. What does the choice of “tap dancing” tell us about that talent? I believe that is tells us the following:

1. It requires skill. This is true of both the dance, itself, and the verbal ability. Many may aspire but few can do it.
2. It is done under pressure before an audience. Unlike some forms of dancing, tap dancing is used almost exclusively as performing art. You do it under a spotlight before an audience. A critical audience is essential to metaphorical tap dancing, too.
3. It is hard work. Other dances may disguise hard work behind smoothness and grace, but tap dancing is obviously physically difficult. A difficult conversation with a prospective client at a sales meeting is also exhausting;
4. There is a competitive aspect to it. Unlike other forms of dancing, competition is almost always present when tap dancing. The competition between the lead and another actor-dancer that I saw so recently in My One and Only is repeated in form again and again when tap dancing is featured. A challenge and a response is essential to the application of the term to a conversation between two people, as well. While the client tries to catch him, the professional dances furiously to respond acceptably to each question.

There is a school of thought that tap dancing at a sales meeting isn’t necessary, because a professional is always open with clients. I lean in that direction, too. But I have tap danced through a sales meeting or two in my years as a professional and in doing so, have won some work that helped the client achieve her objectives and helped the firm I was with avoid a layoff. And I have enjoyed the admiration that others in the firm expressed afterwards.

Yes, we should always be honest with our clients. But we also should put our firms before them in the best fair light. That sometimes requires tap dancing. I would wager heavily that those who learn to tap dance make partner more often than those who only know how to waltz.

All of which leads me to conclude that when a rainmaker dances to make rain, it is sometimes a tap dance.

A former client called me to discuss the loss to a competitor of an assignment she had set her heart on winning. She had been told that the competitor was seen as a better fit with the company’s collaborative culture. “It’s not true! I know those people,” she said. The presentation had seemed to go well and she had sensed that the selection committee had been favorably impressed.
There was one awkward moment. She had been asked how updates on progress would be handled. “I told them how we do it, and one of the committee members started pushing for more frequent updates. I said we could do that, though I wasn’t sure too many more were warranted, given the amount of information that we were likely to have to pass on.” She wasn’t sure who the man was.

There are several possible missteps in this description, but what I expect hurt her most was trying to answer a boomerang question. Beware of the boomerang questions. They can cost you the sale.

A boomerang question is one the speaker asks you, hoping that you will ask the same question of him. For example, imagine you are in a sales meeting with senior people from the client organization. One of them comes from the staff of that part of the organization you work with most closely, be that the finance, human resources, information technology, legal or some other department. This person is ten years older than you and will have day-to-day responsibility for the matter you hope to help with. We will call her the engagement manager. You are describing your team, when she asks, “Typically, what is the role of the engagement manager when you work on this kind of issue?”

Answer this question at your peril! A rainmaker will immidiately bass the question back to th client. The chances are high that the prospective client doesn’t want you to answer. Instead she wants to be heard on the subject. Give the wrong answer and you will find yourself in an argument or worse have created a silent enemy who will kill your chances of winning once you are out of the room. An appropriate response is, “That depends a lot on the engagement manager. Do you have any thoughts on the subject?”

Boomerang questions are a subset of a larger group, called recognition questions, used by speakers when they want to state an opinion. Other kinds of recognition questions are much easier to identify. Often they are statements introduced with a short phrase like, “Isn’t it true that . . .” Boomerang questions are a special case, because they are so much harder to recognize.

Here are two more examples:

1. During a discussion of how you will do the required work, someone says, “Have you ever tried . . .?” Look at the prospective client. Does his facial expression suggest that this is an inquiry or does it suggest he has something he wants to say?
2. After meeting the president and CFO of the prospective client, the young staff members who first called and screened you by telephone, asks, “How do you think the meeting went?” You have sensed all along that he wants you to win. Does he really want your opinions about how the meeting went or does he have something to tell you and is simply being polite by starting the discussion this way.

Boomerang questions are common. You probably use them, yourself. (Honey, do you have any plans for Friday evening?) But don’t . . . don’t ever . . . confuse them with a request for information.