Shortly after starting my own firm fifteen years ago and desperate for work, I followed an old client to his new firm.  He took me down the hall to the department that could hire me and introduced me to its head, a man named Joe, said a few kind words about me and left.  At the end of our meeting, Joe asked for a proposal, which I had delivered by courier within twenty-four hours.

And then, everything went dead.  He neither acknowledged getting my proposal, nor returned my calls.  I tried a number of standard techniques, like leaving a message that I was going to be in his area and would like to stop by.  No response. 

I knew in my heart that there was no life in this opportunity.  Joe had asked for the proposal as a courtesy to the man who had introduced us, but had no intention of hiring me.  He didn’t like having me imposed on him from above.  I would never hear from him again.  And it made me feel ashamed, like a beggar asking for dimes.

I needed the work so badly, I was prepared to go back to my former client, if need be.  I knew that was likely to terminate any chance I had, so I made one final attempt to get to Joe, calling his secretary to get advice.  “Joe is in the hospital,” she informed me, saying with a chilling finality that he was unlikely to be back.  It was cancer. 

And that’s when I got it.  I wasn’t about me.  I had been a self-absorbed fool.  I wasn’t that important.   Joe, poor man, had much more important things to think about than me and my proposal—and so did everyone else!  For the most part, we all have but walk-on roles in the movies of other people’s lives.
The secretary referred me to someone else and I got the assignment.

It’s not about me.  This lesson freed me from a minor paranoia that, I know, many people have, believing that they and their calls are an annoyance.  They stop calling, and so give up.  This lesson has freed me to call, write and visit prospective clients with fiendish tenacity.  Without that lesson, I doubt I could have succeeded, as I have.  Thank you, Joe.

Whenever we see ourselves as the cause of a prospective client’s lack of response, it is worth reviewing the evidence.  There are thousands of reasons why someone may fail to reply to our calls and emails.  When one thinks about it, to attribute a lack of response to bad feelings about us in the absence of any supporting evidence is likely to be a mistake. 

Summer is here and I will be on vacation for part of July and, I hope, slowing things down a bit the rest of the time.  So, I will not be posting as often in July and into August as I usually do.  My usual two or more postings a week will drop to no less than one a week.

Ford Hading

In a market made up of many thousands of people there would be chaos if every person in the market tried to meet and work with all of the others.  In a market made up of 5,000 people, this would require 12.5 million separate parings.  Imagine each member of the market trying to schedule and meet with 4,999 others.*  

Chaos theory also describes the other extreme in which there is rigidity with no one making any new contacts. In the grey area between these two extremes lies complexity, where some people manage to meet some others and make things happen.  That’s the world we live in.

When mathematicians model complex systems on a computer, they often find attractors, nodes, like magnets, which attract others.  In network markets these attractors are rainmakers.

If you once establish a strong lead flow, you will find yourself much sought after by others who want to feed off of your contacts.  You attract them because you know so many of the right people and are always meeting new ones.  You attract them because the right people seek your advice, which allows you to spin off leads for your own firm and for others.

Several identifiable types are attracted to you, including:

Other Attractors: Attractors seek each other out for obvious reasons.  When two or more come together, they create a lead generating machine.  They also create an in-group or clique.  These cliques create a powerful attraction.  Many are drawn, but few are let in.

Client Minders: These people know their business and deliver excellent service.  Their clients love them, and they are often good reactive sellers.  But with the exception of turning up some add-on work at their current account, they don’t know how to generate leads.  Within a firm the paring of a rainmaker/attractor with a minder can be a powerful combination around which many a practice has been built. Outside the firm, grinders tend to work intensively at a client for a few years.  When work at a client dries up, they spend six months in hell hoping to get some more work and not knowing what to do about it.  They are attracted to rainmakers, because the rainmakers have one thing they haven’t, lead flow. 

Most rainmakers I know like to help out client minders, because they know that any client the minders are referred to will be treated well, and because most minders are decent, hard-working, likeable people.  Still, when a minder comes back for more leads time and again, the rainmaker is likely to wonder why the minder hasn’t taken steps to avoid the dearth of work, yet again.  And rainmakers need help, too.  Must the flow always be one way, they wonder.
For every rainmaker there seem to be three or four minders, all looking for leads.  At any given time, one or more are hoping that the rainmaker will toss something their way.  This gets old for the rainmaker, as much as she values their friendship and likes them as people.

Proto-rainmakers/attractors: These are people who demonstrate a fundamental understanding of networking, but are still learning.  They are seldom a member of a clique yet nor are their networks big.  But they will try to help the rainmaker, not just looking for handouts.  Most rainmakers will try to help proto-rainmakers, because they like to help people come along.  There is also a chance with this type that the rainmaker’s help will be returned.

There are a variety of other people who want access your lead flow. There are those who have started a business but don’t have a clue about how to get find a client and so, probably won’t be in business for long.  Others see great synergy between your practice and theirs, synergy meaning that you feed them leads and they buy you a lunch in return.  Rainmakers will try to help these people, too, but not put much energy into it.

* Many markets have more than 5,000 members and the number of possible parings goes up geometrically as you add people.  So, a network of 10,000 has just shy of 50 million possible paring, almost four times larger than the 5,000 person market does.
 

For more advice like this, please see Ford Hardings’ new book: Rain Making, Attract New Clients No Matter What Your Field, 2nd Edition

“Rain Making, in its new edition demonstrates its position as the single most sensible, accessible guide to building a professional practice…”
David Maister, author of Strategy and the Fat Smoker and co-author of The Trusted Advisor (with Charles Green and Robert Galford)

A reader sent me the following question: 

What’s your opinion on referral fees? I’ve just paid my first one to get some business - it was just over 10% of the first project. All fees that come after it will be my own. For years I’ve been practicing good karma, believing that what goes around comes around. But your opinion on this would be very helpful.

This is an important issue.  Here is my response.  I would welcome others:

Referral fees are a complex subject.  In some areas of business they are a standard procedure, and, being so, it is reasonable to assume the client knows about them.  So, when an accountant retires, he often charges his successor to the account for the referral.  In other areas, this isn’t true.  I do not pay referral fees, because I do not think it ethical to accept a payment for a referral unless the client knows about the exchange.  Otherwise, I would be misleading him to believe that my referral was impartial.  Not wanting to explain that, I simply decline to give or receive such fees. 
 
If the client knows that there is money in the deal for the referrer and has no qualms about it, I don’t see why anyone else should care.  But, be careful, even then.  There can be legal issues.  Especially if you are selling your services to governments, check with a lawyer before accepting or giving any referral fees. 
 
To avoid the ethical problems sometimes associated with referral fees, if there is a financial aspect to an introduction, I will set it up as a subcontractor relationship.  A financial exchange is implicit in such an arrangement and the client need not know the details–nor has one ever asked.
 
I hope this helps.
 

This carnival has selected a posting from this blog,  Who’s in Your Audience, originally published here on May 12, 2008, for inclusion in its Professionally Speaking category.  Because our blog is not primarilly focused on public speaking, we are flattered to be included.  For additional good postings on speaking skills, visit the carnival.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sims Wyeth and I are having a debate on the use of FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) and GOG (greed, opportunity and glory) in selling.  He argued for FUD and I suggested that for some clients, those who are achievement oriented, GOG works better.  He came back with the one, two punch of FUD first followed by GOG.  In plain English, scare the pants off of them first and then wow them with the opportunity.  This is my rejoinder.

Sims, our arguement started with your FUD hypothesis, followed by my GOG antithesis, allowing your FUD’em then GOG’em synthesis.  Your Aristotelian heart must be glowing.  If this were an Aristotelian world, that would be the end of it, but it’s not.  Making a client keenly aware of the risk she faces and then showing how she can both avoid the risk and achieve something good at the same time makes a powerful arguement when this logic reflects the client’s situation.  Often it doesn’t.  If you see smoke coming out of someone’s roof and rush to their door to warn them, you shout to alert those inside of the danger and don’t waste time describing how beautiful the renovated building will be a year from now.   It’s a FUD only situation.  If you discover a great deal for some object you think a friend might like to buy, you seek to pursuade him what a great opportunity it is–a GOG situation. 

There is an ethical issue here, too.  Fear tactics are despicable when used with unsophisticated clients who don’t know enough to discount the inflated description of what might happen.  The same is true about inflated descriptions of future benefits.  The goal of selling is to help the client assess real risks and real opportunities in the situation she faces. 

Imagine a Venn diagram of two overlapping circles.  The left one represents situations where downside risk is high, where FUD is appropriate.  The right circle represents situations where upside risk is great, perfect for GOG.  Only where the circles overlap is it approriate to use both FUD and GOG.

In his current posting, Sims Wyeth argues the validity of using FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) as a means of pursuading and selling.  This is a hotly debated subject. 

Not long ago, Charlie Green wrote a post arguing against the use of FUD in most cases.  I took issue with Charlie’s aversion to so useful a tool.  Certainly, there are big, bad thinks out in the world and if a client is unaware of them, it’s appropriate to bring them to his attention.  In other words, to use FUD.

Today, for variety, I will take issue with Sims.  There are many cases in which FUD is inappropriate, and some clients are annoyed when the professionals they deal with resort to fear tactics, reminding them of threats that they are well aware of.  These are people who are more interested in greed, opportunity and glory (or GOG, if you will).  GOG sells, too.  It sells much better than FUD to people who are achievement oriented, and that’s a category that includes some important people.  Most CEOs, for example, are achievement oriented.  With such people it is often more effective to focus them on the good things that would result if they take the right action, instead of on impending disaster.  Instead of painting a picture of a scorched earth, paint one in which they are rich and famous, in which they create business history. 

Achievement oriented people are easy to pick out.  They’re the ones who see opportunity at every turn, instead of problems.  They’re the ones who talk continually about growth, profits and all the neat things they plan to do.  In addition to CEOs, many Chief Marketing Officers, and heads of research think this way.  Ask these people questions like:

• How fast could this company grow, if you could get the right stars to align?
• If you could bring your new version out ahead of the competition, how would that change your position in the market?
• If you weren’t being held back by x, what would you do with this company?

So, over the next few weeks, try selling GOG a couple of times.  It can be a lot more fun than dealing in FUD.

New Jersey Lawyer has published a review of the new edition of Rain Making. The author of the review is Esther Gueft, an attorney and business development consultant primarily working with East Coast law firms.

Read the review of Rain Making at New Jersey Lawyer online.

Clients often ask professionals to help them make or save money.  Accountants may help them reduce their taxes.  An engineer may help them reduce the cost of their products or add something to a product that allows them to charge more for it.  A consultant may help them enter a new market or reduce the costs of their supply chain.  Architects design spaces that attract more customers or allow their clients to use space more efficiently.  Lawyers may help a client gain regulatory approval for an acquisition, allowing it to make money.  Or they may help them avoid a stiff fine.

When a client tells you that there is money at stake, first determine how much is at stake.

How much money are we talking about here?

What would that be worth?

At a minimum, how much is at stake? And at a maximum?

That’s a lot of money. Are there any additional costs we haven’t considered? For example, would the news that you have been fined cause some customers to bolt?  If so, what kind of a hit might you take and where would that money have to come from?

Then ask them a question that will let them mentally spend the sum identified.

What would you do with that extra $10,000,000, if you had it?

What difference would it make if you had an additional $20,000,000 drop to the bottom line?

Could you use that money to reduce your debt?

The mental spending will help the client appreciate the value of your services.  That will make her more willing to accept your fee and make her less likely to buy on price.