When selling professional services, you always want to sell directly to the decision maker.  But sometimes you can’t.  Sometimes you have to sell to someone else in the client organization, who then makes your case to the decision maker.

This often happens when:

1>     The decision maker delegates the vetting of firms to a subordinate, but wants to reserve the right to make a final selection on the basis of what the subordinate tells him.  An attorney sometimes delegates the selection of experts, for example, both as a developmental assignment for a young partner or associate and because he is busy.

2>     The person you are dealing with is building a case for a course of action and plans to introduce the hiring of a professional as a part of a total solution.  A facilities manager might do this when recommending the adaptation of a facility for a new use.

When blocked from talking to the decision maker, yourself, you face a two-step selling process: first, you must convince the person you do have access to that yours is the right firm for the job.  Then you must prepare her to make your case effectively to her boss.  She may only recognize the need for the first step.  You would do well to work hard at the second.

This means making the case for hiring you clear and in a manner that allows your contact to repeat your arguments. Leave behind written documents your contact can present to the decision maker or borrow from when developing her own case.  For management consultants this means foregoing any incomprehensible consulting graphics. For all professionals this means minimizing use of your profession’s argot. Use language you would expect the decision maker to understand, rather than relying on your contact to explain what specialized language means.

In some cases, the client will have to explain to the decision maker why a professional is needed.  In others she need only explain why she is recommending you.  You can help her more effectively, if you know what case she will be making.  You will also be better equipped to help her, if you know about the concerns and ambitions of the decision maker. Gather as much information about him as you can, from the person you are working with, a web search and any other person who knows him and is willing to talk about him.  What you learn will help you and your contact develop her case for going ahead with the matter.

Then, consider providing the following:

1>     An executive summary: If you are preparing a proposal, include an executive summary that concisely summarizes the larger document.  Sections might be titled The Issue, The Work to be Done, Why Use an Outside Professional, Why Use [Your Firm]. 

2>     A presentation: This can be a PowerPoint deck that supports a short presentation you give to the person you are working with in hopes that she adapts it for use with the decision maker. Better is one that you and she prepare together for her use.  Clients facing high-pressure presentations often welcome such help.  If possible, include what one rainmaker I know calls the pot-of-gold slide, which succinctly and compellingly presents the business case for going ahead.  Make sure she understands it.

3>     A list of frequently asked questions with answers:  Chances are you sell your services more often than your contact buys them.  You know better than she what questions are likely to be asked by whomever she is presenting to.  Help her make her case by providing her a list of questions she might have to respond to along with answers that you know from experience are effective.

4>     A whitepaper:  A thoughtfully written document explaining why companies use services like yours sometimes makes a powerful marketing and sales tool.  When I was a location consultant, we had a two-page whitepaper entitled Do You Need a Location Consultant? that provided criteria for making such a decision.  On at least two cases I am aware of, clients lifted paragraphs verbatim from this document in their internal memoranda arguing that we be hired.

5>     Presentation coaching: If you are selling a big-ticket service, requiring your contact to make a formal presentation to the board or executive committee, offer her the use of your firm’s presentation coach at your firm’s expense.  For a client stressed by the need to make a presentation to such an audience, this is sometimes a welcome confidence and performance builder.

6>     Real time backup:  Provide her your cellular phone number and make sure you are available right before and during the presentation to respond to any call for help she makes.

Supporting your contact’s efforts to get an assignment approved will help both of you win.

I seem to have a different goal for an elevator speech than others do, perhaps because I work for professional service firms.  In a recent post, Glenn Andrew proposes a three-step process for creating one.

In Step One, you pose a do-you-know-how question.  Do you know how easy it is to reach over and shut off the alarm clock and go back to sleep in the morning when you should get up?

In Step Two, you pose a solution.  My firm makes the Run-Away Alarm Clock that keeps moving just our of reach, when you try to shut it off.

In Step Three, you ask for a referral.  Do you know anyone who has trouble getting up in the morning?

I like the first two steps, first getting the client to visualize a problem and stating that you solve it.  But I don’t like Step Three, as least for my clientele.  Imagine recieving the following answer to your question about what someone does for a living:

Do you know how some people who earn big incomes will try to divorce their wives and leave them almost nothing?  I am a divorce attorney who helps the wives get a fair share of the family wealth in a divorce.  Do you know any couples who are divorcing? 

This lawyer provides a valuable service, but asking for a referral so early in a relationship is highly inappropriate.  At least it seems so to me.  I could cite many other examples. 

In the professions, an elevator speech isn’t a sales pitch or a request for a referral.  As I stated in a previous post , Of Water and Buckets, an elevator simply tells the listener what you do in a way she will remember.  That is why my description of how to create an elevator speech leaves out a request for a referral, or for a sales meeting or any other advance.

I am not saying that Glenn Andrew is wrong for many businesses.  Nor am I saying he is all wrong for the professions. To the contrary, his first two steps have taught me something useful that I will apply when I next get a chance.  It is only in the goal of an elevator speech that we disagree significantly, and that is the reason I have a hard time with his third step.  This is just another case in which selling professional services differs from selling products. 

Guest Blogger:  Gary Pines

We attend events: association meetings, conferences, seminars, and charity dinners.  We go for many reasons, and high among them is to meet more people whom we can add to our network be they prospective clients or influencers

Too often, after leaving the event, we realize we have failed to come away with quality new contacts or reasons to follow up with those we did meet.  Why does this happen? Often because we don’t prepare sufficiently.  At other times, it’s because we simply go with the flow of the meeting instead of actively seeking out those we want to meet.  Like any other performing art, working a room requires practicing the basics, again and again.  Basics, in this context, aren’t just for beginners.  Professional performers review them, too.

I have coached groups of professionals on how to try to get the most out of an event they are about to attend.  One group was determined to get a return for time and money they would expend on an evening event.  They arrived early, met the staff and even helped set up.  They met the other early attendees who had no one else to speak with.  As they moved on from attendee to attendee, they worked it like professionals, especially compared to their competitors who were standing around talking to each other.  And it all paid off.  By the end of the event, each professional had:
 
·  three to five quality people to follow-up with,
·  gained a lot of confidence and comfort with the process, and
·  had fun doing it.

So what should you do to get this kind of result:

1. Arrive early. Meet the staff and ask if you can help them.  You may want to follow-up with them. Plus, they can introduce you to people you want to meet and brief you on logistics of the evening.  Often, name tags are arrayed on a table, so you can see who else is attending.

2. Start working the room early. Meet the first attendees. They will have no one else to talk to, so that you have a better chance to get to know them than you will those who come late.

3. Break into conversations in a professional manner. 

a)       Look for these opportunities:

1)       The Lone Ranger:  Anyone standing by himself is usually delighted when someone approaches to talk.

2)       The V Stance:   When two people are talking and have opened a path by forming a “V” with their bodies, they are asking for you to come and join them.

b)       Try these techniques:

1)       Make Eye Contact:  Look people in the eye as you walk by.  If they respond with eye contact even briefly, it means you can begin a conversation.

2)       Get in Line: Find a line, almost any line, and get in it.  Whether it’s the sign-in line, the line to the bar or to the buffet, the people immediately in front and in back of you will gladly talk.

3)       Stand Near the Entrance:  Stand by the entrance where everyone comes in, have a smile on your face and many people will talk with you.

4)       Break Bread:  Once seated, talk with the people on either side of you, and try to get the whole table into a conversation.  If it is a buffet, you can of then move to a different table for each course.  (Also, see posting, Three Ways to Get a Good Seat.)

3)       Ask questions:  Start a conversation with a question, or with a short statement immediately followed by a question: “What brings you to this great event.”  or  “I’m John Smith and have come by to meet you.  I was hoping you could tell me a little about . . .” or “Do you know much about the guest speaker?”  Continue to ask question with an eye to learning about the other people.  Learn about them! 

4)       Determine follow-ups:  While talking with people, determine whom you would want to follow-up with. Listen intently to these people, listening especially for some excuse to follow up with them.  Then exchange cards and comment on continuing the conversation at another time.
So … prepare and be proactive. 

You invest a lot of your time to attend at event, so work it hard to get a decent return on that investment.

The fastest place to generate business in a down economy is often by recontacting old clients.  This is true even if they have changed jobs and you have lost touch with them.  Payboxpluginreview.com  provides a number of ways to find a contact you have lost touch with, as well as linkages to other useful sites, including the National Open Records Search Project.  These can be added to those referenced in my post, Rainmaker Resource #4: Tracking Down a Contact.  As before, my prefered way to find a lost contact is to call a mutual friend, which gives me an opportunity to rekindle a second relationship.  For additional suggestions on how to rekindle a relationship see my post of May 5, 2008.

Clients often want to tell us something, but don’t want to speak out of place, tell us our business or sound like know-it-alls.  And they certainly don’t want to sound selfish. 

So, they bring up a subject indirectly, hoping that we will draw them out.  How we take these broad hints depends on how we view the speaker and on our mood at the time.  Here are some examples:

Client says: This company has a unique culture.

Professional thinks:
           
In uncharitable mood: Maybe, but I have heard the same words from every other client and they don’t seem so different to me.  This calls for my standard polite response.
                                                                                                          
In charitable mood:  This woman wants to tell me something, and it may be important.  Even if it isn’t, it’s important that she feel she has been heard.

Client says:       What do you see as my role as this moves forward?

Professional thinks:
           
In uncharitable mood: Let’s see.  How can I best describe it?

In charitable mood: I don’t think that is really a question.  I think it’s a polite way of introducing a subject about which he has an opinion.  I’ll say that he can help in a number of ways and then ask him if he has some thoughts on the subject.

Client says:       People will tell you that I can be . . .

Professional thinks:
           
In uncharitable mood: Yes, they do, but that’s not my problem.  It has nothing to do with what I am here for, so how can we move past this distraction.
 
In charitable mood: He wants me to hear his side, and I had better listen.

Client says:       I wouldn’t say that’s the problem.

Professional thinks:
           
In uncharitable mood: Well, if that’s not the problem—and I still think it probably is—let’s try Theory B.

In charitable mood: She obviously has an opinion, and she ought to know.  I’ll ask her what she thinks the problem is.

Client says:       How well do you know Bob?

Professional thinks:

In uncharitable mood: Well enough to know that he’s one difficult . . .

In charitable mood: This guy wants to tell me something, and if it helps me deal with that old cuss, I want to hear it. 

When you consider the value of your time, registration fees and the travel expenses, attending a multi-day conference costs a bundle.  You will get a better return on your investment, if you prepare for it well in advance.  Here are some things you should do to get ready:

1>     Review the agenda:  Figure out in advance what is happening when.  There will be some sessions that offer better opportunities for you than others, such as a breakout session dealing with your specialty.  At some conferences you must sign up for sessions in advance and seats are limited, so it pays to sign up early.

If some items in the agenda are unclear to you, you have a chance to find out what they mean in advance.

2>     Review who is likely to attend:  Ask the organizers for a list of attendees, so that you can see who will be there that you know already and whom you want to meet.  This can help you target your efforts.  It can also save you from attending a conference with too few of the right people.  Make a list of those you want to meet or catch up with and don’t forget to consider the speakers and association staff members when you do.

Use your review of the agenda and attendees to help formulate questions (What does “mixer night” mean?  How is transportation to the local site visits handled?)

3>     Ask for a briefing:  Every association has its own subculture with its own customs and behaviors.  Calling someone who has attended the conference in previous years can help you prepare for the one coming up.  For example, one association held a reception the opening night of every three-day annual conference, but let members arrange for their own dinners afterwards.  If you didn’t know this in advance, you were likely to end up eating alone, while those who had planned ahead ate with prospective clients they had invited weeks before.  Some hospitality suites are traditionally the most popular at an annual conference.  Knowing that can save you time. 

4>     Arrange meetings in advance:  Among the biggest advantages of conferences is the opportunity to meet many new people in a field quickly.  You will increase the probability of meeting a person if she agrees to see you in advance at a specific time and place during the conference.  

A second big advantage of attending a conference is the chance to get face to face with a lot of people you know already, but haven’t seen for a while.  This is especially valuable with people hard to see either because they live far away from you or because they are too busy to meet at other times.  Could we meet at the buffet line and grab a quick breakfast together Tuesday morning?  How about meeting for a drink after the educational sessions end on Monday?  I’m getting in early on Sunday, too, so maybe we could . . .  Plan meetings in advance.

5>     Sign up early:  There are several reasons to sign up early.  First, that gets you priority listing to stay at the main hotel—you don’t want to stay any place else, if you can avoid it—and for breakout sessions or other limited seating activities.  All of these are usually (and largely) assigned on a first-come-first-served basis.  You can also block the days in your calendar, increasing the likelihood that you can fend off other claims for those days.  Those who sign up early usually get a discount on the registration fee.
 
6>     Ask a client to show you the ropes:  A client who is happy with the work you are doing is usually glad to do you a favor.  If one attends a conference regularly, ask her if she would let you tag along with her for half a day, so that she can introduce you to people whom she knows and get her insights into the association and conference. That will shorten your learning curve and help you reduce the time needed to enter the organization’s miniature society.   She is also likely to introduce you with words that it would be immodest for you to use when talking about yourself.

7>     Schedule visits in town immediately before or after the conference:  If you are going to incur the cost of an airline ticket and hotel stay, get more for your money by arranging to see clients and other key contacts in the destination city.  These can be set up for either before or after the conference.

8>     Rehearse your elevator speech:  Prepare your elevator speech or a couple of versions of it, so that it comes out comfortably when required.  See my blog postings on how to construct an elevator speech.

9>     Research primary targets:  After identifying people you hope to meet at the conference, research the most important ones.  That will help you prepare for conversations with them.  Find out if anyone in your firm already knows them and so can tell you about them. Do a quick Google search.  If you know someone working in the same company as a person you want to meet, maybe she would be able to provide you with some background on the target.

10>       Prepare some conversation starters:  Conversation starters are questions or short statements followed by questions that engage a contact in a conversation and get her talking.  They can be about anything; flight delays coming into the conference, outcomes of recent sporting events, that day’s headlines; so they aren’t hard to come up with.  Still, all else being equal, you would rather have a contact talk about an issue related to the type of service you offer than not.  It can be useful to plan a few conversations starters in advance, so that they come to you naturally at the conference (While I’m here I would like to do a quick survey of how firms are reacting to the new regulation.  Is it affecting you much? or I’d like to get your opinion on . . . )
Of course, you need to take plenty of business cards and a small notebook to jot down information you learn about conference attendees and commitments you have made to follow up.

Finally, don’t let your planning become so rigid that if prevents you from taking advantages of serendipitous opportunities as they occur.  Conferences tend to be full of them (see Rainmaker Story # 7-  David’s Breakfast or Get it While You Can)

In the fascinating way that information now travels, Susan Cartier Liebel passes on information she gained from John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing who got it from Universal McCann, that 73% of on-line users read a blog–a reassuring stat for us bloggers.  Also, 57% join social networks.  This reenforces the message that social media are a wave sweeping over those who sell professional services.  Anyone not so engaged is a market laggard.

A test to identify future rainmakers has be reported in several blogs (and also 2).  Here is my concern with it:

I find this test disturbing.  I have interviewed hundreds of rainmakers in the profession, written three books on rainmaking, and, along with the other members of our firm helped many hundreds of professionals learn how to bring in new matters and new clients.

The characteristics Dr. Richards has identified ring true. The test, then, may be good at identifying people who have them. But it does not look at what in our experience is the single most important determinant of rainmaking success, the desire to bring in business.  Someone with the will to succeed can learn many of the other traits. 

Take, for example, an attorney I will call Kate.  She works on media and entertainment matters for a mid-sized firm. When I met her she was a partner who had not met origination targets for several years. One reason was lack of resilience; she gave up on opportunities after one or two unreturned phone calls.  She needed and took help in developing appropriate standards for measuring success.  She learned that an unreturned phone call did not mean a lack of interest, that a client who turns you down for one matter isn’t lost forever and many other interpretations of events that built her resilience.  She now is a solid producer of new work.  A single mother, Kate was driven to succeed, even though she lacked many of the traits at first that Dr. Richards identified.

I fear that people like Kate will score poorly on such a test and be written off as unsuited to become rainmakers.  That would be an injustice to them and a loss for their firms.

Ford Harding

Many professionals write up daily to-do lists.  These lists ensure that their authors don’t forget tasks. They help a professional prioritize work or pick out an item that they can finish during an unexpected fifteen minute wait for someone who is late to a meeting.  Crossing off tasks as they are completed is satisfying, and so serves as a gentle motivator.

To-do lists have many advocates.  For them, if it’s not on their to-do list, it doesn’t happen.  Lars, a client of mine, is one of these people. To-do lists have been a part of this routine for the better part of two decades and small, but recognized contributors to his successful career.

So, he was surprised this week, when I told him to take all of the business development tasks off his to-do list for a while.  These were my reasons:

1>     Lars had more client work to do than he ever had before. He was so overwhelmed that he wasn’t getting to any of his business development tasks, so having them on his to-do list wasn’t doing him any good, anyway.

2>     The list of business development to-do’s kept getting longer, as he added new items, but never got around to completing and crossing off old ones.  The longer the list got, the more discouraging was the outlook for ever getting through it.  Its length had become demotivating as Lars began to doubt he could ever get past his client work to the growing list of BD tasks.

To replace the business-development to-do list, I recommended he create an accomplishments list.  This starts as a sheet of paper with the word, Accomplishments, at the top and the date and nothing else. Lars is to add business development activities to the list as he completes them.  He has agreed to add no fewer than one accomplishment each day.  My guess is that he will add more, substantially more. That’s Lars.

A goal that seems utterly unachievable discourages rather than motivates.  When circumstances make it impossible to achieve a goal that seemed reasonable when you set it, find a different way to look at the problem. Because of Lars’s heavy work load, it is reasonable to recognize each business development accomplishment that he fits in.  Instead of being reminded repeatedly of all the things he feels he should be getting done, but isn’t, he will be reminded of what he has done.  I am betting that this approach will boost his morale and so help him get more done.

I would especially welcome readers’ comments on to-do and accomplishments lists.

Aspiring rainmakers struggle to find time for business development. It is by far the most frequently mentioned barrier to success.  I have suggested several ways to deal with it in earlier posts.  Here is another. 

Most people agree that if something is important enough to them, they will usually find the time for it.  And they always find time for the truly urgent.  It follows, then, that business development, at least the long-term relationship building and lead generation part of it, doesn’t seem sufficiently urgent and important to make it into their schedules.

In one sense they are right.  If you don’t call any old clients or other network contacts today, disaster won’t strike. Your life will go on just as usual, with you working diligently on your clients’ urgent matters.  The same will be true, if you make no calls tomorrow. 

But if this lapse persists, month after month, the cumulative impact is huge.  You won’t develop a referral network and without the network, you get no leads.  Without leads, you have no sales opportunities of your own.

At this juncture, you must ask yourself, so what?  More specifically, five years from today (or three or two—select your own horizon), if you have no lead flow and aren’t generating any work of your own, what are the consequences and do those consequences mean enough to you to get you to find time for business development now?  If so, you need to keep those consequences in front of you now.  Every day.  Where they can compete with the other urgent demands that cry for your attention.

Joshua is an executive recruiter, a self-effacing, quiet man with a strong sense of service.  His clients love him.  And he worked so doggedly for them, he had no time for client development. When asked so what, he said that if he didn’t generate business, he wouldn’t have the financial resources he will need to pay for his four children’s education and other needs.  We took the picture of his children down from the shelf behind his desk and put it next to his phone.  He is making his calls and has the largest number of leads he has ever had.

Patrick is a healthcare consultant with abundant charm.  He can make an exchange on the weather feel valuable.  People like talking with him and he with them.  As certainly as chickens produce eggs, if he talks with people, he will generate leads.  But he wasn’t making his calls.  He has no children and so no looming tuition expenses.  So, why should he make calls?  Patrick answered that he is sick of doing projects for other people in the firm.  As much as he likes these people, he wants control of his own destiny.  He wants to answer directly to his own clients.  He has printed out the following message: Lead flow means control of my own destiny.  He has pasted it above the monitor of his computer where he will see it often.   We will now see if his call volume goes up.

To make time for business development, you must be clear about its importance and its urgency. If you don’t make your calls, so what?