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FORD HARDING is the founder and President of Harding & Company, a firm that helps management consultants, public relations specialists, accountants, architects, attorneys, executive recruiters, and engineers win new clients. Prior to starting his own firm, he spent fifteen years with a consulting firm where he served on the executive committee and ran their Eastern Regional Office. Mr. Harding is the author of three books and often writes for such publications as the Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal, and Consulting to Management.

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Every manager of a professional firm realizes that generating leads and landing new clients are critical components of any successful business venture. But transforming accountants, architects, attorneys, consultants, engineers, and other professionals into client-generators is not always easy to do.

Divided into two comprehensive parts The Rainmaker Model and The Elements of Rainmaking Creating Rainmakers outlines all the steps you should take to turn your professional staff into a powerful team of sales winners.

Filled with in-depth insight and practical advice, this book will show you how to:

• Generate leads
• Build a strong network of contacts
• Master a variety of sales techniques
• Develop capable successors to current rainmakers
• And much more

Based on more than 100 interviews with the principals of professional firms, including many of today's preeminent rainmakers, this valuable guide has the information you need to help your company succeed.

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Rainmakers can be defined as professionals who consistently do two things very well they generate leads to gain new business and then they use their selling skills to turn a portion of those leads into new business. Unfortunately, rainmakers are hard to find, and the efforts of professional firms to end this shortage have been largely ineffective.

As every manager of a professional firm realizes, generating leads and landing new clients are critical components of any successful business venture. But transforming accountants, architects, attorneys, consultants, engineers, and other professionals into client-generators is not always easy to do. There is no magic bullet to rainmaking success, but with Creating Rainmakers: The Manager's Guide to Training Professionals to Attract New Clients, you'll be introduced to a variety of strategies and techniques that will help you build a reliable, sales-driven team.

Based on interviews with more than 100 preeminent rainmakers and people who have watched them in action, Creating Rainmakers outlines all the necessary steps you should take to turn your professional staff into a powerful team of sales winners. It also details specific elements of the rainmaking process and defines exactly what successful rainmakers do to stay on top of their game.

Divided into two comprehensive parts The Rainmaker Model and The Elements of Rainmaking this book will show you how to:

• Generate leads through several different strategies, including cold calling, publicity, speaking engagements, trade association activity, direct mail, and relationship marketing
• Build a strong network of contacts through established clients and new associations
• Master a variety of sales techniques, including listening, value-based selling, and anecdotal selling
• Develop capable successors, so that your firm can survive if a rainmaker decides to leave
• And much more

A firm that can consistently develop and retain rainmakers will have a strategic advantage over competitors. It will grow more rapidly, earn greater profits, attract the best young talent, and provide well for the retirement of its partners. Engaging and informative, this unique guide will help you create the environment necessary for the development of rainmakers and show you what specific things can be done to cultivate those rainmaking skills.

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Creating Rainmakers

John Wiley & Sons

Chapter One

To create rainmakers, you must first have a clear idea of what a rainmaker is and does. Yet, there is little information about this special group of people. What exists is largely impressionistic or based on the experiences of one or two people rather than on research.

To remedy this, I studied rainmakers, people who have been phenomenally successful at bringing in work to their firms and who keep many other professionals employed by doing so. I interviewed both rainmakers and people who know them well. More than 100 rainmakers were included in the survey from the fields of management consulting, benefits consulting, accounting, law, consulting engineering, and architecture. In many cases, I was able to gather information on the same rainmaker from two or more sources. I have supplemented this original research with a review of biographies, autobiographies, articles, and other published sources that describe how rainmakers generate business.

For the purposes of this work, I define rainmakers as professionals who do two things well. First, they generate leads for new business. That is, they go out and create opportunities to talk with prospective clients about problems they can help solve. True rainmakers don't just wait for the phone to ring; they go out and find business. Second, they turn a portion of these leads into new business with their selling skills. To be true rainmakers, they must generate enough business to keep many others in their firms employed. Other professionals may do one or the other of these things, but they don't do both. They are best at minding clients and grinding out work.

From the rainmaker interviews and reading, this is what I have learned:

Rainmakers Don't Fit a Single Personality Type

People who run professional firms are apt to make judgments on the basis of personality types about who has potential to develop as a rainmaker. Although some of these judgments are probably correct, most are made without any real understanding of what it takes to be successful at developing business. Some professionals fall into the "are-they-like-us" trap, epitomized by the head of a midsize accounting firm who told one of his aspiring marketers, "you need to be more like me. You're about 80 percent like me, but you need to be exactly like me." Though few people have so simplistic or arrogant a view, there is a tendency to compare young professionals to current rainmakers to decide whether they have potential.

Those who run firms are not the only ones who make these comparisons. Over the years, many young professionals have told me that they don't really consider themselves to be "the selling type." By this they usually mean they are not aggressive extroverts. Alternatively, they compare themselves to one or two highly successful rainmakers and, not surprisingly, given differences in age and experience, find they come up short.

Anyone who holds such views needs to know that people of many different personality types can succeed at client development. Listen to these descriptions of different rainmakers:

* He was impressive, well-tailored, and when he walked into a room everybody looked up. There was an immediate magnetism and attractiveness. * He was unimpressive. He was very ordinary. People's heads didn't turn when he entered the room. * He is extremely personable and charming. He is lively and cheerful. People feel a lift after being with him. * He had a gray personality. He looked like the archetypical industrial engineer with a pocket protector. * At first she seems mature and serious, but when she laughs, you would think she was twelve years old. * He was a gambler and always heavily leveraged. * He was cautious and never did anything he wasn't comfortable with. * He reminded me of a used car salesman. * Above all else, he was a gentleman.

I could go on and on with contrasting statements: * He was very articulate with an acerbic wit. He had the ability to be totally charming. But he could be totally cold when he rebuffed someone. He was extremely volatile. He was mercurial. * He had a gentle manner. If he was angry, it was always expressed in his face and not in what he said. He was admired by everyone who knew him. * Money wasn't the primary driver for him. * He likes to surround himself with nice things. He has fresh flowers every day in his office and wants top-quality things around him all the time and takes it for granted that he should have them. * He is generous. If he thinks you're worth x, he will give you x + 1. * He knows how to pinch a penny.

Listen to these quotes about two partners at the same firm, each of whom brings in about $6 million of business a year:

* He is an old-line WASP; very organized, very quiet, and very thoughtful. * He's a cowboy. He goes out and sells. No matter what he does, he is always laughing. Something funny always comes out. He has a talent for that. He's a good talker. He speaks very fast and always has an answer for everything, though it isn't always the right answer.

Perhaps not surprisingly, these two rainmakers are reported to not get along with each other.

Here are three final quotes that I want you to remember. The first is from Roland Berger, perhaps the most successful rainmaker in the consulting industry today; the second about an extremely successful attorney at a western firm; and the third from a big accounting firm:

* Everyone in the firm says I am so extroverted. But I have always thought of myself as an introvert. I was very much so in my early years.

* He is not a born rainmaker. He doesn't have the gift of gab and is unprepossessing. He is soft-spoken.... He is not comfortable with groups, but has disciplined himself to be good at it. * Early on, I had a lot of difficulty with [client development]. I am very shy, though most people who know me would laugh if you told them this. I had a lot of difficulty going to those lunches, but I forced myself to do it.

Not much here will help us identify or train future rainmakers, but there is an important message, nonetheless. We need to exercise great caution about making judgments on the basis of superficial personality types about who has potential to make it as a rainmaker. Specifically, contrary to popular sentiments, extroversion is not a prerequisite to successful rainmaking.

There Is No One Way That Rainmakers Make Rain

If there is no single personality type that makes a good rainmaker, you might ask, do rainmakers share a common way of getting business? Is there a best way to make rain?

A lot has been written about how to bring business into a professional firm, much of it recommending one approach over another. Attitudes toward cold calling provide a good example of the differences of opinions about how a firm should develop clients. David Maister, for example, classifies marketing tactics into three groups with cold calling falling into the "Clutching at Straws" category. Another anti-cold caller, Alan Weiss, says "... your marketing thrust should not be ... -...