Rainmakers

The term rainmakers refers to the people in business most responsible for bringing in the work flow. Trying to replicate what they do isn’t easy but every business needs to think about its future, and finding the right rainmaker can require some long term planning.

Many businesses I know feature one, or a small group of business leaders, who have been largely responsible for making the business today what it is. They are intuitive networkers and know how to identify future opportunities, clients or strategic growth pathways. They’ve often been in the business for a long time and the marketplace sees the business closely associated with their drive and personality.

A telling characteristic of this sort of business is that it is often named after them. If singular, it suggests a sole rainmaker. If named after a group, it suggests a group – one that may no longer exist but one which first established the business and handed it on to a next gen of leaders.

What I find interesting is that quite often the rainmakers aren’t necessarily the most technically competent in their particular profession. The very best accountants, lawyers, engineers, architects, project managers and so on may have the edge in technical skills, and they may add a lot to the value of the business, but they may not have the skills to bring in new work. Their preference may be to continue to practice the skills they first trained for, and to continue to push the boundaries of technical understanding within their chosen field.

It makes sense if you think about it. Our university or field education focuses on the technical aspects of a particular profession. This is what first attracted us to it in the first place. We didn’t go into marketing or business courses because, quite deliberately, we didn’t think those things suited our skills or interests. Why expect that to change?

In some cases though, the rainmaker reaches a point in their technical and professional life where perhaps they begin to enjoy running and growing the business as much - if not more - than actually doing the work. They thrive on client engagement and leveraging that for further opportunities. They are not satisfied when a project is completed and a client is happy – they are asking for more – more opportunities, what the client has on next, do they know of any similar projects through other potential clients. While happy to supervise and mentor projects that come into the business, their preference starts to drift to winning more and more business, growing staff numbers and workflow.

This can create a problem for rainmaker businesses because clients are sometimes drawn only to the persona of the individual around whose reputation the business is built. They want that particular individual, or group of individuals, to be hands on with their project. They don’t want to be ‘handed down’ a level or two, notwithstanding the supervision, to a more junior (or less well known) group of professionals. Even if that group might be more technically competent than the rainmaker, clients demand that the rainmaker is the one who is hands on with their job. The rainmaker at this point is conflicted: they know that without their concerted efforts to run the business and win new business, the business as a whole will start to flounder. They can’t really devote the time to being the ‘hands on’ professional but clients are not letting them delegate.

There is no easy answer to this but from what I’ve observed here are some ideas worth exploring:

• Think of recruiting talent based on their future rainmaking skills, more so than their technical competence. A straight ‘A’ graduate with an impeccable academic and work record might sound appealing but if you already have plenty of technically competent people, try looking for someone with perhaps broader skills. Someone with the potential to start getting out there and helping you win work and who shows the personality and energy to do so, could be the missing piece you need.
• Shine more light on your next generation staff. One way to relieve the burden of clients only wanting to deal with you is to demonstrate how clever your next gen of professionals really are. This means not taking the credit for what they do, and can mean reducing your profile in favour of profiling them. Some rainmaker business leaders may say this is what they want, but many also find it hard to do.
• Institutionalise the marketing and BD function. By this, I mean make it a discipline all staff need to understand – much like the monthly timesheets or accounts. They may not love it, but they do at least need to appreciate the importance of it. Someone may start to stand out from the pack as a future rainmaker because they actually enjoy the business marketing and BD function as much as their own professional field.
• Formally reward people for their outreach, networking and rainmaking efforts. Attending functions and events and learning about what projects are doing the rounds before they hit the papers is what got you to this point – so you should encourage your staff in the same way. Don’t be too parsimonious with the networking events budget but encourage those who want to lead in this field to spend time doing so. Some simply won’t want to, so don’t force them. But those who do should be encouraged to ‘get out there’ more often.
• At some point, you might even need to look at changing the name of the business. It it’s named after you, or a group of soon-to-retire partners, it’s going to be difficult for a next gen to lead that sort of business. But you don’t want to do this until you’re happy your succession plan for rainmaking is in good hands. 

None of these are easy decisions and however you approach the issue it’s a long term commitment that could easily form part of a routine board or management meeting agenda. One thing’s for certain: leaving these decisions until the last minute is not the answer.

Milestones

Celebrating a milestone for any business is an important moment, whether that’s 10, 25, 50, 75, or even 100 years. But how much does it really matter to your clients?

Everyone likes a party and turning a ‘significant’ milestone is always good reason to have one, whether for yourself or your business. It’s a celebration of endurance and perseverance and hopefully also a celebration of some sound business management skills, good marketing and a business that’s moved with the times.

It’s become an honoured tradition to mark these milestone events with a variety of initiatives from cocktail functions to special publications or revised letterheads. I would be the very last person to find a reason not to run some sort of client engagement exercise, but I would caution against thinking that reaching that significant milestone really means as much to your clients as it does to you.

From what I have heard in many discussions about how professional service firms are selected for shortlists or how they receive ‘preferred partner’ status, the length of time the firm has been operating doesn’t rate.  What does rate highly are the skills of the people they believe they’ll be dealing with. And there’s no point suggesting the people you’re asking clients to deal with today are the same ones responsible for getting your show up and running 50 or 100 years ago. Or at least I hope not.

Some of the downsides of emphasising the age of your business can include:

• An old firm may suggest ‘stodginess’ as opposed to adventurous
• An old firm may suggest ‘traditional’ and conservative, as opposed to contemporary and innovative
• An old firm may suggest laboured systems and governance traditions designed to suit the business more than clients, as opposed to lean, efficient and client friendly

On the positive side, longevity can say a lot, provided it’s presented as a positive sign of a business that knows how to survive, adapt and respond to changing markets. But if longevity alone is promoted as the businesses’ main virtue, it can suggest a sense of ‘entitlement’ culture: that feeling you get when the people you’re paying for a service treat you and your opinions with disdain and give you that ‘father knows best’ paternalism treatment. You definitely want to avoid that.

Some law firms can be especially bad at this. Visualise collateral that emphasises wooden panelled offices, rows of leather bound law volumes, portraits of founders Smitherington or Smythe from 100 years ago or even a feather quill as part of a logo. You get the picture.

Other law firms try aggressively to disown their heritage, with the emphasis on super sleek modern offices, rows of computer screens, and twenty-something lawyers dressed to kill. That, for me, is going a bit too far the other way.

In summary, it’s nice to know you’re dealing with a business that’s got some history, and isn’t a fly-by-night outfit. But beyond that, I think there is a tipping point beyond which it starts to matter less about how long you’ve been around and more about the sort of business you are trying to be today. 

5 classic 'fails' of many businesses this year

A new year awaits and prospects for economic improvement look good. Some businesses will grow, others will tread water, and some will fail. Such is the market. But more and more as I am involved with building business prospects for businesses in a variety of professional fields, it becomes apparent that some businesses “make their own luck”, while others just hope for the best and pray for the phone to ring. If I had to guess at five things many professional businesses will fail to do this year which could help them “make their own luck” here’s my list…

1.    Fail to communicate at all. Incredible as it sounds to me, there are plenty of businesses who will start 2014 without any sort of B2B communication plan. No calendar of activity, no ideas about content, no commitment to frequency and no budget. It’s remarkable how popular clairvoyance in business has become and clearly business development by telepathy has a lot of committed followers. I am not among them.

2.    Fail to freshen contact lists. The database of clients, prospects, suppliers and others is often one of the more neglected pieces of business infrastructure I see. Far more neglected than the accounts. You hopefully wouldn’t find too many dead people on your list of 30 day debtors but too often business client lists are littered with contacts who have ‘moved on’ – in either the earthly sense, or just by switching jobs. Clients have moved address, changed name, or had wholesale changes of senior staff. None of this is recorded in the database of a lot of businesses though, simply because it wasn’t a discipline to ensure that lists were maintained.

3.    Fail to update collateral. If you made the mistake of printing 20 times the number of company brochures as you really needed three years ago, that’s really a problem of your own making. But don’t think this is an excuse to keep relying on the two or three year old brochure to continue representing your business in 2014. And if it’s a website you rely on, the same applies. Spending time on updating material about yourself is a typical ‘fail’ that many businesses don’t pay sufficient attention to.

4.    Fail to mention your people. In professional businesses, you employ people called ‘professionals.’ This is where the business value lies. So why is it that so many businesses fail to project their people and what they can offer clients, preferring instead to hide behind the anonymity of a corporate logo and inanimate projects? The worst excuse I’ve heard is “people come and go so we didn’t want to have to update our collateral.” DOH. If you haven’t yet twigged to the importance of dealing with people, just try calling the Telstra complaints line a few times and talk to the computer in between listening to the hold message.

5.   Bore your audience to death. A constant source of interest to me is how, the moment we have a keyboard in front of us, many of us revert to a bland style of ‘corporate speak’ which is long on words but totally devoid of interest. If you tried be as boring as possible, that’s what some businesses do as routine. I don’t think it’s deliberate: instead, I suspect it’s a refuge in the ‘vanilla’ language of corporate speak where the difference between one company and the next is reflected entirely in a logo. Another fail in this area is to confuse things of interest to you, and those of interest to your clients. If you’re still sending clients pictures of staff members’ new babies or weddings or triathlon conquests, please stop. Save that for the in-house news sheet.

There you go. There are plenty more but in the interests of not boring you, I’ll keep this one short and sweet. If you’re starting 2014 and plan to make your own luck, avoiding the sorts of traps above should be high on your list.

Don't wait for the recovery

A lot of professional service businesses have been through a rough period in recent years. Talk of a much needed economic upturn in 2014 is helping to raise spirits. But just relying on an upturn to translate into more work for your business is a bad idea. Here’s why.

The cycles should be familiar to all of us who have lived through them before. In good times, work finds you, staff numbers expand and the phones keep ringing. Then comes the downturn. The phone doesn’t ring as often. Work contracts to a few long term clients and staff numbers are trimmed.

Then the upturn comes again but in every upturn, there are new faces and new businesses which seem to be getting the lion’s share of work. It’s as if they appeared from nowhere, or were once fledgling companies regarded at best as junior rivals, now ‘stealing’ all the best opportunities from under your nose. How does this happen?

In a word, complacency. If you are a business which is hoping to ride a coming wave of economic revitalisation and to resume your pre-downturn glory, you’re guilty of complacency. While you are waiting, others are already busy: building the reputations, forging the relationships, making the overtures. They’ll be talking to ‘your’ clients and actively beavering away on their B2B activities. They’ll be communicating often, networking, and spending time on the phone. They’ll make sure they’re on the radar of every potential client… including yours.

When the upturn comes, it’s these companies who will be the first to benefit. During any downturn, people move around, leadership roles change, and ‘old’ relationships are tested with new blood. Active businesses with an intuitive or disciplined approach to their B2B marketing know this, and are always on top of change, in preparation for what comes next. Complacent businesses are the first to discover that old networks are no longer as reliable, and even that awareness of their business offering has dropped off the radar.

So how do you prevent this?

First, start now and don’t wait for the upturn. You should be investing time and resources into building your contact lists and refreshing old lists. If you haven’t used your client database for some time, you might be shocked at how many people have moved or left old positions. You need to find where they have gone and get in touch with them and re-established the relationship.  At the same time, work out who’s replaced them from where they left and keep that B2B relationship alive.

You ought also to spend some time thinking strategically about which sectors of your market will move first in any upturn. Target them. Identify the companies that will need your services and identify the key influencers within those companies who need to be aware of your existence.

Does your collateral reflect your strategic aim? Is it time to refresh the website and those company brochures? Is it time to run a quick survey to understand how your target market perceives you, your strengths and competitive weaknesses?

You need to be communicating regularly. Once a month is not overkill, it’s minimalist. It doesn’t matter if your outreach is a mix of electronic, print, and personal contact – just make sure you have diarised this as a discipline and have a plan for regular client outreach and communication.

If you’re not a natural networker, find someone in your business who is. Make the commitment to have some sort of presence at various industry events likely to attract the sort of clients you’re interested in keeping, and those you’re interested in winning. There is no point having a box of 200 business cards in your desk drawer. They belong in other peoples’ hands so find a way to make that happen.

You will need to do all these things and more because enough of your competitors will be. They’ll be the ones picking up the work you expected to be ‘rightfully’ yours. Complacency is a common human character trait and we all suffer it. The way to counter it is through building a discipline around your B2B efforts.

Failing to do anything much other than hope to be carried along by a coming economic upturn isn’t as good a plan as getting underway now and making your own luck for the New Year.

Corporate humbug

Christmas comes but once a year, thankfully. It’s a wonderful time for family and friends but when it comes to corporate or business relationship marketing, it can also be a time when the most insincere, plain lazy and low quality stuff happens.

The tradition of a posted Christmas card from one company to its clients is still alive in some places, but not many. The card was either signed by the principals, or passed around the office for everyone to sign their name. It was addressed to the recipient. Often personally. This at least was some indication that the senders had actually thought about who they were sending it to.

Then along came email and with it the ability to send a mass email to all clients with some appropriately cheesy sentiment of the season. It was cheaper and quicker but much less personal than the postcard.

Less personal again was the online e-card, which asked you to follow a link to a site with some even cheesier sentiments, anonymously addressed to pretty much anyone.  It got even worse again, in my view, with the arrival of websites that could animate members of your team into some super cheesy rendition of a Christmas Carol or a nativity scene. Ok, they were funny at first but let’s face it, if anyone can do it, where’s the sentiment or sincerity in that? (Here’s one site http://www.jibjab.com/ which illustrates what you’ve missed out on if this doesn’t make sense to you).

Things took a another turn down when some bright sparks decided to advertise their charitable bona fides by sending out emails to clients promoting that, rather than spend money on Christmas cards, they were making a donation to a charity instead. They never tended to reveal how much was being donated. Often, they didn’t mention the charity. Pardon my cynicism, but if you want to donate to a charity at Christmas time (which is a good Christian thing to do anyway) do you really need to advertise the fact and try promote yourself this way?

So here I am, gripped by a fear of what’s about to come through the email channels in the name of Christmas and goodwill, but in every other respect lacking sincerity or the personal touch. As a piece of client communications, some of these border on the meaningless. There are so many of these that, with luck, yours might be deleted without being read and before your intended recipient can pause to think how little they obviously mean to you.

If you’re about to commit one of the mortal sins described above and might now be having second thoughts, what are your options?

If your clients actually do mean something to you, the option of the personally addressed and signed card, with best wishes for the season, ought in my view to make something of a comeback. If you don’t want to spend the $1 or $2 per client on the cost of the card and its postage, maybe you’re better off doing nothing.

Sending a gift is also a nice idea, probably better reserved for better clients. Bottles of wine have become a bit de rigeur – especially if you’ve wacked your own corporate logo on them – but the recipient with an office full of free bottles of wine probably won’t mind too much.  They also probably won’t remember you too much from the crowd who chose to do the same thing. If you’re going to give a gift, give it some thought and try be imaginative. Don’t just do what you did last year and the year before that – people might be forgiven for thinking you’re not making an effort.

The client Christmas function is another option but remember that everyone’s doing pretty much the same thing at this time of year. ‘Come and along and have some drinks on us and stand around for a couple of hours making chit chat… it’ll be fun’ seems to sum up the approach for many. If you are going to throw a function, try keeping it reasonably intimate and personal so that you’ve at least got the opportunity to meet and interact with your guests. And think hard about some angles to make yours stand out. Once again, use some imagination and dare to be just a little bit different. I’m not suggesting a game of charades but there are some things you can do to help break the ice for your guests (many of whom won’t be well networked) and which will leave them talking about you in a positive way for a while.

Whatever you choose to do, just make sure you do it well. The postcard, the party, the gift – they all require some thought and the personal touch is always best. Otherwise, it might be better to do nothing if the something you had in mind is one of those ghastly, insincere, cheap and nasty e-cards.

And you could always just quietly, and without fanfare, make a donation of time or money to a charitable cause that could do with some help. There’s no shortage of options there.

The loyal client?

If the so called 80/20 rule is anything to go by (and 80% of the time it seems to be), then your business is probably heavily reliant on around one in five of your clients for the vast majority of your work. These are sometimes what you might call your ‘loyal clients’. Given their importance, are you treating them with the sort of attention you might lavish on a new client?

Loyalty in business is a lovely idea but in practice, we are increasingly living in a competitive market where loyalties can be hard to maintain. Not only cost pressures from competitors but changing expectations of services and demands for new approaches or innovations can all conspire to convert your loyal clients into your competitors’ clients. And much like a relationship breakdown, it usually comes as a shock when it happens. The post break up analysis can reveal just why this happened but “if only I’d seen the signs” probably features on the list.

So just as important as working on securing new business, it’s very useful to focus on your existing customers. Don’t take them for granted as ‘loyal’ but treat them as a client which is entitled to go elsewhere if you aren’t doing what you can to look after them.

So how do you do that? A few simple ideas might be worth thinking about:

Communicate. Are you maintaining a regular line of communication? If your B2B communication efforts are mainly directed at winning new business, you could benefit from focussing some of it on your established clients.

Survey. I am a big fan of understanding your customers and potential customers. But sometimes we focus our efforts on surveying the broad market of potential clients at the expense of asking different questions of existing clients. People who have already dealt with you in business are the best placed to give you feedback, so why not ask for it?

Make time for one on one meetings. Nothing quite beats a one on one meeting just to touch base with your customers and listen to what’s going on in their business. This could reveal opportunities but more important, it firms your relationship and demonstrates your interest. And be sure to do so more than once a year. There’s no point saying “Yeah sure, so and so knows us really well, I catch up with them once a year.” Your competition is probably doing so more often than that.

Keep a close eye on the accounts department. It’s amazing how quickly a good B2B alliance can be crushed on the rocks once the accounts department gets involved. The last thing you want is your accounts nazi (and we all need them) giving grief to your best customers over invoices or payments or terms. Accountants aren’t strong on the PR side of things. You need to make sure that all points of contact from your business are treating your best clients with the sort of respect they deserve. Be prepared to intervene if need be and do so demonstrably so that your client knows you’re looking after them.

Share internally. A lot of your staff, including frontline people (reception for example) won’t know which clients are more important than others, unless you tell them. Sharing that bit of intel around internally can inspire a more collective approach. It can also mean that the B2B relationship doesn’t just rely on you, but also on a number of your team. Which makes for a stronger bond.

Invite their views on your business. If you’re working on some innovations or new ideas, why not share them with a few of your better clients? Ask their opinions. Do they have any suggestions for you? Even invite their views on how you can grow your business. They’ll probably appreciate being asked especially if you treat their views with respect.

Engage beyond work. Some clients enjoy social networking outside of business. But some don’t. It’s a good idea to understand their likes and dislikes. Little point always asking them to a box at a football game if they’re not interested in football and prefer fishing. It’s also to my mind why putting all your eggs into expensive things like corporate season boxes makes no sense because you’re only going to appeal to a segment of your clients. Along with your own self-interest, no doubt.

These are just a few top of mind thoughts. The important thing is to establish a discipline around client retention just as much as you establish a discipline around acquiring new clients. If you put things in the diary, it’s at least more likely to happen. The cost of forgetting can be high.  

Logo schmogo

A corporate brand is many things to many people. But it isn’t a logo. This is often confused but knowing the difference might help refine your corporate branding efforts.

A logo is basically a graphic design mark which identifies your company. If it incorporates text, it’s usually called a logotype. (Think Virgin for example). So what’s the difference between this and your corporate brand? In my view, your corporate brand is a mix of several things. The brand is much like a corporate personality. It takes into account the type of business you’re in, the style of service you offer, the sort of image you want to project about your business. Clients and customers interact with your business in many ways – by phone, in person, through your corporate and business communications – and all these are touch points where clients or customers will get a sense of what your brand is all about. 

Some big brands like Virgin do this very well. Virgin, despite being a large global business of many decades operation, is to this day a brand of defiance, of youth, and of energy. Whether it’s a credit card or an airline or a music label, the ‘Virgin’ brand is consistent. You know intuitively that what you’ll get is not ‘establishment.’ That’s also reflected in their bold use of colour (red).

By contrast, there are establishment brands which are all about stability, tradition, and dependability.  Banks are typical of establishment brands. And very often, they lean to blue as a colour signal of the type of business they represent.

The logos themselves are ideally a reflection of this brand personality. Which means that usually the brand position and strategy should come first - because the style of corporate brand is how your business projects itself while the logo is the visual personification of this.

So what, you’re asking? The answer is that corporate brand strategy is just as relevant for small and medium businesses as it is for large institutions. You obviously don’t need to invest the sort of money nor effort as majors but there are some simple things you can do to help define your brand thinking.

First, decide your personality. If for example you’re a design based business aiming to make a reputation based on leading edge design ideas, your brand should reflect this. You may want to project as an edgy, contemporary business which challenges conventional attitudes. This personality should shine through all your corporate communications, your website, brochures and even down to the culture of your staff.

Alternatively, if you’re a conservative profession which is associated with evidence or science based advice and opinion (think engineering or valuation for example) you may want to project a more conservative image.  This can be particularly important in economic downtowns where clients become more risk averse and seek out conservative, dependable reputations. Once again, this personality should be reflected in the style of your corporate communication. Every time a client has contact with your business should reinforce this personality.

Think about the content that will support your brand. For the design based example above, if you want to position your brand as edgy and contemporary, you’d support that with content that illustrates that capacity. Likewise, building an evidence-based brand built on conservative, dependable values would logically mean providing content to your target market which supports that claim. Otherwise, it might be a bit like the creative artist wearing a grey suit, or the accountant wearing the latest ‘out there’ fashion.

This doesn’t mean you can’t zig when all your competitors are zagging.  Sometimes, breaking the mould can be hugely advantageous, especially if you’re in an industry which has a recognised stereotype with significant downside perceptions. Think of the stereotypical lawyer for example, and how some firms have projected their brand as ‘plain English’ practices with ‘real people’ who empathise with your needs (as opposed to aloof hair-wig wearers with superiority complexes who view you as riff raff).  Extreme example, but you get the point. Defining yourself by describing what you are not can be very effective.

A warning though: none of your branding strategy will ever work without leadership from the top.  If senior executives are at heart conservative traditionalists with little appetite for ‘breaking the mould’ there is no point adopting a mould-breaking strategy. It will fail, if not at the first hurdle, certainly in time. The strategy itself may be sound but if for the senior leadership of the business it’s an ill-fitting suit, it simply won’t work. This can involve a bit of difficult navel gazing and self -reflection, but you’re better off being honest about who you are. You can’t act a role forever.

There are a few other elements important to successful corporate brand positioning but for now, it’s worth considering that all the aspects mentioned above don’t involve your logo. By the time you’ve decided on your brand, you should be ready to brief a graphic artist on your logo.

PS: For some fun on the subject of logos, have a look at this showcase of the ’15 Worst Corporate Logo Fails.’