—Ford Harding, author, Creating Rainmakers
If you're old enough to remember John Grisham's 1995 novel The Rainmaker, you understand what we mean by the term rainmaker. Grisham's novel was a huge hit, rapidly stepping into the number one spot on the New York Times best‐seller list. According to Grisham's publisher, Doubleday, it was the fastest‐selling hardcover book ever at the time. Francis Ford Coppola's movie that followed a couple of years later starring Matt Damon was a box‐office hit. If you were born after, say 1985, you may be thinking to yourself, “I have no idea what we're talking about here.”
What Is a Rainmaker?
What is a rainmaker? A rainmaker generally refers to a partner in a professional services firm who is skilled at bringing in client business. Rainmakers:
Generate leads for new business
Turn leads into new clients
Are skilled at turning existing clients into referrals and repeat business
Keep many people in their firms employed
Are highly respected and frequently have a lot of influence in their firms
According to University of Wisconsin professors Marc Galanter and Thomas Palay, the first appearance of the term “rainmaker” can be traced to the 1970s. Before that, we simply referred to rainmakers as business‐getters. Rainmakers are business‐getters.
If you want to become a partner in your firm, or to succeed in your own practice, it's hard to succeed without becoming a rainmaker.
Why Do I Feel So Stupid About Selling?
If you've been at your profession for long, or you've already hung out your own shingle, it's no secret that we have to win client business if we are to become successful. Of that, I'm confident – as I am in the laws of gravity. You won't make partner if you can't make the cash register ring. Certainly you won't stay in business long as a solo practitioner if you don't have enough clients.
It's funny, in a sad sort of way, that they don't teach us how to do this at law school, business school, engineering school, or architecture school. We spend years of our young lives and huge sums of money learning our professions. But, ironically, we're never taught the one thing that our future success depends upon.
I should know. I teach at a college of business. Nowhere in our curriculum is there any course that would provide a young professional with the knowledge and skills to win client business in the professional services. And my college is no different than any other business school out there.
Furthermore, I graduated from a top MBA program. How to win client business isn't taught there, either. Nor is it taught at any other top MBA program. I also graduated from an excellent engineering program – again, never discussed. The one thing that could have a huge impact on the success of our professional career is not spoken of.
It's akin to Lord Voldemort in Harry Potter – that which must not be named. I won't go into why we aren't taught this in school. That's a rabbit hole I'll save for another day. Suffice it to say you've never been taught how to win clients at the university.
Nor are we taught how to do this by our firms. A few do provide a seminar here or there, but our firms don't provide any structured, systemic training to high‐potential, pre‐partner staff on how to win client business. The approach taken by most firms is simply to throw everyone into the deep end of the pool and wait to see who dog‐paddles their way out of it. This is true of every profession that I have witnessed. The downside to the sink or swim approach is that we lose a lot of highly talented people along the way. The attrition rate at the partner juncture is high. I guess it's at least 50%.
Pete Sackleh, who previously held the positions of managing director of Deloitte University and executive director of KPMG's Learning & Innovation Center, knows something about the transition to partner level. He had a front‐row seat at two of the most successful professional services firms in the world.
When I spoke with Pete recently about the high failure rate at the partner juncture, he felt my 50% estimate was too low: “The failure rate at reaching the partner levels is much higher than 50%. I would guess it's closer to 70%. Look at the org chart of these large professional services firms and do the math for yourself.”
Partner track attrition is caused by one of two root causes:
1 Failure at winning client business
2 Self‐selecting out
With better training, there would be a higher success rate and a lower attrition rate. You would think professional firms would provide more training on client development. The truth is that most of those in charge of training young professionals don't know where to go for help. Frankly, there really isn't that much out there to choose from. Most of the sales training offered is geared toward products. And, as we'll discuss, selling a service is different than selling a product.
Furthermore, most of the partners that are successful rainmakers have a difficult time explaining what it is they do. It's the reason why most successful people, in any given field, are often not the best teachers. Try asking Michael Jordan for tips on how to play basketball, or Serena Williams for suggestions on how to improve your tennis swing. It's very hard for them to articulate why they are so good at what they do. The best coaches are rarely the best players at their sport.
For decades, Vic Braden was the go‐to coach for many of the world's best tennis players. Vic always made a point of asking his players why and how they play the way they do. “Out of all the research that we've done with top players, we haven't found a single player who is consistent in knowing and explaining exactly what he or she does,” says Braden. Similarly, we're not going to get much helpful coaching from the best rainmakers in our firms.
Another area sorely lacking is in the limited number of practical books available on the topic. Relative to all other business topics, there just isn't much out their written specifically on client development in consulting and professional services. Want to learn about leadership? You could fill London's Wembley Stadium with the books available from Amazon. Want to find a good book on becoming a rainmaker? Good luck. You can count on one hand the number of good books published on the topic over the past decade. There are a few very good books – for example, those by David Maister and Ford Harding. But many of these classics are over 20 years old. So, even if a professional were looking for self‐help in this area, there isn't much to grab on to.
So, I would say to you, cut yourself some slack. If you're feeling stupid about selling your services, please stop beating yourself up. Why feel bad about not knowing something that you have never been taught? You shouldn't. My hope in writing this book is that it gives highly talented professionals a place to start in learning the craft of winning client business.
The Five Rainmaker Skills, the Focus of This Book
If I could go back in time to have a beer with my younger self, these five skills are things that I wish I had known. In my experience and observations over the past 25 years, these are the important skills that successful rainmakers practice that differentiate themselves from the rest of the pack to have long‐term success at consistently winning new client business.
I say “consistently” because we can all get lucky from time to time. Winning one new client can be attributed to good fortune – being in the right place at the right time or being on the receiving end of a highly desperate situation. But long‐term, we don't want to leave our success to chance. Therefore, we need to learn to practice these rainmaker skills.
The good news is these skills aren't rocket science. While they may seem at first like a sorcerer's bag of tricks, they are not magic. Rather, they are practical skills based upon sound principles of consumer behavior and marketing strategy