Grab your umbrellas….it’s raining clients!
Creating New Business
Consider the idea of a rainmaker. Under the traditional definition, a rainmaker was someone in a revenue-producing role whose primary responsibility was bringing in new business.
But that definition is limited in scope and leaves so much room for expansion.
The idea of rainmaking needs to be disseminated throughout the entire organization – from the C-suite to the summer interns, so that everybody at every level is conditioned to spot opportunities and look for ways to add value, regardless of whether they’re interfacing with external clients or not.
Companies need to not only make rainmaking a task; it needs to be woven into company culture.
The company I worked for in my corporate days, Towers Perrin, was exceptional at grooming rainmakers.
Every Wednesday morning before office hours started, I had the opportunity to learn directly from the king of rainmaking and client relationship management at our company, Gary Pines.
He blended his decades of experiences with the ideologies from the book Rainmakers by Ford Harding and packaged it up into a program to groom the next generation of rainmakers.
Gary had a way with clients, and most of what I learned from Gary came from watching him in action. He was the master of client relationships – always fully present, engaging eye contact, leaning in, and relaxed. Always very relaxed. The ceiling could have been caving in, and there would be Gary, still sitting there calm, cool, and collected, listening intently and nodding to show he understood.
It was obvious that clients liked how they felt around Gary. He always made them feel heard and took their concerns seriously. Through listening and really empathizing with the client, Gary was able to put himself in their shoes and offer solutions that served them well.
I believe that if everyone at all levels of the company shows up with this rainmaker energy, this rainmaker presence, this “how can I serve you?” mentality, it would be a major contributing factor to explosive growth.
In the next article, I’ll show you how fear was there, but I did it anyway.