Ten Steps to Becoming a Rain-Maker

Professional services are all services provided that require the power of the mind to solve often complex problems or perform analysis requiring specialized talents and skills and rendering a solution to the client. No Service that requires the
power of the mind can ever become a commodity.

Clients hire experts for their important work.
They cannot afford not to.
Clients will seek them out and pay them more.
Therefore, as professionals we have to prove we are experts.

Finally, to become an expert, one must find your passion for you will not expend the time required to become an expert in any area about which you are not truly passionate. Experts immerse themselves in their disciplines.

There are ten steps to developing a professional services practice.
1. You are a Business: Every professional is a unique business.
This is true whether one works for a firm or hangs out her own shingle.
Buyers buy a professional and his or her team.
You must build your business and team.

2. Find Your Passion: As explained in Good to Great by Jim Collins, you must become the best in the world at that about which you are passionate and use that to drive your economic engine.
What are you truly passionate about?

3. Focus: Identify your service or services and create your professional services business.
You must be the expert.
Buyers pay the most in "bet-the-company" situations.
In those situations they want the best.
To get the best they will pay more.
If you are the best, buyers will seek you out and pay you more.
It can be a long road to get there, but worth the trip.

4. Become a True Expert: Once you have identified the services you will deliver through your business, you must develop a "culture of discipline" to become the very best in the world at the disciplines involved.
Read everything.
Pay your dues. Get all relevant certifications and degrees.
Join the right organizations and get involved.
Listen to the current experts.
Take their ideas to the next level.
See the future.
Get published.
Speak often.
Speak with passion.

5. Identify Your Target Market: Who buys YOU and what you do?
Identify your targets with specificity.
Create a detailed list.
Who controls the projects you want to work on?
Research them. Know them.
Determine who else knows them.

6. Marketing: Building your expertise and more precisely the perception of expertise. Tell the "world.“
Network – build many close relationships.
Turn them into Friends/Coaches who will advocate for you.
Create a STRONG CV.
Build a list if references and secure testimonials.
Develop a list of cases you have done or worked on.
Make marketing yourself a critical daily function.
Create strategies to get to your Targets.
Network, Network, Network.

7. Selling Becomes Simple: First – it is NOT selling!
Know the target and what THEY NEED.
What will make THEM look GREAT in front of the people MOST IMPORTANT to THEM?
Who are those people? Use your friends/coaches.
NEVER ASSUME!!!
Listen. Share briefly. Ask good questions and repeat.
Work with them to create a solution.
Show that you want this to result in a Win for THEM.
Adjust/build your Target list.

8. Sell Strategically: Use Your Friends/Coaches.
Who else influences the decision to hire you.
Find them. Research them. Know them. Find out what is important to them.
Create a "Win" for everyone who influences whether you get hired and you will create a big win for YOU.
“Make them look great in front of the people most important to them.”

9. Execute Flawlessly and Professionally: Act with etiquette and manners.
Build your team. Perform flawlessly (as possible).
Provide phenomenal delight-the-customer service.
Communicate everything – especially errors.
Never blame them or those important to them.
Graceful recovery from mistakes builds lifelong friends.

10. Exploit your Successes: Make everyone at the client a new Friend/Coach for you.
Use them to get the next piece of business in that firm.
Use them as a reference to get work in other firms.
Secure a testimonial.
Write an article together and get it published. Speak together.
Find ways to benefit your friends/coaches.

Becoming a rain-maker is not an easy endeavor. It requires vision, dedication, discipline and a desire to get there. It takes years, not months. Most overnight successes were years in the making.

The key to success is finding your path to success.

Ideas for these concepts come from Good to Great by Jim Collins, The New Strategic Selling by Heiman and Sanchez, 95% Share Marketing & Sales by Fanning and Niekamp and other brilliant minds.