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Neil Rackham, the author of SPIN Selling, which set the stage for modern consultative selling, was bemused by the resistance he found when speaking to partners in professional services fields such as accounting, law, investment banking and consulting. They didn’t see themselves doing anything as unseemly as selling; they were professionals, offering high-quality advisory services.
In response, he would ask if they would agree to the fact “there is a mysterious process by which your clients’ money ends up in your bank account, and can we just call it ‘sales’ for now?”
The need to understand – and, indeed, acknowledge that mysterious process – is more vital in these competitive times, as boutique firms and outside disruptors emerge. As well, being a long-time supplier of a service carries less weight.
Professional services partners are effectively doers-sellers, providing the actual work but also responsible for retaining the client and finding others.
A study into that mysterious process by DCM Insights, titled the Rainmaker Genome Project, looking at nearly 3,000 partner-level professionals in various fields, found five ways, or profiles, for accomplishing that dual role, one of which is clearly superior.
More startling, four of the five profiles, containing 78 per cent of study participants, are negatively correlated with performance – not just unproductive but counterproductive.
Professionals may see elements of each profile in their own approach but the researchers says everyone has a dominant style that fits into one slot:
- The Expert: These are reluctant business developers, far more comfortable doing the work than selling. For some, the aversion is actually contempt for what they perceive to be a necessary evil. They wait for clients to find them, based on their expertise, which they spend disproportionate time burnishing through writing, speaking and serving on industry panels and boards.
- The Confidant: This is the old-school trusted advisor, who tends to focus on a small number of clients and aims to be extremely client-centric. “Confidants are highly responsive to client needs and focus on building a reputation for executing high-quality work. As one confidant explained, a key to his client engagement approach is to provide an experience that exceeds the client’s expectations,” DCM Insight’s Matthew Dixon, Rory Channer, Karen Freeman and Ted McKenna write in The Activator Advantage.
- The Debater: Highly confident in their knowledge, these professionals look for opportunities to reframe what their clients believe they need. As one put it: “I’m not really interested in asking clients what they need. They don’t really know themselves, so I see it as my job to tell my clients what they need.” Debaters are most common in areas where there is little differentiation between service providers. One investment banking partner, competing for mergers and acquisitions work, explained: “I want to stand apart from the crowd, I need to find an opportunity to disrupt the client’s thinking. I lose my fair share of deals, but when I win it’s usually because I’ve brought an innovative, ‘outside-the-box’ perspective to the client.”
- The Realist: These professionals are completely transparent about what they can and can’t deliver, what an engagement or matter will cost, and what the client should realistically expect in terms of outcomes and value. They know most clients have been burned in the past by a professional who overstated their capabilities and left them holding the bag on a poorly implemented solution. They strive to set themselves apart by doing the opposite.
- The Activator: These are the standouts – super-connectors, with a large professional network they have built and nurtured. The research team debated whether “Connector” was a better name than “Activator” but concluded that connection was only part of the story. “In interviews, activators were very clear that while network building is absolutely necessary, it is also insufficient as a business development approach. For an activator, a robust professional network represents potential, not kinetic, energy. It needs to be activated to result in paid work,” they write.
Activators are heavy users of platforms such as LinkedIn – regularly posting, commenting, liking and connecting. But they also extend their network building to live settings such as firm-sponsored events and industry conferences. “These are the professionals who don’t attend an event hoping business development will happen, but who attend events to make business development happen,” the researchers say.
They add that the most intriguing part of the activator approach is how they convert connections into conversations and then convert conversations into paying client relationships. They proactively engage their connections with new ideas for ways to make or save money or mitigate risk that clients may have missed, overlooked or not had sufficient time to explore.
In that respect, they are the opposite of the expert, not waiting for the phone to ring with someone seeking their expertise but offering ideas as they connect with people. Unlike confidants, who tend to hoard client relationships within the firm, activators eagerly bring other colleagues in to help their clients where they see advantages for that client.
Should every professional service partner become an activator? The researchers say no. Keep doing what has made you successful but at the same time recognize the client environment is rapidly changing and enrich your approach by adding activator techniques.
Cannonballs
- CEOs and other senior leaders need to ditch one-on-ones with subordinates, leadership consultant Ron Carucci argues. While those may work lower in the organization, at the top the more one-on-ones senior executives hold the more fragmented and functionally siloed the organization can become because work at that level is so interrelated between different functions. An alternative to consider operationally: Small, cross-functional capability meetings bringing together a few lieutenants from different areas with their boss.
- The adoption of artificial intelligence for hiring has made it harder for companies to find people who stand out, leaving recruitment stuck in “a doom loop,” according to Daniel Chait, chief executive officer of Greenhouse consulting. He says we need a hiring process that allows people’s true selves to come through more clearly and completely – a more human process that helps candidates showcase their skills.
- When making decisions, the opportunity cost of not pursuing alternatives can be critical. Ottawa thought leader Shane Parrish says there are three lenses to considering opportunity costs: Compared with what? And then what? At the expense of what?
Harvey Schachter is a Kingston-based writer specializing in management issues. He, along with Sheelagh Whittaker, former CEO of both EDS Canada and Cancom, are the authors of When Harvey Didn’t Meet Sheelagh: Emails on Leadership.