landing new business ggets a lot easier when you’re a thought leader in your niche
with sarah dobek and ty hendrickson
inovautus consulting
what does the transition and evolution to rainmaker look like?
related: growing revenue through client service | eat that frog: asking for a prospect meeting
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it’s different for everyone, but it’s a process that starts early in your career and never ends.
it requires professionals to gain a better understanding of how to identify opportunities and talk intelligently about them, which is a hard thing to do in a profession where we feel like we can’t sell unless we have all the answers.
training, shadowing and self-reflection will either help you determine if becoming a rainmaker is your calling and prepare you to drive new revenue.
take-aways
1. how do you define a true rainmaker? (hint… when someone is more beneficial in a business development role).
2. how do you know if becoming a rainmaker is right for you or your firm?
3. why does becoming a thought leader and specialized have to do with becoming a rainmaker?
4. what value does a rainmaker have within a firm outside of bringing in new business?
transcript
ty
i’m ty hendrickson, cpa and consultant with inovautus here with sarah dobek, our president, and founder, and in this video, we are going to look at what it means to be a thought leader and in rainmaker and what that means to you and your firm and how to know if it’s even right for you.
so, sarah, i’ll turn it over to you and just ask you what is it? how do you define a rainmaker within a firm and how many do you need?
sarah
wow, i wish i had the question on how many you need. i think it’s kind of how about how big you are but i think for us we really define a rainmaker as somebody who is a really strong sales driver that is generating a robust amount of opportunity for the firm and can really go out and drive something and close it but can also develop other people for us, our rainmakers are sometimes hard to replicate, but they have a lot of natural knowledge and gifts in addition to what the skills are that they’ve learned over the years to really be able to connect with people and sell the firm, not just sell themselves, but really to silver.
ty
and that’s such a big transition, right when i think that’s one of the biggest differentiators between a sales driver and a rainmaker.
sales drivers are bringing in new business.
they’re closing it.
rainmakers are out there as the face of the firm, and they’re doing more business development than anything so.
what does that transition look like for someone who is so used to knowing what they can do, knowing what services they can provide to figuring out how to position the firm out in the community?
sarah
yeah, you know it’s different because i think each of our clients is different.
we watched one of our or an audit leaders go through this and she’s a very talented audit leader for her firm and was running that and was always the go-to person for the operational things right and she’s just good at everything that she did.
and so i remember when we were going through some coaching with this firm, having the conversation with the managing partner about freeing her app to say we don’t have a lot of other people that can do those things we don’t have a lot of people that could go out and sell it.
she had a great relationship with all the other people in the firm and the partners so we freed her up and gave her a really aggressive sales goal ’cause we felt like she could do it and she knocked it out of the park the first year surpassed it easily and just continued to grow exponentially because we have really put her in the right seat for gifts and talents. and so it really opened up a lot and that firm has evolved quite a bit, and now she’s, she’s the managing partner for a firm.
i don’t think those two things are equitable but she continues to be in that role where she’s out and she’s the face. she is building a lot of that, but she’s also doing a lot of coaching across the firm because of the level of trust and not every firm we’ve worked with has that kind of like path, right?
it looks different, but what i will say is that across this all firms, especially their rainmakers, are learning how to sell the whole firm, not just what they did right.
she wasn’t just outselling audit services she was outselling all the things that the firm did.
and so it does take an evolution to get a better understanding of those things, enough to be able to identify opportunities and talk intelligently about them which is a hard thing to do in a profession where we feel like we can’t sell unless we have all the answers and that’s not necessarily the case, we have to be able to sell enough.
bring somebody else along and say you don’t know the answer to that, but my colleague ty here, that is her.
ty
yeah, and people respect that so much more.
you know, i think that’s one of the biggest transitions.
as you said, they feel like you have to know everything, but people can pick up on if you’re kind of fluffing a little bit or don’t necessarily know when you’re trying to sound like an expert, they would much rather, you say look that you know that’s not my wheelhouse, but we are someone who’s phenomenal and i think that also goes back to the culture part of it, and this comes kind of full circle, right?
the firms that are developing a strong dd culture sales and marketing culture in the firm have rainmakers that are involved in coaching.
and if rainmakers are involved in bringing stuff into the firm and developing up, you know those sales supporters sales drivers and in getting others involved.
so, being a rainmaker, i think coaching and mentoring should be a big piece of this.
so how do you see that balance in growing the culture and what should they be doing to contribute through mentoring and coaching and growing the culture?
sarah
i think one is just to allow shadowing as adults and as humans, we learn by watching a lot, not, you know that there’s value in classroom learning.
don’t get me wrong, ’cause a lot of our training has classroom learning components, but so much of what we do needs to be experiential and sometimes just watching how somebody does something.
how i learned early in my career?
i used to go out with my managing partner and i’ve watched him.
i’d see how he did it.
i’d see how he’d ask questions, and i’d find my own style on my own approach, but it gave me confidence seeing it over and over again.
sarah
to be able to do that and then participating in calls and having a speaking spot in some of those.
and so we have to give those opportunities to our young folks, even if they’re quiet at first to just sit and observe. and then you talk about it, well, what did you see?
what did you think and what are you curious about and being able to debrief on some of those learning opportunities i think is really, truly invaluable.
i will also say and acknowledge not everybody is meant to be a coach, but at least if you can allow them on, you know their shattering opportunities.
i think it can be extremely helpful to watch people learn.
that’s always one of the key elements that really is a make or break in my mind that bring their people along, even if they don’t expect them to say anything right away, but bring them along and allow them to learn from you and make the time to be able to do that, and you know what today is so much easier to be able to do that with video.
they would bring anybody into the call and say, hey, this is my colleague tie right here and i’ve asked her to join our meeting today.
they don’t need to know why you’re a key member of our team right and you can even say that this is a key member of our team and somebody that works in this area that works with you and invited her to join our call, i’ve never had somebody be like no, i only want to talk to you.
ty
no no and you’re right, that’s our fear is like someone telling us no, but nothing about it, and they’re not going to write.
so that fear just kind of has to go right?
but i love what you said, you know so much of this is experiential, right? and we do a lot of classroom learning and there’s one firm that i’ve been working with.
but it’s kind of been funny to see the light bulb go off on both sides because we’ve gone through a whole bunch on questions in conversation and small talk and how to build relationships and then a couple of them actually had the opportunity to shadow the managing partner at some event that they had recently and came back and they said i didn’t realize that’s why he was doing this and i couldn’t believe that i saw this in action and it just blew my mind that all of these things were happening and you know the light bulb clicked when they knew what to look for and they saw it.
but on the flipside that, managing partner didn’t realize how much of an impact it had. he was like, well, i just do that naturally. i didn’t realize that it doesn’t come naturally to others, and so from both sides, those mentoring experiences can help make people better coaches.
and then you know it gives people the experience to be able to emulate and make it their own.
so i think that’s such an interesting part of this.
this rainmaker piece is that it just it takes a group effort to build that culture and it involves bringing in the rainmaker.
i think we’ve seen in some firms where if the rainmakers out on their own in doing everything you know outside of the rest of the firm that disjointedness is holding a lot of people back to.
sarah
it is and it can be hard sometimes, especially some of the best ring makers i know are the people that can’t teach it right.
they can’t teach what?
they do because it becomes so natural, but they can at least let people watch and learn about what they do and there is a lot that you can pick up from some of that.
the other thing i’ll share is one of my favorite phrases and i forget who has this quote
the quote is, we can have a lot of knowledge, that knowledge is knowing things, but that doesn’t mean that we know how to do it.
our wisdom, which is what a rainmaker is, somebody that has put this into practice comes from actually.
doing it right and so we have to take that knowledge and apply it.
and that’s where that shadowing or coaching or you know, translation of conclusions.
when you have those light bulb or a-ha moments that go off though.
so, oh, now i can see this in practice. i can do this. i know they talked about this. this was important, but now you begin to pull it all together and that’s what creates confidence.
but that’s also what creates that wisdom, right? that we’ve been there.
we’ve done it, and i figure out what works best for me, not what works best for you to you, and i have different approaches and that’s ok.
we’re getting to the same end goal.
ty
and you know, i think one thing that we’ve missed, though, because i feel like this is all spot on with the mentoring and all that.
but one thing that i feel like we’ve missed is is a lot of these rainmakers get to this position and go into a specialization and become a thought leader.
what’s the importance of thought leadership in this rainmaker.
sarah
it’s important for a few reasons.
one, it and not everybody, right?
we have some sales professionals and firms and they aren’t necessarily thought leaders, but our technical specialists, our partners, are often cases and i think the reason this is important is because it helps create demand generation for your firm.
as you become a thought leader you were visible.
you were out there and you were known for something and the firm needs to be known for something, and sometimes that thought leader isn’t the best rainmaker, that’s ok.
maybe they’re the technical expert in the firm, but those elements 100% have to be there and it’s a benefit to if you’re a rainmaker, you need to be visible. why not be visible for something you’re well known for?
ty
well, i think we’ve covered a lot here, and i think there’s importance in all four levels in the firm.
whether you’re contributing through client service and client development, whether you’re in a sales support or role in helping you know guide that sales process along and bring in leads or sales driver that’s closing business or rainmaker, there’s so many different ways.
that you can contribute, and there are so many different opportunities to help the firm grow, and so firms that recognize this and pull up every individual potential and get them to that point.
that’s going to be the real difference-maker in growth in the firm, so.
sarah, any last comments on growth and accounting firms?
sarah
no, just don’t be afraid to try up small steps.
keep learning and don’t let a misstep or what you consider to be a failure or a failure.
i believe that failures teach our best lessons and so learn.
learn from everything that you’re doing and get better inch by inch. it doesn’t happen overnight. i started doing at 22 in my first accounting firm and i’m pretty sure you know for the first four years nobody thought i was ever going to develop anything until i sleep training clients, right?
but i was given the opportunities to shadow and do all the things that we talked about and i learned a lot.
and you know several decades later, i’m still sitting here, you know, in that role, so you don’t become a rainmaker overnight.
you don’t become an expert at business development, you do it by being resilient in repeating and trying and learning and going again.
yeah, i, i think that’s perfect, so get out there, ask questions, start building relationships. that’s the foundation and then see how far it takes you.
so thank you everybody for joining in with this and we appreciate it.