Chapter 1: Eagerly Dedicated
Many of you reading this book are already excited to start selling your expertise and services, but equally as many, if not more, cracked this book open with a skeptic's eye. Why? Because a lot of you, in all honesty, just don't want to sell. You probably believe the costs outweigh the benefitsâselling is nebulous, time-consuming, and takes you away from the work you either love or are good at and find easy to do. Bringing in business is more difficult and less straightforward than delivering on engagements. Building a strong book of business requires that you win new clients, which often involves persuading people who don't know you well to hire you to solve their problems. That's not such a simple task, nor one most of us want to tackle.
You're smart. You're talented. For years, you've been honing your craft and taking pride in becoming an expert. The non-technical activities, like entertaining clients or networking, seem unimportant, and better left to people without âhard skills,â or those who have the right personality and enjoy that type of work. Since you mainly deliver work, most of your client interactions are with people who already value your services. It may be easy to think that sales will naturally happen as you continue serving these clients and building up your reputation. Unfortunately, that limited vantage point is also why many people struggle to build their book of business.
To become a rainmaker, you first need the desire to bring in business. Fortunately, that motivation can be acquired and developed quite quickly once you fully understand the benefits of selling. Landing clients is the name of the game. You cannot generate increased revenue for your organization unless you are eager to sell and dedicated to succeeding, two hallmarks of any professional rainmaker. To get there, you need to understand what may be dampening your enthusiasm for engaging in business development. If you are technically inclined, and pride yourself on solving complex problems, you may be prone to avoid selling for three reasons. By understanding these three reasons, and challenging the assumptions behind them, you will find yourself becoming more motivated to sell.
Why Smart People Struggle with Sales
Research shows that most people strongly resist any activity that threatens their status.1 In many professional settings, there's a general distaste for sales for this exact reason: The role is typically not seen as glamorous or glorious, and people may feel as if selling is âbeneathâ them. That's why few, if any, professionals pursued a degree in âsalesâ at college or aspired to become a sales rep when they graduated. The typical sales job does not seem to require special qualifications or credentials. The compensation is often commission-based, and large companies hire tons of salespeople, making the bar to entry seem low. Further, to most people, a job always seems higher-status or more prestigious if they are not tasked to sell a service or product. Companies recognize these facts and rename job titles to mask the role. âSalespersonâ becomes âconsultant,â âaccount executive,â âsolutions specialist,â or any euphemism that hides the four-letter word sell.
Another reason smart people struggle with sales is that there is a lag time between effort and payoff. If you're a technical expert, you are likely accustomed to seeing your hard work directly translate into results. Whether you are modeling future cash flows or writing a brief, you know how long it will take to complete the task and what the end product will look like. As you shift more time and energy into business development, if you don't immediately see results, you may begin to question your approach and doubt your abilities. Worse yet, if you are compensated on the billable hours model, you may feel pressure to get back to billable work, considering your sales efforts unproductive and abandoning them.
The problem here is the sense of uncertainty that goes along with sales. Success for any given deal does not depend solely on the quality and quantity of your effort. Timing, buyer preferences, economic conditions, personal emergencies, and other factors outside of your control all impact whether you will close a deal. As a result, you may experience a strong pull toward non-selling activities that feel more like a âsure thing.â
Senior managers in professional services firms often fall into this trap. Although it is clear that generating revenue is a critical step on the path to partnership, many professionals choose to spend the bulk of their time focusing on deepening their expertise, executing work already sold, managing teams, and improving internal best practices. These activities feel safer and more productive; they are well-defined, and you can immediately measure your results. Unfortunately, those tasks alone will not distinguish you at your firm and can hinder your career progression if not supplemented with strong revenue numbers.
The third reason smart people resist sales is because sales activity can appearâto be bluntâkind of boring. The tasks involved may come across as rote or intellectually dull. Maybe you got into your line of work because you like...