Marketing for Rainmakers

What a bizarre week for non-rainmaking wannabe’s. First we have Rep. Joe Wilson shouting at President Obama and calling him a liar during a live address to the nation (and the world). And then last night, the irrepressible and always self-obsessed Kanye West jumps on stage at the Video Music Awards show, grabs the microphone from Taylor Swift as she’s accepting her award, and announces that (in his humble opinion) Swift did not deserve the award and it should have been presented to Beyonce.

These two incidents are not isolated events. Similar nonsense happens every single day on lesser stages and with smaller audiences. We are becoming a society in which the “center of the universe syndrome” has become epidemic. We don’t care what other people think or how they feel. It is increasingly all about hearing ourselves and seeing ourselves and drowning out other people’s beliefs. It is decidedly counter to the rainmaking approach to life and business which places the focus on the other party’s needs.

And so, Rainmakers of the World Unite! Set an example for the Joe Wilsons and Kanye Wests of the world and show them that their boorish behavior is not amusing or “cool” and simply will not be tolerated.

Michael Resler, professor of German studies at Boston College, used a classic rainmaking technique to boost flagging enrollment in his “German Literature of the High Middle Ages” course. He renamed the course “Knights, Castles and Dragons” and immediately tripled enrollment. Similarly, Jessica Holmes, an economics professor at Middlebury College, has enjoyed considerable interest in her “Economics of Sin” course that examines the societal impact of gambling, prostitution, and the drug trade.

In an interview with the Boston Globe, Prof. Resler observed that “we live in an age where everything has to be marketed in order to find a willing audience.” That means facts and good content alone cannot rule the day. Instead, the factual content needs to be woven through a compelling storyline that attracts attention and increases retention.

It’s an approach that works in the academic world, in the boardroom, at home, on the golf course, and in one-on-one meetings across the kitchen table.

If your words bore you, imagine their effect on your audience.

Rainmaker marketing, at its core, is easy. It’s the blocking and tackling that we practice diligently and then capitalize upon on game day. Because GEICO owns the “so easy a caveman can do it” analogy, I’m going to argue that rainmaking is so easy a dog could do it.

The dog I’m thinking of is Enzo, the narrator of Garth Stein’s delightful novel “The Art of Racing in the Rain.” Enzo is nearing the end of his life and, as he tells his master’s story, he informs us that he fully expects to be reincarnated as a person. And Enzo explains why he will be a good person: “Because I listen. I cannot speak, so I listen very well. I never interrupt. I never deflect the course of the conversation with a comment of my own. People, if you pay attention to them, change the direction of one another’s conversations constantly. It’s like having a passenger in your car who suddenly grabs the steering wheel and turns you down a side street.” Enzo continues with an example of how this redirection might work, and he concludes with this entreaty: “Learn to listen. Pretend you are a dog like me and listen to other people rather than steal their stories.”

Like Enzo, you have two ears and one mouth — so listen at least twice as much as you talk, and when you do speak make sure it’s relevant to the other party. Don’t try to sound intelligent or witty — just sound engaged, which is what Enzo urges you to be.

The Abilene paradox was introduced about 20 years ago by Jerry Harvey. In a nutshell, it describes the all-too-common phenomenon of groupthink whereby a group of individuals agree on a course of action that none of them truly believes in. It’s a consensus based solely on the lack of dissension. The Abilene paradox is often used to point out the flaws in committees and other working groups, but I think it most importantly points to the organizational need for devilish marketers.

Every successful organization needs a strong devil’s advocate – someone who can stir things up, muddy the waters, and throw a couple of monkey wrenches into the mix just to see what happens. That role should be played by marketing-minded rainmakers. The most effective and successful marketers function as change agents who question every aspect of their business.  They have the ability to view the business from the perspective of a disinterested third-party or, even more valuably, as an aggressive competitor hoping to gain market share.  Effective marketers understand that it’s their role to lead the organization via strategic insight not via groupthink and vacuous cheerleading.

If, after you’ve given the devil his day in court, everything stills looks perfect and you’re more resolved than ever to proceed as planned, that’s great.  But if things look a bit murky, there’s still time to tweak the idea or trash it entirely.

And if you have any doubts about the power of avoiding Abilene-like marketing decisions, consider how differently things might have worked out if someone had asked a devilish question within the following companies:
•    AIG:  “Does anyone really understand how all this derivative crap works?”
•    General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler:  “Would it freakin’ kill us to fly to Washington on a commercial jet?”
•    Washington Mutual:  “Do we really want to be writing mortgages at 105% of home value?”
•    Yahoo:  “And why exactly do you think we should turn down $44 billion?”

Did you ever notice how you often do your best work when you’re most under the gun? It seems like the closer the deadline and the more pressure there is to perform at peak ability, the better we do. It’s a trait that is virtually universal among rainmakers, and it now has some scientific basis to explain the whys and wherefores.

“When Losing Leads to Winning” is a just-published study by two Wharton professors, Jonah Berger and Devin Pope. The authors postulate that “through increasing motivation, being slightly behind can actually increase success” and their “analysis of over 6,000 collegiate basketball games illustrates that being slightly behind increases a team’s chance of winning.  Teams behind by a point at halftime, for example, actually win more often than teams ahead by one.”

What’s really cool is that Berger and Pope didn’t limit their analysis to the basketball court. They conducted several lab experiments in which test subjects were given a specific task and told they were competing against an unseen opponent. Halfway through the test the subjects were stopped and told either that they were well behind, slightly behind, tied with, or slightly ahead of their opponent. When they resumed their task, the subjects who believed they were slightly behind displayed significantly greater focus and effort than the other three groups.

Berger and Pope then added another twist to their lab test. In addition to telling subjects how well they were performing against the competition, they examined the impact that “self-efficacy” (known as self-confidence in less academic circles) had on each individual’s performance and effort. The results were unequivocal. Individuals who had higher self-efficacy “were more likely to respond to feedback that they were behind by working harder and exerting more effort.”

Self-efficacy is a hallmark of rainmakers. And while rainmakers never allow the competition to get too far ahead, sometimes allowing the competition to think they are slightly ahead puts them right where you want them.

Phil Fragasso

There was a great article in the Boston Globe this week about the pre-game routine of the Celtics’ sweet-shooting Ray Allen. Anyone who has seen Allen play swears the guy is a natural. He’s focused, his release is silky smooth, and the arc of the ball is pure magic. Put it all together and it looks like he’s hardly trying; but that’s actually the result of trying so hard to get it perfect. Allen is one of the most diligent and disciplined athletes in the NBA or any other sport. He gets to the locker room three hours before tip-off and shoots hundreds of balls, all by himself. He’s the quintessential team player, but he understands that the best way to help his team is to keep improving his own skills. And part of that improvement is the routine.

It sounds counter-intuitive, but routines are often the driving force behind personal achievement. Notwithstanding the common belief that routines are evidence of a dull and dreary mindset, they are actually quite the opposite. Routines — whether shooting a hundred free throws a day, ordering the same Starbucks venti non-fat latte every single day, visiting a place of worship, or walking the dogs — serve the same purpose as the crack of a starter’s pistol. They get you in the game. They focus all your energy on the goal. In truth, they’re somewhat Pavlovian because they operate at a subconscious level. We think we’re drinking a latte, whereas our subconscious is getting ready to win that case or nail that presentation.

Think about your own routine and embrace it. And if you don’t have a routine, get one. Every professional athlete has one, whether stepping up to the tee box or stepping out of the batter’s box between pitches. It’s part of being the best you can be, which is at the core of a rainmaking mindset.

Without getting into the merits of the potential bailout of the not-so-Big Three automakers, from a pure rainmaking, marketing, and rational-thinking perspective, it is truly mind-boggling that all three of the supplicant CEOs flew to Washington today in private jets. This on the exact same day that GM ran a full-page ad highlighting its enterprise-wide commitment to reduce expenses and work smarter. The irony of this was not lost on the Congressional committee members, and it points out the major flaw with corporate America. Most high-level executives have lost all touch with reality. They believe they’re worth multi-million dollar salaries and even bigger bonuses — and don’t seem to care if the company under their stewardship succeeds or fails. Their paychecks are almost always guaranteed via employment contracts and golden parachutes.

The sad thing is that many CEOs were rainmakers in their younger days. They understood that perception was reality, and they cared about perception. They focused on the needs, concerns, and ideals of their clients and customers. They would not be satisfied unless their customers were satisfied. And they would never allow their own arrogance to take precedence over common sense.

While private jets can arguably serve a role for certain corporations in certain circumstances, using them for a hat-in-hand visit to our nation’s capitol is egregious.

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In today’s post (http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/2123/35817154), Seth Godin, one of the best marketing minds of our generation, loses his mind. He’s writing about presentations and the tendency for speakers to go on far too long, and he suggests that, “No audience member, in the history of presentations (written or live) has ever said, ‘it was exciting, useful and insightful but far too short’.”

Now I fully understand Seth’s point, and he is correct that most speakers abuse the privilege and fall victim to self-indulgence, spending more time entertaining themselves than the audience. But he is wrong to suggest that the best presenters cannot leave the audience begging for more. That’s what all of us should aspire to. Preparing and delivering presentations that are targeted with pinpoint precision, delivering them with enthusiasm, and striking a deep inner chord with the audience need not be a pipedream. Rather it results from an external focus on what’s important to our clients, rather than the onanistic blah-blahing that passes for corporate insight. That’s the rainmaker way.

Phil Fragasso

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As the global economic meltdown continues, there is one potential bright spot — Apple. While Apple stock has been hit just as hard as most every other domestic and international equity (and is trading near its 52-week low), Jim Cramer and a lot of other Wall Street pundits have “strong buy” recommendations on the company. Why is that and what could it possibly have to do with rainmaker marketing?

The short answer is that Apple represents the Platonic ideal of corporate rainmaking. In an insightful article on CNBC.com (http://www.cnbc.com/id/27774130), Jim Goldman suggests that, “Apple may not be recession-averse, but recession-proof.” In a down economy like today’s, you can make the argument that shoppers will pare back their gift-giving and focus instead on “one big, splashy purchase.” So, yes, there may be a significant slowdown in the retail world, unless “you’re the one company offering what those consumers are looking for, for that one splashy purchase.” And that company could very well be Apple.

This is a classic rainmaker approach to the marketplace. Provide a quality product and a level of service unmatched by any competitor and the negative impact of down markets will be reduced and the impact of up markets will be intensified. If you truly give your clients and customers what they want in an irresistible package, they may cut their budgets but they’ll make sure to retain a line item just for you.
Phil Fragasso

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As the 2008 presidential election draws to a close, I am haunted by one nagging question: “Will we ever have a rainmaker-style president?” And I’ll try to address this question without announcing my vote or getting into the politics of this highly political issue.

What bothers me most about this campaign is that both candidates, actually all four candidates counting Biden and Palin, make the mistake of talking too much about themselves, too much about their opponent, and way too little about their “clients” and “prospects.”

True rainmakers call attention to themselves by their character and actions, not by their words. When asked a question, they respond by answering it directly and honestly, not by changing the subject. They listen more than they talk. They focus on the needs of actual people, rather than creating cartoon-like composites. When asked, they will discuss their competitors — but it will be done with respect and with a focus on meaningful differences.

Rainmakers would much rather lose a sale (or a vote) than mislead or obfuscate. They spend time to deeply understand and appreciate the needs of their target market, and they accept a fiduciary-like responsibility to do the right thing for their clients. Saying what people want to hear rather than what they need to hear is anathema to rainmakers. Educating clients is far more valuable than placating them. The idea of promising one thing to win the client with no intention or possibility of delivering on that promise constitutes a one-way ticket to failure and disappointment. Rainmakers accept responsibility and accountability for their words and actions. They don’t hide behind clichés, they don’t trade insults and barbs, and they don’t pander.

Rainmakers are the true leaders of the business world and it’s my hope that one day they’ll also serve as the leaders of our federal, state, and local governments.

Phil Fragasso

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