Marketing for Rainmakers

The acclaimed historian, David McCullough, served as the commencement speaker at Boston College’s graduation ceremonies on May 19. He urged the graduates to “make the love of learning central to your life.” That advice is critically important to rainmaking marketers in any industry and at any point in their careers.

McCullough made a special point of differentiating between the simple accumulation of information and the distillation of factual information into true wisdom and universal truths. “One can have all the facts,” he stated, “and miss the truth.”

The implication to marketers is that facts serve as the skeletal infrastructure of the stories we tell about our companies, our products, and ourselves. Left alone, however, facts are not engaging or relationship-building. Facts are sterile, quantitative, and analytic. Clients and prospects, on the other hand, respond to emotional catalysts. They want to see and understand the big picture. They want facts to be interpreted and put into understandable context. They want the underpinnings of their relationship with you to be based on solid, factual information — but they’re much more concerned about what you build atop that foundation. Anyone can accumulate data, but it’s what you do with the data that makes the difference to your clients.

Postscript: McCullough made an additional point that also has meaning for marketing rainmakers when he pleaded with the graduates to kill the spread of the “verbal virus” that afflicts Americans — in particular the usage of words and phrases such as “you know,” “like,” and “awesome.” He asked people to consider how John Kennedy would have sounded if his famous inaugural exhortation had been phrased like this: “Ask not what your country can, you know, do for you, but what you can, like, do for your country.”

As storytellers, marketing rainmakers must choose their words wisely. The wrong word at the wrong place and time can sabotage the most otherwise impressive effort.

Phil Fragasso — May 20, 2008

Have you ever noticed that people who have worked hard for their money are much more generous than those who inherited money or stumbled into it by being in the right place at the right time? There’s a sorry sense of entitlement among the latter; whereas the former are true rainmakers who understand that it’s not what you have that determines who you are, it’s what you do with what you have.

The more someone says “trust me,” the less you should.

Platitudinous posturing is the preferred platform of pea-brained poseurs.

The more “golly-gee-whiz, I’m a regular guy just like you” style an individual affects in public, the more elitist he is in private.

Accepting responsibility for one’s actions makes rain; assigning blame to others brings nothing but shame.

The more self-help business books-dujour an individual reads, the less he knows what he or his company stands for and the more his “strategic vision” wavers.

The more powerful you truly are, the less need you have to bully.

The more you run for cover at the first sign of a storm, the less rain you make.

Phil Fragasso — May 1, 2008

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I was recently present for a legal deposition involving the senior-most executive of a large Midwestern company. The executive is someone that I’d met a handful of times before, and someone whose style and competence I respected. He’s one of those natural leaders who engenders respect and loyalty — not because of his position but because of his record of achievement and his character of honesty and integrity.

What I found particularly interesting about the deposition was that the executive in question had been “thrown under the bus” by certain other parties involved in the litigation. Through the course of the deposition, that fact became increasingly clear to the executive. Nonetheless, he maintained his calm demeanor and continued to respond to questions succinctly and articulately. As a rainmaker at the top of his craft, he understood that the issues being discussed were “business” and not “personal.” Even more tellingly, he immediately realized that the other parties had crossed the line between business and personal considerations — and he would not make the same mistake.

Why is this distinction between business and personal so important? Because it is the determining factor with regard to how we view the world. A business perspective is outward-oriented with a focus on what’s most important to customers, employees and the organization as a whole. A personal perspective, on the other hand, is all about me. It’s self-centered with little regard for how one’s selfishness and shortsightedness can drain resources and permanently damage an organization.

Rainmakers are highly personal individuals — but they’re all business.

Phil Fragasso — April 30, 2008

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