Marketing for Rainmakers

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?”