Have you ever stopped to think about where you make your money? Do you sell consulting services, or are you in the product business? Do you really know?

Of course you can look at your sales register and identify the categories your revenues are allocated to … X% here, Y% there, and so on. But stop for a moment and think about a couple of things. what does the man with the hot dog cart need? He needs a horde of hungry hot dog aficionados. What does the guy who goes into the store looking for a shovel want? He wants a hole. Have you ever thought that maybe there should be a way to categorize your sales by needs fulfilled rather than item or service?

“You can trust me.”

Famous last words from every con artist I’ve ever met, and a sure-fire way to lose my trust, and most anyone else’s.

Trust is so important and so misunderstood that there are over a half-million books on the subject on Amazon, over 300 million sites listed on Google, and the one-rhetorical phrase used by that con artist.

Okay, I think it’s about time I said something about newsletters.

Now, I’m not talking about email newsletters here. Those are important, but as a practitioner concentrating on your local market, I feel that you will be a lot more competitive if you do the majority of your prospecting using traditional offline methods. Print methods.

Because they could not advertise, these “Rainmakers” used the skills lawyers are trained to use, writing and speaking. This came naturally; those lawyers are trained to write, things like briefs and contracts, and to speak, especially when arguing a case.

Financial professionals, such as accountants, were not so lucky. Their college training focused on how to add and subtract. Harsh as it may seem, accounting rules are basically rules of when to add and when to subtract from one side of the ledger to the other.

What are clients looking for? Determine what a prospects needs are, supply it and you’ll be successful, right? It’s what every sales manual you’ll ever see, that doesn’t cover the basics of Rainmaking skills, will try to tell you. Find a need and fill it. But, you’re in a profession, licensed or not, and what [...]

Being a “Rainmaker” is a designation aspired to by many professionals. It doesn’t matter whether they are self-employed, work for a regional or local firm, or are employed by a major firm in their industry. Firms in almost all professions seek Rainmakers as part of their team, whether they are engineers, doctors, lawyers, accountants or [...]