I was just checking in and reading Margaret Grisdela’s blog at the Rainmaking Club, and she was discussing how strong rainmakers don’t experience a downturn, despite the condition of the economy.

As Margaret so aptly put it, it’s much easier to build your business in a growing economy, than it is in a downturn. Yet many skilled rainmakers continue to bring in new business despite the economic conditions.

Why? The main reason is that even in a downturn economy, some people are still looking to retain professionals.

Why is it that the legal and medical professions seem to have such a proliferation of niches and specialties, while the accounting profession in general professes it’s ability to handle everything?

I know there are dozens of credentials that branch out claiming to be specialties, such as the Certified Internal Auditor, the Certified Fraud Examiner, the Enrolled Agent, the Certified Management Accountant, to name just a few. But few, other than maybe the Enrolled Agent and the Certified Fraud Examiner seem to have gathered any real traction in the mind of buyers of services.

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.

I learned a very valuable lesson from my mentor the other day about repurposing content, one of her favorite habits.

Now, I’ve heard lots of chit-chat on the internet about repurposing content, and I have consistently thought of it as rewriting the same old article or report in forty or fifty different ways. Sort of what the online bunch call “spinning” an article.

One of the best pieces of advice I ever received was related to goal setting. My mentor, repeated the often quoted phrase “if you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll never know when you get there.”

It’s not a great leap from that quote to the idea of trying to picture where you want your practice to be in five years. In today’s practice building environment, every effort you undertake, must be directed toward your eventual goal.

If you’re a typical bookkeeper or accountant trying to build your practice using the traditional methods of networking and referrals, you’re probably struggling day after day and not getting the results you need.

Your competition has probably already positioned themselves in your community as the small business “expert.” You see their name in every seminar announcement from the local community college, or in the newspaper as a speaker at almost every Rotary or Kiwanis club meeting. And you wonder how they did it. How did they position themselves as the “expert?”

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.

One of the basic tools of the rainmaker system is the writing and using of articles. You’ll enjoy a lot of benefits by having an article printed in a business or professional publication, or even in your local newspaper. However there are some misconceptions about what it will do, and these misconceptions usually [...]

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 [...]