3 Traits of Rainmakers: What Top Performers Do Differently | Matt Dixon

22:58The clients who engage with me, even when we're not involved in paid work together, because they solicit my feedback and my advice, and we've got that kind of relationship. And then who else in my network looks like that person? And is there a way I can kind of move them up? And at the same time, maybe there are people I'm spending a lot of time with, and maybe I'm stuck in the friend zone, and I need to actually deprioritize them and move them to a lower tier in my network. There's a couple other elements to this connection idea. One, we talked about this collaboration, right? So many firms we talk to deliver value to clients across lots of different dimensions.

23:35Think about a consulting firm that works with clients and everything from AI-driven transformation to driving supply chain efficiency and human capital transformation, all kinds of work that they do across lots of different domain areas. And what these firms want is for their partners to sell the breadth of the firm's capability. Don't sell your own thing. Sell all of our things. And so many of these partners get uncomfortable with the idea of talking about areas that they're not an expert in because they made partner by becoming experts. And this idea of asking clients questions and probing around areas that are outside of your swim lane can be very unnerving for a professional because they feel like the client's going to see less value in working with me because I'm not the expert on that area.

24:18But activators are totally comfortable delving into questions and topics. And tell me more about that. Now, I don't have the answers, but I know my firm definitely has somebody who does have the answers. So tell me a little bit more. Let me take it back to home base and let me see if I can find somebody that can advise you on that topic. and then they love putting their colleagues in front of clients. They don't live in fear of the bad stuff that's going to happen. They know their client's going to send them a thank you note. I had no idea you guys did this stuff. That's amazing. Thank you for introducing me to so-and-so.

24:48And then the last thing I'll say on the connection piece, activators are actually very good at building what we call zippered connections within the client organization. So a lot of times consultants, advisors, they get really focused on that C-level decision maker, The person who has the budget, the person who signs the agreement. And that's important. But those people also get fired pretty regularly and they turn over like clockwork, right? So activators are very good at building connections up and down from their team, up and down the client organization. Again, that zippered connection for a few reasons.

25:19One is it leaves them less exposed when the senior most does get fired or goes off and lands a bigger job at another firm, which happens all the time at the C-level. and so they build the connections lower down but they also will say look even if that senior most still sticks around and we're still working with them those people under the senior most they might leave and go land a big job somewhere else and if i invest the time in building relationships at that level they become clients at other organizations so again you're paying it forward may spending time with people who don't sign the check but you're building those relationships offering value knowing that down the road, when that person lands a C-level job somewhere else, they're going to come to you because you carved out time for them when they were earlier on in their career, which is really, really powerful.

26:05And it's also just about staying top of mind. Absolutely. Yeah. As well. Right. So the more people are talking about you, the more that you are in their conversation, that's all helpful. And if the C-suite guy isn't thinking about you, but everyone else around him is, that's going to put you back on the map. You're totally right. If you're in the flow of conversation and you're staying top of mind, yeah, that's, I mean, how often does that happen where you're out of sight, out of mind, you haven't engaged with the client for a while, nobody's talking about you, you're not delivering value, and then suddenly they're going off and hiring somebody else or their piece of business up for grabs you never even knew was up for grabs.

26:46That's a key part of it as well, because I think so many of us, especially when we're trying to break into the C-suite or the decision makers, the stakeholders at the upper level, we struggle with early on in our career, well, where is the value that I could provide? This is a busy person. I don't want to be nagging them. All this self doubt creeps in. But the zippered approach, if you have 10 people in the company that you can provide value to, you're going to be able to find one or two things across the 10 a lot more easily than just relying on that one C-suite person to be able to break through the noise.

27:16And then of course, if you provide value, it's a lot easier to get on the C-suite's calendar if everyone around the C-suite professional is speaking highly of you. Well, you actually, you're kind of going to this third dimension of the active area, which is this idea of creating value proactively, which this is the one that I think really surprises people because they get in this mindset with the self-doubt, right? I don't want to be a bother. I don't want to annoy my client. Like, if I reach out to them, they're going to know I'm trying to sell them something. And I don't want to be an annoyance.

27:44I'll just wait for them to realize they have need, and then they'll call me they know how to find me like they they got my email and i think what what is so surprising is when we go to clients what they say is their biggest complaint about firms they work with and partners they work with is i don't hear from them often enough and this really surprises people to hear this because they're like wait i thought i was going to be a pain or a bother to my client but the client when you talk to them says no no i'm heads down on my own strategy on things i've got to get done in my own company you're going to talk to more people in a week like me at companies like mine about the issues I care about that I'm going to talk to all year.

28:21So bring those ideas to me. I don't know what I don't know. And so I'm paying you and I'm giving you purchase preference and I'm going to you, not just because the work you can do on things I know I need, but because of insight you can bring around the things I don't yet know I need, but I need to know. You're a window into the market for me. And I think that we can kind of head fake ourselves into thinking that we're just being annoying. But again, the clients are saying, no, like, where are you? Like, bring those ideas to me. I think there's this other element of creating value, which is, this didn't come through in the quantitative research, but it did come through in the interviews, which is, if we think about the value that professionals deliver to clients, there's really three types.

29:03We've got business value, we help them save money or make money or avoid risk. We've got trust value. So we do those things, but we do it in a trustworthy way. It's ethical. It's on time. It's on budget. It meets or exceeds client expectations. It's transparent, et cetera. And I think those two things are the core of what it means to be a trusted advisor. And what's so interesting is that activators say proactively to you, look, I think being a trusted advisor is great, but my competitor has lots of trusted advisors too. And there's lots of trusted advisors who hung up a shingle and are now competitors of mine.

29:37I don't have a monopoly on being a trusted advisor in this market. A lot of people deliver or great work and do it in a trustworthy way. And so what they try to do is add this third dimension of value, which I'd call personal value. Personal value is not knowing your client's kids names or remembering their birthday. That's just about being a nice person. You should do that stuff. This is about understanding what is personally important to your client. It might be a career aspiration they have. It might be a struggle they're having with their boss. It might be a struggle they're having with an underperforming team member or an underperforming team at large.

30:10It might be other business pressures. It might be something personal, like a cause they're passionate about or maybe a personal struggle or challenge they're dealing with. Inactivators are always looking for that opportunity outside the scope of the paid work. What is important to my client personally? And is there something I can do, somebody in my network can do, or maybe what a colleague in my firm can do to deliver value to that client at a personal level? And when I do that, I've added on top of just being a trusted advisor, I've created a really sticky and personal relationship with my client.

30:41And it does establish a lot of preference. That client thinks of me because I'm paying it forward, not just in a business way, but in a personal way to that client as well. What a lot of our clients struggle with in that regard in particular is the vulnerability that that involves. So a lot of us, especially when we're going through school, we're getting credentialed, we're working our way up to the partner level, we actually close ourselves off from that vulnerability. We want to be seen as perfect, as always right, as that trusted advisor and expert. And anything that seems like it's sharing some vulnerability, some struggles, some things outside of that, we're really afraid to.

31:17And because we're afraid to share that, we're often then not tuned in when other people are sharing that. We breeze to the solution. We breeze to the answer, the thing that's in our expertise that we know provides value, when in actuality, it's the vulnerability that builds the trust in these relationships that survives all of the other noise in the marketplace and makes you top of mind. We uncovered in the research kind of three mindsets that activators share. One is kind of obvious, which is resiliency, right? They're good at sales. In sales, unfortunately, you get more no's than you get yes's.

31:50And so these people dust themselves off, they pick themselves up. In fact, as an aside, a lot of activators will probably point out that a lot of their deepest client relationships started with a no. And then they're like, game on. I'm going to win you over eventually. I'm going to put you in that. I'm going to continue to touch base. You're not dead to me. I'm going to see how I can protect the relationship, even though you said no to me right now. And eventually they come around. The other thing activators do is they're very self-determined, meaning they don't believe their success is up to the market.

32:19It's not up to what their competitors are doing. It's not even up to the client. They believe that if they put in the reps and they put in the time, they will be successful. They will build a successful book of business and a growing book of business. And then the last piece is about that vulnerability and it's about that authenticity and what we call other centricity. So they're really, really other focus. And that is true, not just of clients. And that, as you said, requires that they are vulnerable and authentic themselves with their clients so that they can be attuned and quite client-centered or empathetic when they are able to spot those things that the client might be struggling with and might offer a new opportunity for me to deliver value or offer some help.

33:01But also other-centric in terms of colleagues, right? They're very prideful of the people they work with. It's like, I don't have to do any work. All I have to do is introduce them to my colleague and I'm going to get showered with praise and thank yous from my client because I'm surrounded by, I don't know how I got the job, but I'm surrounded by a lot of rocket scientists and I love showing these people off versus I'm going to box people out and keep this client to myself. And I'm worried about what somebody might do to rock the boat with my client.

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36:30visit rexmd.com slash charm. That's rexmd.com slash charm. See full details and usage at rexmd.com. Prescription required. Results may vary. This episode is brought to you by Indeed. When your computer breaks, you don't wait for it to magically start working again. You fix the problem. So why wait to hire the people your company desperately needs? Use Indeed's sponsored jobs to hire top talent fast. And even better, you only pay for results. There's no need to wait. Speed up your hiring with a$75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. I want to drill down on that resiliency piece because that no for a lot of us, that rejection is something we are afraid of.

37:22We try to avoid. And when we hear it, we stop in our tracks. when in actuality, as you pointed out, for many activators, that's game on. That's an opportunity to learn, okay, what did I miss? What is the offer missing? What can I go back to the team with? How can I make this something that's a better fit? And, or, is there anyone else in my Rolodex that can help you with this right now, recognizing that if I help you over this hurdle, there's probably more business to be won later, and I want to stay in that driver's seat for that extra business? Oftentimes, and I know even when we first started, that no, that rejection was like, oh, all right, close this chapter, cut this person off, move to the next lead, move to the next opportunity.

38:01I did something wrong, but I can't imagine being curious and asking, well, what was it? What didn't you like? Or what wasn't a good fit? But that's really where the value and the information is that these activators leverage in these no rejection situations. There are a number of activators who kind of on their own devised techniques for dealing with no's. And one of them we teach in our training course, which is called The Lost Call. When you ask most partners and they get a no from a client, they do exactly what you just said, which is, that person's dead to me. They take it personally. They ignore it.

38:32They don't even want the feedback. It's just like, I'm moving on to the next opportunity. But activators actually will productively reach back out to the client. And it's interesting because the goal is not to change the client's mind, not say, well, let me tell you why you're making a big mistake here. Let me tell you why those guys you selected are terrible. instead it's to protect the relationship and to pay it forward and lay the groundwork for the next opportunity as you're saying so totally understand these are really hard decisions and can't blame you for choosing that provider they do great work and i think they're gonna be great for you but what i would love i'd love some feedback about air you know things that you saw in our proposal or offer where maybe we're a little bit off the mark just so i can take it back to my team and we can digest we're always looking for feedback but i would also love to make an offer which is these are complicated projects and I want to be of help, even if we're not getting paid for it.

39:20I'd love to be of service to you and to help you, especially if you find the things start to slip or maybe go a little bit sideways. And so many, so often these activists will say, I then three or six months later, get the call from the client who says, yeah, these guys kind of dropped the ball here, here, here, but I'm very, I'm curious, what would you do? Is there an area that you guys could plug in and help us out and get, kind of get us back on track. So that protecting of the relationship is absolutely critical. It's not personal. The client didn't do anything offensive. We had a great time getting to know you and your team.

39:54We're here to help. Let us know how we can help. Good luck with the project and we'll stay in touch. And they do stay in touch, right? They don't wait nine months before they reach out again. How'd the project go? What's going on? Anything we can help with here? You know, and so they're continuing to invest in those relationships. But I think above all else, They just don't take it personally. It's not, and you can't in this business because, as I said, you get a lot more no's than yes's. Even the very best salespeople I know are getting more no's than yes's. Well, it's not really the no, is it?

40:24That's right. It's the no for now, maybe. Well, in the sales process, I know ours can be incredibly intimate. We're working with clients. We're building plans together. uh where we want to be vulnerable through that process in order to connect and feel good because it's going to be a working relationship that is building processes that need to be managed so you want to get to know everybody yeah and so when that when the no comes maybe it's not the right time. We don't have to imagine what the problem is. It can marry out of things, but we were vulnerable. We made a friend. If the sales process was good at all, then two people got to know each other and learn where their strengths were, their weaknesses are, and how to help each other.

41:20And so when all of that happens and then you hear no, well, it's certainly a letdown. And it is hard not to take that personally because of how much you put into it. One of these activators we interviewed during the research said, most of my colleagues think that the relationship with the client is an outcome after the client chooses me as a provider. They choose me to do some work for them. we do the work we invest in the relationship and the relationship comes on the back end so i kind of think about the other way around which is i'm trying to build a relationship with the client first and then and then paid work is just sort of the logical conclusion right of that relationship uh right it's it's sort of a natural evolution that relationship but as you said yeah when you invest in those relationships pretty deeply and you are vulnerable and you are building some tight connections and some personal connections that that person for them to come back and then say no, or even no for now, that hurts more.

42:21But it's also less likely to happen when you've laid that groundwork. So really, you have to put yourself out there. I know a big part of the value creation is the insights and sharing those insights with the people that you're building relationships with and looking to work with. And in a situation where you're going to hear no, those insights that they give you around the no, what specifically the issue was, what's top of mind for them right now, that creates great follow-up opportunities for you later on. So we're not going 90 days or nine months saying, oh, where did that project go? I should check in and see if they're still happy with that service provider.

42:59If you get those insights, you can actually effectively follow up and cheer them on as they go through the process with your competitor until things go sideways. And a lot of times they do go sideways for a ton of different reasons. I know in the book, you share an insight framework that activators use that really surfaces these insights and then gives them a great strategy to reach out and manage these relationships. As we talked about before, activators are looking to, you know, okay, I got these business cards from the conference. I've got these LinkedIn connections. I'm, you know, how do I turn this into paying client work?

43:32And in the, no pun intended, but the active ingredient there is I need to bring ideas to people. I need to pay it forward, show them what I know, and create the, if you will, the environment for them to be interested in what I can do for them and potentially engage with me in paid work. But I think a lot of partners, they struggle with what that is, what is that idea that I bring to my client. And what you find is that most partners, most professionals, we like to say, we say this in the challenger sale, they lead with what makes them or their firm unique. So they lead with their credentials, how long they've been doing this, where they went to business school or law school, how many clients they've worked with, all the cool prizes they've won and recognition they've had in their career, where they've been published, all this stuff.

44:19But I think activators recognize that that stuff is important, but it's not entirely differentiated because there's lots of really accomplished people in the market and your credentials are not that much different from your competitors' credentials. And so it's better to lead to your capabilities that lead with your capabilities. So in other words, start with an idea. And I think the kernel of that is often, what is the thing that you know that your client needs to know? What's the thing? Whatever your area is, it could be digital transformation. It could be IP law. It could be dealing with tariffs, right?

44:52What is the thing that you know that the client needs to know? Or maybe a different way of thinking about it is think about your very, very best clients, the people who will walk through fire for you. They're just never going going to go anywhere else. What do they see in you and the service and insight you provide, the advice you provide that you could teach everyone else to value? What is it that they see in you? And then how do you package that up and bring that to bear? But oftentimes it starts with this idea, the thing you know that the client needs to know, or the thing your firm knows that the client needs to know.

45:24What's interesting about that is I think a lot of firms will say, oh, you mean like thought leadership? And what I would say is it's not exactly thought leadership. Thought leadership is about demonstrating that the partner or the firm is smart, right? And that's a good thing. You don't want them to think you're dumb, of course. Did you want the market to see you and clients to see you as smart? But an insight is different. An insight is often provocative. It changes the way the client thinks about an opportunity or brings an opportunity or an idea to them that they haven't even thought of before.

45:53It can be eye-opening. It can get the client to do a double take. It kind of grabs them by the lapels and shakes them a bit out of their comfort zone. And it can sometimes be tricky for partners to figure out, like, what is the idea that I have that I could go out and teach people? And if I did that, then they would want to pay for my capabilities, and I would be in a category of one because I taught them about this opportunity, and I taught them to value the service I can provide them in a way that other competitors can't. So I think figuring that out is tricky. Now, the framework is a pretty simple kind of four-step framework we talk about.

46:29The first thing when you're sitting down with a client is, we say, hypothesize. So don't walk in and tell them about your credentials and how long you've been in business and how many clients you have and how many awards you've won and all this. They don't care. It's all on your website. That's why you got the meeting. So start with a hypothesis. Talk about the things you suspect the client probably is focused on right now. How would you know? Well, you probably talk to clients just like that client and companies just like theirs all the time. So just take a stab at it, right? The goal is not to be 100 % right.

46:58The goal is to be directionally right or start the conversation in a different way. The next thing is the disrupt moment. So you're going to hypothesize, then you're going to disrupt. And the disrupt is the idea that you have that they need to have. And if you do it well, it will cause that client to do a double take. Say, hold on a second. I meet with consultants all the time. And I've never heard anybody suggest that. You think that's really a risk to our business? Why do you say that? And so then you've got to back it up. And we say, or we say in the book, justify it, right? You've got to get them to understand that this really is a risk or really is an opportunity.

47:31I've got data, I've got evidence I can point to or examples from other clients that validate that what I just said, even though you didn't recognize this need or this risk before is actually true. And then the last step is I got to connect it. And what do I mean by that? I mean, you got to connect it to what you can do. So I just taught you about this opportunity that you didn't know was out there. I just validated that it's factually true and you should be thinking about this as well. And then I'm going to point you to me and to my team and to my firm as the best service provider to help you get after that.

48:02What is it about us that makes us really specially positioned to address that opportunity? These are the touch points that we need to be having, you have to be listening and curious to develop out those opportunities to be insightful. And to your earlier point, so many times we get hung up in the credentials and what we've done in the past to prove ourselves, to show the value to the client, that we skip over the curiosity that's necessary to actually develop the insights that are going to lead to getting the deal. Yeah. And so much of what we teach in our programs is just actually honing in on that curiosity, not stopping with your assumptions.

48:44So even if you ask a simple question and you get an answer, many of us will immediately start going, okay, well, I know exactly what that is. And I can think of a client here instead of saying, let me go a level or two deeper. Let me make sure I'm understanding. Paraphrase it back to you. Are there any areas that maybe I made assumptions in that I was a little bit wrong? If you can go those two or three levels deeper with your curiosity, then that insight that you share later is going to pierce through all the other LinkedIn DMs, all the emails, the cold outreach that people are doing that your competitors are living on because you took the actual time and all of these opportunities that you've had in conversation.

49:22Some of that is that kind of other focus, but it's also just intellectual curiosity, if we're honest. It's, I'm genuinely curious. I want to hear more about that idea. And so they don't stop with the surface level. Oh, great. You said this. Here's our solution. Let me just, you know, let me jump to the answer. But tell me more about that. How is that impacting you and your team? Like, what are you finding hard about that? And it's not just, you know, a sales trick. It's because they are genuinely interested in learning more. And oftentimes, again, it might be that I'm not the right person to help you.

49:56But if you tell me more, I can go find the right person either in my firm or in my personal network, my professional network, and try to connect you with that person because I think they might be able to help you. But I wouldn't know if I didn't ask deeper questions and really start to probe around that opportunity. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Listening to this podcast, smart move. Being financially savvy, smart move. Another smart move? Having State Farm help you create a competitive price when you choose to bundle home and auto. Bundling. Just another way to save with a personal price plan.

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51:14another early on in in my career mistake that i was making and i know for many in your audience they're starting to get to that point too where we become afraid of losing relationships and you kind of hinted at this earlier but this is something that activators really understand that there's a limit to the amount of relationships that we can humanly manage at any time the dunbar number and we have to be actively looking at okay what are some of these relationships that we can let slide. And if you're an introvert like me, a bit of a people pleaser, it can be hard to let go of some of those early relationships in your career, relationships that you think there might someday be a chance, but that's actually robbing you of time to be focusing on the closer to closing deal opportunities that are out there for you.

52:00And activators do a great job of really honing in on this. They're really good at prioritizing and deprioritizing. In the Dunbar number we talk about this in the book but um this idea that um as humans we can only manage somewhere between like 150 and 200 um close relationships and dunbar would define it as the the kind of people you'd bump into on the street and you wouldn't feel awkward in the least asking if they want to go grab a coffee or go grab lunch or go grab a beer you know um and then there's everyone else in your linkedin network where that way that probably would be awkward right and the people aren't even on your linkedin network and that would just be creepy right so So, but there's a small, and it's defined by like the size of our neocortex.

52:39And like, we just can only manage that many relationships. And this has been validated over like multiple studies over the years. But I think the more important point is because there's a limit, as you're saying, I've got to be really choiceful about where I invest my time. And activators are, ruthless is probably the wrong word, but they don't let themselves get trapped in this sort of non-reciprocal or asymmetric kind of relationships where I'm putting forward a lot of effort, but it's not being reciprocated by my client. I'm sending you all these insights. I'm making the efforts. I'm trying to invest in this relationship, and I'm just getting nothing back.

53:18If that's the case, it might be that what you're saying is not actually particularly insightful, but it might also be that you need to deprioritize them and go find somebody else in your broader LinkedIn network that looks kind of like that ideal client and start investing in that person. And you can't do both, right? If you want to move somebody else in, you probably got to move somebody out just to make room and given the natural limits. One of my one-on-ones had a similar problem where he was having an issue with one of the clients that he was working with. And this client is the, well, that's the client facing and the one who's making the payment.

53:53So he's working with him in particular, and he has noticed that there's just always a lot of, it's a contentious relationship, to say the least. And he was taking everything personally. So we went through a few different ways of going about it, and certainly one was, let's get some more intel to see what the other folks have been saying about their relationship with him. And of course, as it turned out, he's now realized that everyone that this person has worked with has been difficult and everyone has a problem with him. So he was able to put a meeting together of everyone who's working with this guy.

54:35We need to all have a chat and be on the same page because he's obviously doing a lot of pushing. He wants to see where cracks are. He wants to see how strong the team is. And in a relationship like that, it needs to be a unified front and dealing with that client so that that client feels that the work that you're doing is secure and they can dress. If he sees any cracks, that's what he's going to go home and think about all day and all night. And then start talking with everybody else like, I don't know if these guys are handling things. Some of this BD, you kind of hit on this unified front idea.

55:11It is a team sport. and I think being aligned, we get, one of the questions we get asked a lot is, hey, our firm goes out and engages clients. We sell the big clients and it's a team support. Like we bring, it's like a clown car of people that we send to the client. It's like, you know, does everyone need to be an activator? And, you know, what we usually say is statistically not possible that they could all be activators. They should all be trying to add more activator nests to their current approach. But the most important thing is that you've got the quarterback on the team or the person running point with the client and owning that relationship or being the face of the client is a very strong activator, right?

55:52Because they're going to be the people who are best positioned to win that client over, to expand the relationship and to get the rest of the team on board to present that unified front as you're talking about. But yeah, that gets really hard. It's like hard enough for individuals to do that. So it's really hard when you got a whole team of people and you got to get them aligned. And with that, the client management, is so important because activators don't just look at it of like, oh, I hand it off to the team. I know the team always does great work. They're still active in that relationship and they're looking to manage any potential conflict before it gets to a make or break decision front.

56:27There was a quote on the back of the book from a CEO of one of the big search firms. And he said, you know, this, a lot of this is about kind of never, ever getting comfortable, right. With your client relationship. And that's part of it, right. Is always look, I sold the work. I've got a team. They're implementing the work. But the worst thing I can do is just disappear for six months and then show up when things go wrong or at the final presentation of the findings and the recommendations or even worse, to ask for the next piece of work. Like, I haven't seen you in six months. And so they're constantly engaged.

57:02And that's what fits into that business development time, that chunk of time that they're protecting and they're preserving on their calendar to do business development. Some of that time is checking in with these clients where we got ongoing projects and staying ahead of potential problems or risks or pitfalls or maybe spotting other opportunities, right? Clients absolutely hate that when the senior partner or the senior person comes in, sells the work, and then disappears and doesn't show up again until there's something else to sell. Of course, those insights as they go out through the build out, as they're working with your firm, what they're enjoying, what's been super helpful.

57:39You can use that to your advantage on the next deal and highlighting that for the next insight to share with other people in your network who now might be facing that exact problem. What's funny is that I think in the article that preceded the book, the HBR article, we talked about the time that activators spend on business development and how much time they spend. And this is self-reported data. But a lot of times partners look at that. Like I was presenting some of the research to a group of new law firm partners. And in law, of course, it's a business where they bill for time, right? And so all these partners have a billable hour requirement, like 1 ,200 hours, 2 ,000 hours, whatever the target is that their firm has set for them, and they got to hit it.

58:21And when you do the math and then you look at how much activators are saying they're spending on business development, how much time they spend, it's like, there aren't 50 hours in a day. How do they come up with that? But what's so interesting is that when you talk to activators, they're like, well, and you actually pull the time tracking data, the amount of time they spend on business development is not that much greater than the average partner. It's just much more consistent. And in their minds, they think of delivery time and other client engagement time is also business development time.

58:50So in their heads, they're thinking like, oh, I spent half my time. I had an activator I spoke to who said, I asked her, how much time do you spend on business development? She said, 100 % of my time is business development. Obviously, that's not true because she's got firm initiative. She's got client deliveries and engagement work she's doing. But she's like, no, every opportunity to interact with the client is an opportunity to learn something new and potentially bring some new value to that client to win a new piece of business or bring a new idea forward. I know for many of our clients, when they step into that role of partner or business development, moving beyond their technical abilities, one of the first things that happens is a bit of a panic around their first in-person event.

59:29In the past, they've been able, as you shared to hide, to put on the name tag, to sit through the talks and get back on the plane home. But now when you're in a different role and your firm is expecting you to bring relationships back that lead to business, and that's your main role, you have to approach those events in an entirely different manner. And activators actually are very good at recognizing the right events and opportunities and then leveraging the in-person interactions in those events to the maximum. So let's talk first around how they actually look at that in-person time and the events they should be attending and prioritizing the right things.

1:00:05Time is limited. And so they don't, we've had a lot of activators who don't necessarily, in some spaces, like there's a big show, there's a big event we all go to, or firm-sponsored events are great fertile ground for finding new business. But you don't always find that activators go to the same big events that all the other partners from the other firms go to. In fact, I think there's a story we talk about in the book about a lawyer who I think does M &A work specifically in the HVAC industry. It goes to the HVAC conferences. And one of the reasons was, well, there are no other lawyers here pitching for work.

1:00:39So it's a fishing pond and I've got the only license to it. So they are very thoughtful. And they also don't spend a lot of time – they might go experiment with an event. But if it's not a good spend of time from a business development standpoint, they don't go back and make that mistake again. Now, when they go to an event, they are game planning diligently up front. So one of the hacks, and we talk about this in the book, is they often will try to serve on panels and serve on committees that are picking the speakers and organizing the agenda. And one of the reasons they do that is that those people get early access to the attendee list.

1:01:15and they don't have to pay for it, right? Because they're volunteering with their time and giving time to the conference organizer. But then they have their target list and then they're working with their business development team internally, their associates, and they're saying, okay, of these people, who are the people we really want to make sure we reach out to? And then we're sending invitations, insight-based invitations for coffees or lunches or breakfasts or dinners or even throwing together small networking events for groups of clients. and they're trying to collect as many of those business cards or connections as possible.

1:01:48And then importantly, those business cards do not sit and collect dust on their desk when they get back. They start working through them. What's the thing I can bring back to this person? Maybe it starts with a LinkedIn connection. So great to meet you at that event. Love that conversation we had about this. I've actually got some ideas on that topic if you'd like to grab time. How do I get this from business card to LinkedIn and then off of LinkedIn and ideally to a Zoom or a Teams, and even better to a lunch or a coffee or a dinner or some sort of live interaction. We find that there are firms that have invested in like, activators will do this on their own, but there are some firms, there's one we talk about in the book, McDermott, Will & Emery Big, Ablaw 52 firm, one of the biggest firms in the world.

1:02:29And they have built an entire event process. And what they tell partners is if you want to go to an event, whether it's a firm sponsored event, or it's an industry conference and you want your expenses reimbursed, you're going to follow the playbook. We've got a whole team here that's ready to support you, help you get set up, help you plan your time, create your target list, set up those meetings in advance, and then support you on the back end, get those contacts into the CRM, set up connections on LinkedIn, and then set up business meetings as an output of all that. We're here to help, right?

1:03:00But you got to make good use of the firm's money and your time if you're going to go to these things. On the actual interaction, so this is something that we really practice with all of our clients is again, as I shared earlier, that level of curiosity. So oftentimes when we think about these events, we think about our elevator pitch and what we're going to say and how we're going to position the firm and what our offerings are. And we get so hung up on that, that we forget that actually most conversations in these events require you being curious, learning and putting some insights to the business card because there's nothing worse than having that introduction.

1:03:33You get through your elevator pitch, you get the card exchange, and then you don't know anything about this person and how you can actually reach back out to them or what you can follow up with or how you can actually lead to that meeting. And so much of what you were sharing in the book around activators is they actually come in with curiosity, establish interactions as many as possible. They don't spend too much time on selling themselves and they actually transition very nicely into the insights that lead to business opportunities. We will practice this, especially when we do training with kind of earlier career associates who are not kind of at the partner level.

1:04:07They're not expected to go make it rain, but they're working up to that level in their careers. And we do this exercise, kind of the conference exercise, and it's designed to teach them how do you get seamlessly into a conversation with somebody you don't know, learn a little bit, be curious, and then actually extract yourself so that you can go to the next client, right? And that's actually a hard skill to master. And it makes people very uncomfortable. But it's really important. You're sticking and moving through this whole thing. You're collecting business cards. You're connecting the dots.

1:04:40You're sharing some insights, expressing curiosity about these people. And what did you think about that event or that keynote speaker? I saw that you were on that panel. That was really interesting. Tell me more about the work you do. But you're going in quickly and then you're kind of putting a marker on follow-up. Let me send you a LinkedIn connection. Let's get connected. We'll love to set up a coffee or lunch next time you're in town or just hop on a Zoom and kind of lay the groundwork again to turn those into paying client relationships. And the thing about that is everyone appreciates you extracting yourself.

1:05:15We're at a large event. We're all under the impression of trying to meet as many people as possible. Nobody likes that lingering, long-winded, boring conversation that's tying them up from meeting the speaker they want to talk to or having the target list opportunity that they're working. And I often find it's a lot easier in these scenarios if we have a warm introduction. So being willing to share your target list and expressing curiosity, who are you here looking to meet? If you can make that connection, well, you're going to stand out in a much more meaningful way. You're helping this person with their target list.

1:05:51And let's be honest, that's what everyone's doing. We're all going into this with a game plan of who we're trying to meet, who's on the attendee list, what speakers we're trying to get in front of. And if we can help each other out, then that deepens the relationship in these one-off networking events. That is part of the activator mindset, the other focus. I'm not just curious about these clients. I want to be helpful to them, but I want to be helpful as well to the other people who are here, whether it's, you know, if I'm a lawyer, maybe it's a private equity person I do some work with and I'm not the right person, but I know they're trying to be, oh, I met that person yesterday.

1:06:23Let me walk you over and make the connection. Say, you guys should really talk because I think what you're doing could be really of value based on our conversation yesterday. Let me leave you guys to it. And again, I think that theme of like, how can I be helpful is the thing that sort of cores that idea, kind of courses through the activator's veins and it's the thing that's always running through their minds. How can I deliver value to prospects, to current clients, to members of the team in the client organization, to colleagues inside my own organization? Are there different ways I can deliver value?

1:06:59And that is a huge way to deliver value is helping somebody get after their target list or to make a connection that they probably would have been uncomfortable to make on their own. That's good for the client, right? And it's also good for you because now you've done that person solid and the principle of reciprocity is very powerful. They now owe you one, right? And they're going to remember that. In closing, there was one thing that stood out to me as kind of a surprising finding around activators, and that's that they don't prioritize thought leadership on LinkedIn as much as they prioritize direct messaging and what goes on behind the scenes.

1:07:34And so much of when you log into LinkedIn is these long posts, lots of likes, lots of engagement, and it feels good to be sharing your expertise and getting the feedback from the community, but activators actually aren't spending that much time. That's a lower priority task for them. Can you unpack that a little bit? And then if there were any surprising findings on your end in closing of what activator is doing that kind of stood out to you, I'd love to hear it. Yeah, let me share one, but I'll first address what you raised around LinkedIn usage. I think there's kind of in the world of professionals, I'd say there's sort of three buckets of LinkedIn users.

1:08:12You got your thought leaders. And so these, I would say in our nomenclature, given our profiles, those are more the experts. So these are people who are out there saying like, I'm an expert. I'm going to post this really long thing, or I'm going to post a link to a white paper I just wrote with my, you know, go download here or say, you know, transformation in the comments and I'll send you a copy, you know, that kind of thing. So those are the experts, thought leaders, and they're doing a lot of posting. Activators, it's not that they don't post, they certainly do, but the volume of posting is not the same.

1:08:44And actually, they're spending a lot more time liking, commenting, sharing, and direct messaging. And what's so interesting is that they are very diligent about following the people they work with today and the people they'd like to work with and following the firms and the companies they work for. And this is so important. I think you know this very well, but partners, I think this surprises them, is that that's so important because then you're training the algorithm to feed you things that those firms post or those clients talk about and they comment on and they like and they repost or they share.

1:09:22and now you're in the flow of information and that's a really great place to be. Clients or partners get very uneasy about that. They're like, well, I don't know that my client or that prospect wants that kind of relationship with me, but that's what LinkedIn is for. And it's not just that they're okay with it. They actually expect it. They expect you to care about what they care about. And we hear this from partners all the time that they lose work that they never even knew was up for grabs. And when you find out about how that work was won, it's often because your competitor's partner was engaged with that person on LinkedIn, following them, saw something interesting, sent a DM, said, hey, I really liked your comment about that.

1:09:57We've got some data on this. I'd love to share with you. And then away they go. And they've sold them some work. And again, you never knew it was even an opportunity because you never invested in that connection on LinkedIn. So you find more of the activator, activators, again, liking, commenting, reposting, doing some sharing, yes. but it's more it's more participating they think of linkedin as like the world's biggest conference and their participants not i'm up on the stage and i'm giving the talk again it doesn't mean they don't post but they don't do it as much as the experts and then the third category is they just don't use it which unfortunately is like a huge chunk of partners the number of them that have that little like grayed out you know stick finger headshot thing it's like you know and in that a lot of these partners have this mindset that like, well, my clients aren't really on there, but they are on there.

1:10:48And then again, they act surprised when they lose work to competitors that they never even knew was up for grabs. Now the finding that surprised me, you know, we went into this, I think we had this hypothesis of once we found the profiles, it must be that maybe you start your career as an activator to build your network, but maybe you graduate into becoming a confidant once you find those key clients. And what we found was interesting, there's no age correlation here. So in other words, you found as many older or older professionals are tenured, long career activators, as you do early career confidants.

1:11:23So what that told us is you kind of pick a swim lane and then you sort of stick with it. And then the question a lot of firm leaders ask is, well, why? When we do this analysis in our own firm, we find we have so many experts, who are so many confidants or realists? Why did that happen? And I think that's a really interesting question because a lot of it comes down to some of it probably is personality. What is the approach I'm most comfortable with? But I think more of it is actually, what's the culture you've created in your firm about what kind of approach with clients is celebrated and rewarded?

1:11:53Who are the people you drag up on stage at the partner retreat and you celebrate their accomplishments? Who are they? What profile do they fall into? Because all your younger professionals are looking at that person saying, if that's what the firm rewards, I'm going to follow that person's playbook. And then you got to look at these older partners, the practice group leaders, the office chair heads, the senior executives and leaders in the firm, and what they are mentoring that younger generation to go and do. And unfortunately, I think a lot of these tenured partners are actually mentoring around a playbook that worked 10, 20 years ago, but really isn't the right playbook for today's client buying environment.

1:12:29So anyway, lots of interesting stuff, plenty of more, plenty of more in the book, of course. Yeah. And I appreciate you sharing that because I think one of the big takeaways that I'd love everyone listening to come away with is that we all can be an activator. That's right. It's not like you come out one of these five people and you're stuck there. I know early on in my career, I didn't really value these things and my introversion got in the way. But as I started to figure out, okay, there are some mindset shifts and some habits that can make things simple, that can play off my introversion as a strength in these scenarios, then all of a sudden you can develop these traits and become an activator in your career, even if you fancied yourself right out of college being the expert or being the confidant.

1:13:12That was one of the questions we get all the time from partners is, can introverts be activators? And we found a huge number of introverted, self-professed introverts who were actually high scoring activators based on our research. And really, we're out there doing the activated thing. Now, I'm thinking of one top partner at a firm had like a$30 million book of business. And she told us, she said, I go to the conference and I don't go to the bar afterwards. I don't do the after party. It takes a lot out of me because I'm an introvert. So I need to go back to my room and recharge and get ready for the next day.

1:13:46But she knows what needs to be done in the moment. And she said, I've taught myself to do these things, even though they don't come naturally to me. So again, I wasn't born this way. I learned to do these things and get good at them. And that's a really important point that you're making. Everybody can become an activator or become more of an activator or add a little bit of activator to what they do really well already. Because there are good things about all these other profiles as well, right? But how do we add more activator-ness? An activator is not a personality type. We didn't study personality.

1:14:16That's kind of a hiring, firing decision. Very hard to change personality. What we studied were behaviors, time span characteristics, how you use tools, technology, resources, things that we can all learn to get better at, not things that you're either born with or not. In the current environment, everyone's concerned about being replaceable. And if you can become an activator who is generating business outside of doing all the other tasks that you have to do in your role, and not looking at biz dev as something you do at the end of the day or with the last 20 % of your time, but look at 100 % of your time as biz dev, you can actually put yourself in a position to be irreplaceable, even in all the changes in technology and the economy.

1:14:53That is a great insurance policy, not just client relationships, but on your own value to your own firm as well. And where can the audience find out more about the book and the work that you do, Matt? Sure. Yeah. So the book, again, is called The Activator Advantage. It is out on May 20th. And you can find out more about our firm, DCM Insights at DCMinsights.com. And we work with firms and partners, associates, all up and down the firm organizations to teach activator behaviors and skills and help develop an activator mindset when it comes to going to market. It was great having you. Thank you so much for stopping by.

1:15:30It was awesome to be here. Thank you so much for the invitation.

1:15:41Thank you for listening to another episode of the Art of Charm podcast. And now I'd like to showcase one of our X-Factor Accelerator members. Take it away, Daniel. My name is Daniel and I'm a manufacturing engineer. My overall experience with the X Factor Accelerator program has been excellent due to effective teaching and a supportive community of like-minded individuals. Since joining, I have cultivated deeper connections with my friends, family, and colleagues by implementing the conversational techniques learned in the program. These deeper connections have made my life more fulfilling, both personally and professionally.

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