Breaking BizDev

3 (Really) Bad Reasons to Hire a Rainmaker

• John Tyreman & Mark Wainwright • Season 1 • Episode 49

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In this episode of Breaking Biz Dev, John and Mark take the Rainmaker model out to the alley for a well-deserved beatdown, highlight three (really) bad reasons to hire a rainmaker. In this episode, you’ll hear:

  • What is a ‘Rainmaker’ anyway?
  • Various ways firms organize their sales functions
  • How buyers evaluate professional services firms
  • Really bad reason #1 - you don’t know how to sell
  • Really bad reason #2 - you need a deal closer
  • Really bad reason #3 - you want to grow faster

Read Mark’s full blog post: https://www.wainwrightinsight.com/3-really-bad-reasons-to-hire-a-rainmaker/

Show notes:

Connect with Mark on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markhwainwright/
Connect with John on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johntyreman/

www.breakingbizdev.com

John Tyreman:

Welcome business developers and others to another episode of Breaking Biz Dev. And today we're going to beat up the Rainmaker model. Before we dive into this though, Mark, you have a message for all of your Rainmaker friends.

Mark Wainwright:

Yeah, welcome business developers and hopefully. All my dear friends, the rainmakers, right? this is not intended for anyone to take this personally. You are good people. You are well intentioned, you are good at what you do. If your firm looks at you as the rainmaker, and you're doing a bang up job, then. keep at it, keep running at it. A lot of rainmakers that I know, that are out there in professional services firms are people who at one point in their life were practitioners. they were the experts, they were doing all that stuff and they've evolved to this rainmaker role inside the organization. They've been there for decades. They're just sort of the go to person, you know, Keep doing what you're doing. Keep at it with the caveat that, there's some issues lurking on the horizon. So maybe we'll tease out of this episode a few things that even if you're a successful rainmaker, you should be looking out for., so. No harm intended, but, ugh, John, rainmakers are problematic.

John Tyreman:

I don't like the rain. So what's not,

Mark Wainwright:

Well,

John Tyreman:

sunshine.

Mark Wainwright:

you know I'm in Seattle, so every single time I mention that, the first thing that comes to people's mind is, Oh, doesn't it rain all the time? I was like, yeah, rain is water, and water is good, and they say, Oh, oh, you're right, and I say, yeah, yeah, so, so,

John Tyreman:

all right. So let's, outline the show today. So we're going to beat up the Rainmaker model. we'll define it for anybody who doesn't really know what a Rainmaker is. We've got some research that we can look over, just to kind of set the table for the different kinds of business development organizations or the ways that you could organize your business development operation. And then we're going to talk about the cyclical model of Rainmakers. And Mark, I love this. I love to get into that. That's going to be really fun.

Mark Wainwright:

it's painful.

John Tyreman:

And then you have, you wrote a blog post, about three bad reasons to hire a Rainmaker.

Mark Wainwright:

Yeah, three really.

John Tyreman:

really bad reasons.

Mark Wainwright:

to hire a rainmaker. Yeah. Just to put a point on that one. Yeah, we're going to live up to our billing, John. I am taking the rainmakers out of the alley and we're beating them up because there's way too many professional services firms out there, organizations out there who just default to. Yeah, we've got, you know, long timer, Jim in the corner over there who, all he does is, go to the networking events and, shake hands and backslap and all that other stuff. But they say that with a little quiver in their voice, cause it was like, yeah, but Jim said he's going to retire in two years. So,

John Tyreman:

What are they going to do?

Mark Wainwright:

Yeah. What are you going to do? So we're going to, we're going to beat up the rainmaker just enough.

John Tyreman:

All right. Well, let's do it. So first of all, for those who don't know what we're talking about, they don't know the term Rainmaker, what is a Rainmaker?

Mark Wainwright:

Yeah. the definition you pulled from somewhere, right. As a very, very skilled practitioner in a professional services firms that do nothing or almost nothing. But sell and close, a lot of deals, right? so that's that in,, in larger terms beyond our industry, right? It's, the Rainmaker is the shining star that might even be part of a sales team. You know, could be the person that is ranked first every single month. It's just like, Oh, you know, Susan is making it rain this month. that's the thing. And it crops up, in all the really big. Bad sales, stories, sales, movies, sales, you know, cliches, everything. The little rainmaker pops their head up, you know? So yeah, that's, that's what it is. Rainmaker is just, Oh, making it rain,

John Tyreman:

Great.

Mark Wainwright:

have, but you did some research and you wanted to bring up a finer point to that. So.

John Tyreman:

Yeah. So I think It's interesting to take a look at what are the other ways that firms are going about sales and winning new business and the society for marketing professional services, SMPS teamed up with Stambaugh Ness to produce this AEC business development, 2024 report, and we'll link it in the show notes. So for folks that are listening, you can go check that out. But what I thought was really interesting is they took a look at a number of different. Business development models. And I just want to highlight a couple here. So I'll highlight four. So we've got the Rainmaker, which we just talked about. So this is one individual, brings in the majority of the firm's work. And then there was a few others here. There's the principal business developer. And I think this is an interesting point of difference. Is this is where a firm's principal partner or vice president is responsible for managing the firm's business development activities. And so I think it's important for us to just recognize that this research that we're looking at separates those 2 out.

Mark Wainwright:

Yeah. Interesting.

John Tyreman:

Now there's a couple of other ones in this report. There's, market champions, dedicated business developers, seller doers, or as we like to call them, doer-sellers

Mark Wainwright:

Doer sellers.

John Tyreman:

and then marketing business developer and principal business developers. So they look at six different. models and what this report found was that 12 percent only 12 percent of their sample operates under this rainmaker model. Now, if we combine that with principal business developers, that number goes up to about 68%. So that's why I wanted to separate those out because at first glance, it could seem like, okay, well Rainmakers, there's not, not a whole lot of them out there, but you could make a case where if there's one, partner, who's the main business developer, that could be kind of like a Rainmaker. Type of model.

Mark Wainwright:

Yeah. There's probably a little semantics kind of wrapped up in this whole thing. Not everyone might own up to being, of a Rainmaker, the one that comes to mind often for me is the principal business developer in this, in the doer seller. And those are two of the larger. One sort of percentage wise that firms will say it's like, because most of these firms, what that says to me is that this individual has other responsibilities inside the organization, whether it's running the firm or whether it's, doing client work. and then on the side they do, new business work and that's whatever large percentage of their time. So,

John Tyreman:

Well, what I thought was really interesting is that the most preferred business development model is the doer seller model. So it just seems like within recent years, more and more firms have adopted that as part of their business development strategy.

Mark Wainwright:

yeah, years ago that wasn't the case. I think firms of almost any size would try to lump these new business responsibilities onto one individual and call that person a rainmaker. I think firms were more, comfortable and it was more calm that they were doing that. I think things are changing. I do, however,, will put a little asterisk on that I prefer to lean into, what firms are doing rather than what firms are saying. And this, survey data that they have may not ring totally true because I still see the fact that even though a firm says, yes, seller model is important to us. They still don't have enough of them, right? There's just a handful of people doing it. So for me, you know, my bias is always, we want to democratize the sales. efforts and we want more people to do it. So, yeah, these are good good numbers, but, you know, cautionary tale with all of it.

John Tyreman:

Yeah, yeah, well, I think the reason why I wanted to bring this up was to just kind of set the table for the different ways that firms go about developing new business. And so now we can kind of compare and contrast Rainmakers from the other different kinds of models. And another data point that I wanted to bring in here, another piece of research was, Hinge Marketing has done a piece of research, a body of research in the past. I think it's on their fourth edition now. Called inside the buyer's brain. And this, research looks at buyers of professional services and how they go about making those purchases, how they go about evaluating firms and what are the criteria that go into selecting them? And the two top criterion for selecting a professional service provider was number one, knowledge of the industry. And then number two, relevant experience and past performance.

Mark Wainwright:

Yeah. the early conversations they're having with their prospective consultants, the expertise needs to shine through.

John Tyreman:

yep. And if you're a doer seller, you are naturally plugged into the industry and you understand the ins and outs of the services that you provide. However, if you're a rainmaker and all you do is sell you there, you have distanced yourself from that experience and that knowledge of the industry.

Mark Wainwright:

You're exactly right. And, you know, I, think that's what practitioners turned rainmakers, where they find themselves is that they start to lose track of service delivery, things that are changing in the industry, that sort of stuff to the point where they're, a few steps removed from it. and, there's also that little thing that kind of happens with Rainmakers is if you're spending all your time, finding and winning the work and then the handoff is weird. Right. So um, you know.

John Tyreman:

needs to take place.

Mark Wainwright:

There's a bait and switch kind of that term always kind of comes up and, whether that's done intentionally or just sort of that's how organizations are built, that's a factor, right? Clients are leery of, developing a relationship with one person and having some expectations around them, working together throughout the engagement and then things change. So, yeah, that's a problem.

John Tyreman:

All right. So I think we've made the case for why you should not choose a Rainmaker model as the central focus of your business development organization. So Mark, let's talk about this cyclical model of Rainmaker. Why do firms get into this position in the first place?

Mark Wainwright:

right. I think there's this self reinforcing thing that kind of happens and I have seen it play out. So I'm not just pontificating here like this. I've actually watch this whole thing happen. and it takes a lot of time. I'm not saying this cycle of events happens. In weeks or months or stuff, it can take years for this whole thing to play out. but yeah, I mean, if everyone's sort of picturing, a cycle, that kind of reinforces itself, first step is, okay, you're a professional services firm. We need to develop new business. We need new business. You kind of look around your firm and you're like, Oh shoot, we don't have it.

John Tyreman:

Who wants to sell?

Mark Wainwright:

Yeah. Yeah.

John Tyreman:

Not me, not me noses.

Mark Wainwright:

At the right. At the, at the annual meeting. It's like, Hey, we could, we could use that. Can you raise your hand? Nobody raises their hand. Cause people are experts and they like doing the work rather than going and getting the work. So dah, dah, dah. So then the decision is made on high that we need to hire a rainmaker. Right. So the search starts, you know, and they hire a rainmaker. They go and they, you know, lots of interviews and the people show up in the suits and there's the rainmaker. So the rainmaker is hired. The rainmaker probably brings, a quote book of business along with them to a degree. But they also kind of work their way into existing client relationships of the firm. They get introduced, they go to the lunch, with the principal and get the introduction to client Bob, all of that stuff. So the Rainmaker brings their own relationships but starts to establish other relationships there. So the Rainmaker is placed and the Rainmaker's working away and there's a lot of cost because you spent a ton of money on the Rainmaker and now there's the lunches. And there's the plane tickets and there's that whole thing low and behold some point in the future, whether it's six months down the road or two years down the road, everybody looks around and says, I don't know if the rainmaker is cutting it. You know, it's like, there's a ton of cost here. We're not getting the return on it. We're seeing client relationships kind of erode because lo and behold, they really appreciated, being in connection with our existing principles, our existing team members. So we now have this rainmaker in place, so we're not getting what we want. Our clients want to work with the experts, not with the salesperson. So the rainmaker fails. The senior team members decide they need to do it themselves. They're like, all right, forget it. We're going to ditch the rainmaker and we're going to do it themselves. Then the principals have to go out and reestablish the relationships and start building business. And they do okay with it and they're getting fine and they're reestablished the relationship with Bob who got kind of bent out of shape that you brought the rainmaker to lunch that one day, so then. They do it and they're doing okay, but then they get right back to the beginning and they're like, Oh, we're not doing well enough here. We got to hire a rainmaker so it all happens again. And like I said, it just, it almost happens unconsciously. It happens over time, likely years, right? It just have you see this whole thing happening again and again and again. And it's so frustrating. And there's an obvious, Yes. Solution, John, and we'll kind of tease that out when it gets to this next chunk of stuff. So there's the cycle.

John Tyreman:

That sounds like a hellacious cycle.

Mark Wainwright:

I've seen it. I've watched it happen. Like it doesn't cease to amaze me that you're like, oh yeah, we just, we hired the rainmaker and I'm going, oh man, didn't we talk about this? Didn't I, didn't I pull you aside and warn you.

John Tyreman:

Well, some people just don't learn, don't learn that way. They got to go through it

Mark Wainwright:

They got to go through it. Yeah, totally. Yeah. It's like us, us trying to tell our kids not to do something. I'm

John Tyreman:

that's exactly what I'm thinking of.

Mark Wainwright:

Yeah. So it's just people just, they have to experience it. So firms out there who have recently hired your Rainmaker and you're maybe not getting the results you want. There you go.

John Tyreman:

And, you know, maybe it's a product of these firms just don't understand the alternatives that are out there. and that's our job, right? And yes, that's what we're here to do. And we are going to teach you. All the different ways that you can develop new business without relying on rainmakers, but first let's go through, you have three really bad reasons to hire a rainmaker. So let's start there.

Mark Wainwright:

Yeah. And this, ties into that whole cycle thing, right? This is that decision point you come to, as a. Senior leader in a firm where you're making that decision to go pursue and go hire this is three reasons why you should not go through that exercise. Right.

John Tyreman:

So you've got bad reason. Number one, why you shouldn't hire a rainmaker You don't know how to sell.

Mark Wainwright:

it's not a surprise, right? It's gonna like, screamingly obvious. But the thing is, is that people think it's such a beast and so complex. people think it's something you're either born to do or you're not born to do. They think it's just inherent in some folks. Which I don't think is necessarily true, right? It's hard, you know, sales is hard because sometimes you don't win, you know, and you know, for, uh, yeah, yeah, Right. Whatever your wind percentage is, right? It's a pretty tough nut to swallow, particularly for some expert out there, some architect or engineer or something like that when they undertake project work. They hit it out of the park, like 99 percent of the time they do an incredible job of their billable work, right? The clients are excited and they do a great job when they're handed a new business development, opportunity and they only win half they're like, what. Is this right? So they get frustrated, but on the other hand, John, it's not rocket science either. We're not like, this is the stuff these people went through during their degrees and licensing and everything else far, far harder than this, right? So sales is just a skill people can learn, you know, and it takes time. To learn it and master it, right? It takes time to understand it and practice it, improve it. And, gain significant levels of mastery in it. And a lot of times it just takes practice. So people are thinking, Oh, we just need to hire the rainmaker. We're going to outsource basically we're in source or whatever you want to call it, whatever term you want to use, we're going to give that person all their responsibilities and, Oh, we're just going to sleep so much better at night. Lo and behold, that doesn't happen. so. Bottom line, people need to learn how to do it. Right. And even these technical professionals out there can do it. They just need to do it in a way that aligns with how they think, which a lot of times means that these technical sort of left brained professionals need a process. They need a how to. They need a one, two, three, ABC. and that is the way that they can avoid the Rainmaker. By just, getting more and more folks involved and more and more folks practicing and gaining mastery in sales crashed.

John Tyreman:

Yeah. If you have just one person who owns all of the knowledge of sales, then you have a single point of failure in your sales operation.

Mark Wainwright:

You're listening to breaking biz dev

John Tyreman:

the podcast that beats up, breaks down, and redefines business development for the professional services firms of tomorrow. Your hosts are John Tyerman, founder of Red Cedar Marketing, the podcast marketing company for experts and professional services firms,

Mark Wainwright:

And Mark Wainwright, principal consultant and founder of Wainwright Insight, the fractional sales manager and sales consultant to professional services firms.

John Tyreman:

If you find this podcast helpful, please help us by following the show and leaving a review on Apple podcasts

Mark Wainwright:

and now back to the show.

John Tyreman:

The second really bad reason why firms should not hire a rainmaker is that you need a real deal closer.

Mark Wainwright:

Right. This is that. Ages old cliche, that thing where, you know, we just need the person that's going to close the deal, get in there and the handshake. And, you know, we're going to get what we want out of this whole thing. because, us, engineers, consultants, we're just not great at that. we get a little squirrelly towards the end of the deal. And, when the, the proposal goes in on a wing and a prayer, and we've got our fingers crossed and the client comes back to us and says hey sharpen your pencil. We need someone with a little bit of backbone and a little bit of, sales skills to not do that, so that we can, we can close more contracts and be more successful and all that stuff. And yeah, you need that, right? You need to understand how to navigate the tail end of this whole process, but, you don't need the closer. can we just do away with that already?

John Tyreman:

It's a combination of, not knowing how to sell and because you don't know how to sell, there's a lack of confidence in the ability to close a deal. And that lack of confidence is kind of perpetuates there. And, that's the reason why, okay, well, I don't know how to do it. I'm not really confident in doing it. Let me go out and get a Rainmaker who will close the deal. Logically, it makes sense, but it doesn't play out that way.

Mark Wainwright:

Yeah, that's part of that scary thing because, you know, people have seen the movies. We've seen the Glenn, Gary, Glenn Ross, and the, you know, Alec Baldwin is doing the always be closing stuff. And I hate that guy.

John Tyreman:

Yeah,

Mark Wainwright:

And,, you know, by the way, uh, and, so you feel like you need that person, but really you don't you need is you need to be the ones who are really, interacting well, communicating well, with your prospective clients, right? You need to be talking them through. Proposals. You need to be working, towards a one plus one is three solution to this whole thing. you can't be conceding on price every single time. You need to find other ways to negotiate if the client has issues or concerns, so just establishing a really good sales process that puts you in close communication and connection with your prospective clients throughout the entire process helps A ton rather than rushing to their proposal, throwing some PDF in an email, hoping for the best, and they come back and they say, sharpen your pencil. So yeah, you don't need a, closer,

John Tyreman:

really bad reason. Number three to hire a rainmaker is you want to grow your business faster.

Mark Wainwright:

right? You think this is going to accelerate. Accelerate things, right? And if you were listening earlier in the podcast to that whole cyclical thing is, that whole cyclical process that you go through of hiring and then firing the rainmaker and deciding you need to do what your own everything else is, there's not a lot of growth happening in that whole. Whole process, because in order to grow in a professional services firm, any firm, but since you and I work with professional services firms, right, you need to have more people inside the organization doing this work, doing this hard work. Of, you know, developing, finding and winning new work, developing new business. You need to have more work so you can scale, right? That's where the scale thing comes from versus the growth thing. The growth thing is, oftentimes unsustainable because you're not scaling. Well, scaling means that you've got more hands doing the work so that there's not too much on one, One set of shoulders. More and more folks are doing more of it. So you're seeing this exponential growth, you know, scaling rather than just the one person growing things right. And, that whole one person growing your firm thing is super precarious, right? Because, oh, by the way, that rainmaker that you hired, you were so excited about because you stole that rainmaker away from one of your competitors and they came in and started doing all their wonderful rainmaking work. Guess what? Right. The precedence has been set that they're going to do it again, Right. They're going to be with your firm for, you know, a handful of years. Someone's going to go be at the point in the cycle where they need to go hire the rainmaker. So they're going to approach your rainmaker and steal them away and pay them a bunch of money.

John Tyreman:

And they're going to take that Rolodex with them.

Mark Wainwright:

yeah, and they're gonna take the Rolodex. They take the contacts, they take the Rolodex. Yeah, we have level. We use that term. Yeah, they're going to take their long list of contacts with them. and, uh,, there goes your growth.

John Tyreman:

And you can put a non compete clause, but those are so hard to enforce.

Mark Wainwright:

No, that's not, that's not, yeah. Lawyering up is not your path to to resolution in this whole, whole process, you know? So yeah, if you have that individual in your firm who maybe is a rainmaker, I'll bring my rainmakers into this conversation. If you do have the person who is the rainmaker, the one thing that you need to do almost more so than, telling them to get out there and find a win in the work is that you need to have that person be a really great mentor. That person needs to be working with other team members to show them, how it works, right? Show them They're ins and outs and, and how they're successful and sure, maybe making some introductions, to, other people, but more importantly, rather than your rainmaker, maybe your longtime person who is your, new business person, rather than them handing off relationships to the next generation, which is what a lot of people think it's more. Teaching the next generation of leaders in your firm, how to go, establish and build and grow and maintain their own relationships. Right. So that's more important rather than handing off relationships, teaching people how to do it. So yeah, if you have a rainmaker, they better darn well be teaching others how to do it.

John Tyreman:

that's really interesting. So how could you, I suppose that the compensation model would play a big role in that, right? So if a Rainmaker is paid mostly on commission, then they would be to teach.

Mark Wainwright:

Oh,

John Tyreman:

you, you'd probably need to, to, to adjust that.

Mark Wainwright:

No doubt about it. any smart, rainmaker coming into a firm, getting hired would establish some, compensation stuff. whether it's a,, part of their base compensation or whether it's some,, some bonus structure or whatever else it is you would be. Smart to, do that. Oh, little side note folks, people who are really good at sales make a ton of money. So, you know, that should be no surprise, cause it's hard. but the model is not frequently employed in a lot of professional services firms. Organizations that I'm familiar with are usually ones that have full time sales teams. The ones that are, adjusting compensation and putting together specific models, and for everyone's reference out there because professional services really don't know is that typically, in your average, likely large organization where salespeople, they're a full time salespeople and they have, variable compensation models is that at least half of their career. Based compensation is paid from commission. So, and that's a huge number. I would never recommend anyone at professional services do that. just because it doesn't align with this whole do or seller model. Right. And it doesn't incent the Right. behaviors. just like you mentioned there, John, it doesn't, we want our people who are good at new business development, teaching and training and mentoring others to do it. And the compensation model. doesn't, fit with that whole thing. So,

John Tyreman:

It was just something that I just dawned on me that I thought would be worth pointing out is that if you want to leverage a rainmaker in the sense of trying to mine their expertise and try to teach that to your staff, that's something to take

Mark Wainwright:

no, it's a, great point. I mean, you know, every time we have to talk about compensation, we have to talk about the types of behaviors we want to incent or disincent with individuals and in the organization. we want to do everything we can in most firms in most professional services, firms who don't have these full time salespeople, which is most of them. we want to do everything we can to incent these kind of teaching, mentoring, growing organizational sales acumen rather than having it sit on, one person's shoulders. Because if the rainmaker model is what we're trying to incent, we're going to create a bunch of lone wolves, in an organization who are just off doing their own thing and, not serving the organization. Well,

John Tyreman:

And that can be challenging because when you have that scenario where you've got multiple lone wolves going out there and selling, what they're saying to prospects and the questions they're asking and the pitches that they're presenting can be wildly different, which creates confusion. It creates an uneven shape of your brand. So that's, you bring up a really good point. that's another great reason why you should train your team to learn sales, democratize sales across your organization. I'm curious, Mark, in the, firms that you've worked with, that have a doer seller kind of makeup. Is there an element of commission or some sort of a bonus for hitting a number or is that pure salary? Like, I'm just really curious about that on the

Mark Wainwright:

it varies, but, if the organizations are large enough, they will have individuals that they have defined as, spending a certain amount of time, finding and winning. New business. And a lot of times that's, in professional services firms, we track utilization. A lot of times that's reflected in their utilization where they will have their billable utilization will be fairly low and everybody starts scratching their head. They're like, what's going on there. It's like, Oh no, no, they're responsible for X amount of revenue. And that's how. That's how the firm gets the return on their,, time. so Yeah. so that, and that tends to happen with, larger and larger organizations, who knows, it doesn't, it's not even talking like big, like hundreds and hundreds of people I'm talking, it could be some dozens of employees where the firm just gets to a point where they think that's an important. Important role. so yeah, I mean, John, we took the Rainmaker in the alley, beat the Rainmaker up a little bit. You know, I don't want to throw shade on, on, on our friend, the Rainmaker, because I do think there's a real genuine opportunity for people who are interested in finding and winning new work. People who, Don't run screaming in the opposite direction from sales. there's a real opportunity with just a few edits, I think, for those people to become, educators, mentors, leaders, leading the charge and, why this whole sort of, do reseller model is so important for firms, spreading the responsibility across many. Many hands, many shoulders is so important. So all is not lost if you are a rainmaker or an aspiring rainmaker, right? If you dig this stuff, then great. That doesn't mean that the definition of your success is not going to come from, how many times you can venture off into the woods and come back with the fresh kill. It really depends on how successful your You know, from top to bottom and side to side at this stuff

John Tyreman:

love that reframe. So if you are a firm owner, if you're a consultant and you are considering a rainmaker because you don't know how to sell, because you need a real deal closer, or because you want to grow your business faster, those are three really, really bad reasons to It's a hire a rainmaker.

Mark Wainwright:

they are. And yeah, I'm, you know, as always, John, I'm happy to elaborate with people who are, you know, just ignoring the screamingly obvious.

John Tyreman:

all right, well, forgive us rainmakers for beating you up too bad. Um, Mark, this has been a fantastic episode until next time.

Mark Wainwright:

until next time, John.

People on this episode

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John Tyreman, Founder & CEO, Red Cedar Marketing

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Mark Wainwright, Principal Consultant and Founder, Wainwright Insight

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