Want to Be a Rainmaker? Master Balancing
Business Development and Thought Leadership

Rainmakers take action on this understanding by consistently and intelligently
investing time in both business development and thought leadership.

 

For associates and newly minted partners alike, the journey to rainmaker can seem as easy as scaling Mount Everest in the dark, without a light, equipment, or a Sherpa. While there’s an abundance of information today about how to become a rainmaker (and, for that matter, how to climb Mount Everest), actually doing so is difficult. There’s a reason there are so few rainmakers among so many attorneys in private practice.
 

To continue the mountain climbing metaphor, rainmakers become rainmakers because they understand the need to climb the business development side of Mount Rainmaker at the same time they climb the thought leadership side of that mountain. They understand that business development and thought leadership complement each other by working in harmony to help them build and nurture relationships with current and prospective clients and referral sources. Most importantly, rainmakers take action on this understanding by consistently and intelligently investing time in both business development and thought leadership.
 

Attorneys who aspire to be rainmakers will need to do the same.

Rainmakers master relationship building

Rainmakers know how important relationships are to growing their practices or firms, whether those relationships are with past, current, and prospective clients or past, current, and prospective referral sources. But rainmakers don’t merely prioritize relationship building, they optimize their efforts in this area.

For one, rainmakers ensure they’re pursuing opportunities in the right places with the right people. Said differently and in keeping with our outdoor metaphors, they fish where the fish swim.

Rainmaking defense-side employment attorneys, for example, could theoretically join any networking group because there’s bound to be a few people in any that could refer them to a colleague or someone outside the company for a potential matter. But most opt instead to join trade associations in industries they want to specialize in, or to join groups like the Society for Human Resources Management, where members are more likely to be aware of, and in a position to bring in counsel regarding, potential legal matters.

Additionally, rainmakers don’t continue investing time and resources in professional associations or other groups that show little promise. If, after putting forth a reasonable effort over time to take part in or sponsor events, and they have little to show for it, rainmakers will pull the plug and reallocate that investment toward associations or groups where the rainmakers are getting some traction, or explore opportunities with new associations and groups.

On a related note, rainmakers understand that business development is a series of systems that can be deployed—and they deploy them. For example, they run their meetings with new networking contacts in a particular way that minimizes unnecessary small talk and focuses on determining whether opportunities exist to help each other. Rainmakers coach referral sources on how to describe what they do to third parties, so those referral sources understand the kinds of people the rainmakers want to meet. And, rainmakers have developed structured ways of walking potential clients through selling conversations that don't feel like them.

Finally, rainmakers aren’t afraid to sacrifice billable hours or devote portions of their nights and weekends to one-on-one, human-to-human business development activities. Whether that’s dining with a client during the week, visiting a client’s manufacturing facility or head office, or scheduling a playdate with a potential referral source and their children on a weekend, rainmakers know that unscalable, nondelegable business development activities are often the most effective ones.

 

Rainmakers also master positioning themselves as authorities

Besides doing the small-scale business development tasks necessary to build relationships, rainmakers understand that thought leadership is the substantive, “I know what I’m doing” yin to business development’s warm-and-cuddly, “We’ve developed a rapport” yang. That’s why they willingly invest their non-billable time in regularly developing thought leadership materials like articles, blog posts, videos, podcasts, and webinars.

Rainmakers know that thought leadership is how they establish, in the eyes and minds of clients and referral sources, that they’re authorities regarding the areas of law they practice and the industries they serve.

Rainmakers know that their library of thought leadership is really an army of advocates that’s working 24/7/365 in the background—while the rainmakers are tackling billable matters, spending time with their families, sleeping, vacationing, doing whatever—to show past, current, and prospective clients and referral sources that they have the requisite knowledge and wisdom to assist clients with their legal and business issues.

Additionally, rainmakers understand that their thought leadership is providing samples—à la Costco—of their knowledge, experience, analytical abilities, views of the world, and personality to clients and referral sources. They realize that the best way for them to tell a client or referral source that they’re worthy of their consideration to assist with a legal or business matter is to produce thought leadership that shows they’re qualified to do so by providing relevant and valuable insights in an interesting way that stands out from the plain-vanilla, “The court said [X]” content that many other attorneys and firms produce.

Rainmakers often take their thought leadership one step forward and integrate their business development efforts into their thought leadership. Some will create thought leadership content that responds to clients’ questions about the legal or business issues they face. That way, the rainmakers can reference that content when a prospective client asks that question in the future, signaling just how knowledgeable the attorney and their firm are about the kinds of issues the client is likely to face. 

Other rainmakers will invite clients, referral sources, and other members of their target audience to collaborate on articles, videos, and podcasts. This reinforces the rainmaker’s mastery of a topic to the person they’re collaborating with while also providing the other person a chance to market and promote themselves with little effort (because, obviously, the rainmaker or a colleague will do the heavy lifting on the content production and promotion). 
 

Finally, rainmakers produce private webinars or in-person presentations for clients and referral sources, including ones that may qualify for continuing legal education credits. These might be the ultimate hybrid business development/thought leadership activity because they can combine reinforcing a rainmaker’s knowledge, wisdom, and authority (through the substantive presentation) with one-on-few rapport building (through informal conversations before and after the presentation, perhaps over a catered meal).

 

An invitation to scale the mountain

We know there are attorneys who have become rainmakers by focusing only on business development or thought leadership. You likely know a few yourself. But in today’s competitive marketplace—both online and off—we believe those rainmakers are increasingly becoming the exception, not the norm.

Rainmaking today requires attorneys to combine the rapport-building, on-the-ground, one-to-one endeavor that is business development with the authority-demonstrating, high-level, one-to-many endeavor that is thought leadership. 

This is a tall order, but there are harder tasks in life. Given that almost 6,800 people have climbed Mount Everest since record keeping of the feat began, climbing Mount Rainmaker is surely within your reach.

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Steve Fretzin, an expert at legal business development, is the author of four books regarding the topic, and is the host of the Be That Lawyer podcast. He has helped hundreds of attorneys across the world dramatically grow their book of business while living a well-balanced life. He can be reached at steve@fretzin.com.
 

Wayne Pollock, a former Am Law 50 senior litigation associate, is the founder of Copo Strategies, a legal services and communications firm, and the Law Firm Editorial Service, a thought leadership ghostwriting service for Big Law and boutique law firm partners, and executives at organizations that serve the legal industry. He can be reached at waynepollock@copostrategies.com.

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Reprinted with permission from the August 22, 2024 edition of The Legal Intelligencer/Pennsylvania Law Weekly © 2024 ALM Media Properties, LLC. All rights reserved. Further duplication without permission is prohibited, contact 877-257-3382 or reprints@alm.com.