Crux Rainmaking: 3 Steps to Exponential Business Development
by Joe Brocato

Introduction

Management will ask “What value do you bring to our organization?” The question is simple and inevitable. So is the universal answer across organizations globally. It should be no surprise that the value you bring has much to do with money and your ability to add to the bottom line.

Adding to the bottom line is closely related to the relationships you develop with clients, colleagues, and other connections. In fact, a clear, measurable relationship must exist between you and the bottom line in order to maximize the security of your job, make more money, and increase the likelihood of moving up in your organization. Your ability to generate more income for an enterprise speaks loudly. In fact, it shouts.

Developing business has always been important, but with the marked and fundamental changes in our economy—especially since the Great Recession of 2008—our individual ability to bring new money into our respective organizations is more important than ever. It is a harsh fact that service professionals must do more than simply provide great service going forward in order to prosper, especially as hoards of more providers surface in the new service economy. Sales executives who sell goods through traditional relationships with procurement departments face inordinate competition for orders due to more low-cost alternatives from increased competition in the marketplace. It is difficult for not-for-profit organizations to even maintain historical contributions, let alone generate material, net-new donations. Entrepreneurs, assuming they can muster the requisite level of capital to get their new ventures off the ground, need to have the confidence that they can sell their products or services to people who are more discerning than ever about how they spend their hard-earned money.

Without the talent to bring in business, we are at risk. For some, this might mean we don’t bring home the money we deserve. For others, it might result in a demotion in title, responsibility, or both. It might even mean we are let go from our jobs. Entrepreneurs will find it impossible to keep the doors open.

The ability to generate business and contribute to the bottom line has become personal. No one is exempt anymore. No longer can we rely on someone else to develop business. Our individual failure to do so will have consequences. Thus, we need the skills to preclude failure, and we need these skills quickly, as our livelihoods and futures are at stake.

Rainmakers: Born or Bred?

I’ve often heard the opinion that rainmakers are born, not made—that rainmakers are people who have a natural gift. Certainly, there are some people who appear to have been born with qualities we admire, such as the ability to carry on a conversation with the most entertaining small talk we’ve ever heard, make people laugh, pour on the charm, or get people to immediately like them. Yes, there are people who are born with these abilities. But I disagree with the notion that the rest of us cannot acquire these skills.

We all have the ability to be significant rainmakers for our respective organizations. How is this possible? Aren’t there only a small number of rainmakers in any given organization? Typically, yes. Usually only 2–5 percent of professionals are rainmakers who bring in significant business for their organizations. Think about your company, firm, or charitable organization right now. How many people are responsible for the motherload of net-new revenue?

Sales and Marketing Information Overload

What is particularly surprising, though, is the fact that there is still a paucity of rainmakers despite the fact that there is so much information available to us on the topic of sales and marketing. The sheer volume of this information is mind-blowing. A search on Google of both “sales” and “marketing” will yield more than a billion results—each. The supply of books about sales and marketing available on Amazon is endless. Go into any bookstore and visit the “Sales and Marketing” shelves. Count the number of books on these topics. What’s more is the sheer number of sales seminars offered around the world and online—more than ever before. And there is no shortage of sales consultants to help us get better at bringing in the business. The idea is that there is ample information and assistance available to us on the topic of developing business, yet only about 2–5 percent of us translate that information into material results, namely becoming accomplished rainmakers for our organizations.

Something is wrong with this picture, as they say. Frankly, something is missing. It makes no sense whatsoever that there is so much information available to intelligent people and yet only a negligible percentage of them can take that information and produce significant results. What is missing is a single simple and effective approach to developing business that can work for anyone—and that can work quickly. The mere existence of so much information on this topic is the problem. There’s too much! It’s overwhelming for even the best-intentioned and hardest-working budding rainmaker.

Many of the books and seminars on the topic of sales and marketing have become quite complicated in recent years. Many books on sales have become textbooks, with charts, graphs, and elaborate processes designed to generate a sale. Increased complication makes any subject less accessible and more confusing and increases the likelihood that even the most promising of students will not reap the desired benefits from the education medium.

A Simple and Effective Approach to Bringing in the Business—Finally!

This book shares an approach to developing business that is both simple and effective. I have been in the trenches every day—just like you—for nearly three decades trying to generate business for my various endeavors, primarily in the legal profession. But the approach in the pages that follow is applicable to the development of business in any service profession, and to any company that sells products to others where personal relationships with customers are important, and to any not-for-profit organization for which fundraising is essential.

I completely understand the difficulty of getting potential clients to say yes and can truly empathize with the inherent limitations of the sales and marketing information overload mentioned above. There is too much information available to efficiently and effectively go about developing our business. You can use the approach in this book to maximize your value to your organization. You can use this approach to bring more money into your business and, in turn, put more money in your pocket. Use it to raise more money for your charitable organization and help the people you want to help more than ever before. I call this approach Crux Rainmaking—the crux of the matter when it comes to developing business.

The Secret of Crux Rainmaking

There are three ideas, or concepts, that are at the crux of what rainmaking is all about―hence the name Crux Rainmaking. These three concepts are manageable as compared to the overwhelming volume of information available to us on the topic of business development. We can get our arms around three ideas. We can focus our efforts on these three things going forward as we build our business. By so focusing, we can efficiently allocate our time, effort, and resources—without getting bogged down in countless steps and processes.

The three components of Crux Rainmaking are:

• Unique Business Relationships

• Strategic Lead Generation

• Mind [Re] Set

First, although developing relationships in business is nothing new, Crux Rainmaking goes further. It contends that the essence of translating leads into real business stems from ensuring that our relationship with a decision-maker is more unique than the relationship our competitors have with that individual. We can do this by developing and maintaining Unique Business Relationships (UBRs) with our contacts.

Second, to significantly increase our business originations, we need a means by which we quickly and efficiently can maximize the procurement of our desired potential clients and customers. There is a precise method that, if implemented correctly, can exponentially generate more desired leads and, thus, more opportunities for new business. This method includes five prongs, all of which work in tandem to maximize lead generation. We will take a look at each prong in detail in the pages that follow.

Third, the mindset of a rainmaker is quite distinguishable from other participants in the business community. The rainmaker’s brain simply works differently, and there are certain characteristics of it that we must understand. Once we understand these characteristics, we can then reset our minds to be consistent with that of the rainmaker’s.

Each of these three ideas is important. They work hand-in-hand to allow us to more strategically focus our business development efforts and more quickly increase the positive results of those efforts. We will take a close look at each of these three concepts in detail in the chapters to come.

Because this approach is simple, you will find neither endless statistics about trends nor predictions about the sales and marketing industry. What you will find in these pages is a systematic, three-step way to develop business that can be used by anyone to generate exponentially more income for an organization. It is a framework. Crux Rainmaking and other books or seminars or online information about the topic of sales and marketing are not mutually exclusive. My hope is that it is complementary to such other available information. It can be a foundation upon which all other available information is considered.

Whether you are just starting out in your organization or have been in the business or the charitable world for many years, Crux Rainmaking can be used to focus your business development efforts with the accuracy of a laser beam. It is manageable and can be easily implemented.

Ambitious Goals

I will discuss several things in this book that you already know. And that’s okay. If you are like me, you don’t think of or focus on every important thing every minute of every day. A friendly reminder, especially on a topic as important as generating business and increasing our personal value in our organizations, is welcomed. Crux Rainmaking is that reminder.

I also hope to share a number of new ideas with you, which may serve as a pathway to think more creatively about how you go about generating business. And perhaps my most ambitious goal: I’d like to get you thinking, perhaps for the first time, about your own innate potential not only to bring in business to your organization, but also to bring in a significant amount of new revenue. I believe we all have that ability. Few things are impossible if we want them enough. With the right foundation to build our business, we can, in a big way, increase the likelihood of generating the level of business we’ve always dreamed of.