Book review: Rainmaking Made Simple

I will always associate Rainmaking Made Simple by Mark Maraia with one particular line. I will forever remember the Litany Against Fear from Frank Herbert’s “Dune,” (very helpful for marketing people) and a line from “Beowulf” praising the title character’s chieftain (“Though drunk, he slew not hearth-companions”).  Thus will “Rainmaking Made Simple” be tied in my mind to the wonderful laugh (ha-ha) and insight (ah-ha) I got when reading the following selection from the chapter, “Excuses for Failing to Market:”

“When you hear this [‘I’m too busy. The last thing I want is more work’], come right back with… ‘Have you raised your rates lately?’”

Raise the price immediately

I laughed so hard that I work up my sleeping three-year-old. And, as stated above, this was an “ah-ha” as well as a “ha-ha” for me. I spent 12+ years in retail marketing before coming over to professional services side. In that life, if you’d told me your product sold out in the first day of sales, or that you couldn’t keep merchandise on the shelf, I’d have told you, “Raise the price immediately.” It took Mark’s book, though, to help me bridge that gap in my own understanding. Mark scores big points with me throughout this book with such insights into the often mysterious process of “rainmaking.”

[For an excerpt "Marketing in Slow Times," see http://www.lawmarketing.com/publications/news/pub407.cfm on the LawMarketing Portal.]

In his chapter, “Giving Effective Feedback,” he suggests giving positive reinforcement first, and then ideas for improvement. So I’ll start with what I liked most about the book, and close with some constructive criticism.

Consistent themes

First of all, he’s consistent. Throughout the text, Mark lands on a number of themes repeatedly. They include:

• Preparation before meetings – do your homework
• Ask more “high energy” questions – listen more than you talk
• Work toward “advances” (see below) and measure your progress accordingly
• Meet face-to-face whenever possible
• Feedback from failures is much more potent than from successes
• Write down ideas, goals, next steps, follow-ups

If you read this book front-to-back, as I did, you may find some of the repetition tedious. The book isn’t meant to be read that way, so chill out. It’s more of a reference than a text book, to be considered whenever reviewing a particular subject or need. Mark’s introduction makes that clear. And it’s meant to be read by lawyers, not by the marketing department. Not that all y’all marketing directors shouldn’t read it, but we’re not the audience being directly addressed.

Consistency is good, and reassures me that this book was indeed written by someone who has some real-world chops. I have read other books on professional development that give diametrically opposed advice within the confines of their two covers; one indicator of an armchair coach. Mark is consistent, and many of the activities he suggests in one area will be reinforced in other sections.

Also a plus is that Mark’s experiences seem to have been predominantly with lawyers. Although many of the suggestions would probably work well for architecture and CPA firms, most of the anecdotes are from the legal world. Because this review is for a legal marketing Web site, that counts as a plus as far as I’m concerned.

Original concepts

Originality is another of the book’s strengths. I can’t claim to have read every book on professional selling, but I’ve ingested my fair share. There are some concepts that seem to be endlessly regurgitated as part of the communal cud of the genre. And while Mark’s book does bite on some of these (“make marketing fun,” “return calls promptly,” “avoid random acts of lunch”) there’s plenty of new material here.

One of the concepts he puts forward that I haven’t come across elsewhere is that of the “advance.” He refers to this as a “specific next step, [defined] as a possible outcome to marketing meetings.” For example, if an attorney meets with a current client in order to cross-sell the firm’s other practice areas, an “advance” might be a commitment on the part of the client to speak with the practice lead for that group. It’s a way of having attainable, specific goals somewhere between the “I don’t know this person from Adam” and “Now they’re a new client.” It’s a good way of reducing a seeming impasse into smaller, manageable steps.

I also appreciate that the book has lots of lists of “things to do,” and almost all of them are concrete, verb-heavy instructions: “call,” “send,” “meet with,” “calculate,” “seek feedback from,” “keep a log of,” etc. When reviewing strategy documents or project plans, I always counsel my employees and peers to avoid “goal-less” actions; “review,” “revise,” “consider,” “evaluate,” “analyze,” etc. Mark sticks to “things” rather than “concepts,” which is refreshing.

48 separate activities

This specificity is what I liked most about this title, but it’s also what makes it hard to recommend without a caveat or two. I didn’t expect to find 48 chapters in a book with “Made Simple” in the title. Nothing that is simple can possibly require 48 separate activities. In the forward Mark explains that these chapters are meant to be short and ingested individually, “…just before you undertake an activity.” That, to me, is a bit disingenuous from an author who repeats “prepare, prepare, prepare” over and over. Preparation before an individual activity is important, but many professionals need an overview or system within which to place their activities. There is not much in the way of how to regulate a range of activities within a balanced practice. All the individual items are great, but there isn’t much of a “big picture.”

Mark states in the forward that the book is “light on theory and heavy on skills because professionals have little tolerance for fluff.” I, too, prefer concrete action to airy philosophy (unless there is beer involved). But there is a difference between “theory” and “strategy.” I highly recommend this book for practitioners or marketers looking for real-world, insightful, original, often humorous ideas on tactics for business development. What I’d love to see in Mark’s next book, though, are his thoughts on strategies to successfully integrate these tactics. The best coaches not only make up great plays, but have an overall strategy for the entire season.