From the President's Desk
Rainmaking and Food: Not Perfect Together
 Getting
new clients and solidifying and expanding relationships
with current clients often involves sales calls, presentations,
food, and drink. How to Become a Rainmaker, by Jeffrey
Fox, provides some rules for these occasions. Here are three
of my favorites.
Don’t drink coffee during
a sales call. The duration of the average sales call is
eighteen to twenty minutes. You do not have time to accept
the coffee, stir in the cream, or drink the coffee. You
have to maximize time and concentrate on your objectives.
Drinking coffee wastes time and interferes with your presentation.
You can’t take note with a coffee cup in your hand.
And heaven forbid you should spill the coffee.
A luncheon meeting is a sales
call with tableware. You are not there to sample the food.
You are there to ask questions, make a presentation, and
get a commitment to use your services. Don’t waste
time concentrating on the food. It is all right if you do
not eat anything. It is impolite to survey your dish while
your client is talking and you can’t talk notes with
a fork in your hands or food in your mouth.
Always take the best seat
in a restaurant. You should take the seat that looks out
onto the restaurant or the one that places your back to
a wall. You don’t want your client’s attention
to wander or to be interrupted by something more interesting
that your presentation. Your client has invested some of
his precious time by meeting with you. You don’t want
to squander that by providing an opportunity for him to
be distracted.
For more information, see
Fox, Jeffrey, How to Become a Rainmaker, Hyperion,
2000. See our webstore for
these books on marketing:
The Expert Witness
Marketing Book
Marketing for the Legal Nurse
Consultant
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