True or False: Too Many of Your Partners Are Reluctant Rainmakers

Does your firm have partners and other subject matter experts that are “reluctant rainmakers”?

These are folks that have superior technical skills and an abundance of experience and expertise, but when it comes to sales and marketing, well, let’s just say that these types of activities are just not their forte.

You typically won’t find them designing clever lead generation campaigns, they’d rather poke out an eyeball than make cold calls, they tend to cluster at firm marketing events. But put them in front of a prospect that’s sales ready and they become a sales closing machine. Here’s why: at that point where they’re pitching to a qualified lead that’s sales ready they’re not “selling” … they’re talking about their first love.

But partners are expected to be actively involved in marketing and sales activities. Reluctant rainmakers typically do this reactively through making contacts at associations, building a network, or hitchhiking working with other partners in the hopes of grabbing a cross sale opportunity. So how do you get them to become proactive?

There’s another way to use their skills, talent and subject matter expertise for new business called “content marketing”. Content marketing is a fundamental part of inbound marketing.

In a nutshell, inbound marketing – also known as permission or pull marketing – are strategies and tactics to help a firm get found first by prospects searching on line for information or solutions. One of the best ways to do this is by posting thought leadership to an optimized website.

Recent studies show that 93% of business buyers use search to begin the buying process, and 90% of business buyers say when they’re ready to buy, they’ll find you.  So, instead of using a reluctant rainmaker’s business development time for sales and marketing activities that are not really in their comfort zone, ask them to use their subject matter expertise to create content as their key contribution to the firm’s new business efforts

What they would do is to take an idea or an insight or make an observation and turn it into content like a blog post, a white paper, a slide show, a video, a podcast, a new article, or even a webinar. Next, that content gets published on your website. Then, when a prospect is doing a search, that published content will come up in the search engine rankings, and with one click, that prospect will be delivered to your website. Tuck that content behind a form where the prospect must give you their contact information before getting the benefits of your reluctant rainmaker’s thought leadership, and you have lead generation

There are a number of best practices for doing this the right way.

In the new world of professional services marketing, content is king, and your reluctant rainmakers can use their subject matter expertise to be knights of the round table – or conference table as the case may be!