The Ten Critical Steps to Becoming a Rainmaker

Consulting services require the power of the mind to help a client find a solution. No service that requires the power of the mind is ever a commodity, no matter how many people provide that service.

| July 09, 2010


By Ned Lips

Rainmaker Consulting services require the power of the mind to help a client find a solution. No service that requires the power of the mind is ever a commodity, no matter how many people provide that service.

  • Clients hire experts for their important work.
  • They cannot afford not to.
  • Clients will seek them out and pay them more. Therefore, to get the most lucrative work, to become a true rainmaker, we must prove we are experts and then some.

1. Be a Business
The biggest mindset change for a young professional is to recognize that each professional is a unique business. This is true whether one works for a firm or hangs out her own shingle. Clients buy a person and, if they have one, his team. To become a rainmaker the first step is to think like a generator of revenues, expenses and profits—a business.

2. Find Your Passion
As explained in the book Good to Great by Jim Collins, businesses become great when they become best in the world at something in which they are deeply passionate and use that to drive their economic engine. As a business, a consultant is no different. This is more difficult than it sounds. Find your passion in the tasks, concepts and processes you love. Then create a practice that exploits the things you love to do most. For example, a renowned expert in fraud and corruption investigations explained that his passion is solving complex financial puzzles. His career took him through audit, forensic accounting for litigation, fraud and ultimately to the most complicated puzzles in this area, international fraud and corruption investigations. His passion is not in fraud; it is in solving the most complex financial puzzles.

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