From rainmaker to rainmaking
“I’m not really a salesperson.” Almost every founder says it, and almost every founder is wrong. Not because they underestimate themselves, but because the choice is not theirs to make. Whoever starts a company becomes its face. In those first years, clients don’t buy an offering, they buy a person. The same goes for the partner in a professional firm: the client does business with him, not with the firm behind him.
We have a word for someone who brings in clients without anyone being able to explain how. We call him a rainmaker, after the rainmakers who promised water to dry land. The word predates business: it first appeared in 1775, for the medicine man who summoned rain through ritual. And that image is precisely the problem. It assumes magic, and magic cannot be taught, planned or handed over.
The two faces of one skill
Rainmaking is not a trait but a skill, and that skill has two faces. In the beginning it is about you: can you, with who you are and who you know, win clients? Later it is about something else entirely: can you make rain fall without dancing for it yourself? Can you uncouple yourself from every client conversation, without fully letting go of what attracted the clients in the first place?
This is where most companies get stuck, and the two common answers don’t help. Keep doing everything yourself: the company plateaus on one agenda, because there is only one rainmaker at the table and his week has as many hours as yours. Give everything away: then exactly what the clients came for disappears. The third way is a mix, and that mix is not a compromise but a paradox. Part 3 of this series is about that.
Why this is not a luxury problem
Research among 120 entrepreneurs in six countries shows how stubborn the pattern is: founders postpone selling, finish their product first and treat the commercial side as something to add later (Onyemah, Rivera Pesquera and Ali 2013). Those who do sell, sell alone, and keep selling alone. Recent research on scaling ventures shows that founder roles do evolve, but the commercial role sticks to the founder hardest (Van Lancker et al. 2023). The client wants the founder, the founder wants the client, and meanwhile nobody in the organisation learns to make rain.
In established professional services firms the pattern is identical, except the rainmaker there is called a partner. The relationship lives in one head, the team works behind the scenes on files, and when the partner leaves or retires, the rain leaves with him. Zoltners, Sinha and Lorimer (2011) asked the question every firm should ask itself: who actually owns the client relationship, your people or your company? As long as the answer is one name, your revenue has a single point of failure, and your company is neither scalable nor sellable.
The movement
From rainmaker to rainmaking is the movement from winning clients as a person to winning clients as an organisation. Understand that movement well: it is the company that moves, not the rainmaker who disappears. I know CEOs of organisations with thousands of people who still make rain themselves, and that is not a failure but their strength. What changes is their second assignment: making sure the organisation learns to make rain itself, what growers so elegantly call organic growth. Keep making rain, and build rainmaking. This series follows that movement in five links.
The five links of the movement
1. Steering growth means being proactive. Waiting for whoever calls is no longer a strategy.
2. Being proactive means choosing. Your time is limited, so which clients yes, and which ones no.
3. Choosing is only possible from your DNA. Without DNA every choice is arbitrary, and arbitrariness doesn’t last.
4. Keeping focus only works with your people on board. Define the DNA together with everyone who carries the growth story, not in the boardroom.
5. Focus only becomes growth in the conversation. As the rainmaker, teach your people to hold conversations that add value.
From rainmaker to rainmaking. That is the movement.
In practice: take your ten most important clients and write behind each name who they call when things get tense. If the same name appears ten times, you know where your ceiling hangs. The next parts are about lifting it.
References
- Merriam-Webster. s.v. “Rainmaker.” Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Accessed August 2026.
- Onyemah, Vincent, Martha Rivera Pesquera, and Abdul Ali. 2013. “What Entrepreneurs Get Wrong.” Harvard Business Review, May 2013.
- Van Lancker, Evy, Mirjam Knockaert, Veroniek Collewaert, and Nicola Breugst. 2023. “Preparing for Scaling: A Study on Founder Role Evolution.” Journal of Business Venturing 38 (4): 106315.
- Zoltners, Andris A., Prabhakant Sinha, and Sally E. Lorimer. 2011. “Who Owns Your Customer Relationships: Your Salespeople or Your Company?” Harvard Business Review, July 2011.
Series · From rainmaker to rainmaking · Add Business
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Why your best customers are not on LinkedIn
The paradox every founder wrestles with
You post on LinkedIn every day. Tens of thousands of impressions a year. An engagement rate the experts call “good.” Nice replies: great post, interesting, thanks for sharing. And then you count your new clients. Zero.
Here is the paradox: the more visible you become online, the more invisible you are to the people who actually matter. So where are your ideal customers? Not in your feed. They live around the corner. They are friends with your current clients. And they scroll past your post among hundreds of others.
This article is not about using LinkedIn better. It is about a different question: why should you be there at all to win clients? And if the answer is “not necessarily,” what do you do instead?
The LinkedIn illusion: reach is not meaning
LinkedIn promises visibility, and you do reach people. But reach is not a conversation. And a conversation is not a client.
Do the math with me. A thousand connections. Your post reaches sixty people. Three react. One might become a lead. That is a tenth of a percent of your network, and you still have to convert that person.
Then ask yourself the real question: how many of those thousand are truly your ideal client? Ten? And how many of those do you reach with that one post? Maybe one. Maybe zero. That is the illusion. You feel visible, but mostly to people who already know you, do not need your service, or are consultants themselves posting because that is simply what you do. We wrote about it earlier in Beyond the Algorithm.
Proximity: your best customers live nearby
Want a certain CEO to know you, trust you, and eventually call? Then do not hope he sees your post. His feed is full. But do you know who does stand close to him? His accountant. His lawyer. The entrepreneur he had lunch with last week. The client who just closed a fine project with him.
That is his ecosystem. His warm network. And chances are you know someone in it. So why post, instead of sending that accountant a card with a single question: do you know anyone struggling with growth and open to a conversation?
The power of that warm network is not a soft skill. Granovetter showed back in 1973 that weak ties, acquaintances and loose contacts, are often more valuable for new opportunities than your inner circle (Granovetter 1973). Your close network knows what you know. Weak ties open other circles, other chances. But only if you activate them. Not with a post. With a conversation.
Reaching fewer people with more attention wins more clients than reaching more people with less attention.
Five postcards a day
Picture this: every morning you write five handwritten cards. To friends of your best clients. To prospects who fit who you are. No pitch, just a warm, personal invitation to talk things over. No book-here. No link in the comments. Simply one human inviting another.
Why does it work? Because almost no one does it. A card stands out. It stays on the desk, and every time they see it they think: this person made an effort. A post is gone in the feed after three seconds.
Five cards a day is a hundred a month. If ten percent respond, you have ten conversations. If a fifth of those convert, that is two new clients a month. Twenty-four a year. Fifteen minutes each morning, before you open your inbox.
So stop with CTAs that feel like selling. The people who click book-here are rarely your ideal client. They do not want a form, they want a real conversation. Customers are not targets, as we wrote before, and that starts with how you approach them.
In practice
In practice: Stop posting daily. Post something relevant for your ecosystem once a week, without a CTA. Build a list of twenty people who genuinely fit you. Order beautiful cards. Write five tomorrow morning, before you do anything else. Follow up three days later with a short, personal note. And measure differently: count conversations and clients, not likes. Less reach, more proximity, more result.
References
- Granovetter, Mark S. 1973. “The Strength of Weak Ties.” American Journal of Sociology 78 (6): 1360–1380.
Series · Beyond Visibility · Add Business
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The eco-network flight plan
In the blog ‘Stop chasing customers’ we covered the why: you orchestrate an ecosystem instead of chasing customers. This is the how. One repeatable flight plan you can run whether you are looking for your first customer or your fiftieth, at home or across the border. Six moves, in order.
Move 1. Sharpen your value proposition
Everything starts with the value your customer ultimately walks away with, not with what you sell. Adner (2017) defines an ecosystem as the alignment structure of the partners who need to work together for a value proposition to come true. Without a sharp proposition there is nothing to align around. So frame it from the customer’s outcome, in one sentence an outsider would understand.
Move 2. Map the ecosystem
Ask yourself who all has to act for that value to land with your customer. Map the actors, their positions, who hands off to whom, and the links between them (Adner 2017). Mark two things: the gaps where nobody makes the handoff, and the gatekeepers who can open a door or hold it shut. That map is your terrain, not your pipeline.
Move 3. Find your anchor node
On that map you look for the one relationship that unlocks the most: a reference customer, a partner, a community or an institution. That is your runway. It is the weak-tie lesson from ‘Stop chasing customers’ in practice: do not pick the easiest node, but the node that introduces you to many others (Granovetter 1973).
Move 4. Enter through credibility, not price
At a new node the first question is rarely ‘what does it cost?’, but ‘can I trust you?’. So lead with proof and a warm introduction, and turn your first win into a visible reference that de-risks the next one. How you build that credibility is covered in the blog ‘Credibility beats price’.
Move 5. Orchestrate the flywheel
Now you move from deals to dynamics. Dhanaraj and Parkhe (2006) describe how a hub steers a network it does not own, through three levers: keep knowledge moving between the members, make sure everyone wins a fair share, and keep the network stable enough to trust. Reward the connectors who send your business along. A network that wins when you win scales your growth for you.
Move 6. From effectual to causal, deliberately
In the beginning you improvise with what you have. But as patterns repeat, you systematize: qualify, document what works, add people and channels. Keep the founder or the senior relationship holder as the credible person out front while you do it. You build a system without losing the human touch that closes the deal.
The flight plan in brief
1. Sharp value proposition · 2. Map the ecosystem · 3. Anchor node · 4. Enter through credibility · 5. Orchestrate the flywheel · 6. Effectual to causal
A network that wins when you win scales your growth for you.
In practice: pick one market or one big opportunity. Run the flight plan on paper: write your value proposition in one sentence, draw the map, circle your anchor node, and decide what proof you bring in at that node. The rest of the moves follow on their own once that first node says yes.
References
- Adner, Ron. 2017. “Ecosystem as Structure: An Actionable Construct for Strategy.” Journal of Management 43 (1): 39–58.
- Dhanaraj, Charles, and Arvind Parkhe. 2006. “Orchestrating Innovation Networks.” Academy of Management Review 31 (3): 659–669.
- Granovetter, Mark S. 1973. “The Strength of Weak Ties.” American Journal of Sociology 78 (6): 1360–1380.
Series · From first customer to ecosystem · Add Business
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Where do you fish: upstream or downstream?
Ahti Levaho, a sales leader at Eltel Finland, once asked me a question I could never quite shake: ‘Marc, where are you fishing? Upstream or downstream?’. In an earlier piece I wrote that the client now comes to the table already knowing, on equal footing, and that as a result value now emerges only in the conversation. That immediately raises a harder question. If the conversation is so decisive, how do you even get to it with a new contact? The answer is not: send more. It is: choose more carefully where and how you cast the line.
Downstream is crowded, and usually too late
Downstream is where most salespeople stand. That is where tenders are published, where leads come in and where campaigns wait for results. The water is wide and calm, and everyone is standing in it. You fight on price, on speed, at the last minute. And here it connects to the previous blog. As early as 2012, Adamson, Dixon and Toman showed that B2B buyers work through most of their buying process before they ever speak to a salesperson (Adamson, Dixon and Toman 2012); Gartner later calculated that a buyer spends barely seventeen percent of the journey with suppliers (Gartner 2019). By the time that buyer has written out the request, the information asymmetry has already vanished entirely and the shortlist has already been drawn up in their head. In ninety-five percent of the deals that were won, the winner was on that list on day one (6sense 2025). Downstream you no longer have a conversation. You have a comparison. And in a comparison you are, as I wrote before, just another data point.
Upstream is where the conversation is still possible
Upstream it is different. There the plans are still in motion, there the right people are still thinking things through, and there is room for a real conversation, long before there is a tender. That is not romance, it is strategy. Narver, Slater and MacLachlan (2004) showed that a proactive market orientation, in which you help shape latent needs before the client articulates them, predicts new success better than merely reacting to what the market already asks for. Upstream is exactly that: you are there while the need is still forming, not once it has already been written out. So do not fish harder. Choose better where you cast the line.
Calling more is not a strategy
The reflex with a thin pipeline is volume. More emails, more calls, more campaigns. It feels productive: opening a list of two hundred names and hitting send has the texture of work. But mostly it multiplies noise, and noise is precisely what the client runs into everywhere already. The upstream approach rests on three convictions that run directly counter to this.
Scarcity creates attention. Someone who senses they were deliberately chosen, rather than selected in bulk, responds differently. It is the scarcity principle that Cialdini (1984) described, applied to your first contact. The physical world lies fallow. Now that inboxes have become pure noise, a handwritten letter stands out: neuroscientific research shows that physical mail is processed with less cognitive effort and remembered better than email (Canada Post 2015). Personalization is the highest lever. Tailoring your message to how someone really thinks and decides is the most valuable thing you can do before you send anything.
A bit of network science helps with the selection. Granovetter (1973) showed that it is not your strongest but your weak ties that open new doors. Burt (1992) refined this: the real value lies in bridging ‘structural holes’, the gaps between groups that do not yet know each other, because that is exactly where you find non-redundant information and new opportunities. The ideal prospect therefore sits in the sweet spot: roughly five to fifteen shared connections. Too few and you are invisible; too many and you no longer bring any new information. A warm introduction through a shared connection is always the strongest upstream move.
The 1-2-3 method: five choices per week, three steps
In practice this translates into a single rhythm: five deliberate choices per week, three steps, and the patience to let a conversation ripen. It starts with selection, before the first letter. Five people per week, chosen on three criteria: do they fit who you really help, do they sit in the sweet spot of shared connections, and do you have real context about their situation? And read how someone thinks before you write a single word.
Step 1: the physical package. A postcard, a personal handwritten letter, and a QR code to a dedicated landing page. The letter says three things: why you are contacting this particular person, what you recognize in their situation, and which hand you are extending. The landing page is not a sales page but a verification screen: ‘Who is this person, and is this worth my time?’. The headline I use says it all: you are not looking for more clients, you are looking for the right ones.
Step 2: the connection. You do not push, the recipient chooses: a LinkedIn connection, a phone call, or a coffee right away. That is not a detail. It is exactly the equal footing from the previous blog, put into practice. The client is at the wheel, you offer.
Step 3: the cockpit conversation. Short, five to fifteen minutes, no pitch. The other person already has context, so you ask sharp questions instead of explaining. Rackham (1988) showed long ago that success in complex sales is tied to the quality of your questions, not the force of your arguments: does this fit now, is this the right moment, what is really going on? Exactly the conversation the previous blog was about.
You are not looking for more clients. You are looking for the right ones.
Why this works on equal footing
Every part of this approach respects the new reality. You choose deliberately, because you only have something to say to those you truly understand in their context, their job-to-be-done (Christensen and Raynor 2003): that is the conversation beyond the expertise. You let the client verify for themselves through the landing page, because they want to be at the wheel. You let them choose the channel, without pressure. And your conversation is sensemaking (Adamson 2022), not a sales pitch, because value does not arise in what you tell but in the interaction itself (Vargo and Lusch 2004). That is how you approach new contacts in a world where the client already knows everything: not with volume, not with information, but by earning one real conversation, at the right moment.
In practice: do not open a list of two hundred this week. Choose five. For each one, write down a single reason why you are contacting that specific person, a reason that fits no one else. Send one thing by post. And then wait for them to choose. Upstream does not start with sending more. It starts with choosing better.
References
- 6sense. 2025. B2B Buyer Experience Report. San Francisco: 6sense.
- Adamson, Brent. 2022. “Sensemaking for Sales.” Harvard Business Review 100 (1): 48–57.
- Adamson, Brent, Matthew Dixon, and Nicholas Toman. 2012. “The End of Solution Sales.” Harvard Business Review 90 (7–8): 60–68.
- Burt, Ronald S. 1992. Structural Holes: The Social Structure of Competition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
- Canada Post. 2015. A Bias for Action: The Neuroscience Behind the Response-Driving Power of Direct Mail. Ottawa: Canada Post.
- Christensen, Clayton M., and Michael E. Raynor. 2003. The Innovator’s Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
- Cialdini, Robert B. 1984. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. New York: William Morrow.
- Gartner. 2019. The B2B Buying Journey. Stamford, CT: Gartner.
- Granovetter, Mark S. 1973. “The Strength of Weak Ties.” American Journal of Sociology 78 (6): 1360–1380.
- Narver, John C., Stanley F. Slater, and Douglas L. MacLachlan. 2004. “Responsive and Proactive Market Orientation and New-Product Success.” Journal of Product Innovation Management 21 (5): 334–347.
- Rackham, Neil. 1988. SPIN Selling. New York: McGraw-Hill.
- Vargo, Stephen L., and Robert F. Lusch. 2004. “Evolving to a New Dominant Logic for Marketing.” Journal of Marketing 68 (1): 1–17.
Series · Value in the conversation · Add Business
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This insight does not stand alone. Explore the other parts of this series and take the next step in your own course.