Should Sustainability investors, CEOs and boards care about "The Rainmaker Dependency" and your largest deals? Only if our teams "think" we have this sorted and the research shows we do not.
Each and EVERY one of 400+ B2B businesses - from F500s to G2000s to scale ups - we've worked with have "The Rainmaker Dependency".
Amex. HP. Tata. Oracle. Ericsson. Saab. And every scale up we've worked with. No exceptions.
(If you ARE the exception, you belong in the next edition of the Megadeals book...let's talk.)
The Rainmaker Dependency ("The RD") is invisible to many as it requires an uncommon, holistic view across strategy, customer decision-making process, offers, product, marketing, selling & service.
It requires the kind of experience that comes from seeing - and assessing - what works and what does not over 30+ years of tech innovation cycles, economic cycles and large deal-making triumphs AND failures.
The RD is a direct outcome of the complexity of what we sell and the environment we sell into...decisions to buy our offer must be anchored across many departments (due to user alignment and system/process integration, for ex.) AND from the board of directors down (due to risk/macro factors).
Orchestrating these deals requires uncommon smarts, skills, steps, experience, empathy and resolve that only a "rainmaker" possesses. And they do not scale.
If you "get" the impact of The Rainmaker Dependency - a few rainmakers on your team driving 90%+ of revenues and 100%+ of profit in just a handful of accounts - you are ahead of the game.
If you are in action, great! Ask:
- When does The RD matter?
- How to define strategy?
- Who to employ w/ what skills?
- "How to" on messaging, process & tools
...to address this common bottleneck to scalability, profit & growth.
Watch for:
- The Rainmaker Dependency is unarticulated, unidentified or unaddressed at the board level
- No clear articulation of a buyer decision-making process at the top 10-50 accounts
- Positioning & messaging as a major issue creating confusion w/ executives at your buyer
- Hiring more reps & training not working
- "Marketing THEN selling" process not building trust w/ board & CXO-level buyers
The offer: if no one on your team or portfolio is elevating the need to focus on large deals & the most common bottlenecks to growth & profit...might you benefit from drafting an MJ onto your large deal team?
// Neil Passero
