evolving; the pendulum is swinging to a more balanced perspective. Susan Cain, a leading twenty‐first‐century researcher on introversion, offers this perspective in her wonderful book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking:
We make a grave mistake to embrace the Extrovert Ideal so unthinkingly. Some of our greatest ideas, art and inventions – from the theory of evolution to van Gogh's sunflowers to the personal computer – came from quiet cerebral people who knew how to tune in to their inner worlds and the treasures to be found there.
Furthermore, according to Cain, one‐third to one‐half of Americans lean toward introversion – in other words, one out of every two or three people you know. If these statistics surprise you, that's probably because so many people pretend to be extroverts. Cain's research suggests that closet introverts pass undetected in the corridors of corporate America.
I suspect that a healthy percentage of us in the professional services tilt toward introversion. By nature, many professionals are cerebral, inward‐focused problem‐solvers. We live inside of our heads much of the time. We draw energy by wrestling with thorny issues for hours, days, or weeks on end. Many of you may relate to what I'm talking about.
The Rainmaker Mindset
You may be thinking to yourself, “Wait, I don't want to be a salesperson!” If so, I'm confident you're in good company. Don't panic; we don't have to be salespeople at all. Or fake extroverts. The key is to view our work as rainmakers as helping others; to see the process of client development as a journey in helping identify and find solutions to client problems.
Mindset Shift One: Seeing ourselves as problem‐solvers instead of salespeople
Some may see the distinction between calling us problem‐solvers versus salespeople as purely semantics. It is far more than this. It is a total mindset shift in the way we view the work we do as rainmakers. It's important to see our role as partners in a journey of helping solve important problems rather than selling services. Products may be sold by salespeople, but clients hire trusted advisors.
Tim Nath is the operations practice director of Aspirant. Aspirant is a Pittsburgh‐based management consulting firm with approximately 100 employees. Like many of the senior professionals at Aspirant, Tim comes from an operating background. Tim shared with me that when he first entered consulting he was uncomfortable with selling:
If I could go back in time, I would like to know that rather than going into a client with “Here's what I can sell,” it is really about “What problems do you have that I can help solve?” I'm an introvert by nature. It always rubbed me the wrong way to think about being in a “sales position.” But when I think about it as “I'm helping someone solve an important problem” – that's something that I can get on board with.
There's an old adage in sales that goes: no one likes to be sold, but everyone loves to buy. This is to say that clients don't like pushy salespeople, but they welcome genuine help from trusted advisors who can help them solve problems and advance their goals.
Wherever you land on the introversion/extroversion spectrum, I encourage you to follow the wisdom offered by the most successful rainmakers: whatever you do, don't call it selling.
Lessons from Dominic Barton, Global Managing Director at McKinsey & Company
Dominic Barton successfully led McKinsey & Company from 2009 to 2018. While McKinsey is one of the most well‐known and respected management consulting firms in the world, Dominic is not a household name like Elon Musk. We won't see Dominic on Shark Tank like Sara Blakely, but in the world of management consulting, Dominic casts a large shadow.
Dominic shares with us his thoughts on winning client business:
Relationships with clients are critical. These relationships are based on trust… the way you've worked together…how you interacted together with people – that becomes the most critical thing.
What are the implications of this if we're more inward‐looking than outgoing? Clearly, we need to know people and build our network of professional relationships – and this is where extroverts excel, right?
There is hope for us introverts, because as we'll learn from Dominic, there is no one right way to build our personal networks. With over 25,000 employees, I'm guessing McKinsey has more than a few introverts in its mix. Dominic shared this:
It's very important to build a professional network. I didn't realize this until I was five or six years in the firm. What is the approach you're gonna use to develop relationships with different people? There are many different ways of doing it.
Dominic continued:
That can be through knowledge. One of my mentors established a banking practice. All his client relationships came from what he wrote. He was not a guy who did cold‐calling. It was through his writing. He had perspectives on the industry, where it was going, what he thought needed to be done and how. And so his model was he wrote a lot. And through writing, he established a reputation and then a network. And he was always busy.
This story is full of hope for many of us. Many writers lean toward the introverted side. We spend a lot of time reading, thinking, and writing about our perspectives on matters pertaining to our areas of interest.
Writing, as Dominic's story suggests, is a form of networking – networking for introverts, a way of becoming friends with strangers. The author Pico Iyer once quipped, “Writing is, in the end, that oddest of anomalies: an intimate letter to a stranger.”
Pico's sentiment is shared by Judy Selby, a partner in the New York law firm Hinshaw & Culbertson LLP. Judy has over 25 years’ experience in complex insurance coverage litigation and international arbitration. Judy writes a lot for her target audience on the topics of cyber insurance and privacy, and she has found writing to be an effective way for her to build relationships with those she wishes to serve.
Judy offered this from her writing experience: “When I meet people for the first time, they feel like they already know me. They're like, ‘Judy Selby – yes, I know you – I've read your work. And, so, you come into this new relationship with credibility and trust.”
Another example from Dominic Barton offers hope to those of us who don't shine at business happy hours:
And there was another mentor of mine. He also wrote, but his approach was more personal. He used cold‐letter writing. He would think about transitions for new CEOs coming in – and these were people that he didn't know. And he would write the CEO and say, “I'd like to talk to you because I've got some news on what you might be thinking about, and I'd like to have a discussion.”
Susan Cain, the author of Quiet, makes a point of differentiating between introversion and shyness. According to Cain, “Introverts are not necessarily shy. Shyness is the fear of social disapproval or humiliation, while introversion is the preference for environments that are not overstimulating.” I think this is an important observation. Some introverts are shy, but many are not. An example Cain offers is Bill Gates: “Bill Gates, who by all accounts keeps to himself, is unfazed by the opinions of others.”
One last example from Dominic offers an approach that I think many of us will feel more comfortable with in building our personal network:
It was probably when I was four or five years in Toronto and the office manager asked me to help with a hospital board.
