What Today’s Rainmakers Do Differently

Much research has been conducted to determine what makes top salespeople at B2B companies perform better than their peers. (See, for example, “ The End of Solution Sales ,” HBR, July–August 2012.) But little has been done on professional services firms, which have a unique go-to-market model in the B2B landscape. At most B2B companies, demand generation, sales, product delivery, customer success, and account management are discrete functions and tasks. But at professional services firms, partners are responsible for doing all of them. While most professional services firms have business-development support teams, the partners are “doer-sellers” and own the entire business-development and service-delivery life cycle. As “rainmakers,” they must build awareness of their expertise in the market to generate demand, identify and close new client business, deliver the work, and then renew and expand the relationship over time.