Wait! Don’t delete this eNews! If you are
not in the professional services industry, I’m predicting you will still find immense value in reading this book. Or…just order the book for your favorite consultant, CPA, marketing guru, or other professional—and then ask them to give you their Top-10 take-aways over lunch—and what’s applicable to your organization.
(Shock them further—and pay for lunch!)The four co-authors of
The Activator Advantage are partners at DCM Insights, a company that helps professional services firms improve business development.
Matthew Dixon hooks you immediately in the Preface by describing his presentation to 400 partners of a strategy consulting firm at their annual retreat. His talk flopped and though scheduled for 60 minutes, the managing partner asked him to stop after 45 minutes!
(Must-read story. Awkward!)Dixon was told—in no uncertain terms—that this firm did NOT do sales. One of the senior partners later explained to Dixon that “the group had a deep aversion to the ‘S word,’ as he called it. ‘Sales,’ he explained, ‘has a very pejorative connotation around here.’”
As a result, Dixon and his co-authors went back to the drawing board and this book is the result: original and break-through research on five types of professionals. And get this—just one type, the “Activator,” is overwhelmingly more successful than the other four types in growing the business.
They collected detailed data on nearly 3,000 partner-level professionals across more than 40 professional services firms. Then they zeroed in on the top 80 business developers. “These interviews helped us to understand not just
what they do, but
how they do it—and even more importantly,
why they do the things they do.” The results, discovered the authors: “something entirely unexpected.”
The authors write,
“The results are eye-opening. It turns out that four of the five profiles—Realists, Debaters, Confidants, and Experts—are, in fact, negatively correlated with performance…” The more this average professional were to lean into any of those approaches,
the worse they would perform relative to how much revenue they could generate.
More concerning than this, however, is that 78 percent of the professionals we studied fell into one of those four profiles.”(Now I have your attention, right?) Whether you’re in a professional services firm—or you rely on these firms—you do want to know how to apply this research to your own shop. Nonprofit leaders will especially want to know how to identify an “Activator” who would make an effective fundraising professional.
THE 5:EXPERTS: Known for their deep knowledge and technical mastery, Experts "spend disproportionate time burnishing their images as thought leaders in the market through writing, publishing, speaking, and serving on industry panels and boards," not growing the business.
(“I didn’t go to law school to become a salesperson.”)CONFIDANTS: Trusted and empathetic, Confidants build deep relationships with clients, often becoming their go-to advisors for both personal and professional matters.
(Yet…they think they are immune to the coming changes in client loyalty.)DEBATERS: These are the challengers and critical thinkers who thrive on intellectual engagement, questioning assumptions to sharpen ideas and strategies. They, not the client, know what the client needs!
(And…they’re described by their colleagues as “sharp-elbowed, opinionated know-it-alls.”)REALISTS: Grounded and pragmatic, Realists focus on what’s practical and possible, often tempering ambition with a clear view of risks and constraints. Establishing trust is a big deal, knowing that clients have "been burned in the past by a professional."
(Yet…may misunderstand that selling professional services—often intangible services—requires a very different mindset, as Clayton Christensen argues in this 2013 HBR article.)ACTIVATORS: Get this: they generously share their rolodex with clients! Visionary and action-oriented, Activators are the catalysts who initiate movement, rally others, and relentlessly drive progress and results. (
And…they are “super-connectors,” heavy users of LinkedIn, and they don’t attend “an event hoping business development will happen,” but participate in conferences and industry gatherings “to make business development happen.”)MUST-READ. It’s tough to land on my favorite chapter, but it might be “How Activators Commit to Business Development.” The what, how, and why details are fascinating.
Example: one Activator has a routine where every Sunday night he religiously “writes three categories on a blank sheet of paper: client interactions, deal-specific action items, and ways to engage prospects and clients.” He practices a weekly rhythm of biz development next steps.
That’s all part of two critical habits of Activators:•
Habit 1: Business Development Rhythm
•
Habit 2: Prioritization
Under Habit 1,
the authors are cheerleaders for “developing a consistent, metronomic cadence.” I love that phrase. (See the graphic above!) They write,
“The consistency with which Activators reserve time for business development is the most critical, practical difference between Activators and non-Activators.”They urge professionals to avoid “intermittent business development” and they note three major problems with that routine:
1) The lack of new contacts (it’s a “numbers game”).
2)
It leads to “opportunity spoilage.”3) It’s inefficient. (“New contacts need nurturing. The longer we take between interactions, the more work it requires to rebuild that relationship.”)
Here are more reasons to read this new book:• Research by psychologists at Case Western Reserve University: Is willpower a learned skill? And why willpower, at some times and on some days, is less. (
Read more about fresh-baked cookies and radishes!)
• The chapter, “The Moments That Matter to an Activator,” includes a four-step “framework for insights to create client opportunities: Hypothesize, Disrupt, Justify, and Connect.”
•
Client loyalty, research is showing, is way down. The authors quote
Marshall Goldsmith’s wisdom, “what got you here won’t get you there.” So “…professionals should look to add Activator tools to their toolbelts and evolve their approaches to better suit the needs of a changing market” and “future-proof your success…”
• Maybe start with the chart on page 29: “The Activator Model” with a unique 4 x 3 matrix: Activator behaviors, Activator habits, Activator mindsets, and Activator pivot points. (They add it’s
not a sales methodology or a step-by-step approach—like baking a cake—but it’s a “road map.” See the chapter, “Why Activators Win.”)
So what do today's rainmakers do differently? • Option 1: Read the book.
• Option 2: Delegate your reading to a team member or board member.
• Option 3: Gift the book to a professional firm you work with and ask for 10 take-aways!
In my 2007 review, I wrote about a new revolution you might have missed—what happens in movements without a hierarchy. According to this classic book, “a lack of traditional leadership is giving rise to powerful groups that are turning industry and society upside down.” Still relevant almost 20 years later?
•
Read my review on Amazon for Issue No. 21, Jan. 27, 2007.
• Order from
Amazon.
• Listen on
Libro (5 hours, 43 minutes)
• Management Bucket #17 of 20:
The Operations BucketDo leaderless organizations actually work? Cut off a spider’s head and the poor guy is dead meat. Slice a leg off a starfish and the separated leg rejuvenates into a new starfish. This 2006 book spotlighted a new sea change afoot: decentralized organizations (starfish) that were giving the top-down centralized organizations (spiders) a run for their money. Still relevant?
For an entertaining, but highly informative and important look at why the Apaches, the Quakers, Alcoholics Anonymous, Wikipedia, craigslist (note the lower case "c") and other “open source” movements have changed and are changing the world, read or listen to this book.
Read why your vision will explode with new ideas and opportunities once you understand why when MGM (a spider) won their Supreme Court decision against Grokster (see also the Napster case), they really lost. (
Listen free to the first five minutes of Chapter 1.)
Issue No. 658 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (Oct. 3, 2025) features a new book coming Oct. 7—describing the four seasons of a CEO. The “...
Issue No. 660 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (Oct. 18, 2025) highlights a book urging you to choose the opposite like George Costanza did...
No comments:
Post a Comment