I recently attended the Women’s Business Conference, sponsored by NAWBO – the National Association of Women Business Owners. As a member of NAWBO for over 10 years (and current chapter President of NAWBO-Silicon Valley), I’m proud to say that the recent conference made me even more inspired to be a Woman Owned Business. As we celebrated the organization’s 40 year anniversary, some of our “founding mothers” were introduced, as were many Past National Presidents and other women who have truly blazed a trail for those of us who own our businesses today.
I got to thinking, what do we all have in common – besides being women? As business owners, we are responsible for bringing in the revenue – making rain. Without these skillsets in attracting customers, we could not have started or grown our businesses.
According to Wikipedia, “In business, a rainmaker is a person who brings in new business and wins new accounts almost by magic, since it is often not readily apparent how this new business activity is caused.” In short, rainmaking is about bringing in the business – by magic, or simply hard (yet targeted) work. It’s something we talk about regularly in the accounting related and legal professions. CPAs and attorneys are trusted business advisors to their clients. And in order to build their books of business and grow their practices (and chances of being promoted to principal or partner), they must go out and generate business. We need to (gasp!) become marketers and salespeople, and put ourselves out there to sell our services. For many, the thought of being a salesperson is simply so foreign and scary that it keeps them from ever achieving their goals of partnership or business ownership.
Why talk about Rainmaking here and now?
I’ve spent over 20 years building my career consulting with companies about their multi-state tax issues. And I’ve spent the better part of the last 13 years marketing my expertise to prospects and future clients in my own business. Over those years, I’ve honed a linear, repeatable process that has been successful for me. I took those skills and the passion behind them and developed a Rainmaker Series for accounting and finance professionals, in order to share this proven strategy with my colleagues so that they may also benefit from my “accountant’s approach to rainmaking” and apply it to their practices.
- Why? Because in addition to a passion about helping my clients with sales tax and income tax issues in 50 states, I have a passion for taking some of the fear out of the rainmaking process.
- How will I do that? I’m starting by presenting a program “Rainmaking for Accounting and Finance Professionals” at the AFWA National Conference in Pittsburgh, PA on October 27.
- Then what? In November, I’ll be rolling out a webinar series (“Jumpstart Your Rainmaking”) designed to delve deeper into the details and provide hands-on tools that participants can use to enhance their skillset.
In the meantime, stay tuned to this blog every Friday, where I’ll preview some tips and techniques for becoming a better Rainmaker.
I hope you’ll visit here regularly as I promise to dedicate a regular blog to the topic. (And if you happen to trip over some state tax information in the process, all the better too!)
Stay tuned, and get out that umbrella. It may be a wet autumn!
Monika Miles is President of Miles Consulting Group, a firm specializing in multi-state tax consulting for middle market businesses. Clients include technology, manufacturing, software and SaaS based companies doing businesses across state lines. Miles Consulting Group assists companies in determining the sales tax and income tax ramifications of creating a taxable presence in a state and how to address these issues with the various states. When she’s not assisting clients with multi-state tax issues, she passionately shares Rainmaking strategies with other professional services firms.
