Business Development

How to grow: instead of laying people off, Ferrazzi them

I've just invented a new verb -- to Ferrazzi. It's one of those verbs that's also a noun, like "summer." The inspiration came from several places.

In today's Wall Street Journal Law Blog, there's a piece about the true savings to firms from associate layoffs. Calculations vary wildly, with one of the most intriguing being Mike O'Horo's estimate that each laid-off associate saves each equity partner around $400. This teeny number, combined with the problems these firms may have in staffing back up when the economy gets back on its feet, are the basis for O'Horo's argument that laying associates off due to the recession is a bad move. He further suggests that this would be unneccesary if equity partners did a better job of marketing.

I think he's half right and half wrong. I think that instead of simply laying them off, the associates should be out there marketing, too. They should be Ferrazzied. Rather than using a meat axe, in making these changes, the firms need to be using a scalpel. The result could well be that they grow in a recession. I've seen it happen.

The term arises from the career of Keith Ferrazzi, author of Never Eat Alone, a well-known book on networking. Early in said career, Ferrazzi was an associate at a big consulting firm, and wasn't doing too well. However, being smarter than the average bear, the firm noticed that Ferrazzi was really good at business development. Here's what happened:

Still, my first annual review was devastating. I received low marks for not doing what I was asked to do with the gusto and focus that was expected of me. But my supervisors, with whom I had already developed relationships and who were aware of all my extracurricular activities, had another idea. Together, we cooked up a job description that previously did not exist at the company.

My mentors gave me a $150,000 expense account to do what I had already been doing: developing business, representing the firm with speaking engagements, and reaching out to the press and business world in ways that would strengthen Deloitte's presence in the marketplace. My supervisors' belief in me paid off. Within a year, the company's brand recognition in the line of business on which I focused (reengineering) moved from bottom of the consulting pack to one of the top in the industry, achieving a growth rate the company had never known (though, of course, it wasn't all my doing).

Why not do the same thing with these associates? If you're planning on laying off twenty of them, only lay off ten. With the remaining ten, who you have identified as having business development talent or inclinations, you basically set up a sales force.

The savings from the layoffs you do go through with will cover the expense of retaining these associates. There are many, many consultants who can train them in business development and coach them in this work (including, of course me -- the very best of the best) as they learn. Then get them out there. Reduce their billable hour expectations, give them some kind of an upside incentive for the business they do bring in, assign them to particular deparments or practice groups, and let them off the chain.

At the very worst, this program will break even. But the benefits are fantastic:

• The firm will have a very motivated, knowledgeable sales force that, at least, will be teeing up opportunities for equity partners to close business.
• When the recession ends, they will have the in-house capability they need to grow.
• Having these people in-house will help a business development culture take root and grow
• And, oh yes, if just one of these people manages to help bring in just one big new client, the entire program will more than pay for itself.

Every business on earth has a sales force, with the exception of professional services firms. With a reasonable amount of training and planning, these firms could leverage the in-house sales potential they've already, basically, bought and paid for. Which is, of course, just what you need to effectively handle a recession. All it takes is some creativity, and some planning.

Throwing Oranges

One of my absolute favorite blogs is Ad Contrarian, which describes itself as "Cranky opinions and advice from the CEO of a pretty big ad agency." Usually I like it. Yesterday I didn't. It was, in fact, a healthy dose of the mindset that can make marketing incredibly difficult, and kind of a beefed-up version of what goes on inside law firms occasionally  and makes me want to bang my head against the wall.

Here's the story. Peter Arnell runs an agency in New York, a division of Omnicom (the agency, not New York) and was assigned to redesign the Tropicana orange juice carton. He did. Prior to showing the design to the public and actually beginning to produce it, he was onstage at some event talking about the design process, and the work his agency had done. Here's the video.

And here's the blog's assessment of it:

Rummaging around in the ad industry, it's often hard to identify the bullshit. Here's a very simple way to recognize it. Everything that goes on in an agency that is not related to the creation or dissemination of ads, is bullshit.

If you would like a nice, close-up look at bullshit, I recommend this video. It is part of a presentation made a few weeks ago about the "new" package for Tropicana orange juice by its designer, Peter Arnell. I put "new" in quotes because the package is now old and dead.

The new package was yanked after about a half hour because it was such a piece of crap and provoked a firestorm of criticism and customer unhappiness.

Going back a few weeks, before the firestorm, and looking at the pretentious bullshit that was being served up is very entertaining and satisfying.

Whenever some designer starts out with, "We started on a journey..." as if he was climbing the fucking Himalayas instead of playing with crayons, you know there's some massive bullshit heading your way.

The Contrarian runs a big ad agency. He knows better than this. You know he knows better than this. Let's look at all this from the perspective of the real world we happen to live in -- at least most of us.

First, what Arnell is trying to do is unbelievably hard. Redesigning a well-known package for an incredibly boring commodity product, orange juice, is next to impossible. He's trying to figure out and convey brand attributes that are basically intangible, for a product that, as a commodity, doesn't really have any genuine selling points. Plus, every one of the brand attributes has already been beaten into the ground by every other orange juice on the market. What are you going to do, communicate that it's fresh? That it tastes good? That it's good for you? Wow, nobody's ever heard any of THAT before. In that environment, trying to do something new is like, to quote Hunter Thompson, dragging a Buick with four flat tires across a parking lot.

Second, if you're trying to do this for a brand like Tropicana, you're also working with one of the oldest, most marketing-savvy, most powerful consumer product organizations in the country.Tropicana is a cooperative of orange growers, has been around for seventy years, and produced three million gallons of juice a WEEK. If you think having a package redesign done by an outsider, no matter who it is, isn't an excercise in Machiavellian maneuvering beyond belief, I have a bridge I can sell you here in San Francisco. The second you win the assignment, you already have lots and lots of enemies. You had better cop some kind of attitude, and have some kind of story, because otherwise, the various political factions inside the client are going to eat you alive.

Third, in the video Arnell is trying to verbally describe something that's basically visual. The whole point of design is how it looks, the impact it has in an instant purely on a subconscious, nonverbal level. Getting up there and trying to talk about it, in front of a crowd, is basically impossible as well. I mean, really, can you verbally communicate why those classic Nike ads were so cool . . . "Well, there's this picture of this guy jogging down the street early in the morning, and he runs through this shaft of light . . ." Didn't think so. Could you describe the Apple 1984 commercial in a way that conveyed even one percent of its impact? Nope. Arnell is up on the podium trying to describe something that's indescribable. The entire exercise reminds me of that quote attributed to Elvis Costello: "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture - it's a really stupid thing to want to do." Trying to talk about design is kind of the same thing.

And finally, the Contrarian adopts this faux tough-guy response to Arnell that I have seen before, and that makes my ass tired. It is the easiest thing in the world to throw rocks (or oranges) at someone who's trying to do something creative and/or different and/or new, and paint him as a phony, pretentious fraud, another one of them New York City intellectuals who wear funny glasses and clothes, and are creative fakes, unlike real, meat-eating, two-fisted admen who understand that theiy exist to sell shit, period. Give me a break. Even the Contrarian doesn't actually believe that, but it sure makes for an entertaining post.

I make my living helping professional services firms, primarily law firms, market themselves. The most difficult, success-crushing situation is when you begin to work, and you run into one of these tough-guy types, who opines that he believes marketing is crap, branding is bullshit, and the only thing you need to do to succeed is be a damn good laywer and bill, bill, bill. Basically, their minds slam shut before you even begin to do their thing. It's especially bad when you're dealing with logos, and some tax partner wants to spend a hundred bucks and just put the firm's initials in big, blue letters, and you have to try to explain to him why this may not exactly be brilliant marketing. 

I would be interested in having the Contrarian describe, specifically, what he dislikes about the design. In the end, what matters is the work. What did he think of the carton? I am not really interested in his opinion about the guy who did it.

Buying A Rock Star

One of the most fundamental facts about business development is that a lot of people don't want to do it. The reasons for this are complex, and usually powered by pretty deeply-held beliefs. As with anything like this -- something that people really, really don't want to do -- one of the classic techniques for avoiding doing it is coming up with business development systems that don't require them to be personally involved. This is what psychologists call magical thinking: if they can somehow devise the perfect system, contacts, leads and eventually clients will be produced, sort of like a factory produces Barbie dolls or fish sticks.

A pervasive version of this is what I call the Golden Rolodex fantasy. This is the idea that it is possible to develop business by paying someone else to do it for you. Sometimes this takes the form of a partner or senior-level executive you're going to hire who's got incredible connections and relationships, and is going to bring in a tsunami of business. In other words, buying a rock star.

This strategy can work. It can be done. However, where plans go awry is when people believe they can get this person on the cheap, or even on the reasonable. Someone who is going to arrive with a big book of of business has several business development attributes, among them:

• Their running business and contacts are worth a great deal of money. They know it, you know it, and they know you know it. They're going to want to be paid for this business, and they're want to be paid a lot.

• They are also going to be pretty unwilling to fit into your firm's management structure, or at least, more difficult to manage than the average professional. If they arrive with a lot of business, they're basically a one-person firm already. They're going to think and act like one.

• Finally, they are not going to be big billers. These are folks who excel at creating and managing relationships. They are not folks who will sit in the office and crank in the revenue.

 If you're fine with all these factors, then this strategy may go somewhere. You may be able to buy some business. Simply don't expect these people to be a bargain, easy to manage or big firsthand revenue sources. They never are.