Meeting with a Rainmaker

The dictionary.com definition of 'rainmaker' is:

rain·mak·er [reyn-mey-ker] -noun Slang. an executive or lawyer with exceptional ability to attract clients, use political connections, increase profits, etc.

We met Mark at the Capital Connections event put on by The Startup Lounge. At the event we talked for about ten or fifteen minutes. Mark is boisterous and animated. Confident. Executive-looking.

This past weekend we saw him again at the SoCon event. He was out looking for opportunities. And we're at the point in our business where we need to generate sales.

So today we met with Mark for about three hours to go over what dNeero has. And what Mark has.

In 1997 our second salesperson hiring mistake told us over dinner at The Food Studio "hey, any salesperson worth their salt can sell himself." Indeed. He was later fired after we caught him lounging around his house with his phone off the hook while he said he was out on sales calls. And he was maybe one of our less horrible salesperson hiring mistakes.

Suffice it to say that we're cautious these days. Mark's not the type that would crumble under an interview, no matter how sinisterly designed. But in a real conversation you can usually get a good sense of what a person's about.

Mark has a very solid understanding of what it takes to sell. He was able to propose ideas and processes on the spot. Able to criticize presentation ideas quickly. You get a sense that he has his own way of working sales. Which is a good thing. Much better than people who just do whatever. Or who sit on their couches.

Which isn't to say he has all the answers. By his own admission he hasn't had any time to dig into our product to understand the value proposition, technical issues, etc. But you get a sense that he'll figure things out.

He looks the part. An adult. Somebody you'd trust. Somebody you might drink a beer with at a NASCAR event. Somebody in a suit. Somebody who's got the pull within his organization to make sure that when the operations guys stumble he can get you a refund... or box seats at a Hawks game.

And, importantly, he's a rainmaker. He knows how to generate sales. While we haven't done a real due diligence on his past (it's not nearly appropriate at this point) we get the sense that through the companies he's created and sold he was the one generating business. It's what he likes to do.

And this is important to Sr. and me because we need a rainmaker. He agreed to go in with us to a meeting we've been working on getting with CocaCola. To see what we do and to help us close the deal. In a sense we'd love for him to take the whole pitch soup to nuts but that's rather too much work after one meeting and a week or two of prep.

After the meeting Sr. and I were cautiously impressed with Mark and his rainmaking skills. We're going to take things slowly. Plenty of time in the universe to make mistakes. Plenty of time to get to know people and get a real sense of what they're about. It's like dating. Because startup businesses are like relationships. You spend a lot of time together. You argue. You want to make things work. From both directions. Mark has to like us... and Sr's kinda prickly and annoying.

We want to find somebody who can take ownership of the sales side of the business. Somebody who can take this product from where it is today and make it an industry standard piece of any social media campaign. The product's poised and ready. The meetings we've had with hundreds of people verify the concept. The users are screaming out for more surveys. The competitors in the market are generating sales with inferior products. Every marketing/pr person we talk to is convinced they can fit it into a campaign in some way.

We're finally in the right place with the right product. While we can figure out the sales piece on our own, in doing so we may let the good timing pass us by. So we want to find a rainmaker. Whether or not Mark will be that person is anybody's guess. In fact, we're not able to answer honestly whether he should be that person. But meeting with him highlights the existence of that skillset and its importance to our business. My role as CEO is to make sure that we have the right resources in place to succeed. My role is not to do all the work myself. Seriously, I need to get some sleep one of these years. Damn servers.

A lot of stuff happening lately. It's amazing what happens when you get away from the computer screen and meet people. Many thanks to Mark for spending the time with us today. We enjoyed it and look forward to the future.