The High Flyers Podcast with Vidit Agarwal
00:47:52 · Vidit Agarwal
[00:47:52] S0: Yeah, I'm nodding my head furiously because see this all the time even in people looking for their next job or if they've had a setback is they've not built the relationships because they don't want to be the quote unquote networker because they feel that's transactional. Then they're out of work and I had a call the other day from someone and then he said to me, he said, I've been given my notice, the company's gone through a restructure. And I said, you're a senior executive and you've spent no time nurturing your network. He's like, yep, I've got a family and I've got a demanding job and I've got my health to focus on. I'm now getting out there and building that network. And I said, it's gonna take you months before someone can give you anything and you don't know any of these people. Like even me, you hadn't spoken to me for two years and you've reached out for a call. I find that baffling. Like I see that every day and I'm sure you both see it in a consulting context or just in a general work context.
00:48:45 · Robert Nason, Vidit Agarwal
[00:48:45] S2: That's right, I'm not a networker either. I don't like the concept of networking but I do like the concept of providing value to people that are in your industry sector, in your domain of knowledge and experience where you can offer help. So I come from that service side. This is a service to clients. It's not selling. It's your job as an experienced professional working in an organisation to find ways that organisation can be better and to communicate those to the people that matter and to have views of where the industry is going. If you're just sitting back not doing that, then you don't deserve success to me. And it's a service to the client. It's not selling. It's actually adding value. You're putting forward things you would like to do for the client because that makes their business better. [00:49:43] S0: Yeah, the story of how Robert and I met I think is an example of this where we met at the tennis and we sat on the same table but then we didn't speak for probably eight, ten months after that and then a mutual friend connected us and then we had a coffee and then again, I don't think we spoke for a couple of months and then Robert texted about your book. So life also can be random. Think to your point, Neil, life can be very random where it's not always planned and I've seen that in my own journey where you just have a good conversation with someone and you're introduced by someone they trust and often that can end up opening doors that he never expected.
00:49:43 · Vidit Agarwal, Neil Plumridge
[00:49:43] S0: Yeah, the story of how Robert and I met I think is an example of this where we met at the tennis and we sat on the same table but then we didn't speak for probably eight, ten months after that and then a mutual friend connected us and then we had a coffee and then again, I don't think we spoke for a couple of months and then Robert texted about your book. So life also can be random. Think to your point, Neil, life can be very random where it's not always planned and I've seen that in my own journey where you just have a good conversation with someone and you're introduced by someone they trust and often that can end up opening doors that he never expected. [00:50:17] S1: Yeah. Yeah. Look, to give your own business a plug, the curiosity center, one of the things we've found in successful people just generally through this process is they're very curious. People are curious in other people. The reason we connected with you was you're both interested in what each other were doing. But that's the consultant and the client. Just be interested in what and they are curious about their performance, their own careers, their personal situation. Just be curious. [00:50:51] S0: Absolutely. Let's go into RAIN Group, your new firm and the work you're doing in addition to the book, you're high in demand, you're getting invited all around the world to run training courses and other things. Do you want to just give us an overview on the RAIN Group itself, the firm that you're building and the services you're providing?
00:51:13 · Neil Plumridge
[00:51:13] S1: Yeah, I'm happy to go first and then Yeah, Robert okay. Can add yes, so we're being quite selective. We're I guess trying to focus on those clients where we can make the greatest difference. But we are working in London, we've been working and supporting in North America, we've been in Australia and we'll be in Asia in the new year. We basically offer a few things. We offer a one and two day training program. We call it a peer to peer learning program for partners and aspiring partners and there's three things that go on in that. One is around deal origination and using the participant's information, their own information, not theoretical, is how do we lift the bar on playing bigger and bolder around deal origination. Second is around the relationships. How do you move from level one or level two into a level four relationship? So there's quite a lot of work on personal relationships. And then the third is around these habits and routines. High performers in all fields have daily, weekly, monthly routines and habits. So we call that out. Look, it's a bit more than that but that's the essence of it. We also offer our content to buy. Firms can buy our content if they like. And then we're also open to doing webinars. Although to be honest, we've been so busy. The webinars have kind of fallen away. But we're Can share yeah?
00:52:43 · Vidit Agarwal, Neil Plumridge
[00:52:43] S0: Sorry, was going say can you share an example? So if I'm a CEO of a big, say ASX listed company or a Fortune 50 listed company, what should I be thinking of the RAIN Group for? Are there any particular areas that you help with or like is it a series of workshops? How do the engagements generally work? [00:53:03] S1: So we're mainly focused on the professional service sector, consulting firms, accounting firms, engineering firms. That's our main focus. And so the CEOs of those can expect to see if they hire the RAIN group, is Robert and myself, they'll see an uplift in their sales pipelines. They'll see their win rates go up and they'll see an overall lift in performance from the cohort that joins our programs. [00:53:34] S0: Don't Why
00:53:35 · Robert Nason
[00:53:35] S2: do you want to describe what we do as training, Vidot? We've been there. Neil and I have been partners. We've been leaders of consulting. We know the game. We know the numbers, the number you get, the pressure every year to start again from zero and deliver a result as a consulting partner. We feel we're collaborating by sharing what we've seen and what we know and discussing that with partner groups, reflecting on what has changed and what needs to in their daily time allocation and there is a lot of flexibility at the partner MD level as to where you spend your time. Are you allocating that time in the optimum fashion to build your pipeline, to develop your relationships, to give you a continuity and an expanding volume of work in the areas that you're most interested in. It's both a stress release if you like. It's getting you in more in control of your professional life, doing the work you want to do and having the success that you aim to achieve. And just some facts these days. We believe every company is facing an AI transformation. Every organization in the globe is going to need to do one in the next five years probably. Some of them are going to do complete organization wide transformations and the firms that undertake that work will shut out all the others. Clients will get turned off. We noticed for example in a recent client that did a joint venture with a professional service firm to do AI transformation, 11 other consulting firms were exited that were doing AI work with that contract being led. That's going to be the future. How do you if you don't go for the bigger deals, you've got a strong risk of missing out. If you're playing down in middle management doing small projects, you're going to be disintermediated. So you need to target the bigger projects and have a point of view and work the team. The CIO is no longer the technology decision maker. Those decisions have moved into the total C suite. So if you're a technology vendor you've got to learn how to persuade an entire executive team because they're talking about a transformation of the company with technology as a driver, a completely different selling concept and how do we get our heads around that and how do we deliver to that.