Build your Client Base with a 0% Win Rate
Use the Bohemian Business formula!
Until I had been in business a full eight years, I had no idea how my company was growing. I had a strong, loyal client base, a diversified portfolio of gigs, and a handsome income. All kinds of people envied me. What was my secret?
I had no idea.
I surveyed my company records. I added up all the contracts I had bid on, all the clients I had tried to get through sales and marketing efforts, all the calls I made, all the research I did, all the newspapers and magazines I read, all the directories I’d leafed through, all the proposals I’d written and letters I’d sent, all the conferences and networking breakfasts I’d attended, all the schmoozing, all the interviews, and all the times I’d taken prospective clients to lunch. I added them all together and then calculated the number of contracts I’d won.
Nothing. Nada. Zip. I captured not one single contract by competing for it, submitting a bid, or trying to drum up business. My marketing campaigns had proven a dismal failure.
My win rate was zero percent!
Throughout my eight-year career as an independent consultant I had accumulated dozens of clients big and small, international and local, who offered me a rotating and varied inflow of gigs. Many of my devoted clients referred me to other companies, and many had become friends. Where on earth did all these clients come from?
A red carpet and silver platter, apparently. My clients had all figured out they needed my services before they called me and I did not need to convince them. They were all referrals from somebody else, even though that somebody else may have never worked with me.
Do you mean to say that, instead of spending all that time, effort and money running around doing sales work, I could have been sitting down in my living room eating popcorn and drinking red wine?
It seems so. All of my successes have sprung up organically just by being myself — by meeting people, talking to them, and saying yes. And by “people,” I don’t mean people who turned out to be clients. I mean random people in random, unplanned circumstances who referred someone to someone else who referred someone else to me. It turns out most of these circumstances were entirely outside my knowledge and control.
Whenever someone asks me about my sales and marketing techniques for my own company, I tell them I use the Bohemian Formula. They squint and frown.
“I’ve never heard of that. How does it work?”
“I sit in a comfy chair, drink red wine, eat popcorn, and watch re-runs of Columbo. The phone always rings.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
I understand if you’re skeptical. But it’s true. My business has blossomed and thrived despite all my best efforts at traditional methods of growth.
The Bohemian formula seems to have started from the beginning of my career. I started as a writer, working as a consultant at the Plain Language Center in Toronto. When the Center closed, I hired myself out to non-profit organizations. Three years later, I moved into financial services. Finally, I found myself working with high-tech firms, developing proposals and business plans for deals worth up to $200 million dollars.
But it wasn’t ordinary at all. It’s been an exciting ride, and I owe it all to the Bohemian Formula. It hasn’t jinxed me, either, to discover the key to my success. It continues to work without a hitch.
I doubt your business expertise matters. The Bohemian Formula works if you’re a mechanic, chef, project manager, church pastor, financial adviser, sheep shearer, plumber, contractor, interior decorator, professor, teacher, used car salesperson, carpet cleaner, or campaign manager. And let’s not forget about worm-diggers, proctologists and gold prospectors. Anyone can do business like a Bohemian.
But if you are a consultant, I think it comes in particularly handy.
The term Bohemian, as I use it, sprouted in France early in the 19th century. It referred to an artist or artist type who defied convention. Puccini’s famous opera La Bohème is based on the lives of artists in France, and Thackeray’s novel Vanity Fair mentions Bohemians. They came to be known as wild, roving vagabonds off the beaten track, who challenged the status quo, rules of behavior, and accepted wisdom.
I came across the term myself when my friend Steve loaned me his copy of Robert Service’s ballads. Written in Paris while working for the Red Cross, his Ballads of a Bohemian (1921) reflect an abandon, a devotion to beauty, an appreciation for little things, a visionary grit, a tenderness for the people in his community, and of course, a weakness for red wine. Here’s an excerpt:
The humble garret where I dwell
Is in that Quarter called the Latin.
It isn’t spacious — truth to tell,
There’s hardly room to swing a cat in.
But what of that! It’s there I fight
For food and fame, my Muse inviting,
And all the day and half the night
You’ll find me writing, writing, writing.
The Bohemian portrayed in his ballads lives by the skin of his teeth in wartime Paris. In tough times he learned how to make it from month to month selling his talent and staying close to friends. He lived each day for itself, unplanned. When someone published another one of his stories or poems, he would live like a king for a week, on red wine and fresh bread and fish and fruit, and sing and laugh and wander around for more inspiration.
A month later he would again be wondering where his rent was coming from, and would get inspired and write another ballad, and just when his landlord had threatened for the last time to evict him, a check would arrive in the mail and he would prance down to the landlord’s door with a broad grin on his face, pouring out apologies and brandishing a copy of his latest poem. Then he would be off to the local cafe again for a meal to celebrate.
That’s it, I thought. Robert Service has defined my business marketing formula.
To do business like a Bohemian, try this: adopt an attitude of gratitude, respond instead of plan, pursue adventure for its own sake, savor the simple things in life, cultivate your visions and follow your passions. Most important, foster authentic relationships with other people and with yourself.
Bohemian wisdom challenges some of your habits and assumptions about what works and what doesn’t in your business. None of the business books I ever read told me about it. Yet since I have spoken at dozens of business clubs, many business owners say my story reflects theirs. They agree that their own business growth has been organic, unpredictable and haphazard, driven almost entirely by relationships. Owning your own business is like falling in love, getting married, or travelling. It’s an adventure. You cannot predict what will happen or all the people you will meet and all the fun you will have.
I do not claim that traditional marketing and sales methods don’t work. I’m only saying they didn’t work for me. By focusing on authentic relationships, I came to manage a thriving consulting business. Not bad for a zero-percent win rate.
