Volume 13, Issue 6
This year marks my twentieth anniversary in the training and coaching business. To celebrate this milestone, I’ve been racking my mind for how to recognize it in some fashion that allows my readers, clients and friends to receive an extraordinary benefit.
Hopefully, through the years you’ve found this newsletter delivers many tangible benefits to helping you grow your practice and your relationships. I’ve strived mightily to provide ideas that are simple, practical and easy to implement. The same holds true of my books. As I reflect on my twenty years in this business, I’ve learned so much and have succeeded beyond my wildest imagination. As a result, I really wanted to demonstrate my heartfelt gratitude for my work during the past 20 years. As I’ve often told my children, I haven’t worked for 20 years because I genuinely love what I do! I hope you can make a similar statement about your work. If you can’t, I’d urge you to rethink your work so that it involves doing more of what you love and less of what you find to be drudgery or energy draining.
I’ve counseled many clients during my twenty-year career to look for things they can give to their clients that don’t cost them much (or anything at all), yet it’s still something they greatly value. I’ve now turned that question on myself. It didn’t take me long to come up with an answer: Give away an ebook version of Rainmaking Made Simple!! Thousands of readers have confirmed that Rainmaking Made Simple (“Rainmaking”) is one of the most practical books ever written for professionals on how to build relationships AND still remain true to themselves. We use it as a mental map of the field of relationship building and so have many other organizations. Doing so allows you to build skills more rapidly because it makes this vast field far more manageable.
In recent years many firms (both large and small) have bought a copy of the hardcover edition for every professional in their firm because they found it very useful as a desk reference guide. Leaders of these firms have found it useful in accelerating cultural transformation within their firm.
Giving away an ebook version of Rainmaking allows us to give something of extraordinary value to the world. The hardcover version of the book retails for $29.95 and the Kindle version retails for $9.95, but I genuinely believe that both of my books offer much greater value than their list price. I have heard countless success stories of professionals who have parlayed ideas from my books into more clients, greater confidence and hundreds of thousands of dollars in increased revenues each year. I’ve also heard from many readers who say that Rainmaking has caused some of the most hardened cynics to completely shift their attitude about marketing and business development. So what’s the catch? There is none. My biggest challenge may be getting the word out.
My books aren’t the kind that you read once and then put aside. Instead, they are best used as desk reference guides that you consult over and over again. I’ve had countless clients, friends and readers of my books say that they take a chapter each month and use it as study guide with their associates, practice group, office, and/or firm. As I thought more about the giveaway, I had to decide how it should work. Should I have the giveaway run for a set period of time or for a given quantity? As I thought about the increased and widespread use of ebooks I had an “aha moment”: Why not give away 20,000 copies of Rainmaking in an ebook format – 1000 copies for each year I’ve been in business?!
I got even more excited as I realized this is the perfect gift that costs almost nothing for me to give away and is easily downloadable by readers anywhere around the globe. It’s no more difficult to download an ebook if you’re in Europe or Australia than it is if you’re based in the United States. Not only that, it’s green without even trying to be! Viewed through the relationship lens, as I always do, I’d also encourage you to share this gift with your best referral sources as a way to say thank you. You’re probably thinking of several people right now who have treated you very well through the years who would benefit from having Rainmaking in their library. This is your chance to say thank you. Countless readers have told me they’ve done exactly that with the hard copy edition of Rainmaking. If you’re a leader trying to create a more relationship-focused culture consider giving this ebook to every professional in your firm regardless of whether it consists of two or 2000 professionals! Forward this email issue to anyone you care deeply about and don’t be bashful about expressing your appreciation for the relationship.
I wrote both books with the goal of sharing the best ideas from my two decades of coaching experience. The highest compliment you can pay me is to PUT THE IDEAS INTO PRACTICE! A great idea that never gets applied is worth ZILCH. So get busy. Download today and get to work. The link for your free copy is: http://www.markmaraia.com/rainmaking-made-simple. Feel free to share this link with anyone you know who might find this offer valuable.
I’ve decided to make it available in the Kindle(mobi) and ePub formats because those two formats offer the best reading experience for you. If you don’t want to read it in either format there are plenty of other programs on the Internet that will convert it for free into a format you can read on your computer.
If this giveaway inspires you to do something equally outrageous please share your story with me. I’d be thrilled to hear from you.