This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - The Activator Advantage - What Today’s Rainmakers Do Differently with Karen Freeman | 370

Episode Date: December 15, 2025

If your “business development strategy” is do great work + hope clients stay loyal, I have bad news: that strategy has been officially declared dead on arrival. In this episode, Nicole sits down with Karen Freeman, Chief Product Officer at DCM Insights and co-author of The Activator Advantage, to break down why client loyalty is collapsing—and what the best “rainmakers” are doing instead. Spoiler: they’re not waiting around to be chosen. They’re activating.  What you’ll learn: Why client loyalty is shrinking (even when you are excellent at your job) The buyer behavior shift: from “we trust you” to “we’re still taking calls, though” Practical ways to build a stronger pipeline without turning into a sleazy salesperson How AI + procurement + buying committees are changing the game (and the budget) The Activator playbook (aka: stop crossing your fingers) Commit: plan BD weekly (yes, even when you’re busy) Connect: treat your network like an asset, not a dusty LinkedIn list Create value: show up before the ask with insight, context, and solutions Because “doing good work” is table stakes. Activating is how you win, retain, and grow today. Thank you to our sponsors! Get 20% off your first order at curehydration.com/WOMANSWORK with code WOMANSWORK — and if you get a post-purchase survey, mention you heard about Cure here to help support the show!  Sex is a skill. Beducated is where you learn it. Visit https://beducate.me/pd2550-womanswork and use code womanswork for 50% off the annual pass. Connect with Karen: Book: https://www.dcminsights.com/activator-advantage  Karen’s LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karenefreeman/ DCM insights’s LI: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dcm-insights/ Related Podcast Episodes Powerfully Likeable with Dr. Kate Mason | 364  From Small Business to Big Impact: Leadership, Confidence, & Community | 362  The 3 N’s: Negotiation, Networking & No with Kathryn Valentine | 327 Share the Love: If you found this episode insightful, please share it with a friend, tag us on social media, and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform! 🔗 Subscribe & Review:Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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By the way, we're officially on YouTube because so many of you say, I wish I would have heard this when I was younger. And the younger generation is living over there. So now, so are we. I am Nicole Khalil and you're listening to the This Is Woman's Work podcast. We're together. We're redefining what it means, what it looks and feels like to be doing women's work in the world today. And that is a living, breathing, and evolving thing because we live in an ever-changing world. And while there is some advice and knowledge that stands the test of time, there is a lot that, well, should have been left behind with fax machines and flip-pones. In business especially, we've clung to ideas that once worked and now, not only are they

outdated, they're actively getting in our way. Take business development, for example. If you're still operating under the, if I do great work, my clients will be loyal and refermey philosophy than friend, you may be in for a rude awakening, because here's the uncomfortable truth. Your results might be impressive. Your relationships might be solid, but that loyal client that you've served for years, they're already taking calls from your competitors. Apparently, there's been a pretty dramatic shift in client behavior that makes traditional approaches to business development, not just ineffective, but counterproductive.

And this may have always been true, but if your version of business development looks like crossing your fingers and hoping the phone rings, you're going to get left behind. Because doing good work is table stakes. It might keep you in the game, but it won't win it. The professionals who are thriving in this new era, they're not sitting around waiting to be needed. They're activating. They know their clients are savier, choosier, and surrounded by so many options, so they're creating opportunities instead of waiting for them, showing,

up before the ask, becoming indispensable. And because I'm not one of those people yet, I've invited Karen Freeman, chief product officer at DCM Insights, Global Faculty Member and one of the authors of the Harvard Business Review article, What Today's Brainmakers Do Differently, which was named one of HBR's top 10 reads in 2025. We're welcoming her to the show. She's also the co-author of the brand new book, The Activator Advantage, a research-driven roadmap for how to win, retain, and grow client relationships in today's hyper-competitive loyalty light marketplace. So, Karen, thanks for being on the show. And I'm going to start us off by asking you to give us a bit of an overview about what we need to know about how business development has shifted

in recent years. Well, Nicole, thank you for that great introduction. It was such a nice summary of the real challenges that folks face today in business development, specifically in professional services, right? That's the area that we have focused on in our research quite heavily. And what we heard as we went out and interviewed clients and heads of marketing in law firms and consultancies in accounting firms is that that idea that if I do good work, people will come back to me kind of a guarantee, an assumption that, you know, it's great. as long as I've done this great work, I get that next opportunity. I just have to build a few really tight relationships, and then that kind of feeds me from now on. That has changed

dramatically. We did a piece of research in the middle of this where we did a survey for those who were buying professional services, and we asked them, you know, would you go with the same provider, the same partner, if you had a new need, assuming, of course, that they did good work, before and today they said 53% of them agreed with that statement and I don't know about you but kind of that goes already against the idea of I do good work people will come back to me and that number surprised me for how low it was to begin with um we asked them kind of five years ago how would you have answered and they said 76% agreed with that statement so that's you know that's sort of the number we have in our head three quarters of the time I'll just get work again but in then we

ask them the really hard question, which is five years from now, how do you think this is going to look? This is, again, buyers of professional services. And only 37% said they'd naturally go back to the same person or the same firm. So there's a loyalty crisis, I think, as you said, coming. And if not already here, and it means we need to change the way we do business development as a result. Okay. So what kept popping in my mind is a little bit from my background. I worked in financial services. And there's this sort of pull toward client acquisition. And then, of course, client engagement, client servicing. And so are you suggesting that it might be more prudent to stay really engaged with the clients you have, maybe a smaller amount of clients you go deeper

with versus trying to bring on new clients all the time? Or is there some other way of looking at this information. Sure. I think it's actually the opposite. If the traditional sense was I have this core set of clients where I focus on them, they'll keep coming back to me for good work. And, you know, those people who are really naturally good at it will bring in the other clients. I can be kind of the expert here and just support the clients I have. It says even those big accounts that you have been working with for years, are reconsidering whether to work with you every time now. And so it means you need to have a bit more of a pipeline than you did before. And for many people, especially, I'll say some of the lawyers that we talk with,

where, you know, that business development for many is uncomfortable to start with. And they're really just hoping that they can get enough clients that they don't have to worry so much about it anymore. That shift has been a challenge. They have to do more networking. They have to manage that network as an asset more, like expand beyond those kind of core set of clients that they're, that they may be inherited or built up and be much more proactive with a broader set of people. Okay. So I have lots of questions, but I want to start with first. Why do you think loyalty is, you know, lessening over time. You know, there's a part of me that gets a little judgy about it. It's like we always think the grass is greener on the other side. We always get

overly upset if one thing doesn't go the exact way we want it to. Is this a consumer loyalty issue? Like, is the problem there? Two things I hear, well, both through our research and all the conversations that I'm having with partners in professional services. The first thing that I hear is that there are more people involved. There's sort of more coordination required in making most purchases today. A lot of this got really accelerated by the pandemic. And people talk about the professionalization of purchasing that happened years ago in business-to-business buying, where, you know, you'd have buying committees involved,

a lot more involvement of procurement. They'd formalize buying processes so that you have to use RFPs. that's coming to professional services slowly but steadily. There's a rise of legal operations in the legal space and procurement in general, the sense that even if you personally want to be loyal to the person that you've worked with in the past, you can get them in the door, but you need to bring in another two or three, and then there's going to be a really strong emphasis on price and making sure you get the best deal in budgets and all of that.

And you also don't have as much control over that decision as you might have before because there's more people who you have to bring along on that ride. So that's the first real trend. And then I think the second is just the explosion of professional services, boutique providers. It's changed the mindset of, well, yes, for this area, yes, but maybe somebody else is more of a specialist in this or had experience in this, or even just it can't hurt to look around a little bit, make sure we're not so attached to this one firm. that is more of, it's not quite so scientific and it's more of a feeling, but somebody once

told me in a trainee, it's not cool to use the same provider over and over again the way it used to be, the sort of assumption that if I work with the same people, it'll be friction-free, they know us, it's easier. That's all still true, but then there's this other side, this voice saying, well, but maybe somebody else would do better job or cheaper or be more efficient. Okay, so where does technology or things like, AI impact stuff like this because we have so much more access to efficiencies and, you know, obviously significantly lower budgets on certain things. Is this impacting? And if so, is that a good thing or not a good thing? I think there's two answers to this one as well. The first is just

I realized I didn't really get a chance to talk about the central finding from our research about the different types of business developers that we found. We found five profiles of business developers. And the short, I can get into some of the other ones, but the short answer is that this profile called the Activator is the one that is the winning profile. And it's funny how many people have seen this profile and especially some of the best business developers out there. They see it and they're like, yes, that's me, right? And they are super connectors. They, you know, all of the things we just said are necessary in today's lower loyalty environment. They're doing those things. So maybe no surprise that they win there. They're much more active on LinkedIn. in. They are, or other networking sites, they're much more rigorous about the events they go to, both the planning for and the follow up from it. They are much more likely to bring in other people from the firm and collaborate and much less likely to be protective. They're always about kind of proactively supporting their clients or contacts with value, whether it's from them or from others. We have three, you know, kind of a shorthand for them. They commit to business development. They

consistently and regularly, they connect people internally and with their network and they're kind of managing their network as an asset, and then they create value through proactively in between client work. So going back to your question around technology, for activators, there are certain kinds of technology that are really helpful for them. This isn't so much AI, although I think that's coming in, but LinkedIn and being able to kind of manage your network through technology is increasingly something that they do. So that's technology part one. Maybe not AI, not the newest technology,

but for sure they are much more active users of LinkedIn. I think the other side, AI, for sure, there's a lot more demand from clients that you're more efficient because you're using AI. It's just naturally becoming part of the work they do. And the implication is that professional services firms get asked to do more and more challenging things. This has been a drumbeat for ages in professional services. If you can do it

once, then train my team to do it so I don't have to pay it outside firm to do it again and then move on to the next thing. And the next thing is just getting, I think, more complicated because the assumption is the basic stuff is going to be handled by AI or you're going to be able to do it more efficiently. And then again, coming back to that loyalty, they're saying, well, can you do it for cheaper because you should be able to integrate AI and technology into doing it. By the way, I think there is an interesting implication for associates who are coming into professional services firms and would have done a lot of this work in whether firms are going in the longer run to have fewer of them. I mean, right? We all, none of us know exactly what's going to happen

for MAHA, but that's right. The future business developers, will they get their opportunity to practice this and get their feet underneath them and come in and become the great business developers of the future? That's a side note. I don't know the answer to for my research, but it's a really interesting one. So if the Activator profile is the winning one, what are some things that any one of us could do to move toward that? And I'm going to have some follow-up questions about women or introverts or whatever, but just generally speaking, what can any of us do to move towards the Activator profile?

Sure. And business development and professional services is different than sales in B2B, right? Which, because you are doing and selling, gosh, even that word selling can be very anathema to those in professional services. They're like, I'm an expert. I'm not a salesperson, but you still need to, you know, somehow get your business to grow. So the idea of business development in doer sellers was part of the reason why we saw differences in how, what makes for this most successful profile in the professional services world than we do in B2B. And so what you need to do mostly is that commit piece, like just tomorrow, right?

Being more deliberate about your week-by-week business development activity so often things get busy and you kind of pull back and you sort of say, well, business development is for when I'm not busy. Okay, I'll pick that back up again. But it's incredibly inefficient to only be reaching out to your network when you don't have a lot going on because it seems very transactional, you're rebuilding relationships. So my number one piece of advice is, and we do find that timing of this matter is like a Sunday night or a Monday morning, plan your business development for the week. Because the thing I hear most often is it's the middle of the week. I might have a block on my calendar says business development on it. And the work is right before it is incredibly urgent, or I get some question or something like that.

Business development seems so vague. I'm just going to reach out to some people that when you come to that half hour block you've got on your calendar, you just blow right past it. It's so amorphous, right, versus the very concrete client work that's no doubt just hanging over you, right? So planning ahead to say, who are the people I need to reach out to? and who have I not talked to in a month or so? Who might be in the next tier of my network that I really should be re-engaging? What events do I have coming up

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favorite cocktail at our onboard lounge, you'll see that your vacation isn't really over until your flight is over. Fly Emirates. Fly better. I think so many business centers can relate to everything feels urgent, and that takes precedence over what is actually important. Exactly. Totally can relate to that. So the commitment piece is probably going to be the biggest difference maker.

You talked about connection. I think there are lots of ways to connect, but those of us who might be more introverted by nature, any tips or we just did a huge disadvantage here. What are your thoughts? Yeah, I often get the kind of. Can an introvert be an activator question? And the answer is absolutely yes. I've met so many.

And so if you're out there and you say, I could never be a great business developer because I'm not an extroverted gladhander, it's good news for you, I think, right? The key is managing your energy. So if introverts are more tired by, you know, interactions with people they don't know than others, then you want to be very careful about managing that energy.

For example, events, So third-party events conferences, your own hosted events as a firm, those are really helpful places to meet new people, to progress relationships, and they can be exhausting for anyone, especially introverts. That's where that discipline comes in to manage your energy, whether you've scheduled enough meetings in advance. There's nothing stopping you from reaching out to people you don't know who are attending the meeting, telling them about insights that you might be able to share, or even setting up small group. events at that event, that really can help you manage your energy. I still love the story one person told me. She's like, I'm an activator and I'm an introvert. She reached out to everybody in advance of the meeting, scheduled what she could, went and spoke, because she happened to be on a panel, afterwards talked to just the few people who came up, left and reached out

to everybody and said, sorry, I missed you, right? Which is she got those one-on-one conversations. She's still connected. She had the list, which is, of course, a big advantage, but she knew that in that moment that, like, random networking event was going to exhaust her, and she managed her energy to be able to get the most important relationships sealed for her. I love that strategy. What about for women? Are there any nuances, differences, advantages, disadvantages, one that popped into my mind is when I think of traditional networking, a lot of times those were after hours, evenings, and obviously not super helpful for those of us who are moms.

I don't know if that's still the case in today's day and age, and there's obviously lots of other options, like you mentioned LinkedIn a few times, but anything we should be thinking about as women. I do think that it is, the networks you're going to be using are going to be a little bit different for women. As I hear women tell me about how,

they are doing business development successfully, often it is those networks that you naturally gravitate to. So it doesn't have to be golf, right? If you're not into golf or sort of the traditional sense of how networking happens. And yes, there will be a certain number of these kinds of events and things you need to go to. But most women I know have powerful friend networks, right? You've got those group texts. You've got those groups, mom groups, that you've been part of. and sort of extending that network to be a bit more professional. So there's some professional mom networks or there's women-only networks who in your particular expertise field, those have been incredibly fruitful for the individuals that I talk to,

just especially if women are underrepresented in that field, you can create the space for that conversation to happen. and those will be, you know, fruit for so much more opportunity than you think. I do find that women tend to be a little more reticent to turn personal connections into business opportunities. So that is one place that I think that we can all get a little bit more comfortable with. And it doesn't always have to be me asking for the business from a friend, but it could be asking for, do you know anyone? It could, you know, we do really love to help each other out. Yeah.

And recognizing that that's at the core of turning a personal contact into a business opportunity. It's a mindset thing more than anything else. Yeah, I know personally I had to really shift to my mindset on that because my philosophy is anybody who I'm friends with or family members or people I care about or people who care about me should be willing to support me. How they support me is what we need to figure out. What are they comfortable with? What plays to their strengths?

some of them might be clients, some of them may never be, but it's not an option to be in each other's lives and not support each other. So I find it really frustrated. I've worked with a lot of women who've gotten an A business and have said things like, oh, you know, my friend is not being supportive or my parents refused to talk to me. And I'm like, sorry, but fuck them. That's just them being a-holes. Maybe they aren't going to support you in the way you want them to. But we got to figure out, to make this work. And so to me, that's the mindset shift of like, I don't need you to be my client. I need to buy things for me. I do need to be able to have the conversation with each other about how we're going to support each other. Yeah. Right. Friends and family, or I should say family,

that's its own complicated topic and setting boundaries there is a great thing altogether. But when you think about your friends, you would be offended if a friend of yours didn't ask you for help when they needed it, right? Like, that is the point, we, we help each other out. That is, that is sort of at the core of friendship. And so many people I talk to have that struggle with, well, you know, I don't want our friendship to be weird because I've brought up this business question. Well, yeah. And let me just say to you, your friendship is weird if you can't have a conversation. Like, if you literally can't have a, hey, you know, let's have this conversation about, like, then personal opinion, your friendship is weird and is questionable.

Yeah. Again, you would hope that if they needed your help and you had a particular expertise that they would ask you for it. And to do the same in the other direction is totally fine. But one piece of advice that really helps people, and it is, again, a mindset thing, is actually offering help before you give it. So let's say you have a friend who's now moved into a position where they could be helpful to you for business. You probably have people in your network who could help them in that new role, right? Start by help. them and usually then makes you more comfortable to then sort of, you've helped them in a business capacity. It's moved them into a business situation. And then you feel more comfortable

making the ask of some kind, right? Could you make an introduction for me or something like that? So this may just be a me thing. For me, it's often been about relationships, building relationships, maintaining relationships, providing value, helping others. And then sort of the essential of and then the right people will find me and blah, blah, but it sort of is going a little bit against what you're saying because I have no control over people's loyalty to me and my work. So I guess my question is what are some of the tactics we should be doing as an activator? Is it like making sure our name or face shows up and a consistent enough basis so we stay top of mind? I mean, I do think that's part of it, right?

It's, so staying top of mind is increasingly important because you want to be earlier in someone's consideration set so you can shape the way they think about the opportunity. So you have an advantage when you're in that moment of purchase and you're up against other people almost by definition these days. And you have shaped the way they think about this to fit your unique capability. So being top of mind or just generally being proactive, staying in touch with individuals more regularly gives you that opportunity to get ahead of the purchase process. Okay, so I think a few things kind of clicked, like a little light bulb went off.

So it's really about being proactive, about shaping the narrative, about educating to a certain extent so people have an idea of what you do and how you do it and how they might work with you before they you know the conversation even comes up and just coming in earlier than maybe we have historically or we may have been taught yes right so that is about that's what the maintaining of your network is staying top of mind you know putting your name out there a lot of it is more personal, like I'll be reaching out to you. You know, Nicole, it's been, it's been a little while. I saw this article and I thought of you. I feel like this is going to impact your business in a way that you may not appreciate. Let's set up some time to talk about it. That gets that conversation

from just top of mind to value add. The thing that's critical to all of this is you can't do that with everyone, right? So a big part of it, you talked earlier about having a few close relationships. And that is still true in the sense that you need to prioritize. And a lot of times what that means is stopping with some, you know, you may have a certain number of clients and some of those clients are just not growing or not responsive. And that is taking valuable opportunity time for you to be proactive with a new set of individuals as well as your core clients to build the next opportunity since you do need to get, be top of mind or be a, head of the game a little bit more often than you used to. So some client segmentation would be

important understanding who you're going to invest the most amount of energy and time in what types of clients you serve best, who works with you best, that type of thing, and then going a little wider, casting wider nets with everybody else. Because sometimes you don't know who your best clients are going to be until they become your clients. Like I've been thoroughly disappointed by some people that fit the profile. I put in air quotes, right? And then there have been people who didn't and have ended up being my favorite people to work with. So there is a little bit of reconsideration, right? Or like a review of your client list. And first of all, knowing your ideal client profile is already a big head start, right? Like many people don't go through that process of saying, who is a good client

for me as opposed to, you know, who can I support? And then the second thing is, are they still a good client. Am I being used as a foil for the person they really want to bring in all of the time? And I just keep getting an opportunity to pitch, but I never win, right? Those kinds of things. Revisiting that and then being a bit ruthless about the potentially sort of long tail of contacts you might have and instead saying, who could I add in to my network. And simultaneously, that whole block of people who might be a little bit on the periphery, making sure you're kind of checking in with them more often because you've got that time back from the clients that weren't going to grow. Okay. Karen, there's a very strong probability that I'm just slow on this because it is

different than what I've been taught through the course of my professional career. Can you give us some examples of tactics? If things an activator would do on a Sunday night and a Monday morning to stay proactive to be shaping the information, if we were to create a checklist, what might be on that checklist. Getting right down to brass tax. I think the core here is having that, actually having your list of clients and contacts and taking a look at that. So that is your Sunday night or your Monday morning. It's saying, who are they? And when was the last time I talked to them? What could I be reaching out to them about? And how much are they likely to advocate for me? Kind of ranking them in a way. That isn't necessarily your Sunday night activity. That's a one-time,

sort of like to start, you sit down and say, who are my top and then who are my next tranche out with that ideal client profile in mind. Then every week, you're kind of looking at that and saying, what opportunity do I have to reach out to some of those folks? What have I seen in the news? What have I just finished working on that I think somebody else should be interested in? And being very deliberate about those reachouts, which sounds like a lot of time, but honestly, it's not. It's much more about the plan for it saying these are the five people I'm going to contact this week with this particular piece of news. And just adjusting and personalizing that note a little bit is core discipline. But because we're doer sellers, we get so caught up in the work

that that kind of thing just doesn't happen. Yeah. So what I'm hearing is it's 90% the commitment. It's the doing it every week. It's the prioritizing. It's the not letting it go by the wayside. So eight weeks later, you're like, oh, well, I didn't reach out to not just five clients a week, but five times 12 weeks or whatever, you know. You can build that habit up and get more and more. And right, so we talked a lot about commit and connect. We haven't really talked about what does it mean to create value. And for that, it is this kind of, that's a during my conversation's behavior.

That's bringing curiosity and asking in really broad questions. so often, especially in the professional services arena, you're such an expert in one thing that you hear a little bit about something and you jump right to it. You sort of say, oh, I can help you with that. And you really want this, you have this helpful posture. So you jump to it without getting the full context of what could be and the opportunity that could be broader. So and that full context questioning, asking more questions allows you then to have fodder for that recheck in, that proactive help. I know you're working on this. I understand that a goal for you is to go to a conference. Let me invite you to my conference. Or I know that your team needs a little help here. Maybe I can come in and do a little training for you guys on this topic. You need to have the fodder for that through your conversations, which means you're really bringing more questions than maybe you're even comfortable with to your average client call. Okay. I love it. I have one million more questions, but I guess I'm just going to have to get. at the book. Again, the book is called The Activator Advantage. For those of us who are in professional services, I think this is going to be our new Bible of trying to get ahead of the ever-changing

times and just the change and shift in client loyalty. So Karen, thank you so much. I will also remind our listener that you can follow Karen and her business, DCM Insights on LinkedIn. Karen, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. It's a fun conversation. Okay, friend, here's the deal. Doing good work may have gotten you here, but it won't get you there. Loyalty isn't what it used to be. Clients aren't waiting to be wowed. They're out there exploring, comparing, and deciding. And the professionals who win in this environment, they don't sit back and hope to be remembered. They stay present, relevant, and valuable on purpose. Because business development isn't a one-time effort. It's not reserved for salespeople or extroverts. It's definitely not about

begging for attention or sending cold emails into the void. It's about showing up before the ask, being of value before it's needed, and creating relationships that aren't just strong, they're irreplaceable. You don't need to overhaul your calendar or be someone you're not, thank God. But if you want to thrive in this new landscape, you need to activate, intentionally, strategically, consistently. Because crossing your fingers is not a business plan. But working with purpose, on purpose, is, and it's also woman's work.