• Position yourself and your practice as a provider of premium services.

• Identify your high-profit customers and turn them into life-long relationships.

• Target high-value prospects.

Nowhere does Mills neatly define "premium " or "high-profit" or "high-value." You have to kind of catch the drift. But the methods that Mills presents for implementing this strategy is brilliant stuff. To help you develop premium services, position yourself in the marketplace, and identify your high-profit customers, he provides a series of worksheet-like charts, graphs, and pyramids. These are the tools in the rainmaker's toolkit. They are largely useful, although some are a bit too complex.

Mills is a big-picture guy -- often short on details, examples, anecdotes, case studies, and step-by-step guidance. Here is one of Mills's most valuable observations in the area of building life-long relationships:

Clients do not judge a service on its own merits. They judge it relative to their expectations. Client expectations have to be consciously managed so that the end result is delight rather than disappointment. Firms need to train professionals in how to manage client expectations.

Unfortunately, Mills offers no further guidance on how to managing clients' expectations or train professionals to do so.

The weakest chapters are the ones about marketing techniques (referral networking, public relations, newsletters, advertising, etc.). These chapters are superficial and derivative, apparently outside the author's own area of expertise. I don't know why he felt compelled to include them in the book. I'd rather see an additional chapter on managing clients' expectations than perfunctory babble on marketing techniques.

About the author
Harry Mills is CEO of The Mills Group, an international consulting and training firm (website: www.millsonline.com). He is the author of 22 books on sales, persuasion, and negotiation, including the acclaimed Artful Persuasion. He has been featured in Entrepreneur magazine, Bottom Line Business, and USA Today.