Archive for year: 2014

Good news! The hard copy of Legal Rainmaking Myths is finally available for purchase. You can pick up your copy here. And if you’ve read Legal Rainmaking Myths or the second edition of The Reluctant Rainmaker, please share your review here or here, respectively.

It seems obvious that growing your practice means you want to bring in new clients and new business, right? Without the consistent flow of new business, practices not only don’t grow: they die.

However, you might be surprised to learn that I not infrequently talk with lawyers who say they want to grow a practice, when deep down, they don’t want new business or new clients. That’s a conflict that will undermine your business development efforts every single time. And it’s especially corrosive because until the beliefs that keep the lawyer from wanting new business are uncovered, the failure just looks like inability to secure new work.

Why might a lawyer not want new business? A few examples:

• the belief that clients are not being effectively served by the practice (this is especially common when a lawyer is considering a lateral move because of some philosophical objection to how the firm conducts its or its clients’ business)
• feeling too busy as is and reluctant to open a flow of additional work, even though you rationally understand that busy will be replaced by bored if you don’t create a pipeline of work
• working with clients you dislike, whether it’s because they’re inappropriately demanding or because you dislike the substantive work (who would intentionally set themselves up for more of what they dislike?)

Each of these reasons to avoid new business is likely unconscious, and yet action is governed by unconscious beliefs far more than we’d like to accept. 

The article The Uncomfortable Truth about Getting More Personal Training Clients describes the unconscious beliefs that run counter to the desire to get new clients as values conflicts, and it offers several steps to resolve those conflicts.

1. Be honest about whether you’re facing a values conflict. Make the unconscious conscious–if it exists.
2. Deal rationally with the values conflicts by answering the previously unconscious belief with what’s actually true. For example, recognize upsides to more business such as that having a steady pipeline of new work will allow you more control over which clients you work with, how you work with them, and so on.
3. Establish clear boundaries for your clients and yourself. Put policies and systems in place so that you define how you will engage with your clients and how and when you will undertake business development activity.
4. Invest in a marketing system. When you follow a system, you will automatically take steps toward new business without being controlled by values conflicts.

Sometimes we learn best by studying outside our own fields, and this article is a terrific example. Take a few minutes, translate from personal training to legal, and absorb the lessons.

Where are you stopping yourself?

We’ve all been there, when work is so overwhelming that it feels like there’s no time for anything else. We make promises (it’ll be different when this project is done) and we make excuses (this matter needs my full attention and I couldn’t possibly shortchange my client by spending time elsewhere). Especially for reluctant rainmakers, both are the currency of justification.

If making promises and excuses won’t cut it (and for the serious professional, it won’t), what should you make? Allowances. When busy-ness is real (and often in practice it is), determine what business development activity you will commit to while you’re swamped, and then make that happen. It’ll be less than your ordinary level of activity (that’s why it’s an allowance), but you’ll at least hold your own and most likely progress with your plans. Most importantly, you won’t have the pressure of the constant restart.

I read a terrific quote on this point this week from David Maister’s seminal True Professionalism.

If you ever allow “busy” to knock you off course, I recommend that you place this quote where you’ll see it at least daily:

“What you do with your billable time determines your current income but what you do with your non-billable time determines your future.”

 Here’s to your present and your future.

Being busy has become a national obsession, and it certainly affects lawyers. We seem to have two speeds: frantic and fearful because we aren’t frantic. We need to have a discussion about what might lie between these extremes, but an even more pressing question might be how to keep marketing going even when frantic. If you don’t keep it going, you may find yourself cycling from frantic to fearful before you have an opportunity to restart your marketing and bring in additional business.

You’ve no doubt heard that content is king for marketing, and there’s a simple reason: good content builds trust. Great content is easy to generate when you have plenty of spare time, but how do you keep up the flow of content when you’re frantic?

Repurpose everything. When you do something, look for other ways to use that same content. Here are a few of my favorites:

• An article can become multiple blog posts
• Blog posts can be broken down into blurbs suitable for use on LinkedIn or Twitter
• Any writing you do may yield a question suitable for opening a discussion in a LinkedIn group
• Any presentation you make may be uploaded via SlideShare (being attentive to potential copyright questions) and you can reuse the presentation points as blog posts
• Record a blog post, and you have a podcast (and podcasts are hot, hot, hot today—if they’re a good fit for your market)
• Client questions can spur an article
• Your reaction to a blog post or news story can yield a comment, which you might then expand into a blog post (as a guest, if you don’t have your own blog), an article, or a podcast 

When it comes to repurposing, the sky is the limit. Make it your habit to ask, how else can I use this?

Even more importantly, ask where you can distribute it. Content won’t help you grow your practice unless it’s consumed by the right audience. Where it’s a fit for your practice, look for ways to appear in the relevant industry and popular media. And look for how you can use what you’ve done to build relationships as well.

What resources do you have that you can repurpose now to extend your reach?

“There’s a lot of conversation now about fees… Whether the billable hour should live or die and how to innovate ethical and effective fee arrangements, just to name two hot topics of discussion.

Here’s my question: What value do you bring to each hour of your day? How can you increase your value to your clients? Or more specifically, how can you bring more value to whatever you’ll turn to as soon as you close this post?

I choose to bring value by making an impact as quickly as possible.“

When you recognize a problem that a client is facing and you offer help, you create real value for your client. I’ve written previously about how an offhand conversation with my contractor Oldrich resulted in my purchasing property in Wyoming with his help. Making that purchase realized a long-term dream for me, and it created additional work for Oldrich and his team. Talk about a win/win, right?

In that instance, I identified the need, though I didn’t expect Oldrich to meet it. I was just asking a simple question that I hoped might take me to the next step. I was delighted when asking that question gave me not just information but real help. Oldrich created real professional value for me.

And that professional value is easy to translate to law. Whether you spot an issue as a result of a client’s offhand comment or because you happen across a new development that may impact your client, of course you know to bring that up with your client. Raising the issue is designed to bring value to the client, which may in turn bring additional fees to you. Because it’s the desire to serve your client that motivates you, this is a “no ick” opportunity. You can raise the issue without fear of appearing sales-oriented. Image to indicate offering help
(As an aside, legal or business issue spotting and offering to help with that issue is cross-selling at its best. Even though you hope that your firm might be selected to address the issue when you start from the client’s need rather than your firm’s capability, you’re creating value rather than a sales opportunity.)

But what if you spot a personal issue? Is it ever appropriate to raise a personal issue to a client and offer to help? 

Here’s what happened in Wyoming to raise this question. Oldrich, who’s still working in Cheyenne, knew that my father was traveling with me and that he might have some challenges with the Wyoming altitude, which is more a mile above the altitude in Atlanta. So Oldrich (who by this time is not just my contractor but my friend as well) reached out to Paul, the electrician who’d worked out the house, who also happens to be the assistant fire chief for a rural fire district. And on our second day in Cheyenne, Paul brought two canisters of oxygen to the house, showed me how to work them, and told me how to recognize signs of hypoxia.

A week after we arrived, I noticed that my father was displaying some of the symptoms Paul had mentioned, and I was able to give him oxygen while I checked his pulse rate. Although I did have to call 911 and my father did end up hospitalized, because Oldrich thought I should have oxygen handy and Paul provided the oxygen and the education, the hospital stay was short and his physical condition was much better than it would have been otherwise. I already knew that both Oldrich and Paul are highly skilled in their crafts, but this experience also showed me that they’re both thoughtful and kind, and I’m deeply grateful for the result.

How does this story apply to a law practice? It’s just the same. If you notice a way to offer personal help—sponsoring a client’s 50th-anniversary celebration at your local club, introducing a client to a needed resource, even offering a recommendation for a new restaurant that you think your client would enjoy—by all means, offer it.

Be cognizant of the bounds of your relationship, but don’t overthink it. You might choose not to offer marital advice unless a client has become a good friend and has raised the issue, but you’ll rarely get it trouble for offering less charged assistance.

We’re suffering from a crisis of trust these days. We see too many politicians exploiting the public trust, too many respected athletes drugging to win their accolades, and too many businesses taking shortcuts to maximize profits despite the risk of harm to others.

Building a personal connection with your clients and offering needed help builds trust. If you aren’t skilled in your craft, personal trust won’t get or keep you hired, but when you do good work and build a relationship of trust, why would a client look elsewhere?

Here’s your action item: consider whether you want client relationships as opposed to client transactions. If you do, consider how you can build trust into your client relationships and whether, how, and when you might bring a personal dimension into those relationships.