Don’t make assumptions.

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I ran across this quote recently:

what's your favorite traveldestination- (2)

So true, isn’t it? And yet, we all tend to make assumptions.

  • That client is thrilled with our engagement; this one isn’t.
  • That target client is represented and has no interest in moving; that one understands the legal situation that’s cropped up but can’t (or won’t) spend the money to resolve it.
  • That contact knows what kind of work I do and knows I’d like to get referrals.

What assumptions are you making that may affect your business development success? How can you test them?

 

What can law schools teach you now?

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I recently paged through the Vanderbilt University alumni magazine and ran across a story titled Law 2.0: Vanderbilt Law School Innovates to Stay Ahead. The article provides a nice summary of the practice a law in the years leading up to the Great Recession, the shifts that the economic crisis created, and the efforts to adapt. Little of that, of course, is news at this late date, but several quotes jumped out at me:

  • “Some commentators call this the ‘new normal.’ I call it the ‘post-normal.’ We don’t know what the new normal is yet for law firms, but we know there’s no going back to how it was.” J.B. Ruhl, David Daniels Allen Distinguished Professor of Law at Vanderbilt
  • “The billable hours don’t indicate value at all. The firm that I hire really needs to help me reach a business result, and that business result is not 1,000 hours.” Julie Ortmeier, vice president, general counsel and secretary for Carfax
  • “Succeeding at a law firm today is more about forging an entrepreneurial, business-oriented path than simply executing good legal work.” Andy Bayman, partner at King & Spalding
  • Daniel Reed, CEO of UnitedLex, a global consulting and legal services firm that offers comprehensive technological solutions for law firms, corporations and law schools, believes the technological revolution in law is only just beginning. “If this is a baseball game,” he says, “we are probably still in the first inning of change.”

 

The article also describes the Program on Law and Innovation, Vanderbilt Law’s response to all of the changes in the legal profession, providing core training in e-discovery, legal project management, law and technology, and legal futurism. Although other programs are not discussed in this article, other schools are also working to identify the skills and new disciplines that law students need to master to be competitive. (See, for example, the regrettably defunct Law School Innovation blog, the Legal Tech & Innovation Concentration at Suffolk University Law School, and the Technology, Innovation, and Law Practice Seminar at Georgetown Law School.)

For those already in practice, so what? While I believe it’s too early to call these new topics and programs required, some programs seem to have been launched at least in part in response to the criticisms about the value of law school and the ease and profitability of entering the practice of law. It would not be surprising to find that new lawyers who have completed them have a leg up if only because taking part in these programs indicates an understanding of the importance of the business of law, which is now a key client focus. You need not adopt the new approaches fully, but failing to be aware of and fluent concerning them may in time mark you as a legal dinosaur—hardly a competitive advantage.

Tracking which topics and programs are successful also allows you to make a call about legal fads versus legal futures. When you see the basis for program initiation and the response, you have an opportunity to be an early adopter of the trends that will speak most directly to your clients.

And if you’re feeling off the hook because you don’t work in a large firm—not so fast; small firm practitioners may have a better opportunity to innovate simply because you usually have to cut through less red tape to implement new ideas.

Here’s the bottom line: you need not go back to law school to learn about today’s innovations, but you can’t afford to quit studying.

Two keys to biz dev perseverance and success.

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Have you ever had the wind knocked out of your business development sails? That can happen when you expect to land some new business and it doesn’t happen, when you hit a few closed doors in a row, or even when you lay out your business development plan and feel exhausted just looking at it. Nobody said building a book of business is easy or fast.

Here’s what makes it less frustrating: doing business development activity on a consistent basis and tracking what you do and your results. When you act consistently and build a track record to look back on, you’ll find it easier to keep on keeping on.

I’ve written extensively about the need for consistency. In talking with several clients recently who were slammed with billable work and leaving business development work on the back burner as a result, I suggested this:

  1. Determine, with all the clear-eyed realism you can muster, how much time you can make available for business development activity on a daily basis.
  2. Block that amount of time on your daily calendar.

  3. Categorize your task list based on the type of activity (contexts, to use Getting Things Done language) and on the amount of time necessary for completion.
  4. Work on one “chunk” of activity each day. If your tasks take less time than you have available, cross a couple of items off your list. If they take more time than you have available, define and complete one step toward the task.

You probably won’t keep your scheduled block every single day, but if the blocks are on your calendar, you have a much better chance of making consistent progress than if you only have one block of time set aside per week.

Tracking

I’ve also written about parallels between business development and going to the gym. Last month, I shifted from a small local gym to my neighborhood YMCA, and I discovered a new parallel: tracking matters!

My new gym features Fitlinxx®, small screens that show the proper settings for each machine and connect to an online program that tracks participants’ activity. Through Fitlinxx®, I can see historical data about what machines I used, how much weight I lifted, and how much cardio or other activity I performed, along with my standings among other FitLinxx® members. I not only stay motivated (right now, I’m #8 among women in my age range in my gym, and I’m just over 200 points behind the #5 position—hello, competition with myself to move up!) but I can also correlate how I performed with how I’m feeling, how I’m sleeping, and so on. All of this data is measurable and meaningful to me, and I can use it to help me improve.

So too with tracking your business development activity and results. When you track what you did and what happened as a result, you’ll get data that will tell you what you can and should do to improve your results. (Do more of what works well and eliminate what doesn’t work, and use the data to tell you which is which.) You may also find that tracking your activity is motivating in itself, and if you share it with an accountability partner (a peer or a coach) you’ll likely find that you do more activity and work to do better.

Here’s the bottom line on tracking:

Where performance is measured, performance improves. Where performance is measured and reported, the rate of improvement accelerates.

You can find more information on how to track your results in Chapter 3 of The Reluctant Rainmaker, and you may download a sample tracking sheet here.

How will you build consistency and tracking into your business development approach?

Why status quo is dangerous.

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What’s wrong with status quo? Maybe nothing. But here’s what you need to keep in mind when you’re considering whether to make a shift of some sort:

Status quo doesn’t get attention.

Status quo doesn’t delight anyone.

Status quo doesn’t get talked about.

Status quo doesn’t feel fresh or tailored.

Status quo… just IS.

Maintaining status quo

In a world that is moving forward, staying the same gives your competitors an advantage. They need not make a big change, and they need not even make a change that offers a substantial advantage: any change offers a point of distinction.

Should you make a change solely for the sake of making a change? No. But you should never stop asking whether a change is warranted to better serve your clients, to better position your practice, or to work more efficiently.

If nothing else, a change may get your own creative juices going. If you’re trying to solve a difficult problem, try standing up or working in a different location. Even driving to work in a new way may stimulate new ideas.

If you’re feeling stuck in status quo, what might you change?

Decision or action?

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Consider this short exchange:

Copy of “Five seagulls are sitting on a dock. One of them decides to fly away. How many seagulls are left-” “Well … four.” “No,” Jones responded. “There are still five. Deciding to fly away and actually flying away

What have you decided to do to grow your practice? Are you actually doing it?

What’s every client’s favorite word?

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On one level, clients are looking for different things as they choose and work with attorneys. Some want a budget provider who will do the minimum necessary or collaborate closely with in-house counsel or business people for DIY completion. Others want to hire the most prominent, best known, most expensive lawyers to appease the Board of Directors or to show another party that a matter is getting serious attention. Yet others look for a lawyer who has connections to useful people or businesses, and others prefer to work with lawyers who have implemented legal project management. You get the idea, and the variations are endless, especially once you consider clients who seek a combination of attributes.

But there’s one word that sums up what every client is seeking: value. The budget-seekers measure value in terms of the legal spend. Those seeking a lawyer with connections define value in part in terms of getting introductions that will expand their reach in some way. Those seeking the authority in the field measure value in terms of top quality legal work, of course, but they also expect to benefit from the top lawyer’s reputation and successful track record. These (and a myriad other ways of determining value) should affect your marketing in at least two ways:

  1. You must know what core value (other than quality legal work) you bring to the class of clients you serve and identify that in your marketing. This is one aspect of differentiating yourself from other practitioners in your field. The differentiating factors that matter are those that your clients value. If what sets you apart isn’t something that your clients value, it’s a distinction that won’t have any substantial effect in growing your practice.
  2. You must find ways to create value for your clients in the course of your representation. Think of this as an “add-on” value that’s above and beyond the core value you identified to differentiate yourself from others. Examples might include sharing information about a trend you’ve identified, offering educational material to support the legal work you do (a pamphlet about ways to attract investors to a start-up or an annual email that invites clients to see whether they need to update their estate plan, for example), or a directory of providers in fields that would benefit your clients.

Take this non-legal example to illustrate the two kinds of value. When you think about car repairs, the most important thing is likely that the repairs be completed correctly, within a reasonable time, and for a reasonable price. Core values that might attract you to a particular garage would include a focus on particular brands of cars or using only factory-authorized parts. Repair shops would promote those points of differentiation because they may be decision factors. Add-on value would include the availability of a comfortable waiting room with wi-fi, a quiet area, and good coffee. Chances are that you wouldn’t decide on a repair shop solely based on that add-on value, but you would appreciate it, you might tell others about it, and you might find the repair process better because of those perks.

Your action item:

Questions on value 2

How to write well for marketing purposes

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Last week, I had two strategic planning sessions with private clients. As usual, writing (articles, blog posts or comments, newsletters, client alerts, etc.) featured prominently in both of the business development plans we created. And also as usual, my clients each asked why they should bother writing, when so many other lawyers are already writing on the same topic. It’s a smart question that each lawyer must answer before pinning marketing hopes on writing.

Here’s what it boils down to: to be effective, you must cut through the tremendous amount of noise that your target audience confronts daily. Blog posts, articles, and client alerts too often regurgitate the no-longer news about a legal development without extending any analysis that makes the information relevant to the reader. Given the availability of “as it happens” information about legal developments, simply being a reporter won’t cut through the noise, and it won’t get useful marketing attention. 

So what does make written product effective for marketing?

Star Onboarding Title Page

This infographic summarizes these steps, along with several others that will make your written marketing product useful for readers and therefore effective for marketing.

Is writing an effective tactic in your business development plan? If you’ve recently written something for marketing purposes, review it now to ensure it complies with these guidelines. And if you haven’t written for marketing purposes, brainstorm at least 10 subjects you could write about a set a deadline for yourself.

How you revive a neglected professional relationship.

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Despite the best of intentions, it’s easy to let a relationship slide.  You may not appreciate the value of maintaining professional relationships, or you may simply get too busy to keep up with an effective follow-up contact schedule and system.  It’s all too easy to allow a relationship to atrophy.

So… Can you resuscitate an atrophied professional relationship? Yes! By focusing time and attention on your relationship and maintaining consistent effort, you’ll often be able to revive a good relationship more easily than you built it in the first place.

But you might feel awkward trying to re-energize a stagnant relationship, especially if you aren’t sure that the relationship can be reinvigorated.  Don’t write off a beneficial or enjoyable relationship is unless you have grounded evidence that it can’t be resurrected!  It’s easy to allow discomfort to lead you into turning a neglected-but-viable relationship into a dead one, and lawyers far too often give up on relationships before they’re truly finished.  But how do you know?  Or, as someone often inquires when I’m presenting a business development workshop,  Is it ever too late to rebuild professional relationships that have languished?

The short answer is that it depends on nature and character of the relationship.  The deeper the relationship was in its heyday, the more likely it can be resurrected later.  If, however, you meet once and fail to follow up, or if you follow up only once or twice, the relationship will lack the firm footing necessary to allow it to flourish following a period of silence.  That said, it never hurts to try to rebuild a relationship, particularly if your sole reason for reconnecting is to re-establish communication and not to seek a favor. (If you haven’t been in reasonably consistent contact with someone, chances are that a request for a favor will be met with silence. Pick your battles accordingly.)

So, what can you to do rebuild a connection that has faded?  The simplest, and often the most effective, approach is to do precisely what you would do with a friend you haven’t seen in a long time:  pick up the phone and say, “I realized it’s been a while since we’ve spoken, and you’ve been on my mind.  Is this a good time to talk for a few minutes?  How are things with you?  What’s new?”  If several months have passed since you were in touch with this contact, you may even begin the conversation by re-introducing yourself.  (This is where my recommendation to maintain a database of contacts proves especially helpful:  you don’t have to try to remember when and where you met.)  You may experience a few awkward moments as your contact gets back into the connection, but most people will pick up relatively quickly. Better yet, leave a warm voicemail expressing your desire to reconnect, giving your contact the opportunity to recognize your name and remember your relationship before getting into conversation with you.

If, like many lawyers, you’d rather do nine hours of painstaking document review without a coffee break than pick up the phone, you do have other options.  For example, you might consider the following:

  • Send an email to reconnect.  You might suggest talking by telephone and either arrange a time to let your contact know you’ll be calling.  While you’ll still have to pick up the phone, you’ve created an expectation that you will call, and chances are good that you’ll avoid an awkward beginning.  If you suggest that you’ll call, though, you absolutely must do so — or run the risk of looking like a flake.
  • Send an article or other resource that will interest your contact.  The resource may address a legal or non-legal issue, but it must be tied in some way to a conversation you’ve had with the contact.  Attach a note that says, “I remember talking with you about [topic of resource] at [wherever you had the conversation] and thought of you when I saw this [resource].  Hope it’s useful!”  By doing so, you not only reconnect by offering assistance, but you do so in a way that will bring your conversation back to your contact’s mind and refresh the relationship.
  • Issue an invitation.  You might invite your contact to an open house or to attend a CLE or other seminar of interest with you.  If you deliver an invitation by mail or email, be sure to attach a note saying that you look forward to reconnecting.  This personal touch will indicate to your contact that your interest in genuine.
  • Seek out news about your contact.  This may be a more challenging approach if you’re seeking to reconnect than to maintain a relationship, but it’s worth a quick search to see whether your contact has been in the news recently.  You may find news of a professional event (an honor awarded, a trial won, a leadership position attained) or a personal event (a new marriage, a new baby, a recreational or community activity).  Such news offers an ideal reason to get in touch again.
Take a few minutes this week to review your list of contacts.  With whom should you reconnect?  Choose three to five people and reach out to them.  Building and maintaining your network is always a valuable activity, and keeping relationships alive will often pay off (often in unexpected ways) over time.

Biz dev is a marathon.

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A friend recently ran her first marathon. She didn’t know how it would feel to run 26 miles, and she was concerned about giving up partway through if she started to feel too tired. She even used a marker to write on the inside of her arm, “Your mind will give up before your body. Don’t stop.” She not only finished: she finished almost 15 minutes faster than she’d imagined she might.

Her tip? Don’t let the mind run the show when it’s tired, stressed, and worried. Make a commitment to action and keep going even when it gets hard.

That approach works for literal and metaphorical marathons. And that’s another reason why it matters so much that you have a business development plan with clear interim and ultimate goals: you’re less tempted to stop even when it gets hard if you can look to your interim goals to mark progress and focus on your ultimate goals to provide continues motivation. (Your ultimate goal refers not to originating and/or serving $X of business, but doing that so that you can make partner or pay cash for your kids’ college tuition or stay at the Four Seasons on your next vacation.)

Here’s the bottom line:

Don't stop when you are tired.Stop when you are done.

The power of quiet selling

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Susan Cain launched a national conversation about introverts with her 2013 book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, and that conversation continues three years later. Even the ABA Journal recently jumped into the introvert discussion with its January cover story Introverts in an Extrovert’s World: Most lawyers are introverted, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Several articles and book have addressed sales for introverts, most notably Daniel Pink’s To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others, which concluded that ambiverts (those who lie between introversion and extroversion) tend to be the strongest performers in sales. A quick Google search on “sales introvert” will turn up some 481,000 results. It’s a hot topic.

I recently ran across an article titled The Power of Quiet Selling that, although it’s primarily directed to introverts, offers tips that anyone engaged in business development should consider. For example:

  • Ask thoughtful questions that will help you (and your sales prospect) understand their priorities.
  • Educate instead of persuade: using a collaborative approach positions you as a trusted advisor.
  • Be patient—the relationships you build will generate even greater rewards down the road
The Power of Quiet Selling is worth your time, and if you apply the article’s recommendations (whether you’re an introvert, ambivert, or extrovert), you can expect to see business development benefits from your efforts.