Archive for year: 2018

I don’t encourage failure… Mostly.  It’s helpful to assess and mitigate the risks of failure when you’re stepping out with a new activity.  There’s no glory in the “ready, fire, aim” approach when you have the time and the ability to do some (but not too much) preparatory  work that increases the odds of success.

BUT.

If you’re not failing despite doing some prep work, you’re probably not taking big enough steps.  Please, don’t fail because of laziness, intellectual or otherwise. But recognize that if everything is going so swimmingly that you’re not failing at all, you’re leaving something on the table.

You cannot succeed unless you’re willing to fail.  Be willing to take a risk.  The more you do, the higher the risk of failure – and the higher the chances of success.

This video (which happens to be an advertisement for Nike) brings it all home.  Take 31 seconds to watch.  Yes, now.

By nature and by nurture, we’ve been trained to avoid taking risks.  Sure, it’s safer to do only what you know will work (even though sometimes you’ll be wrong about that, too, especially where people are concerned) but you’ll also miss a lot of opportunity.

An example for your consideration.  Referrals and introductions often come by email – “Bob, meet Susan, I think she may be able to help with your blah blah blah question.”  If you’re Susan, an email is the safe response to that introduction.  But a telephone call is often a more engaging and helpful response.  There’s risk involved: what if Bob doesn’t want the introduction or the help?  What if Bob is too busy and a call is an interruption?  That’s a risk I’d suggest you take almost every single time.  Sometimes you’ll fail, but (if you handle the calls well) the successes will outweigh the failures.

So, this week, ask yourself where you’re stopping yourself because you might fail even if you prepare as well as you can.  Specifically with business development and client service, what might you do differently if you were willing to fail?

Don’t aim to fail.  Do take some risks and accept that you may fail before you succeed.

Be committed.  What’s the first thing you think when you think of commitment in the context of your business?  Without commitment in three particular areas of business, success is unlikely.

• Commitment to succeeding in the business. What’s your backup plan if your business doesn’t prosper?  Some professionals (especially the risk-averse, like lawyers) need to have a backup plan to feel secure, but having an acceptable fallback can in some instances be a sign of serious trouble.I recently spoke with a lawyer who commented that she was excited about opening her own practice and determined to make it work, but that if things didn’t go well, she was could always go back to the job she’d left.  Plan B so permeated our conversation that I virtually guarantee she’ll be back at the job within a year.  And that’s ok, except that she’ll return with a feeling of failure if she doesn’t recognize that she was never really committed to building her own business.

  I don’t know a single person (especially over the last couple of years) who hasn’t wondered at least occasionally what if this doesn’t work… But having a clear fallback position makes it too easy to put that plan into action instead of executing the plan to make the business work.  The reason is often simple: Plan B is familiar and safe, which may not be the case with one’s own business or practice, especially during the start-up phase.

  Let me be clear: sometimes a business doesn’t work or a practice lacks the clients to survive, and you still have to pay the mortgage.  If that happens, adjust course.  You may need to take on some part-time work or even throw in the towel on the business.  But if you’re starting every week (or every day or every project) with Plan B in mind, you’ll end up with Plan B before you know it.

• Commitment to business development. To get consistent results, you must be consistent with your business development efforts.When I consult with a potential client who wants to bring in more business, I always ask questions to uncover not just what business development activities they’ve tried, but how consistently – and when a business is underperforming, consistency is always lacking.

  Create a schedule of your activities, divided into daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly activity.  Otherwise, you’re leaving it up to chance.  Even when you’ve developed a habit, a change in outside circumstances can undermine that habit, and you’ll never even notice unless you have a system in place.

  One client wrote articles for publication every other month, but when the journal that published those articles went out of business, he neglected to put writing for publication on his task list, and guess what?  It just didn’t happen.  He searched out a couple of journals eager to publish his articles and added writing to his quarterly task list so it wouldn’t slip through the cracks again, and his stalled list of publications began growing again.  Checklists and schedules will help to keep activity consistent.

• Commitment to clients. I have observed professionals who are so committed to growing their businesses that they focus almost solely on getting the next new client, leaving behind current clients.  Some professions mandate a minimum level of client service, but when’s the last time you felt good about receiving adequate service?To succeed in business, make it part of your habit to deliver exceptional client service.  That means providing the substantive service the client needs, plus providing it in a way that surpasses need.  For example, one of the top complaints about lawyers is that telephone calls go unreturned.  (I haven’t seen statistics, but I imagine unanswered emails are a growing area of dissatisfaction as well.)  Of course, you must respond in some way to your clients’ communications to provide adequate service.  Take adequate to excellent by setting a policy that you or someone on your staff will respond to every client communication within X amount of time, and then stick to that policy.

  For ideas on crafting service that will delight your clients, read Seth Godin’s excellent book Purple Cow: Transform Your Business By Being Remarkable. 

How committed are you?  Are you willing to do what it takes to grow your business or your practice, applying a “no excuses” approach?    

My clients often tell me that they don’t need to track rainmaking results, that they just know what’s working and what isn’t. Keeping records may seem inconvenient and unnecessary. In reality, though, simple tracking will help you to get better results in business development. 

If you’re getting new business, you know something is working, but you may not know what. If you don’t track your rainmaking activity and results, you risk three problems:

• You may find it difficult to make a rational decision about whether to continue an activity. Without data on whether a particular effort is paying off, how can you know whether your investment is worthwhile?
• You may overlook a valuable source of new business. For example, one of my clients reported that an acquaintance sent him three potential clients in a ten-month period, yielding income of close to $30,000. If he hadn’t tracked where that business came from, he might not have been able to express his appreciation and further develop the relationship, which in turn led to even more business.
• You may mistake luck for skill. Beginner’s luck isn’t limited to card games, nor is it limited to beginners. Sometimes new business comes flooding in for coincidental reasons. Without tracking the source of the business, there’s a risk of overlooking the coincidence, focusing on the results, and reducing activity. The consequence? A drop in business when luck dries up and skill has not taken its place.

Many lawyers believe that having a sense of how new business comes to them is good enough. And for a handful of lawyers, that may be true. In most cases, though, an informal, memory-based, qualitative system for tracking results is not dependable.

Memories fade and may be inaccurate. Just as mental tracking is unreliable for balancing a checkbook, it is insufficient for making decisions about business development activity. Every lawyer must have a client intake routine that includes determining how that client became aware of you and your practice.

Remember this insight from business performance improvement expert Dr. H. James Harrington:

Measurement is the first step that leads to control and eventually to improvement. If you can’t measure something, you can’t understand it. If you can’t understand it, you can’t control it. If you can’t control it, you can’t improve it.

If you aren’t tracking the sources of your business, start today. Here’s how: 

• When a potential client contacts you, make sure you or your staff asks how she found you. When getting this information becomes habit, you’ll start to build useful data.

• Incorporate questions about how the client came to contact you or your firm into your client intake form. You may find that you get clearer results if you offer check boxes for the activities you’re engaged in (speaking, a blog, or referral, for example) rather than leaving a blank for the client to complete.
• If you are working in a larger firm that does not use intake forms, consider creating your own form. Request sourcing information as well as information about how and when a client wants to be contacted, who else should be kept apprised of the matter’s progress, and other information that will help you to deliver better client service.

Recognize too that your data probably will not be 100% accurate. Depending on your practice area, some clients may not know how they found you, and some may be unwilling to tell you. Nevertheless, any information you get will be more useful than a baseless guess.

What records will you keep to track the sources of your new business?

Most businesses do some sort of year-end review and lay plans for the next year.  Many client-based businesses slow down a bit at the end of the year, and you have two choices: coast along, or use the downtime to your advantage.  Surely you can guess which approach I’d advise!

When you sit down with pen and paper or cozy up with your computer, what’s the best way to look at where you’ve been this year and where you’d like to go next?  Or, for those of you who are new in business, what should you be considering as you lay your plans?

You may have heard of a SWOT analysis, which stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.  SWOT analysis is taught in business schools and elsewhere as a model to distinguish your business from competitors.  It’s a helpful model, but it’s never felt like a fit to me.

I don’t find “threat” to be a helpful concept – and it isn’t because I’m an overly optimistic Pollyanna who never sees a threat.  Certainly, there are situations and circumstances out there that can pose a challenge to your business, some of which can be fatal if they’re ignored.  But focusing on “threat,” in my experience, tends to call forth a defensive response, which sets up a reactive, rather than a creative, approach.

A more powerful perspective recognizes that where an obstacle exists, there’s almost always an opportunity.  Sometimes it’s exploiting a particular market condition or a news story that’s put negative focus on something you or your clients are doing.  That’s an opportunity to turn lemons into lemonade, meaning that the opportunity isn’t one you would necessarily seek out under other circumstances.

But sometimes spotting an obstacle leads you to recognize an opportunity that you would have dismissed as a problem.  A few months ago, I was talking with a lawyer whose practice centers on family law and who wanted to work with a certain slice of the celebrity market.  She’d identified a big obstacle: she wasn’t a part of the celebrity lawyer crowd.  She described a group of lawyers known to one another and to that market, and even though she had many celebrity contacts, she was an outsider to that world.  And there’s the opportunity.  Much as politicians campaign on having the “outside the beltway” perspective, she could position herself as someone who wouldn’t have the same old, same old approach already known to others in the crowd.  She could use her outsider status as a positive differentiation.  Do you see it?  Obstacle… Opportunity.

Another example: I worked with a consultant whose business was exploding at the seams.  She had a unique process to solve a particular problem, and she had a deep connection to the community of people who were struggling with the problem.  Obstacle: not enough time and energy to work with the clients beating down her door.  Opportunity: she was able to raise her fees so that she could work with fewer clients one-on-one, and she certified some associate consultants in her process, so clients who couldn’t didn’t want to pay her new fees could still work with someone she’d personally trained to apply her unique process.  The result?  She continues to serve a large community and to help them solve their problems, but she now does so in a way that provides more income without draining her energy.

What’s your biggest obstacle?  You know, the one that keeps you up at night.  The one that you find yourself worrying about even when you didn’t intend to think about business.

Turn that obstacle on its head.  Look for the (as yet) unappreciated opportunity that exists within it.  Sometimes it’s difficult to see the opportunity if you’re too close, so ask for help from creative colleagues.