One simple question for you today: are you making progress toward your business development goals… Or are you making excuses?
Here’s the tricky part: progress doesn’t necessarily require massive action, and action doesn’t necessarily equate to progress.
Take a minute and get honest with yourself. If you don’t like what you discover, do something different today. Making progress can be as simple as picking up the phone to call a strategically selected contact.
After I finished writing last week’s article on the relationship between the generative power of language and your business development activity, I remembered several other articles discussing a similar topic. I highly recommend you check Michael Hyatt’s 3 Ways You’re Giving Up Power with Your Words: How the Way You Speak Can Sabotage Your Success. Hyatt’s discussion of how words like “I’ll try” give us an automatic escape from whatever you say you want to do:
“When we agree to a commitment by saying, “I’ll try” or “I’ll give it my best shot,” we’re saying the opposite. At least that’s what people usually hear.
The problem is that it not only undermines our credibility, it also lowers the chance we’ll make good on the commitment because it’s a subtle denial of our own agency.”
After you’ve read Hyatt’s post, check out this one from Seth Godin. Godin’s upshot:
When you decide to set the agenda and when you take control over your time and your effort, the responsibility for what happens next belongs to you.
And that’s why you must take an entrepreneurial approach to your practice. Change is going to come, and you can be reactionary or responsible. The choice is yours, but only one of those options will lead you to success.
One of the keys to building a successful law practice is adopting an entrepreneurial approach, regardless of your practice setting. In other words, whether you’re a sole practitioner or the newest hire in a gigantic firm (or anywhere in between), you must recognize that you “own” your practice, and you must act accordingly. That means:
If you need to develop an entrepreneurial mindset, let’s talk.
If you have the entrepreneurial mindset, read this article by Jonathan Fields, a former practicing lawyer who’s now an author, entrepreneur, and producer of Good Life Project. Titled Why Do So Many Entrepreneurs Hate Their Lives, this article will get you thinking about who you are and how you bring that to your practice. Even if you’re happy with your practice, I guarantee that this article will give you important food for thought. As Fields writes, when you consider the questions posed in the article, “you’ll start to cultivate the level of self-knowledge needed to build something that not only makes money and serves a need but also serves you and the life you seek to create.” Read it (and do the work) now.
I confess: I’m one of the thousands and thousands of people who can’t get enough of the show “Friends”. The early seasons were especially clever, taking all kinds of language out of context for comedic effect. (Stick with me, I do have a business development point here!) In one episode, Chandler accuses Joey of becoming too feminine thanks to the influence of his new female roommate, which makes Joey pout. Chandler asks what he said wrong, and Joey answers, “It isn’t what you said, it’s how you said it.” (And thousands groaned, having heard exactly that charge somewhere along the line from a significant other.)
Somewhere through life experience, we’ve all learned the lesson that language can make a neutral concept unpleasant or aggressive. As a middle school teacher put it, “Say what you mean. Mean what you say. But don’t say it mean.” Language has power, so we know to choose words carefully to avoid tainting a message with unintended connotations.
How often do you pay attention to the language you use to describe business development?
I recently led a workshop for a small group of lawyers who’ve been tapped as high-potential leaders within their firm. I started the workshop, as I often do, by asking what feels uncomfortable about business development, and one answer guided a large part of our conversation:
I don’t like having to sell myself.
That comment kicked off a conversation that can’t be replicated in a short article, but…
Consider:
Language is generative, and the words you choose carry a certain power or energy. Choose your words so that you don’t get stuck in a particular way of thinking. Substituting selling your services for selling yourself won’t magically transform your business development activity or results, but I guarantee you’ll approach the job differently if you can make that shift. (And if that’s a change you need to make, read the book Selling the Invisible, starting with my review.)
The practice of law is a business. We all know that, and yet many lawyers also prefer to focus on practicing law rather than focusing on managing the business.
Today’s article comes from Brooke Lively, founder of Cathedral Capital, a team of CFOs and Profitability Strategists who help attorneys with fast-growing firms across the country turn their companies into profitable, thriving businesses so the owner can create the life they want. Brooke knows business, and her article will help you to understand the Key Numbers you need to know to support the business of your practice.
Imagine you are vacationing at a beautiful island resort with no phones or internet, and the only contact with the outside world is by way of a supply boat that comes once a week. What three pieces of information from your law firm do you need to know to decide if you can stay another week?” Wow.
Somebody asked me this question in a meeting one day. I was overwhelmed. Surely, I needed more than three pieces of information? Did I want information about my cash? My people? What about the sales process? And within those categories, what actual one piece of information would I need? And which ones would give me an accurate enough idea of what was going on to allow me to make a decision about staying in paradise for another week?
Over the next few years, my team and I started answering these questions for ourselves and for our clients. We found that there are six areas that have critically important information—the type of info you need when you are sitting at a fabulous island resort. And while all firms are different, we know there is one Key Number in each section that applies to your firm. The Key Number is almost always forward-looking—meaning it tells you what is going to happen. And when it isn’t forward-looking, it tells you how to get back on track. Here’s a quick synopsis of the areas, components, and what we consider to be the 6 Key Numbers®.
Cash is king, and no firm can survive without an ample amount. More than anything else, you need to know about the cash you have—and the cash you are about to need. Your Cash Flow Forecast (CFF) allows you to look forward, make decisions, and plan in a measured, reasoned, and proactive way, instead of reacting to a new crisis every week.
The question we are asked most often is, “How much should I be spending on … ” The good news is that we have the answer. We use a ratio to determine that called the Rule of Thirds – 1/3 goes to payroll, 1/3 goes to overhead and 1/3 goes to profit. Law firm owners work much too hard to be the last ones to be paid. You are taking the risk and should be reaping the financial reward. For this reason, we always monitor the owner benefit—and look for opportunities to increase it.
At the end of the day, if your law firm is not producing legal services, it will close. The trick is to learn how to incentivize your people through goal setting and understand what the capacity of the firm is and how much of that capacity you are using. WIP (Work in Progress) is the key number for production. Today’s WIP is next month’s revenue.
The Budget vs. Actual report is a standard report in all accounting software and serves two purposes. First, it means you have a budget. The Budget vs. Actual report lets you know if you are straying off course and gives you the ability to course correct.
Understanding how clients get to you is vital. Once you start tracking your conversion cycle, it highlights places in marketing where your message is not in alignment with your firm. Ultimately, the Key Number we track is the number of sales calls booked. With that one number, we can predict how many new matters will be signed in the next month.
I realize no case is “normal,” but your matters do have certain similar characteristics. Your average case length and value paired with the Net New Cases key number gives us lots of insight. By knowing the number of Net New Cases (cases opened minus cases closed), we can predict how much work is in the firm, the pressure it will put on your team, and next month’s revenue.
I get it, attorneys don’t like numbers – that’s why you went to law school, right? However, a little work will net you enormous gains. And it doesn’t matter if you are sitting on an island or struggling to keep your firm going, the 6 Key Numbers® that you need to know are the same. These numbers help you gain control, chart a path, and achieve your goals.
For more information on the 6 Key Numbers® and how to implement them for your firm, read Brooke’s new internationally bestselling book, From Panic to Profit: How 6 Key Numbers can make a 6-figure difference in your law firm. Now available on Amazon. You can reach Brooke through her website at CathCap.com or by email at Brooke@CathCap.com.
Regardless of your area of practice, you almost certainly spend a big chunk of your time persuading someone to do something. In addition to persuading a decision-maker (a court or opposing party, perhaps), during the course of a day you probably attempt to persuade colleagues about a plan of action (or a destination for lunch), administrators about research, or other assistance, and so on. Great. Let’s assume that persuasion is among your top skills.
I’ve observed that the skill sometimes falls by the wayside, however, when it comes to business development. I recently talked with a client (a successful litigator) who told me how difficult he finds it to strike the right balance in talking with a prospective client. How much is too much, how little is too little, and what should the content be?
I read this article from 2015 that will help: How Doctors (or Anyone) Can Craft a More Persuasive Message. The article centers on the distinction between the message and the messenger, which is certainly critical, but it also offers three simple factors that you can use to form a more persuasive message.
Read the article for insight on how you might communicate more persuasively. And where you have a choice in forming a team approach to a business pitch, consider especially the article’s question about who’s likely to be the most effective messenger.
A client recently shared his worry about taking on new marketing approaches, which included an effort to become credibly visible in a variety of marketing channels rather than centering all of his efforts on a single marketing avenue as he had in the past. Nothing especially shocking, but my client (risk-averse, like so many lawyers) was almost paralyzed.
A Seth Godin blog post casts light on that client’s situation by untangling risk and uncertainty:
Uncertainty is not the same as risk… Uncertainty implies a range of possible outcomes. But a range of results, all uncertain, does not mean you are exposing yourself to risk.(Emphasis added.)
Overthinking can ruin your plans. One of the biggest mistakes I see lawyers make is coming up with a good, solid plan and then discarding it before ever giving it a shot. Overthinking takes the oomph out of a strategy, and there’s no better way to short-circuit than to let fear take over and reverse a decision.
This week’s quote is right on point.
Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, don’t sit at home and think about it. Go out and get busy.
– Dale Carnegie
There you have it. Go out and get busy!
“Pressure is what you feel when you don’t know what you are doing.” – Peyton Manning
This quote stopped me in my tracks. My first inclination was to disagree, because I sometimes feel pressure because of a deadline or because of the importance of some activity, even though I know what I’m doing. Digging a bit deeper, though, I think Manning has a point.
When it comes to business development, the lawyers most under pressure are those who don’t have a cohesive plan, who aren’t implementing their plan consistently, or who haven’t fully committed to one or more activities that are likely to help them secure work. Although they know what they’re doing on certain levels, there’s a disconnect between intellectual knowing and buckling down to do the work. If you know that you should request an on-site meeting with a client, for example, and you expect that you might well land more business or receive a referral or even deepen a valuable relationship, but you don’t ask for the meeting, you’re going to feel pressure.
In contrast, if you have a plan that you’re implementing consistently, though you may feel tension until you see results from your plan, that tension is different in nature. When you know what you’re doing, both in terms of the specific activities and the timing, you also know that you can shift your plan as needed to tweak your results.
You know that you have something that’s fundamentally workable. You’ve done your homework and you’ve prepared yourself and your plan.
Do you feel pressure about business development? If you do, take a few minutes today to get to the source of that pressure. You’ll probably find that it’s one of these issues:
Which of these issues underlies the pressure you’re feeling? Once you’ve identified the problem, you’re that much closer to solving it. If you aren’t sure where to start, please schedule a complimentary consultation so we can get acquainted and mutually decide whether I can help.
I read a terrifically useful article years ago titled How You Fail In Sales that still applies today. Before you discard its relevance because of the word sales, remember that sales is partly persuasion (of any kind—see Daniel Pink’s To Sell Is Human for more on this) and partly conversation designed to discover a match between a potential client’s need and your ability to help. Lawyers and other professionals sell every day, for business development and substantive practice purposes.
How You Fail in Sales is a nice checklist that will alert you to critical tasks that you may have let slide. And, of course, if you avoid these 9 mistakes, you’ll make significant headway in your business development efforts. The errors listed include:
Don’t let unrecognized mistakes undermine your success in business development. Read How You Fail In Sales now.