If you haven’t already done so, I invite you to make a decision (not a resolution) about how you will engage in and with business development activity going forward. Your consistent commitment makes the difference between a decision and a garden-variety resolution (which, statistically speaking, has a 25% chance of being broken within the first week and only a 46% chance of being maintained for more than six months).
You probably have a list of tasks you must accomplish before the end of the year. Wrapping up some billable work, making a few final holiday get-togethers, perhaps a few last-ditch but gentle calls to encourage clients to pay their invoices before year’s end.
Adding these two year-end tasks will significantly benefit you as you start the new year:
Your biographical sketch is almost certainly the most-viewed page on your website.
Updating it isn’t busywork: it’s a way of letting people know that you continue to improve your professional reach and achievements. An out-of-date bio sketch suggests an out-of-date practice. Review this post I wrote in 2009 to walk through steps to ensure that your sketch does what it needs to.
End-of-year planning can take many forms. Here are a few questions to consider:
The key to planning well is to make it a means to an end. In other words, what comes from your planning should be a document that you will refer to and tweak throughout the year, not a “one and done” effort.
Set aside some time to complete these two tasks now so you can enter 2022 with a clean slate and a clear direction.
To my readers who celebrate Christmas, I wish you a very merry Christmas with your loved ones.
When confronted with a new, daunting challenge, many of us have a tendency to say we’ll try.
In the business development context, that might show up as, “Oh, I hate networking, but I know I need to meet new people, so I’m going to try attending the monthly entrepreneur’s meetup.” Or “I know I need to be easier to find online, so I’m going to try to publish a few articles this year.” Or “It’s been a couple of years since I looked at my business development plan, so I’m going to do that and try to get it updated this month.” Or… Well, you get the picture.
Here’s the truth about saying, “I’ll try”:
Sometimes “I’ll try” does mean “I plan to make a legitimate and strategic effort to accomplish this goal.” If that’s what you mean, leave out “try” and just say you plan to do it. Of course, there’s a risk of failure—there’s always a risk of failure—but leaving out the fuzzy word “try” may help to minimize that risk.
I urge an honest and pragmatic approach to business development. So if you aren’t fully committed to undertaking an action (and by fully committed, I mean intending to take planned, strategic, and consistent action), don’t kid yourself. You don’t have to do everything—in fact, you can’t do everything—so acknowledge what you can and can’t do (or will and won’t do) and leave “trying” on the sidelines.
There’s no doubt that price is a factor in most buying decisions. However, price is not the only factor, and it doesn’t have to be the most important factor. Consider this:
If you want to command a higher fee, deliver extraordinary quality, convenience, service, and value. How to do that is a long conversation. How do your clients judge quality? What does convenience look like for your clients? How can you create additional value for your clients? And finally, how can you provide client service in a way that produces quality, convenience, and value? Answering those questions typically requires some digging, but it’s a worthwhile pursuit.
Here’s the deeper thought, though…
If you market on price, doesn’t that in effect concede that you don’t deliver extraordinary quality, convenience, service, or value?
Relationship development is a key part of any business development initiative. That’s why we put so much effort into meeting new people, getting to know them, and following up with them over time. But how do you gather and track the relevant must-know information about your contacts?
Enter the CRM: the Client (or Customer) Relationship Management system.
(One prefatory note for the rest of this conversation: if you’re working in a larger firm, you may have access to the firm’s CRM and consider that sufficient for your purposes. Before you reach that conclusion, find out how easily you will be able to extract your contacts’ information should you leave the firm. If it’s at all difficult, given the reality of today’s professional world, don’t rely on the firm’s system.)
A CRM is most often software (local or in the cloud) that organizes contacts and information about them, but it need not be highly technology-driven. Some people successfully use spreadsheets, Outlook, Evernote, or even a Word file. CRM software offers functional advantages.
Here’s a list of features and attributes your CRM system should include:
Why might you not want to use a CRM? If you won’t keep it updated, a CRM may do you more harm than good. Otherwise, a CRM is a good investment to facilitate building your network.
Corporations have known the importance of branding for years, and their brands sometimes take on a life of their own. Take Southwest, for example. NYSE stock symbol: LUV. Founded on exhibiting care for employees and customers, the Southwest brand is about being nice, straightforward, and creative. (See more about that and why it matters for lawyers here)
Just like a corporation, you need to have a strong brand as a practitioner, so that you’re easily distinguished from others in your field and so it’s clear what you stand for.
While marketing methods will evolve and respond to current industry and cultural trends, your brand is based on who you are, your core principles, mission, and values. You may make adjustments to your brand over time to reflect your growth, but those core factors will rarely change in a way that will fundamentally alter your brand.
Branding is something you and your team must do on a daily basis, through every representation, with every phone call and email, with all work produced, and every invoice you provide to a client.
Here’s an example, though it’s by no means the end of the story… Consider the law firm Cravath, Swain, and Moore. Everything that emanates from the firm reinforces three key messages:
From those messages alone, anyone looking for a lawyer knows instantly whether Cravath might be the right choice for them and whether their values are likely in line with the firm’s. Cravath’s brand is clear, compelling, and different from competitor firms.
And now it’s your turn.
If you’re aiming to be a RainMaster (or even a rainmaker, for that matter), you must identify your brand and your firm’s brand.
Start by asking yourself these questions, among others:
Each of these questions, when answered with care and when your client engagements demonstrate your answers, creates the basis for a focus on client relationships and building client value.
I’ve uncovered a shortcut for answering who you are as a practitioner in a clear, compelling way: the attorney avatar. An attorney avatar defines a key aspect of your brand as well as the value you offer clients, all based on who you are as a practitioner. A few examples:
If none of those avatars grabs you, that’s ok — there are three more avatars, and one will describe the way you function in practice.
Once you’ve defined your brand (in terms of your attorney avatar and otherwise), the next question becomes how you convey it. That brings us to positioning, which is the process of sharing your marketing message, particularly including your brand, with clients and contacts. Positioning depends upon business development activities such as communicating with potential clients and referral sources through key marketing avenues.
I’ll share more information about branding and positioning in upcoming emails, but here’s the key takeaway: you must have a brand as an attorney, and that brand informs the way you market yourself and your practice as well as your positioning among other practitioners in your field.
If you fail to understand and shape your brand, you may be misperceived in a way that limits your business development opportunities; if you fail to pay attention to your positioning, you may be invisible in the market or a “best kept secret” — both of which result in too little business of your own.
P.S. Eager to learn how you can put this all together to become highly and credibly visible so you can build a solid book of business? [Here’s the fast track.]
Knowing how to approach a conversation with a potential client can be a struggle. You want to know what his or her concerns and objectives are, but how do you make sure your potential client understands what you’re about and why you’re the right choice to handle the matter?
Here’s the best two-sentence guideline I’ve ever seen:
One truism about practicing law is that there’s never quite enough time. That’s especially true in two business development-related instances:
Let’s focus on the second of these challenges: the big project. Having survived law school and some years in practice, you no doubt know all the tips about breaking a large project down into bite-sized pieces, mapping out the ultimate objective and interim goals.
What if, despite your scheduling time to work on the project at the end of the day or on weekends, you just aren’t making progress? It’s time to take two steps.
First, ask yourself whether you’re committed to this project. It’s ok to change your mind, so long as you acknowledge the change and know what you’ll do instead. Having an outstanding goal that never gets closer undermines drive and confidence in the ability to reach that goal. Don’t do that to yourself.
Second, rearrange your day so that you spend at least a half-hour at the beginning of the day working on your big project. That rearrangement (while perhaps inconvenient) recognizes the priority that you’re placing on the project and ensures that you’ll make consistent progress. This is, of course, a valid time management approach for any priority project. It’s particularly useful in the context of business development because it creates a specific time slot and time pressure for an activity that may otherwise lack either. (In other words, it’s blocking space in your day for a task that is important but not urgent and, in doing so, creating some urgency around it.)
Take a look at your schedule today. Is your first task of the day one that’s important to growing your practice? If not, rearrange.
Here’s a quote for you to consider.
Sometimes when I speak with lawyers, especially those new to business development, they share all the steps they’ve taken, and I’m left with one essential question that I always ask in a more diplomatic way: So what?
Activity is critical, of course, since accomplishment can exist only through activity of some sort. That said, it’s important to distinguish between activity and achievement to ensure that your business development activity is worthwhile and moving you toward the results you want to see.
Whether actions you take amount to achievement or whether they’re just activity depends on your objectives. If you want to succeed in growing a profitable practice, you must have a business development strategy that’s tailored to your practice style, your clientele, your preferences, and your skills. Your strategy will tell you whether your efforts are achieving something worthwhile as opposed to inconsequential activity that keeps you busy but doesn’t move you toward your goals.
An example: if you attend a conference and collect 100 business cards for new contacts, so what? If your goal is to be elected to a leadership position, meeting a bunch of people may help you attain that objective, especially if you have a coordinated follow-up plan in place. But if you’re seeking new business, you’d be better served by having more in-depth conversations with a small handful of people who fit your client avatar or referral source description. Follow-up is critical in either case, but when you’ve already started developing a relationship, you’ll find it easier to continue the conversation and take it to a deeper level that moves you down the path toward new business.
Take a look at the business development tasks you’ve completed over the last month and ask whether each represents activity or achievement. If you find activity, check to see what else you might do to achieve instead.
Don’t you love it when someone else is genuinely interested in your success? We all do. And we all know when interest is genuine, as opposed to when it’s self-motivated and faked. Genuine interest is tremendously appealing, while self-serving is off-putting and even alienating.
Are you interested in your clients’ success? You don’t have to tell anyone but answer honestly. Depending on your practice, that interest could mean anything from a years-long involvement at the most intimate business levels to a deep interest in a limited aspect of your client’s experience that’s followed with well wishes, a farewell, and rare-to-occasional follow-up contact. If your answer is lukewarm, that’s a sign that something is out of alignment, and it deserves attention.
Assuming your answer is yes, you are interested in your clients’ success, the question becomes, how do you show your clients that you’re interested in them? When interest is genuine, it tends to flow naturally. Because life is busy, though, you’ll likely find it helpful to come up with some ways that you can demonstrate that interest. A few examples:
These are just a few examples of how your actions reveal your interest (or lack thereof) in your clients. The best methods, of course, are the ones that are most genuine for you and the ones that have the most positive impact on your clients. When you act from a genuine and appropriate interest in your clients’ business and personal success, you join your clients’ team. That tends to create client satisfaction (maybe even client delight), recurring business, and referrals, and it also tends to become an enjoyable extension of your practice.