Legal Marketing: How do you handle silent rejection?
It’s hard to hear “no” when you’re working to increase your visibility through speaking or writing or when you’ve asked a potential client for new business. But as difficult as it is, you probably hear “no” on a regular basis. (In fact, if you don’t get turned down at least every now and again, you’re […]
What if small talk fails?
Relationships are at the heart of business development. That’s true regardless of the length of your sales cycle, meaning the typical amount of time required for a potential client to move from first encountering you to hiring you. It isn’t necessary to build a deep and personal relationship in all cases, but you do have […]
Do you think about what you’re doing?
How often do you think about what you’re doing? Probably more often than you should. Consider this quote: When it comes to business development (and practice in general), building good habits will help you to accomplish the tasks you want more consistently. For example, if you make it a habit to connect with a new […]
What’s your agenda?
One of my favorite questions is, “What’s your agenda?” I’ve noticed, however, that we tend not to ask that question of ourselves often enough. Setting an agenda is a classic time management strategy. If you’re looking to make meetings shorter and more productive, circulate an agenda in advance and expect everyone to come prepared. If […]
Share your best ideas with your best clients.
When do you share your best ideas? BTI Consulting, a group known for its deep research in client satisfaction and preferences, reports that: “[j]ust over 2/3 of clients tell us the best new ideas they see coming from law firms happen during an RFP process. Somewhere among the sea of bland boilerplate submissions lies one […]
Business development trades in promises.
Sales. Selling. Sales pitch. How do those words come across to you? Positive, negative, or no charge at all? Studies show that a significant number of people have some bad impression about selling, though most people have no negative association with buying. (See Daniel Pink’s To Sell Is Human for more on this.) But if […]
Plans are useless, but…
I see two huge mistakes among lawyers eager to build a book of business: the urge to jump into action without designing a plan, and the tendency to plan and revise and plan some more without ever moving to action. Today I’ll offer another perspective on planning, from Dwight Eisenhower: In other words, when circumstances […]