Bribe your way to success

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Clients often tell me that they don’t feel motivated to do business development work. Although I understand on one level, it surprises me every time simply because I don’t believe that any successful person relies on motivation to succeed.

Motivation is a transient emotion that typically doesn’t last through the tough, make-or-break spots. I often wasn’t motivated to study during law school–or college or high school–but I did it anyway because I knew that studying was necessary to reach my objectives. I don’t remember ever being motivated to brush my teeth (except when I purchased my nifty Sonicare toothbrush, and that novelty passed quickly) but I do it at least twice a day because I value my teeth.

Undertaking business development activity falls into a similar category: motivation is a nice bonus, not sufficient fuel to get it done. Ideally, some activities are such a good fit for you that you enjoy them, or at least you don’t mind them. Others you may dread. And that’s where bribing your way to success comes in.

A recent Harvard Business Review Blog describes four kinds of rewards to help you complete tasks you dread. The categories are:

1. Regenerative: a reward that recharges your body and brain
2. Productive: the reward of work you enjoy
3. Concurrent: a reward that you enjoy while doing the dreaded task, likely one that doesn’t require a lot of concentration
4. Cumulative: a fund you pay into when you complete a large and dreaded project
Read the blog post to get ideas about rewards in each category, and then create your own list of compelling rewards. Bribe yourself to complete business development tasks you don’t enjoy, and each bribe will help you to build the practice you want.

Your 2015 marketing must-do

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By now, you’ve probably accepted the reality that you must market your practice, and that you must do so consistently. But the bulk of your time goes into practicing law rather than marketing your practice, so you need to use your time as effectively as possible. You can’t afford to waste time.

And that leads to the “must do” marketing activity for 2015:

 

I don’t really like watching videos, and I certainly don’t like shooting or sharing videos of me. But the statistics are hard to ignore. Video is important and will become even more so over time. Ignore the product demonstration benefits (since lawyers don’t really do that), but if nothing else, consider this: when you have videos available, your potential clients and referrals sources get to “meet” you before you ever speak. It allows people to get a sense of who you are, how you talk, whether you’re approachable, and so much more that can never be conveyed in text.

 

Video is not the silver bullet to marketing your practice, but your approach is incomplete if you exclude video.

A few ideas about how you might use video:

  • Report on a trend you’ve noticed. Video is especially nice here because it’s conversational.
  • Discuss a recent development. You may find it quicker and easier to talk about the development rather than to write it, and if you’re engaged, it’s more likely to draw in your viewer.
  • Talk about issues your clients face. Don’t step over the line into giving advice, but video is a nice way to connect with an audience and let them know you understand.
  • Offer resources. A litigator might prepare a “how to prepare for your deposition” video that may allay a client’s discomfort. If you recommend the same service providers or tools over and over to your clients (for inventors, perhaps), a quick video will let you give more information and color than text.
  • Introduce yourself. Notice that this is last on the list. A video that’s about your target client and what that client needs will outperform a video that’s about you. That doesn’t mean an “about us” style video (or webpage) is unimportant, but clients and referral sources will want to know how you can help first.

A few ideas on where you might incorporate videos into your marketing:

  • On website pages specific to a practice area, to talk about the issues that your clients face.
  • On a resources page on your website
  • On the a “recent news” page on your website
  • On your website’s about page, to describe yourself, your practice, etc.
  • On your blog, to discuss recent updates or to spot trends for your readers.
  • In a comment you share on someone else’s blog, to support or amplify your comment
  • In client newsletter or alerts, to share insight in a conversational way
  • On your LinkedIn profile, to bring your profile to life and distinguish you from others who don’t use video
  • On YouTube—you do know that Google owns YouTube, right?
  • On Facebook, if your market is there and if you’re jumping through the requisite Facebook marketing hoops. There’s good evidence that Facebook is now outperforming YouTube for video.
  • In emails to clients, if you know your clients appreciate video.

If you’re ready to explore video use, consider these recommendations:

  • Have your video copy transcribed. Google can’t index the content of your video, and not everyone will want to watch a video. Having the copy right below the video gives you the benefit of both video and text.
  • Have evergreen videos professionally produced. Your “about us” video should be professionally created and edited, and that’s what you should use as your primary LinkedIn video.
  • Shoot some “recent developments” videos on the fly. If you just attended an interesting conference or a hearing and want to share some information about it on your blog or as a client alert, you can shoot a perfectly good video with your cellphone. Just be sure the sound is good and that the image is stable, and make sure your comments match the immediacy of the format. (In other words, have a conversation with the viewer rather than speaking at the viewer.)

Make 2015 the year you incorporate video into your marketing. That’s one of my goals for this year, so you can expect to see more use of video in this newsletter and elsewhere.

How do you use and/or view video for business purposes? What engages you, and what turns you off?

Avoiding 2015’s top obstacle

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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 recent 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.)

If you’ve ever found yourself hesitating on doing something new (and who hasn’t), read Godin’s full post. I suspect that you’ll come away with a different view of risk, one that will help you to avoid standing still, which is (as usual) this year’s top obstacle.

Celebrate!

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It’s the season of celebration: Christmas almost here, Hanukkah just ending, and other special days about. Whatever you celebrate, and even if you aren’t celebrating anything, I wish you a magical season.

(Wishing for a biz dev read? Here’s one of my most popular articles in 2014.)

Year in review: what worked?

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In just two weeks, 2014 will be over and done. You can still accomplish a lot if you choose, even with the intervening holidays, but there’s one must-do task to set yourself up for a strong 2015: your year in review.

Just about every successful person I know or know of considers the year-end review a critical piece of preparing for the upcoming year. There’s no single way to conduct this review, though you can get a flavor of the process through Chris Guillebeau’s Annual Review and his suggestions  on how you can perform the same process.

When it comes to marketing and business development, you can streamline the process by asking three simple questions. 

  1. What should I stop doing? What marketing initiatives flopped? What did you dislike doing? Which activities delivered results that weren’t proportional to the time (and perhaps money) investment required? These are activities you should stop doing.Just a word to the wise here: be sure that you’ve given an activity enough consistent effort to judge it fairly. If you just started working within an organization in October and you’ve only attended one meeting, you probably don’t have sufficient data to make a determination.
  2. What should I start doing? This is where you’ll revisit your business development plan. Which activities fit your marketing identity and are well calculated to reach your ideal client? Most likely, you should start implementing some subset of those activities.
  3. What should I continue doing? In other words, what worked well? Consider results in terms of building your brand, raising your profile in the marketplace, building valuable relationships, and landing new business.

 

Year’s end is an ideal time to ask yourself these questions, and the process need not be fancy. Grab a pad (whether i- or yellow) and make a few notes. Be sure you have your calendar and your business development plan at hand to jog your memory and measure your outcomes. And while you’re at it, schedule a midyear review now for late June or early July 2015.

News you can use

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Without further ado, some articles and ideas you can use this week:

1. If you work in a firm and struggle to get around to business development activity thanks to the pile of billable work on your desk, read this quote and then internalize it:

“The biggest mistake that you can make is to believe that you are working for somebody else. Job security is gone. The driving force of a career must come from the individual. Remember: Jobs are owned by the company, you own your career!” Earl Nightingale

2. If you think that doing good work on time (you know, just like most of your competitors) is enough to create value, try this exercise to uncover reasons for clients to choose you.

3. Especially pertinent for the holiday season, when socializing is at its peak: 5 Steps to Building Great Business Relationships .

4. As you’re working on your business development plan for 2015, consider the interrelationship between goals, strategy, and tactics . Get them mixed up, and you’ll waste a lot of time.

Finally, are you committed to growing your book of business but not sure where to start? I’ve set aside a few consultation times for next week. Schedule a time for us to get acquainted and explore whether I might be able to help you.

Don’t miss this no-fee webinar!

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Do you ever wonder why the plan that a colleague used to land business just doesn’t seem to work for you?

Are you tired of facing a choice between doing billable work (so you have receivables today) and doing business development work (so you have receivables tomorrow)?

Have you ever had the feeling that there’s a secret that you could use to build a successful practice, if only you knew what it was? And a fear that other lawyers know that secret, but you don’t?

Do you ever worry that your marketing or business development activity comes across as pushy or obnoxious—or, worse yet, desperate?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, here’s the good news: it doesn’t have to be that way.

Over the last few weeks I’ve shared the 9 Ways You’re Losing Business—And What to Do About It. Last week, I shared a “big picture” schematic that shows you exactly how to determine you most effective marketing activity. Join me next week for a complimentary webinar, when I’ll show you exactly how to….

Build a Rock Solid Book of BusinessThat Brings You More Impact, Influence, and Income 

I’ll show you how to:

  • Develop marketing that’s an ideal fit for you, your practice, and your clients so you never again feel inauthentic or pushy when marketing your practice
  • Become credibly visible in your market, so you become known to your potential clients and referral sources
  • Create a consistent experience for your clients so that they know exactly what to expect during the course of the engagement
  • Build relationships that leads to business (directly or by referral)
  • Create value for your clients above and beyond the basic expectations for an engagement
  • Identify the word that no client wants to hear and replace it with the word that will connect with them

Use this link to register to attend the webinar or to receive an invitation to an encore broadcast.

I’ll look forward to “seeing” you at next week’s webinar!

Nine Ways You’re Losing Business: The Big Picture

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Over the last 10 weeks, I’ve serialized the article Nine Ways You’re Losing Business—and What to Do About It.  To recap, the nine ways you’re losing business are:

  1. You aren’t creating value for your clients.
  2. You don’t really see your clients.
  3.  You’re indistinguishable from other lawyers.
  4. You don’t invest in your practice.
  5. You don’t know how to say no.
  6. You’re invisible.
  7. You “don’t have time.”
  8. You’re marketing using someone else’s plan.
  9. You’re renting your practice, not owning it.

I shared suggestions on how to address each of these problems in the respective article parts, but there’s a bigger answer. Effective business development lives at the intersection of four factors:

  • Your practitioner brand (who you are, as demonstrated in the way you approach your practice and your clients, and who you are in terms of marketing)
  • Who your client is (in terms of demographics, psychographics, and more)
  • What your client needs (substantively and from the relationship with you)
  • How you create value for your client

Here’s the question for you: how frequently are you operating in that sweet spot?

It isn’t easy to learn this. Law school doesn’t teach how to hit this sweet spot, and very few business development training opportunities address this level of strategy. Knowing how to find it is critical, however. The alternative—strategic scattershot marketing—leads to frustration and success that’s limited at best.

Next week, I’ll share an invitation to explore this topic with me and (most importantly) begin to identify your unique path to success. For now, study the schematic above and consider where your marketing lives.

And for those of you in the United States, Happy Thanksgiving!

Nine Ways You’re Losing Business (part 10)

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Welcome to part 10 of a 10-part series, Nine Ways You’re Losing Business—and What to Do About It. 

Next week, I’ll summarize the entire series and show you some next steps so that you can go into 2015 from a position of strength instead of trying to play catch-up.

Reason No. 9: You’re renting your practice, not owning it.

Are you renting your practice? I’m not asking whether you’re renting office space. And I’m not asking whether you’re an associate or junior in practice. This question is about your attitude and your approach to your practice. Are you building your practice based on what you want your practice to be, or are you “paying your dues”? Compromising? Accepting what isn’t ideal but might be good enough for now? Waiting until something changes?

If you aren’t actively and strategically growing your practice on a consistent basis, you are renting your practice. Even if you’re a sole practitioner, renting your practice means you have a job, not a career. As we learned during the recession, lawyers can lose their jobs when firms fail or as a stopgap measure designed to avoid failure—or even to increase profit.

“Career” non-equity partners (meaning those who cannot or will not advance to the point of attaining equity partnership, as distinguished from “transitional” non-equity partners who are working to become equity partners) are at special risk.  These lawyers typically have strong skills but relatively high salaries and relatively small books of business, meaning that they represent a drag on the firm if work dries up and they can’t bring in enough new work to support or significantly defray their expense.

 

If you only rent a practice, you have few transferable assets other than skill and experience, which is many cases isn’t enough to distinguish you from a sea of talented lawyers. As a result, you have fewer professional options, and you may find it difficult or even impossible to find a new job.

“Owning” your practice means taking responsibility for your own success and not depending on others to provide work or opportunities to you. It means looking at the assets and liabilities in your practice (financial and otherwise) and determining how to harness the assets so that you can grow your practice. It’s putting in consistent and strategic activity to grow your practice. It’s looking at engagements as relationships, not transactions—even one-off engagements can yield referrals with the appropriate effort.

Renting vs. owning a practice isn’t purely a financial question: depending on the circumstances, a lawyer with no clients at all may own her practice with a lawyer with a $250,000 book of business may only be renting. While results certainly do matter, what distinguishes two similarly situated lawyers is action and attitude. A 2009 New York Times Op-Ed piece summarized it this way:

A Washington lawyer friend recently told me about layoffs at his firm. I asked him who was getting axed. He said it was interesting: lawyers who were used to just showing up and having work handed to them were the first to go because with the bursting of the credit bubble, that flow of work just isn’t there. But those who have the ability to imagine new services, new opportunities and new ways to recruit work were being retained. They are the new untouchables. . . Those who are waiting for this recession to end so someone can again hand them work could have a long wait. Those with the imagination to make themselves untouchables — to invent smarter ways to do old jobs, energy-saving ways to provide new services, new ways to attract old customers or new ways to combine existing technologies — will thrive. (Emphasis added.)

The legal market has shifted, and it will continue to do so. Clients have more options and are making new demands in terms of the cost, efficiency, and structure of engagements, and there’s no hint of abatement. Instead, we can expect to see more changes and more significant changes in the way that lawyers and clients work together.

Today’s economy calls on you to become an entrepreneur at law. Stop following the tired old rainmaker model of getting the work, then doing the work, rinse and repeat with an ever-growing focus on bringing in more and more work. That model, when successful, leads straight into the feast/famine cycle. Instead, determine your brand as a practitioner and how you can express that brand in your practice, then find how your brand and the skills encompassed in that brand can intersect with what reaches and influences your ideal clients. Build relationships based on trust, and look for ways to create value for your clients. Re-imagine how you can work with your clients, letting your clients’ needs and wants guide your innovation.

If you’re doing the same old, same old, you are losing business. The new economy calls on you to take ownership of your practice, to explore new ways to find, engage, and serve your clients, and to seek continuous improvement in what you do as a practitioner and how you do it.

Step up, or you may be pushed out.

Nine Ways You’re Losing Business (part 9)

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Welcome to part 9 of a 10-part series, Nine Ways You’re Losing Business—and What to Do About It 

Reason No. 8: You’re marketing your practice using someone else’s plan.

Law schools rarely teach students how to market (or manage) a law practice. So most lawyers learn by reading articles, attending training, and—most commonly—following the example set by a successful mentor. However, every person brings different skills, assets, and attitudes to both marketing and practice.

If you’re using a plan created by someone who’s significantly different from you, even a plan that’s been highly successful for that person won’t be successful for you. Every person brings a unique set of skills and assets to be used in marketing as well as preferences that must be accommodated, at least to some extent. In addition, every ideal client profile will be slightly different. No two plans will be identical, and even remarkably similar plans will probably be executed in distinct ways.

I once worked with Sarah, a lawyer who had built a thriving practice, and I thought I’d follow her lead so I could get the same results. Unlike me, Sarah was a social butterfly. She entertained frequently and met contacts for a meal or coffee most every day. She seemed to know everyone: when we went out to lunch, I felt as if we were having lunch with the whole restaurant because it seemed that she spoke to almost everyone there. Sarah was well known in the community, she met many potential clients who subsequently hired her, and she had a steady flow of referrals.

I tried to model Sarah’s networking activity. I laid great plans, but I dreaded executing them. Unlike Sarah, I’m an introvert, and the thought of that much socializing was simply exhausting. I made an effort, but it was too easy to get sidetracked with work (pressing or otherwise) because I didn’t enjoy that volume of activity, and so I didn’t get anything remotely close to Sarah’s results. Sarah’s plan worked for her, but it wasn’t a fit for me, and it wasn’t as effective as the plan I created to incorporate my own personality, preferences, and skills.


The “copycat plan” is destined for failure, as is any plan that doesn’t start with an analysis of the building blocks at your disposal and the objectives you want to reach. Instead of borrowing someone else’s plan or using a generic plan prescribed by a marketing expert, create your own plan based on the responses to questions such as:

  • Who are you as a practitioner? How do you approach your practice and your clients?
  • What is your marketing identity? What marketing avenues are most effective for that identity?
  • What are the attributes and characteristics of your target clients, and how can you reach them?
  • What are your branding assets?
  • Which relationships should you focus on building?
  • What are your objectives? (For example, do you need to bring in business immediately, do you need to raise your profile in the marketplace, or do you need to position yourself to support a new or expanded practice area?

Use the answers to these questions to design a plan that’s well suited to your specific objectives, that uses your unique skills, and that’s calculated to reach your ideal clients and your network of allies. When your plan is tailored for you, you’ll find it more effective and you’ll be more willing to implement it on a consistent basis.

If you use a generic business development plan copied from another source, you’re losing business.