Don’t be a stranger

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Last fall, I hired Summit Pools to close my pool for the season. My contact Pete (I didn’t know it at the time, but he’s also the owner) was terrific: he set the appointment, let me know exactly what to expect, told me what the cost would be and what could change that cost, and explained the benefit of the service. He called me the day before our appointment to confirm the time, and he showed up right on time—after sending a text to let me know he was on the way. It was a great experience, and I just plain liked Pete.

Fast forward to March, when I was eager to make arrangements to get the pool open. I couldn’t remember the name of the company I’d liked so much in the fall, and I hadn’t put it in my Home Maintenance Evernote file. I went through emails and my calendar without success. Because I remembered something about a P, I looked at companies with names like Pinnacle, Premier, Popular, and the like, and I hired one of those companies since I couldn’t find the original.

And the service was ok. No reminder call, but a quick response when I called to confirm. The work wasn’t done perfectly, but it was adequate. I didn’t think much of it and probably would have continued with the new company, except that I had a few issues with the pool and wasn’t getting the kind of response I wanted. I eventually went through my checkbook register to find Summit again, and I got the same fast, capable, friendly service. This time, I put Summit (and Pete) in my phone and in my Evernote database.

Do I hear a great big SO WHAT?

What does this have to do with law?

If you do large, complex matters, chances are reasonably good that your clients know exactly who you are and how to find you if they want to hire you again or send a potential client your way. However,  if your matters tend to be of relatively short duration, with limited direct contact, or somewhat routine, you could be missing out on repeat business and referrals if you don’t proactively stay in touch. Even if you’re confident that your clients will know how to find you to rehire you or refer work to you, staying in touch will keep you top-of-mind and continue the relationship so they’ll think of you first.

Consider these steps:

  1. Send reminders if the work you do should be reviewed and updated periodically (estate work and some contracts, for example). An email or postcard will suffice. Schedule these reminders as soon as you complete the matter.
  2. Send follow-up resources. Perhaps there’s a logical next step for your client. Establishing a new company could lead to later needs like contract review, intellectual property protection, or a buy/sale agreement, among many others. Provide appropriate resources at an appropriate interval. This too should be scheduled as soon as you complete your work for the client.
  3. Keep in touch. Sometimes you don’t need a specific reason for a contact. Depending on the representation and your relationship, it may be quite appropriate to send an email or call to touch base. You might inquire how things have been going since the matter ended. But here’s the key point: you must be genuinely interested, not just trolling for new work. Where appropriate, an electronic or hardcopy newsletter offers an opportunity to stay in touch without taking the time to make every contact individually.

Here’s the bottom line: don’t put the onus of finding you or updating the work you’ve done solely on your client. Friendly and useful ongoing contact is a benefit for your client and potentially a path to new work for you.

Meeting Client Expectations… Or Not.

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One of the top client complaints received by bar associations across the country has to do with lawyers’ failure to return telephone calls. I haven’t seen statistics, but I suspect that clients also complain about lawyers who fail to answer email. Clients expect that lawyers will communicate with them in a timely manner, and on the surface, just about all lawyers agree. And the same is true for other service providers, including those who don’t have a professional oversight board of some sort.

But we’ve all had that annoying client. You know, the one who is constantly on the phone or sending yet another email with an unnecessary question or comment. The one who is so insistent on knowing when a task will be completed that it may feel like you won’t have time to do the work unless you “ignore” the client for a while. And even if you don’t have one of those clients, you’re probably still swimming in telephone calls and emails – we all are these days.

So, how do you deal with client expectations about communications? If you meet every expectation, you may fear that you’ll add dramatically to your workload and you may worry that your clients will dictate how you operate your business; if you don’t meet expectations, you may find yourself on the wrong end of a complaint, or you may discover that dissatisfied clients are telling their friends and colleagues about your [perceived] poor service. What’s the answer to this catch-22?

Have a conversation with your clients about communications at the time of engagement. The most dangerous expectations are those that go unexpressed. If, for example, a client is expecting a weekly check-in and you don’t realize that, it’s probably a safe bet that the client will quickly feel dissatisfied and either start clamoring for attention or silently smoldering. If you ask what the client expects, you’ll have an opportunity to meet that expectation.

And, you may choose not to meet the client’s expectations, instead finding an arrangement that works for you as well as for your client.  When there’s nothing pressing, for instance, you may not communicate with the client for some period of time.  If you bill based on time, unnecessary communications will run up your client’s bill (perhaps creating greater dissatisfaction), and if you use a flat fee arrangement, unnecessary communications can eviscerate your profit. Planning in advance to advise that a quiet period is coming instead of taking the time to give weekly reports of “nothing new” will serve your client and yourself.

When you discuss expectations, you can respond to what your client expects by sharing your own expectations. Some clients will be satisfied when they understand when and why you communicate (especially if you agree to communicate in the manner your client prefers), some may negotiate with you in some way, and some may choose not to hire you. Regardless of the outcome, both of you will come out ahead for having had the conversation.

What’s more, when you build this into your pre-engagement conversation, you may find that this conversation can either convey or serve as a value-add for your client. Your client may not expect weekly updates, but if you share that aspect of your practice in advance and the value that other clients find in those updates, your ordinary habit may be a selling point that gets you hired. And anytime you can both increase the likelihood of securing new work and increasing client satisfaction with one simple conversation, shouldn’t you do it?

Clients aren’t property.

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An interesting article to share with you this week:

Law Firms Leaders’ Moneyball Mistake: (registration is required to view the article) Written by Steven Harper, author of the can’t-miss book The Lawyer Bubble, this article points out the problems with large firms’ “aggressive inorganic growth” via lateral hires. Harper quotes Group Dewey Consulting’s Eric Dewey’s observation that, “An attorney needs to bring roughly 70 percent of their book of business with them within 12 months just to break even,” and that “more than one-third bring with them less than 50 percent.”

Why should you care? If you’re in a large firm, understanding these issues is important in considering firm growth and your own professional options. If you’re in a smaller firm, the lessons may still attain.

More importantly, the article offers the reminder that clients are not property. Whether you’re planning to bring or receive portable business, or whether you’re planning to inherit a book of business from a retiring attorney, it’s important that you understand that successfully requesting any kind of client shift depends on trust and a strong relationship that extends to the new situation.

And so it’s important to be building trust and relationships with your clients even if you have no intention of asking them to follow you to a new firm or to work with your designee when you leave practice. It’s too late to do that work when a change is imminent, and in the absence of a trusting attorney/client relationship, you may find your client shifting work to another lawyer or firm.

What will you do with this information today?

How do you establish trust?

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You’ve probably heard some version of Bob Burg’s statement that, “All things being equal, people will do business with and refer business to, those people they know, like and trust.”

We tend to focus on getting known, we work to communicate in a way that increases the chances of being liked, but how do you build trust? I like this perspective:

Trust is built in very small moments.

What does this mean in the context of business development and the practice of law? Ensure, to the greatest extent possible, that everything you do increases (or at least doesn’t decrease) your trustworthiness. For example:

  • Return calls and emails within a reasonable time. (Extra points for letting your contacts know when they should expect to hear from you.)
  • If you say you’ll do something (whether it’s billable work or following up on a conversation), do it at the time and in the way you said you would.
  • If you send a newsletter, send it consistently.
  • If you’re asked a question and you don’t know the answer, say so and promise a follow-up—and then follow up when you said you would or sooner.
  • If you’re wrong about something or you make a mistake, own up to it. Explain if necessary, but don’t make excuses.
  • Be findable in the groups and publications where someone in your field would ordinarily be found. (If you’re an elder law attorney, for example, you might be a member of the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys.)
  • Have a professional presence both offline and online that fits your practice. (Your “vibe” will be likely different if you work with musicians than if you serve Fortune 100 companies, for instance.)

These are just a few examples of how you might do your part to appear and be trustworthy. What opportunities do you see in your own practice?

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!

Implement these ideas today

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What would it take for you to catch up on all those articles and emails you put to the side (physically or digitally), promising to read them later but almost never actually doing so? For me, it was spending the last two weeks sitting in the ICU with a very ill family member. (He’s now out of ICU and doing well, happily.) And while catching up, I ran across a few articles and resources you can’t afford to miss.

1. How do GCs really view lawyer marketing? This article, summarizing a panel of Fortune 500 GCs who spoke at the Legal Marketing Association annual conference, is well worth a read if you’ve ever paused in the midst of business development activity and wondered why you’re bothering. The big take-home for me? Fortune 500 companies pay attention to client alerts and blogs as well as speaking engagements. Holiday cards and directory listings, in contrast, ranked low.

Bottom line? Providing relevant and timely content to potential clients establishes your credibility and makes you a viable candidate for retention. (Note that these conclusions may not translate directly to consumer clients.)

2. Explore Coursera, which allows you to enroll for free in online classes offered by some of the top universities in the world. If time and money were endless, I could be a perpetual student, and Coursera affords entry to classes I could never access otherwise, offered online via video. I signed up for Better Leader, Richer Life, based on Stewart Friedman’s book Total Leadership (which I reviewed here and taught by Friedman himself and Inspiring Leadership through Emotional Intelligence, taught by Richard Boyatzis, co-author of books including Primal Leadership, and I have my eyes on several other courses.

Coursera will feed your mind on topics relevant to building your practice (including several business classes on marketing and innovation) and personal interests (such as Exploring Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas or Buddhist Meditation and the Modern World). What’s more, depending on your practice area, you may recommend a course to your clients (Law and the Entrepreneur, perhaps) or draw on what you learn to flavor an article or blog posts.

3. Never Lose Sight of the Competition. This article, written by “Die Hard Entrepreneur” Gurbaksh Chahal, offers ground rules on how to handle your competition: don’t take competitors for granted, study your competitors and learn from their mistakes, be creative (not a copycat), and persevere.Although the article’s context deals with products rather than professional services, the lesson holds. What can you learn from the way others on your practice area market, how they define the scope of their practice, and what ancillary services they offer? And then, how can you use that information to help you identify a gap in client service or in outreach to your ideal clients and/or referral sources?

I hope these three resources are helpful for you. More importantly, I hope they are useful — which means you have to implement what’s relevant for you and your practice.

Not enough time for biz dev?

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The #1 objection I hear to undertaking business development activity is time. Nobody has an overabundance of time, and when there’s plenty of billable work on your plate, it’s often hard to free up time to bring in yet more work. (Willingness may be an issue, too. As I discussed recently in this article, in addition to the time crunch, you may unconsciously be resisting new business if you’re already very busy.).

Lack of time is a real concern, but it’s also illusory since we all make time for our top priorities. As Larry Winget has written, “Your time, energy, and money always go to what is important to you.” If you say you want to grow your practice and yet you never seem to have time for the requisite activity, you should reconsider your level of commitment.

Even so, finding time for business development activity takes dedication and ingenuity at times. I read a great article by Michael Hyatt, former Chairman and CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, whose work now focuses on leadership and platform building. Titled How To Blog If You Don’t Have Time, this article offers useful tips that are applicable beyond blogging. Item #3 in his list is my absolute favorite: use a timer to harness the power of a deadline. It’s also a winning strategy to beat procrastination.

Review Hyatt’s list and decide how you can create the time to engage in your business development activity. What’s your first step to implement?

Legal Business Development: What You MUST Learn From Law Firm Layoff Trends

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On Monday morning, I read a Wall Street Journal article sharing the news that law firms have “regained some of their pricing power” and that hourly rates are up an average of 4.8% from 2011.

Later Monday, other news started to roll out:

  • Weil Gotshal announced a layoff of 60 associates (7% of its associates) and 110 non-lawyer employees.  Weil further announced that about 10% of its partners will see “meaningful adjustments” to their compensation.  See articles here and here.  The layoffs were explained by the shrinking market for premium legal services that are a part of the “economic realities of the new normal”.  According to the firmwide memorandum that announced the action, Weil remains strong on a variety of economic indicators that have been linked to the demise of Dewey LeBoeuf.
  • Jones Day announced a “reorganization, which includes a realigned management structure and the elimination of 65 positions around the Firm.”  All of these positions are staff.

This follows earlier stories of firm layoffs, including:

Does this signal a return to the cuts of 2008-2009?  I don’t think so, though I do think it’s quite likely we will see additional layoffs and firm failures.  Instead, these layoffs seem to be signs of large firms’ efforts to adjust to the “new normal,” a change that is neither comfortable nor simple.

But the trend that’s becoming clear should be a wake-up call, whether you’re practicing by yourself or in a large firm.  There has never been much room for non-productive personnel in a law firm, but the measuring stick for contribution is much tighter now than it might have been in the past.  And thanks to shifting client demands, smaller and less elite firms have opportunities to gain from clients unwilling to accept law firm business as usual.

Here’s what you need to know today:

  1. If you are a service partner, you may be at risk.  I’m hearing from more and more service partners who have seen their compensation cut, sometimes by as much as 50% over the last three years, and moving to another firm may be difficult or even impossible without a demonstrated ability to bring in business.  Technical expertise is only one component of a successful practice, and if you don’t have your own clients, you may soon find reduced opportunities to demonstrate your expertise.
  2. If you are a junior associate, you have to “learn the law,” but you’d better spend time developing your network and beginning to lay the foundation to build a practice as well.  You may hear that you don’t need to worry about bringing in business yet,  but you need to lay the groundwork well before you need to see results, especially in more sophisticated practice areas.
  3. If you’re working in a midsized or larger firm and don’t have your own book of business, it’s time to get moving and to look for ways to facilitate introductions for your firm.  Even the very most junior lawyers may have an opportunity that results from conversation and culminates in an introduction to a more senior lawyer who is more likely to land the business.  That opportunity won’t happen if you aren’t looking for it, however.
  4. If you’re working in a small firm or as a sole practitioner, you have opportunities.  Larger firms are historically resistant to change, whether because of institutional beliefs and expectations or simply because it’s harder to shift the approach of a firm of several hundred (or thousand) lawyers than to shift the approach of a firm of a dozen lawyers.  This is a time to reconsider practice and to look for ways to meet your clients’ (and desired clients’) needs and preferences, even those that may not have been fully expressed yet.  Read Mitchell Kowalski’s intriguing book Avoiding Extinction:  Reimagining Legal Services for the 21st Century for inspiration.
  5. Whether you’re a highly successful rainmaker, an aspiring rainmaker, a reluctant rainmaker, or a lawyer in denial, relationships matter.  It’s critical that you focus on building a network that’s composed of clients and former clients, referral sources, colleagues, former classmates, and other contacts.  This network is your lifeblood, whether you’re looking for business, for a job, or for a new dentist.  Build it before you need it, and always seek to add more value to your network than you extract.  (If this is a scary thought to you, email me and I’ll be happy to send you a list of networking resources that will help.)

The days of having a practice supported by being a “great lawyer are gone forever.  In today’s economy, every successful private practice lawyer is a rainmaker who has created an effective plan for building a consistent pipeline of new business.  Rainmakers harness their unique strengths and perspectives to create a cohesive, strategic, simple-to-implement plan–and they take consistent, focused action on that plan.

Don’t delay.

Legal Rainmaking: To Sell Is…

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This week, I met with a lawyer who’s been in practice for 50 years, who will be using The Reluctant Rainmaker to teach a law school class on business development.  We touched on how the practice has changed over the years and why he encouraged his sons to become lawyers, but the bulk of our conversation centered on how he has marketed his practice over the years.  Perhaps you’ll be interested in these three takeaways from our talk:

  1. Business development starts with personal development and must be grounded in integrity, authenticity, and truth.  Turns out that we’re both fans of Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and I recommended The Speed of Trust by Covey’s son, Stephen M. R. Covey.
  2. Small, consistent touches are memorable and build relationships.  For instance, this lawyer sends a book that meant a great deal to him when his mother died whenever he learns of a death in a client’s immediate family.  His firm also uses a client satisfaction form at the close of every representation, and he’s created cards to send whenever he sees a client mentioned in the news.
  3. Meeting new people is critical to the success of any practice.  This lawyer serves on several boards, speaks regularly to associations relevant to his practice, and is active in a wide variety of community activities.  As we discussed, the small, consistent touches won’t accomplish anything if you don’t have people to receive them.

We also agreed that too many lawyers have bought into the myth that sales is inapplicable to professionals.  Every lawyer must understand how to sell, and that’s why I’ve reviewed Daniel Pink’s recent book To Sell Is Human recently.  Read about that here.

Out of curiosity, how would you complete the sentence stem, To sell is…?

 

Legal Marketing: To Sell Is Human

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The subtitle of Daniel Pink’s recent book To Sell Is Human is The Surprising Truth About Moving Others.  I’m not entirely sure that the truths shared in the book are altogether surprising, but the book puts a human, approachable face on a necessary skill that suffers from a bad reputation.

Pink starts by proving that we’re all in sales now.  He defines sales as the business of persuading, convincing, and influencing, which he calls “moving” others.  With a definition that broad, it’s almost impossible to find someone who isn’t in what Pink calls “non-sales selling.”  Pitching an idea (to a boss, a team, or a jury), convincing a hyped-up kid to go to bed, or teaching resistent students all qualify as sales activity.

Nonetheless, the majority of people view selling with distaste, largely because of the deceptive tactics that salespeople are known to pull.  Pink cites record-breaking car salesman Joe Girard, known for establishing relationships with buyers by fabricating connections.  (“You’re from Yonkers?  Me too!  Your aunt has a beach house on Long Island?  Me too!  Your middle name is Thaddeus The Great?  Me too!”  UGH, right?)  Although Girard was quite successful in the past, Pink suggests that he wouldn’t do as well in today’s world.  Why?

We have shifted, writes Pink, from caveat emptor to caveat venditor.  Today’s purchasers come into sales conversations armed with information, reviews, and ratings of products and services.  As a result, sales now consists of curating information to assist the purchaser, finding answers together, and making sales both personal and purposeful.

In contrast to the old “ABC” = “Always Be Closing” model of sales, Pink defines the ABCs as Attunement, Buoyancy, and Clarity.

  • Attunement refers to approaching the sales exchange from the buyer’s perspective.  Pink notes that in contrast to the stereotype that extroverts are the best personality type for sales, ambiverts (meaning those in the middle of the extrovert/introvert range) are actually more successful because of superior skill in attunement.
  • Buoyancy is the combination of “a gritty spirit and a sunny outlook.”  Pink urges sellers to be optimistic and reason-focused (asking, for instance, “Can I succeed?” before a sales encounter, to prompt reasons to expect success rather than just ungrounded motivation), with just enough negativity to stay pragmatic.
  • Clarity calls on a successful seller’s ability to define the problem to be solved through the sale and why the purchaser might not want to buy your solution.  Pink offers several tactics to use her, including emphasizing experience over material objects and including a small negative attribute to the solution being sold to make the positives more believable.

When it comes to the “how to” of selling, To Sell Is Human is not comprehensive, and if you’re looking to become an expert in sales, you’ll want to add other resources.  However, he offers three points that provide significant insight into the process of selling.  One of the most useful is Pink’s list of six new ways to pitch a solution:  the one-word pitch, the question pitch, the rhyming pitch, the 140-character Twitter-style pitch, the subject line pitch, and the Pixar pitch.  These won’t translate directly to selling legal services, but the exercise is helpful in crystallizing what a buyer needs to know and what will pique her interest.

Pink also recommends the use of improvisation techniques, which allow the seller to accept whatever a buyer says and to add a suggestion that supports the sale.  I couldn’t agree more about the value of improv for sales and any other business discussion.  See my review of Improv Wisdom for additional suggestions.

Pink finally urges sellers to come from service, focusing on the value that the solution will bring to the buyer.  This point feels like the most “human” of the suite:  instead of just looking from the buyer’s perspective, service requires an independent determination that the buyer will benefit.  Sales, in other words, is not done to someone, it’s done for them.

What’s in it for lawyers?

So many lawyers have told me that they can’t possibly excel in rainmaking because they aren’t extroverts.  This interview in which Pink explained why ambiverts (which includes most of us) perform the best in sales is what prompted me to pick up the book.  If you’ve ever worried that your introversion will block your ability to land business, read the book.  That section alone makes it worthwhile.

More generally, the book’s premise and examples will help to mitigate distaste for selling and the idea is something you do to someone, not for them.  That shift in perspective alone can transform the way you approach business development.

Finally, the examples and exercises will focus your attention and will help you to improve in sales.  As I said, learning sales techniques will require additional training (I recommend Mastering the Complex Sale:  How to Compete and Win When the Stakes are High!  By Jeff Thull), but To Sell Is Human will help to erase discomfort around sales and provide an authentic way of approaching a necessary task.