Nine Ways You’re Losing Business: The Big Picture

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!