It usually take a good three weeks to develop a good impromptu speech—Mark Twain

An opportune way to allow newer attorneys to cut their teeth in an industry is to develop opportunities for them to participate in speaking engagements. Under the guidance of more senior members of the firm, they can receive good exposure with current and potential clients. Use the law firm marketing department to research professional conferences in which to sponsor or participate one to two years in advance. Here’s why it is essential to the marketing mix: The more speaking engagements and seminars you conduct and participate in, the more opportunities your attorneys have to make contact with new targets and new possibilities to enter the Red Zone.

Turn Seminars into ‘Web’inars

Don’t just record the events on camera for prosperity. Arrange in advance for the rights to use the footage from the seminar, trade show or association event for future use on the firm’s website to broadcast the helpful information worldwide. Doing so will enhance the richness of content and credibility of your corporate site. Opportunities for exposure abound on the Internet, both from a client relations and potential media relations opportunities, as reporters covering a particular area of law increasingly use the net to find sources on the subjects they cover. As an extra measure of exposure, email a link to the seminar to existing and potential targets along with a brief note.

This is the final chapter on law firm mergers and the importance of early involvement by marketing leadership. What can you do to maximize the “rollout” which begins in earnest after the “launch” is over? It needs to identify what the marketplace really wants, and it delivers it.

The launch is a press release. The rollout is the real meat and potatoes of merger marketing. It requires an in-depth knowledge of your own resources in terms of people and expertise. Those resources can be tough enough to identify at your own firm.

In a merger, it requires an assiduous cataloging of what the two firms bring to the table. It should confirm the wisdom of the merger.

In this third chapter on law firm mergers and the importance of early involvement of marketing leadership, the next question is:

How do you show - not tell - the marketplace that your intellectual and professional platform is indeed broader and deeper? New sub-specializations can be defined and marketed. Articles on legal or client industry issues should be co-bylined by lawyers from both merging firms. Talk about mergers in general, using your own as one example. Even years later, partners from the two original firms can still share their experiences at conferences, meetings, etc. - and by so doing implicitly remind the market that their own experience is an example of how it is done right.

This is the second in our series on Law Firm Mergers and the importance of integrating the marketing leadership from both firms as early in the process as possible. Since clients and internal stakeholders will be the most impacted, how should a firm get more people to care?

Well, what do people care about? While marketing in a merger situation is not conceptually unique, it is exponentially more complicated because now you must refine the message and re-identify the messengers across multiple fronts. These fronts encompass the capabilities of the merging firms and the altogether new capabilities that the merged firm presents.

With this premise set, our next column will focus on how you show - not tell - the marketplace that your intellectual and professional platform is indeed broader and deeper.

A vital component to business generation and business development is to create an effective follow up plan. Good follow up enables your firm to fully capitalize on the opportunities that develop relationships already available to you via bar association and trade events, meetings and seminars.

Remember, good follow up starts even before you make physical contact with your target.

Preparation: The Huddle

• Organize the follow up before the event, ascertaining who your firm’s primary targets are.
• Preview handout materials and anticipate who might be attending.
• Match the right attorney with the right potential client based on practice area and expertise.

Then, Don’t Drop the Ball:

• With every personal connection you have made at the event, organize a follow up system to maximize the good will you have cultivated. Forget email in this situation. Instead, stay at the top of their minds with a personal, hand-written note sent no later than three days after the meeting.
• Conduct a post-event review of attendees, their titles, industries and buying power. Then create a checklist on how to effectively follow up on each viable lead.

We begin a new series on why most underachieving law firm mergers share one fundamental deficiency. Over the next several columns, I’ll identify a checklist to be used by the negotiating partners and marketing leadership to deal with it.

The failure is to work a practicable marketing strategy into the very soul of the merger - before it happens, while it happens and after it happens. Keep in mind that marketing is not just self-promotional activity but the process by which the institution actually defines itself. It is also used by others, such as in recruitment and business development to define the firm externally. Marketing likewise has an immediate impact on internal perceptions.

The first of the strategic questions from both firms’ marketing leadership should include:

1. Who is going to care about the merger? The answer, of course, is anyone directly affected by it, mainly clients and internal stakeholders. So marketing leadership must provide for direct and well-timed outreach to both constituencies, by phone whenever appropriate.

Stay tuned for more.

allan

Here are the type of questions to ask a client or client prospect which not only demonstrate your skill and understanding of their business, but draw out answers that will help you sell.

* Does in-house counsel have an organized, functioning early case assessment system?
* Are their business and operational units covered in this system?
* How is enterprise risk management and intellectual property protection handled?
* Are they prepared for the arduous demands of e-discovery?
* Do they need outside counsel to assist in litigation public relations or crisis management?
* Can you offer training programs in professional development for the legal department?
* Does your firm provide a shared technology system so you and clients can communicate
directly and easily?
* How will they expect you to “communicate” with them?
* How much of what you communicate with them needs to be formatted so it can be
forwarded to the CEO and Board of Directors?
* What is the best format to use and how often should they be sent?

The very fact that you are already concerned about these essential day-to-day considerations sends a very positive message about you at all stages of the selling process.

DISCUSSION OF DISCOVERY continues our series on winning communications with client prospects and clients. With research and media analysis completed, you are ready for the transition from talking to selling.

For starters, ask how the CEO and Board of Directors expect to be apprised of pending risks and prevention steps. Such questions can directly generate deliverables on your end if, for example, that CEO or Board has asked in-house counsel to provide a larger dose of prophylactic analysis of operational or business units.

If so, you’ve immediately found the critical sweet spot and possibly uncovered a future service area. At that point you can discuss related strategies that you’ve successfully implemented for other clients. If your question about preventive law does not resonate, you simply move on to the next question rather than bog down trying to sell something the company does not want to buy.

Next time, we’ll have a specific list of questions which will not only demonstrate your skill and understanding of their business, but draw out answers that will help you sell.

When the New York Giants won the Super Bowl, no one on the other side could argue that they should have won because they gave a really good effort. Because in the end, it’s all about who wins. Despite all the planning, huddling, offensive and defensive tactics you implement, you only win when you close in the Red Zone and start the engagement. However, all the little steps and big ones you’ve made along the way are what I call ‘invisible successes.’ Each victory leads you up the rung and into The Red Zone. Invisible successes, no matter how small, are not to be dismissed. They encourage. They build morale. They motivate. They galvanize.

After your law firm has developed tactics to generate new business and is driving ahead for what is to come, don’t drop the ball. Your business development strategy cannot exist in a vacuum. It must frequently be measured, massaged, managed and modified to remain effective.

Change starts from within. Use your entire organization as a barometer to measure new business generation initiatives.

Staff
Use your staff and your attorneys to gauge their perception of internal and external progress in business development, newly introduced sales and closing techniques, client outreach and the overall marketing campaign.

The Marketing Department
Keep the channel of communication flowing between attorneys and the marketing department. They cannot produce optimal results beached on an island on the opposite end of the building. Expect them to follow up on every significant outreach effort and provide you with frequent updates.

The Organization
Moving aside all bravado, how does your firm measure up against competitors? Bring out the yardstick and start measuring.

Incentives
Rewards for developing new business should be concrete and measurable. By adding up the rewards, you measure progress.

Continuing with our series on really getting to know your clients and your prospects, and assuming you do want to discover what makes them and their companies work, what’s next? You and your marketing support team must make time to organize, pursue and hopefully close opportunities if you do find out. Lawyers are excellent at talking, good at asking questions and only so-so at listening. Yet it is the latter two skill sets that are the ultimate determinants of ongoing success.

According to KLS/Gates “top of Mind” survey of senior in-house counsel, conducted in the summer of 2005, “communicating effectively” and “enjoyable attorneys” are two of the top three attributes for outside counsel selection.

For any lawyer who wants to “communicate effectively and enjoyably” the 60/40 rule that served IBM so splendidly for decades still applies. Client talks 60% of the time, you talk 40%. Demonstrate the knowledge you have obtained by asking strategic questions and getting them to discuss operational and management challenges.