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The Aries Role in Law Firm Sales Leadership

Allan — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 13:44:25 +0000

While Pisces’ intuition and Capricorn’s persistence are traits that benefit individual lawyers who are marketing their services, Aries’ confidence and leadership tendencies can benefit senior partners and marketing departments focused on business development. A recent horoscope for Aries offered advice that all firms should apply to their client development training and follow-up: “Dive into your work knowing what you want to accomplish.”

In our experience as law sales consultants, there is not a single example of business development training efforts that work without an end goal in mind. As a practical step, firm marketing departments, senior partners, and other firm leaders should make a commitment to their goals before sitting down with law firm consultants to set up a training agenda.

Managing partners, practice group heads, partners-in-charge, and other firm leaders must know what they hope to accomplish before they dive in, focus on training, and see attorneys develop new business.

Pisces and Invisible Marketing Tools

Allan — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 22:11:43 +0000

Some lawyers may have an uncanny advantage for marketing their practices simply because of when they were born – at least if you take personality traits of astrological birth signs into consideration. Pisces, for example, are thought to be creative, sensitive, helpful, and intuitive. All of these traits are vital when it comes to invisible marketing—and fortunately, you can hone those traits, no matter what your sign.

Business development consultants will tell you to look for every possible opportunity to market your services or your firm. The consultants at the Closers Group will also tell you to take advantage of invisible marketing techniques –to be creative, to anticipate future possibilities, and highlight your value for your prospects and current clients – to navigate legal sales.

Lead development (and eventual conversion) requires seizing the moment. If a prospect or client asks you what’s new, focus on a recent big win at your firm rather than the success of your son or daughter’s soccer team. This keeps the emphasis on your services and the way that your clients and prospects benefit from them. Move relationships forward whenever possible. If your client calls with a complaint, be sure to fix the problem as quickly as possible; you’ll be able to leverage this later by reminding the client of your fast response to their needs. This sets the stage for future follow-ups as well. When you have the opportunity, ask your client if there are other problems or concerns – and focus on resolving those just as quickly.

Adopting the Pisces profile – using invisible and creative marketing strategies, intuiting your prospects’ and clients’ needs, and offering solutions as quickly as possible – will ensure that you never miss a business development opportunity that comes your way. Good deeds and a focus on building strong relationships both become ingrained in your prospects’ and clients’ memories and will lead them to seek you out when they’re looking for services.

Use the IRS Approach to Law Sales

Allan — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 12:35:51 +0000

When the IRS launches an audit, agents set out to identify a person or business’ overlooked assets in order to increase the amount of money they collect. Consider launching a similar (but much less dreaded) approach to your law firm sales by developing a plan to take an inventory of your existing in-house assets. Taking a closer look at the resources you currently have available is especially important when you embark on new projects.

Working with a business development consultant will help you to hone your skills, improve your marketing approach, and increase the number of sales you make. It will also help you to better identify the assets that are already available to you.

If you’re working in a small or a mid-sized firm, then you’re not the only attorney who is marketing services and focusing on making sales; have you taken the time to talk with your colleagues or to cross market with them? Identifying and sharing law marketing opportunities with your colleagues lets you learn from the techniques other lawyers are using and creates an opportunity to earn referrals.

Another asset that lawyers have within their firms that often goes untapped involves other members of the staff. Paralegals, legal secretaries, and others are often members of professional organizations. By making a connection with them, learning more about what they do, and helping them get to know more about you and the services that you offer, you’ll create the opportunity to ask them to make presentations to their professional organizations.

Also, with regard to professional organizations, don’t overlook the value of your own involvement. Instead of just attending professional or community association meetings, get on the board or on the program committee–by getting involved and networking, and you’ll create opportunities to market yourself, your practice and your firm.

Many of the sales and marketing opportunities that you’ll find fall into the category of “invisible marketing.” Invisible marketing is all about building relationships, identifying what your prospects and clients really want, creating value in meetings, and sharing your enthusiasm for your practice. Remember: if there are no obvious business development opportunities with a prospect, it’s up to you to create one and take advantage of it.

There’s a good change your law firm is sitting on unused or overlooked legal sales opportunities.. Take a page from the IRS playbook to ferret out law firm marketing opportunities, and then take full advantage of them.

The Nestle Toll House Recall and Invisible Marketing

Allan — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 18:47:26 +0000

One of the most important lessons to be learned in business is that when there’s a problem, it needs to be fixed right away. The process involves identifying a mistake, fixing it quickly, and making sure that your clients know what you’ve done to take action (a recent example is the Nestle Toll House cookie dough recall).

Lawyers who want to market themselves more effectively can learn from the actions taken by Nestle. Having a prompt response to a mistake – and having a rapid fix – allows you to demonstrate how important client retention is to you.

The way that you interact with your clients is a part of your invisible marketing strategy. While invisible marketing is the hallmark of a successful law marketing plan, it is often overlooked when firms talk about lawyer marketing tools and tactics.

Invisible marketing is all about client relationships. While no one wants to make mistakes, when one occurs, you have the opportunity to:

Identify how you responded to the situation.
Look at the relationships that you have with your clients and see how those relationships are progressing.
Determine whether or not your firm is providing clients the support and resources they need.
Examine what can be done to assist your clients as their businesses continue to grow.

Focusing on client relationships not only helps you to build on your current successes, but it can also lead to additional sales and referrals. Rather than overlooking the tactic the way some business development consultants do when they are teaching attorney sales, our business development training workshops include a one-hour segment on invisible marketing. By learning more about invisible marketing and mastering the method, you will increase your legal sales successes.

(Almost) Invisible Marketing III.

Allan — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 16:39:08 +0000

(Almost) Invisible Marketing III.

This third in a series of Invisible Marketing tactics presents two approaches which are not quite “invisible” but are often overlooked by attorneys. The first is:

During speeches, have other firm members in the audience working the crowd.
Make sure you introduce your colleagues from the podium and indicate that they and you are available to answer questions, send featured articles, discuss opportunities, etc. You are there to do more than “educate”, you are also there to “generate.”

One of the most frequent mistakes so often observable at dinners, receptions, etc. is that instead of mingling, attorneys from the same firm congregate together.

At parties, dinners, hosted events – do not talk to your own firm’s attorneys.
Recently, I attended a law firm hosted/sponsored workshop at which over 125 clients and potential clients had breakfast and then listened to a 1 hour CLE presentation. Of the 10 firm attorneys present, 9 sat at the same table. By adding their non-billable hours, advertising, promotion, powerpoints, handouts, facility and food cost, etc., $12,500.00 was thrown out the window.

Once we reviewed this waste, a new approach has been implemented. Each attorney is now assigned 2 non-clients to meet and greet. Each attorney is assigned to a table. And each attorney is introduced from the podium by their speaker/colleague. And of course, if a client is present, invite them to sit with you. They could become your marketing supporter in talking with non-clients seated at your table.

Invisible Marketing II.

Allan — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 18:47:22 +0000

Invisible Marketing II. Last column we started discussing “permission marketing” by recognizing opportunities given to you by clients and prospects for future client generation. This time we will add two more business development openings.

“What’s New?”, when asked by a past contact or by a good client, opens the way to talk about:

* a recent firm success,
* a highly regarded article written by a colleague,
* or asking if they have heard about a new piece of legislation.

The response should not be “the work keeps piling on,” or “same old same old.” You can’t believe how many times I’ve heard these two. Use the question to subtly market. And for those of you who want to respond to the question by stating that your daughter recently won a gymnastics tournament, do both. But take advantage of this invisible opportunity to market the law firm.

“What do clients really want?” is the one key question to constantly ask yourself and your partners, when determining what to put into a proposal, how to organize a casual dinner conversation or building on client retention. Another way to phrase it is:

“Why should I hire your firm?”

Talk about strategies employed, case examples that worked, unique contributions to engagements. Integrate into these components firm background and your team’s experiences. A recent BTI survey indicated that:

* They do not want to know how many offices you have.
* They do not want to know where you went to law school.
* They do want you to know about them.

Invisible Marketing I.

Allan — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 18:06:58 +0000

Invisible Marketing is a concept requiring a sharp eye and ear. It is a component of “permission marketing” where a client or prospect provides you with an offer to market to them! When conducting workshops with our law firm clients, we will spend at least 1/2 hour tuning in to invisible marketing.

For example, we all know that great work and referrals are the 2 best sources of future business development. But complaints, yes complaints, are another great source of business by building a strong relationship. If a client calls and complains that something is not going well with a current engagement, they want to keep working with you. So fix it, fix it fast, and remind them periodically that you fixed it fast by ending a periodic conversation with “just want to make sure we are meeting all of our targets,etc.”

Another invisible marketing tactic is to ask clients why they switched to your firm. At the right time in an engagement, you might learn what they are happy with, and what problems the previous firm had. You can build on the success and avoid the problems.

Next time we’ll address two more invisible marketing tactics:

* “What’s new?”
* What do clients really want?”

Measuring Invisible Success

Allan — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 13:50:50 +0000

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.