Monday, July 26th, 2010
Here’s a question I get all the time when I am running business development training courses:
“What do I do when the person I am speaking to is boring?”
In essence, business development for lawyers is all about building trusting relationships. The quickest and most sure-fire way to build trust is to spend more time listening than speaking. To be a good listener you need to be a good questioner and learn to ask about things that get people interested and speaking about subjects that matter to them.
Or, as Mark Hunter commented in his Slaw column last week: ”ever notice that people do business with people they like?” Being a good listener is the fast track to being likeable.
So what happens when you can’t listen? What do you do if you find your client or important contact boring?
Faking interest never works. And just imagine being on the receiving end with someone looking at you with boredom. The natural reaction is to feel insulted and to then judge the person to be arrogant, aloof and yes, unlikeable.
The answer: It’s up to you to find what is interesting about the person. Push aside your judgemental inner voice and place your focus firmly on the other person. Everyone is interesting, your job is to uncover this. Use questions to get the person speaking about things that are important to him/her. Follow your curiosity. The goal here is to listen and discover, not to prove how interesting you are. Some sample questions that can open up a conversation are:
- How did you get into being a …. ?
- What are you looking forward to this weekend?
- I’m curious, what made you decide to… (go to that school, travel to Palm Springs, etc.)
Another approach is to ask for advice when the opportunity arises. The majority of people enjoy teaching.
Take me for example. I don’t golf. I have never held a gold club. What do I do when faced with an avid golfer? Instead of getting bored and shifting the subject, I dig into it. I confess my general ignorance and then ask to be enlightened. What are the best golf courses in town? Has it been good for business development? What’s the best age to start kids in the sport? What have been the best golf courses they have ever played on? What I discovered is that while I am not interested in the sport I am interested in what people like about it and get out of it.
The bottom line: it’s up to you to turn it around. It is in your power to turn boring into interesting.
When you show you are interested and really listen to the person you will distinguish yourself from the majority of people who do not. The end result is that the person will then likely become interested in you and it will be your turn to tell your story.
My favorite resource on all things to do with listening is Just Listen by Dr. Mark Goulston. He reminds us all that we are responsible for our own degree of interest with this quote:
“Boredom is what happens when I fail to make someone interesting.” Warren Bennis, Founding Chariman, USC Leadership Institute
Posted in Business Development, Client Relations, Leadership, Networking | Permalink | No Comments »
Wednesday, January 27th, 2010
What do you do when the friend, client, contact, family member you have reached out to responds with the silent treatment?
In general we might just guess that our contact is busy and get in touch again. But in cases where there have been some bumps in the relationship or where someone doesn’t respond after a couple of attempts the assumptions come rushing in.
In verbal conversation we have the urge to fill the silent gaps in conversation with words. In the communication that happens in email or through voicemail we fill the silence with assumptions. When we don’t get a response to our first or second messages we start to make guesses about why we aren’t hearing back and these guesses feed on our insecurities.
“Why do we go to our insecurities? Because we know that people tend to shy away from communicating negative messages. If someone hasn’t called us, we think to ourselves, it must be that she doesn’t want to communicate something negative to us. Or she simply wants us to stop bothering her and go away. Also, we figure, if the person wanted to work with us, it would be in her interest to let us know — she would have called.” Peter Bregman
If you want to learn how to handle the silent treatment check out HBR blogger Peter Bregman’s post this week. He maps out the three vital steps to take and explains how to handle these silences with dignity and polish.
Posted in Business Development, Leadership | Permalink | No Comments »Thursday, July 17th, 2008
Many times lawyers tell me they want to hire a coach to be sure they are making the right investments of time and energy to build their practice. Should they be writing articles? Presenting? Taking contacts out for lunch? Attending networking events?
It all comes down to the central question: What activities are going to be the most effective?
The answer to that question is going to be different for every lawyer. One of the first steps I do when I begin working with a new coaching client is to conduct a strength analysis.
Why the focus on strengths? Because by focusing on what we are good at we start ahead of the game. We all come into this world with a unique set of talents, and over our lifetime with the addition of experience and learning we establish a foundation of knowledge, skill, and ability. The winning strategy is on maximising your strengths. Tim Ferriss, author of The Four Hour Work Week puts it this way:
It is far more lucrative and fun to leverage your strengths instead of attempting to fix all the chinks in your armor. The choice is between multiplication of results using strengths or incremental improvement fixing weaknesses that will, at best, become mediocre.
If you have never done a strength analysis then think of it as a detailed answer to the question: “What am I good at and what have I got going for me?” I have an article posted on the cooperative Canadian weblog Slaw.ca with a short list of questions that can guide you in conducting your own strength inventory. Who do you know? Do you enjoy writing or presenting? The answers to these and other questions begin to form your inventory of strengths.
In addition you can try taking the free VIA Signature Strengths Questionnaire found on the Authentic Happiness Web site. You have to register (free) on the web site in order to access the test. This test will indicate your top 5 strengths. It was developed by Professor of Positive Psychology Martin Seligman at the University of Pennsylvania. Thanks to Alexander Kjerulf and his blog Chief Happiness Officer for passing on this tip!
Your goals provide the directions and your strengths (and values!) make up the foundation for your business development efforts. The right moves so often take advantage of the resources you have at hand, the people and contacts you have in your life, and your natural abilities, drive, and motivation.”
Posted in Business Development, Strategy, coaching | Permalink | No Comments »
Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008
I sometimes share my morning commute with Tom, the senior executive of a local investment firm. His company does a lot of financings and M&A deals and predominantly uses a local securities boutique to structure the deals.
Tom knows that my business is coaching lawyers so this morning he gave me his unedited review of his lawyers, law firm, and the legal business model. The fee structure, the billable hour business model, and lawyers insistence at wordsmithing documents on his dollar all got a failing grade.
Here are some of his candid comments:
- Why no flat fee structure for this work? We keep getting told that each deal is unique and there is no way to accurately estimate the lawyer time it will take. Yet, when you look at the total legal bills for each of our deals they always come in at about the same amount. Why not just flat fee us, and leverage your own internal time saving innovations?
- The only reason we don’t put out a request for a law firm who will work this way (see above comment) is that we have a long-standing relationship with our current firm. They know us and our business.
- I can’t stand it when lawyers insist on writing me a long and expensive memo when what I need is a quick answer. I’m a business man; I need my lawyer’s best answer on the spot.
- I recently did a deal where the lawyers on both sides disagreed about how the deal was written. They started to argue, at a cost of 700/hr about wordsmithing. I asked my lawyer, “look, does the deal work as it has been written?” The lawyer responded “yes, it works but I don’t like how it is written.” This is about getting deals done, not about writing an epic novel.
In my local legal marketplace we don’t get the biggest and best financings. Tom’s company would count as a very good client and source of lots of good work. Even though they have an existing law firm relationship (who doesn’t?) in my view they are ripe for the picking. What would it take?
- A willingness to invest in developing a relationship with the company, quickly, at your own expense.
- A willingness to work on a flat fee or other alternative structure.
- A lead partner who is able to provide the kind of “shoot from the hip” legal advice Tom is asking for.
I would like to point out that Tom is an easy-going, even tempered guy. You’d never know it this morning. It just goes to show how the way our law firms conduct business can be so negatively received by the very clients we serve.
Tom’s rant also points out the value of relationships: He and his company haven’t taken their work to another firm because of that relationship. It would be too much work. However, if another firm was willing to make it easy for them to make the change through investing time in learning their business, and offering a different fee structure, they would likely jump.
What are you willing to invest in retaining your current clients? And growing your business? Could you offer what Tom is looking for?
Posted in Business Development, Client relationships | Permalink | 3 Comments »Saturday, March 29th, 2008
Part Two
I first blogged on this topic in December. Today I will continue where I left off and provide my top ten list of steps for launching a successful associate marketing and business development training program:
- Segment your training to target lawyers of a particular year of call, or practice area, so that the curriculum content is appropriate to their skill and knowledge level and can be put into immediate practice.
- Conduct strength assessments with the associates taking part in the training program. These assessments provide a measure of where they are starting from, help frame the business development process, and serve as a point of departure for developing their personal business plans.
- Launch the training program with a Mindset component. Mindset means aligning the business development approach to the strengths and values of the participants, framing business development in the context of career success, and clearing up any misconceptions about what business development is all about.
- In keeping with the active learning emphasis, hold monthly meetings, with actionable homework and feedback components.
- Connect the content of the monthly training sessions to each associate’s goals and business plan.
- Use the training program and homework items to support associates in developing the habit of integrating regular business development activities into their weekly schedule.
- Track results.
- Small groups provide the opportunity for discussion. Each training component is followed by an action item. For example, after the networking session the associates each attend a networking event. Following the event they prepare a brief memo on what worked, what didn’t, what contacts they made, how they will follow-up. At the next training session the first minutes of the class are then spent reviewing the group members’ experience of the networking event.
- Integrate partner experiences into the program through holding partner panels, or collecting business development stories from the partners for inclusion in the training sessions.
- Integrate client experiences into the program through holding client panels, sharing client survey results, or by creating opportunities for the participants to speak with clients of the firm.
Just like learning to improve a golf stoke, lawyers can best develop business development skills through putting knowledge into practice and receiving feedback on performance. Training programs require more than just the seminar component. They require action assignments and the opportunity to debrief with colleagues and a coach or mentor after the event.
Developing a successful business development training program takes time and effort, but the rewards are substantial:
• A training program with measurable ROI
• A team of lawyers who all business develop
• Increased retention of associates
Done right, programs that teach the participants new business development skills, encourage new behaviours and have measurable goals and results will have a fundamental impact on profitability and retention.
For further reading on this topic don’t miss the Hildebrant Article: Masterclass: Adopting A Business-Development Attitude: A Shared Responsibility
Posted in Business Development, Marketing, Training and Retention | Permalink | No Comments »Tuesday, March 18th, 2008
When it comes to learning, teaching, training, and engaging in business development the best starting point is a series of guiding principles that will apply to all your client development activities:
- Ask before telling
- Listen before speaking
- Discover how you can help
And I would add one caveat:
Don’t fumble the follow-up.
These principles form the foundation for all my business development coaching and training.
Applying these principles opens up an approach to business development that is equally accessible to introverted and extroverted personality types. For example, at networking events the focus is not on talking about yourself, but on preparing ahead, asking great questions, learning important information about the people you are meeting, and following up after the event on what you have learned. To learn more about how these principles apply in practice please visit my article Networking for Introverts on the Canadian legal weblog Slaw.ca.
Posted in Business Development, Networking | Permalink | No Comments »
