Mary is unhappy. While she enjoys commercial litigation files she is stressed all the time. The partners provide her with positive feedback as do her clients but every time she makes any kind of error she takes it as a sign of failure.

Do any of these scenarios sound familiar?

Some might say the answer is simple. Sandra just needs to take a different approach. Sandra needs to do fewer revisions, record all her time and let the partners decide what needs to be written off.

As for Mary, shouldn’t she just pay attention to the positive feedback from the partners and her peers and realise that she is good at her work?

If only it were so simple.

Sandra and Mary are each in the grip of their inner critic and it is obscuring their judgment.

To learn more about dealing with your inner critic please visit my article on the Canadian legal weblog Slaw.ca.

1. Update your contact list. This contact list will include your clients, past-clients, contacts and referral sources. Once you’ve updated it, review the list and develop your “A” list of contacts. This is a short list of the most important people in terms of new business opportunities.  While there are many people we care about and we would like to invest time in, the “A” list simply helps us to prioritise.  In many cases people on the “A” list will be clients and past clients.  In some areas of practice such as commercial litigation they may be referral sources.

2. Make yourself a weekly connect with list.  Many of my clients develop the habit of setting aside some time on a Sunday afternoon or evening to think about who they want to take action to connect with in the coming week.  It helps to have at your fingertips your short list of priority contacts. Action for a local contact may be to set up a face-to-face coffee or lunch meeting.  Or it may be to connect with them in some other valuable way.  Is there a legal update you can send them? The guiding question to consider is “how can I add value?”

3.  What gets scheduled gets done.  This past year has been about schedule mastery both for my coaching clients and for my own practice.  Get your commitments into your calendar.  Block off time for them.  AND respect the time you have blocked off for these commitments by not scheduling over it.  Schedule time for connecting with people.

4. Focus on listening.  This is one skill that seems easy and yet is surprisingly difficult.  The more our minds are filled with deadlines, the more our blackberry buzzes, the harder it gets to listen.  In your business development meetings put the emphasis on listening and learning about what’s going on for your contact personally and professionally.  What challenges are they facing?  What are they most excited about?  What’s most important to them?  Seek out opportunities to help and to add value. 
Put your blackberry away so that you can turn your full attention to the conversation.  A key step in business development is “discovery”.  That means asking open ended questions and learning all that you can over the course of one meeting or many about your contact and his/her business.  This is how you discover where the opportunities lie.

5.  Track your actions and your time.  Make a commitment to invest a set number of hours weekly on business development.  If you want to dabble then give it 2 hours a week.  If you want to make a serious effort then set aside 4 or more hours.  (This includes time spent planning, emailing, lunching, attending networking events – everything!) Keep a running list of who you are connecting with and what you are learning.   Review your notes to ensure you are following up when and where you need to, and to evaluate what’s working and what is not.

And here are some other great resources to explore:

When you have listened and uncovered opportunities it is time to talk about the benefits of you or your firm’s services.  Here’s a helpful post from Theda C. Snyder that explains features and benefits.

Check out Susan Van Dyke’s post on 10 tips to revitalize your practice with healthy legal marketing habits.

And finally, don’t miss Paula Black’s recent post tip Be yourself.

“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 golf 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

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.

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.

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:

1. 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?
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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?

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. In keeping with the active learning emphasis, hold monthly meetings, with actionable homework and feedback components. 
5. Connect the content of the monthly training sessions to each associate’s goals and business plan. 
6. Use the training program and homework items to support associates in developing the habit of integrating regular business development activities into their weekly schedule.
7. Track results.
8. 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.
9. Integrate partner experiences into the program through holding partner panels, or collecting business development stories from the partners for inclusion in the training sessions. 
10. 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

1. Ask before telling
2. Listen before speaking
3. 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.

Thanks Nicole for picking up the article. Much appreciated! To clarify on a couple of issues you’ve raised,  please know that I am an executive coach.  As such my clients set their own goals and agendas.  If a woman lawyer has a goal of becoming a partner in a law firm then I would certainly encourage her to consider business development as one of the vehicles to support her advancement.

While it is vital to keep a long term perspective on possibilities for transforming our law firm workplaces, it is equally important to many women that they continue to strengthen their position within the current system. Developing and expanding one’s own loyal client base is vital to achieving power, authority, and financial equality.  As long as one depends on others to provide the work, one is by definition dependant.  This applies to both genders.

Business development means investing in relationships. The purpose of strategy in this context is to ensure that a lawyer’s investments in time are right on target and offer maximum benefit.

In my experience I have seen large numbers of lawyers both young and old turned off by the stereotypical image of the rainmaker.  In fact, there is a different and effective approach which is very much in alignment with these women lawyers own values and integrity.  I want to encourage both women and men who don’t identity with the extroverted model of rainmaker to develop their own equally successful approach based on developing strong legal credentials and developing an ever-expanding base of trusting relationships with clients, referral sources and others.  No grandstanding, polished speeches, or tickets to the NBA (or in the Canadian context NHL) required.

When it comes to innovation and new approaches to rainmaking you truly stand out as the author of not one but three blogs!  That is precisely what I meant when I wrote assess your strengths and develop your own personal approach grounded in your values, your professional goals and I would add your interests. 

Thanks Nicole for encouraging the discussion on this very important topic!

Because in my opinion as female professionals we have reached an impasse.

In the words of Alice Eagly and Linda Carli in the September 2007 issue of Harvard Buisness Review (HBR) the glass ceiling is a misnomer.   There is not artificial barrier beyond which we cannot ascend but rather a labyrinth of challenges and obstacles that must be overcome throughout our careers.

The statistics tell the story:

According to the National Association for Law Placement, a trade group that provides career counselling to lawyers and law students, only about 17 percent of the partners at major law firms nationwide [US] were women in 2005, a figure that has risen only slightly since 1995, when about 13 percent of partners were women.  New York Times, March 19, 2006

Gender inequality continues to exist in management functions, and the increase in the number of female university graduates will not itself be sufficient to close the gap.  Women Matter, McKinsey & Company, 2007

The latest findings from Grant Thornton’s International Business Report (IBR), released today to coincide with International Women’s Day, reveal that 38% of businesses do not have any women in senior management roles, a figure that has remained unchanged since 2004.  The survey, which covers  the opinions of 7,200 privately held businesses in 32 countries, represents 81% of global GDP.   Press Release, Grant Thornton, 2007.

Consider the most highly paid executives of Fortune 500 companies, those with titles such as chairman, president, president, chief executive officer, and chief operating officer.  Of this group, only 6% are women.  Most notably, only 2% of the CEOs are women, and only 15% of the seats on the boards of directors are held by women. From HBR Women and the Labyrinth of Leadership

The rising number of women graduating from law school and entering the legal profession is not enough to shift the balance.  The same applies to women entering the business world with MBA’s and other professional degrees.  More women entering the labyrinth doesn’t result in a corresponding rise in the number of women making it through. 

Business development in this context becomes a means for advancing.  It’s about taking leadership of one’s practice.  It’s about determining what you want and how to get there. 

Keep in mind that your female clients are experiencing the same challenges.  How can you assist them?  What can you do to help them get ahead?

Now it is up to each and every one of us to take this in our own hands. 

The lessening of activism on behalf of all women puts the pressure on each woman to find her own way.  From HBR Women and the Labyrinth of Leadership

In January I presented on this topic for the Legal Marketing Association (LMA) Vancouver Chapter and then again in February to the TAGLaw legal network.  Watch for my upcoming article in The Lawyers Weekly.

I also recommend reading Larry Bodine’s list of ten recommendations “that law firms should adopt to reduce turnover among women lawyers, geneate more business and thus boost firm revenue”  with one caveat:

Women lawyers are busier than ever.  Business development activities must be implemented as a vital and strategic component of the lawyer’s own career plan.  Not as yet another hoop jumping exercise.