Thursday, January 25th, 2007
A quick tip: The Legal Marketing Association Vancouver Chapter has just updated their web site. I was on it today and found a number of great articles in the reading room with information on networking, business development, client appreciation, and a primer on law firm finances among other topics.
The homepage also lists a number of the upcoming events. I’m looking forward to attending the lunch session on February 6 - How Public Sector Counsel Select Their Outside Counsel.
Paul Reynolds of 2nvision consulting will be leading a panel discussion with public sector in-house counsel from British Columbia on the factors influencing the decision to retain external counsel; their choice of lawyers; why they fire some firms and how they feel about various legal marketing approaches.
Reynolds held a similar session at this time last year, but with private sector in-house counsel. It was a highly informative event and the speakers shared candid feedback on their evaluation of legal service providers. One of the points I remember from that meeting was that only one of the counsel had been involved by their lawyers in a client satisfaction survey, and all of the speakers said they wished the law firms they hired would take the time to carry these out. I saw many local lawyers in the audience that day. I wonder if a few client interview programs were finally launched following that disclosure?
I look forward to learning more from the public sector counsel in February. If you plan on attending please stop by my table and say hello. You won’t be able to miss me - I’ll be the one giving the introduction!
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Tuesday, January 16th, 2007
In several of my blog posts since December I have been stressing the importance of strategic planning. A lot of time, money, and effort gets wasted because lawyers and law firms engage in meaningless acts of marketing. Strategic plans are the most important tool for ensuring you act wisely. In order to help you to accomplish this, I have developed a rough guide to strategic planning, which I will share with you in blog posts over the next month.
The first chapter of my guide starts with Mission, Vision, and Values - three simple concepts that are easy to get mixed up.
Your Mission Statement describes what your firm does and who your clients are. It captures the very essence of your practice – the relationship with the client. A Mission Statement is focused on what you do in the present.
A Vision Statement describes how the future will look if the firm achieves its mission. A Mission Statement gives the overall purpose of an organization, while a Vision Statement describes a picture of the preferred future result your firm is after. Your Vision Statement will tell a compelling story about the future you are going to create.
Once you have your Mission and Vision figured out, it is important to take some time to think about values. Values are the core beliefs at the heart of your firm’s culture, and are the foundation of all the actions you will take, and investments you will make.
Here is a list of questions to guide you through the process of determining your firm’s Mission, Vision, and Values. You can also use these questions for developing your own personal plan.
Mission questions:
What do we do?
Who do we do it for?
What is the benefit to the clients?
Vision questions:
What do we ultimately want to achieve with our practice – in terms of service to others?
What do we want the firm to be known for?
What reputation do we wish the firm to have in the business, legal, or other communities?
Value questions:
What professional and personal attributes do we value most?
What professional and personal qualities do we wish to be known for in the legal community and by our clients?
What qualities and attributes do we wish to characterize our firm?
The answers to these questions form the foundation of your plan. The next step is strategy. Stay tuned for that next week!
If you have your own questions and ideas on this topic, I would really enjoy hearing from you. I am always interested in learning powerful new questions for exploring Missing, Vision, and Values. If you have some you’d like to share, or other suggestions, please add them in a comment below or send me an email.
Posted in Marketing, Goals, Planning | Permalink | No Comments »Tuesday, January 9th, 2007
“In its rough form, a diamond is a lusterless, translucent crystal that resembles a chip of broken glass. For it to be transformed into a jewel, it must be cut into a particular gem shape and then polished, facet by facet.” (Edward Jay Epstein)
A colleague recently told me how at her firm, practice group marketing was the domain of the partners, with the associates kept, for the most part, out of the loop. Yet at the same time, the firm runs a highly developed training program for associates with a marketing and business component – so what gives?
This post applies to all firms with associates. If you’ve got them use them. Young lawyers can be creative, enthusiastic, hard working, and dedicated contributors to your firm’s marketing efforts. Introduce them to your clients from the start. Promote their involvement in client events. Provide them with some training and give them a chance to put it into action. Get them involved in organizing seminars and events. Set them up with speaking opportunities. Encourage them to develop personal marketing plans. Compensate them for their marketing efforts.
I have seen how associates, when given these opportunities from their first year of call, develop into valuable members of client teams, bring in referrals, generate new business, and are prepared to become positive additions to the firm’s partnership when the time comes.
Easier said then done of course! There are many hurdles along the way in the form of compensation complaints, disinterested and uninspired lawyers who just want to grind hours, and the usual pressure of the billable hour. But at every firm you will find some associates who GET IT. They might like working with the clients, be interested in business development, have great networking skills, or enjoy writing articles.
The key is to take the time, one-on-one, with each individual associate to discover their interests and abilities and match these to an appropriate part of your firm’s marketing program. The result will be a committed team of associate marketers, who contribute in more ways then one to the success of the firm.
Posted in Training and Retention, Marketing | Permalink | No Comments »Saturday, January 6th, 2007
Kevin O’Keefe’s post today “Decline in enthusiasm for law blogging? Hogwash” addresses some recent discussion that law blogs have reached their peak. I agree with Kevin that legal blogging is far from peaking, and I thought I might be able to provide a little bit of a Canadian perspective on this.
Legal blogs are in their infancy over here. For the vast majority of lawyers in Vancouver blogs were “too new” and “too untried” for their liking until recently. We do have a small number of legal bloggers out here, such as Lang Michener’s Law of the Land Blog, and Clark Wilson’s Canadian Trademark Blog, but the trend is only just emerging. Just visit Steve Matthews blog roll for the complete list of Canadian law blogs. The number currently stands at about 60 law blogs Canada-wide.
In November 2006 the Legal Marketing Association Vancouver Chapter held a Blogging Panel. The panel provided a group of local lawyers and legal marketers a chance to learn more about how blogs work and to ask a number of questions. The top concerns for the lawyers here were: (1) How much time is it going to take? (2) Does blog content constitute a legal opinion? And in the same vein, (3) how can a lawyer ethically and safely blog on legal topics? The panelists answered these questions most effectively and as a result we are going to have at least two new legal blogs arise from just the small group that attended.
I predict that in the next year, as lawyers and law firms become more comfortable with the medium, we are going to see the emergence of many more legal blogs in Canada, and that this number is going to escalate fast in the next three years.
Let’s not forget, less than ten years ago, many law firms here didn’t even have a web site!
Posted in Marketing | Permalink | No Comments »
Friday, January 5th, 2007
Lawyers, legal marketers, administrators, if you do one thing today have a quick look at Seth Godin’s blog. He offers up a most eloquent distinction between strategy and tactics, and sends us a valuable reminder on when it is time to re-think strategy. Here’s an excerpt:
Here’s the difference: The right strategy makes any tactic work better. The right strategy puts less pressure on executing your tactics perfectly.
Here’s the obligatory January skiing analogy: Carving your turns better is a tactic. Choosing the right ski area in the first place is a strategy. Everyone skis better in Utah, it turns out.
If you are tired of hammering your head against the wall, if it feels like you never are good enough, or that you’re working way too hard, it doesn’t mean you’re a loser. It means you’ve got the wrong strategy.
Here’s the big question for consideration. Are your tactics bringing in the big wins or are they just barely keeping your head above water?
For another story that describes the distinction between strategy and tactics we can look to the Second World War when Winston Churchill proposed the strategy:
“Attack the soft underbelly of Europe.”
This strategy determined the tactic of advancing on the German empire from North Africa, Egypt, to Sicily, and through Italy. The strategy was dead on. The tactics worked.
Here’s the caveat. Once we have bought into a strategy, and are deep into tactics, it’s easy to loose sight of the distinction. When the tactics fail or underperform it is tempting to look to different tactics rather than back to the strategic vision and plans.
In addition, many lawyers, administrators, and legal marketers, are trapped in a tactical silo, as so many firms still lack the strategic plans that come first.
If your firm, practice group, client team, or your own practice is struggling, take the time this January to review and re-think your strategy and ask:
“What is our strategy?” This should be answered in one or two sentences.
“Is this strategy paying off?” If not, “what’s working?” “What’s not?” “What could make a difference?”
And if you don’t have a strategy, make this the year that you develop one.
Posted in Strategy, Marketing, Goals | Permalink | No Comments »
Wednesday, December 20th, 2006
The best place to invest your non-billable time? With existing clients. This is the rule, tried and true, which I learned many years ago as a fledgling legal marketer, and it has not changed since then.
Michelle Golden has a great post on this subject. Here’s an excerpt:
As we coach professionals of all levels on their individual marketing efforts, it seems like we constantly need to emphasize the importance and benefits of spending a greater percentage of energy or effort on nurturing existing clients (versus new biz development). Existing clients should receive this heavier focus for many reasons:
- increasing the level of service to increase the level of satisfaction/delight;
- affect longevity in customer relationships;
- inspire referrals from current customers; and, oh yeah,
- increase the number of project opportunities relative to meeting customer needs–needs you won’t know about or be able to help them with if you aren’t TALKING with them.
I agree with Michelle and would just add that “talking” with clients means asking questions about their business and spending most of the time listening to the answers.
Visit your client’s place of business. If your client runs a pulp mill, then put on your hard hat and head down to the operation and have a look. This is the best place to invest your non-billable time. There is no faster route to new files.
Posted in Client Relations, Business Development, Marketing | Permalink | 1 Comment »Tuesday, December 19th, 2006
As New Year approaches it is time to start thinking about developing your personal marketing plan for 2007.
As a new associate the most important thing for you to do in your first few years of practice is to experiment: Explore what sort of legal practice you want to build, what kind of clients you like, and in terms of marketing, what you enjoy doing. Take control of your future by becoming actively involved in developing the habits, skills, and contacts that will help you to build the practice you design for yourself.
The following is a list of marketing tips for you to consider as you begin to plan for 2007. Starting with the most important - your personal marketing plan!
The goal of a personal marketing plan is to help you focus your attention and energy on doing the things that will best help you to turn your professional aspirations into reality.
Personal marketing plans, or indeed business plans, in general work along three simple lines:
1. They begin with a close and realistic description of where you are at currently.
2. Next they look at where you want to be.
3. Finally they describe how you are going to get there.
Below you will find some suggested activities and approaches that you might consider for your plan in 2007.
The personal touch. In this internet age, the personal touch counts more then ever. As much as possible take the time to write a thank you note, a condolence note, or a nice to meet you note. These notes should be hand written, not dictated to a secretary. In addition to being a “good” lawyer, the most effective marketing tools are the handshake, the unexpected, non-billable act of kindness, the follow up phone call, and the personal note. In your plan outline how you will begin to incorporate the personal touch into your practice.
Find your own style. Experiment and find out what you do best. Play on your strengths. If you are a talented speaker, seminars and conferences might work well. If you don’t enjoy public speaking try a one-on-one approach. The same goes when developing your marketing plan. Think carefully about your strengths and weaknesses, likes and dislikes, then plan accordingly.
Talk less and listen more. One of the most common errors lawyers can make is talking to much and failing to listen. In some cases, inexperienced business developers will try and talk their way to new business. Learn to listen deeply and look for the ways in which you can help people out. You will find that helping others will lead to others helping you.
Develop a meaningful introduction. Learn to introduce yourself to people in a way that emphasises how you and your firm help your clients. The unfortunate reality is that introducing yourself as “a lawyer” shuts conversations down. Instead open the conversation up by explaining what you do in a way that invites people to ask questions. For instance, an estate lawyer might say: “I assist clients with estate planning. I help them ensure that their wishes will be followed while keeping the taxes and probate fees down at a minimum.”
Marketing is a contact sport. It is important to step out of your office and start meeting people. Get to know the other people in your firm. Get active in your local business/professional community. Join the business organisations related to your practice. Join community organisations. Become actively involved, join a board, help out, meet people.
Get organised. Keep track of the people you meet with a contact management system. Find a method that works for you to organise the business cards you receive and store information about your contacts such as where you met them, and what their interests are. Write all of this down so you can instantly find it. Make sure to get everyone’s email address.
Trade associations. If you are targeting a specific business or consumer groups, look into the trade associations (or other influential organisations) with which your target prospects are most likely to be associated and become actively involved in the association. Not only will you have a chance to network, you will also have the opportunity to learn more about your prospects’ industry, and their business concerns.
Become a presenter. Volunteer to be a speaker with the business and trade organisations you are involved with.
Write articles. The same associations will be dying for articles. Write a column for a local publication. Find a newsletter or web site that is read by your clients and write articles for them. Start a blog!
Use your lunch hour for networking. Call people who can refer you business and take them out to lunch. This would include your local realtor, accountant, lawyers at larger firms, bankers, etc. Also, contact all your law school classmates, just to say hello. Find out what they’re doing and stay in touch with them. Have lunch with people you are genuinely interested in getting to know, and learn about them.
Peer network. Develop a virtual, private peer network of lawyers. A secret bunch of co-conspirators you can turn to. An associate I know started a small alumni group. She and her law school alumni have lunch once a month. Just a few years in, and this has already developed into a powerful referral network.
Posted in Business Development, Marketing | Permalink | No Comments »Wednesday, December 13th, 2006
‘Tis the season for client entertaining, gift giving, and social functions. Here’s a quick list of some great resources for anyone looking for pointers on how to make the most of the season.
First, visit Allison Shield’s holiday networking tips.
Next, take in Tom Kane’s Holiday Gift Ideas.
And finally for holiday card innovation read Seth Godin’s post on the Young Issac cheque is in the mail holiday cards - truly an innovative approach to the season of giving!
Posted in Client Relations, Marketing | Permalink | 1 Comment »
