As a business coach working with lawyers one of the most common concerns that arises for my clients is the fear of coming across as insincere and in the words of some associates I know: “salesy” or “oily”.
They have a point.
When business development is badly done that is exactly how it can come across. We have all met sales people and other professionals who have made us feel like some commodity they are trying to get off the shelf.
David Maister has drawn the analogy between our relationships with clients and our relationships with our romantic partners. In those terms, asking for business right away is like asking someone to get into bed with you on the first date.
I have even heard some business coaches tell their clients to “just get over” their reluctance to ask for business. I don’t agree. That reluctance likely stems from your own deeply held values. It comes from wanting to do the right thing. The right thing is always to focus on building a trusting relationship first. The right time to ask for the business will present itself, or in many cases the client will ask you for help. By starting with a focus on the trusting relationship you will not risk coming across as insincere or salesy.
How do you start building trust?
Start with listening.
We naturally trust those people who genuinely listen to us and take the time to understand us.
In David Maister’s post on “Earning trust when there is too little time” he writes:
“The first point I’d make is to ensure that, in the limited few interactions you can afford the time for, you succeed as coming across as sympathetic and understanding. I don’t necessarily want a lot more of my doctor’s time when I see him or her, I just want to be treated a certain way when we are together.”
Listening is the key to coming across as sympathetic and understanding. As Stephen Covey points out in his book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, use empathetic listening to first seek to understand, then be understood.
To get ready to do your best listening, prepare for meetings with potential clients by thinking about what challenges they might be facing. Develop a few truly thoughtful and open ended questions that you can ask them during the meeting. These are questions that will open up the conversation and help you learn more about their interests, background, work, company, and any challenges they are currently facing.
Engage your curiosity.
When the person responds, listen attentively, watch their body language, try to keep the analysis in your own head to a dull roar and instead really focus your attention on the other person. Let them know they have been heard by repeating back a little of what they have told you and then follow with another insightful question.
Insightful questions highlight your intelligence far more than a soliloquy on your experience ever could.
Posted in Leadership, Business Development | Permalink | No Comments »
First the CBC aired its radio documentary this summer “Mother’s in Law” about the increasing exodus of women lawyers from private practice. Now in an address to lawyers at the 2007 Canadian Legal Conference held in Calgary last week none other than Supreme Court of Canada Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin has spoken out against the unhealthy legal business model in a panel presentation entitled “Supporting Women in the Law”.
The Globe and Mail on Wednesday August 15 offered the following quotes from Chief Justice McLachlin:
”The reality is that women entering the profession in droves have suddenly found themselves confronted with a very difficult, inflexible model of practice.”
“The strict, inflexible business model is increasingly questioned by men,” she said. “This is the question, I believe, for the future. How do we structure the way lawyers - women and men - work; the way they live, the way they serve the public?”
As a lawyer coach I see many of my clients grapple with these issues. The expectation in many big city law firms is that lawyers will work 70 to 80 hour weeks. The billable hour target for lawyers has steadily climbed, as have the demands that lawyers invest additional non-billable time in marketing and business development activities. Many male and female lawyers are no longer interested in sacrificing parenthood to their legal careers and are leaving private practice.
The lawyers I know aren’t afraid of hard work. They are not against putting in long hours. The issue is that the demands of the profession have become extreme. How will the legal profession respond to this central question raised by Chief Justice McLachlin: “How do we structure the way lawyers - women and men - work; the way they live, the way they serve the public?”
There is an opportunity here for the Canadian Bar Association to get involved by convening a task force. This is an issue that deserves to be discussed by Managing Partners and Executive Members of law firms and indeed lawyers of all year of call around the country. The legal profession will always be a hard working profession, but there are ways to adapt the business model such that it becomes more flexible, more supportive of lawyers who parent, and healthier for legal professionals in general. Law firm clients should also be involved. What are the expectations and needs of Corporate Counsel from their lawyers? The Corporate Counsel subsection could be invited to take part in these discussions.
As for making time for business development, there are many innovative ways to bring family life into the picture. Lawyers with young children can connect with other professionals and business people with children. Instead of going to a hockey game, arrange for tickets to the children’s festival. Or ask your client to bring his/her children to the game. Hold social events for parents and their children. Your clients with young children face similar time challenges. Since one of the primary goals of client entertaining is to build trust and deepen the relationship what could be better than to make the focus of these events the children who are such an important part of your clients’ lives? I know one firm that holds a large skating event for clients, lawyers and their children in December each year which is hugely successful and greatly enjoyed by all. But entertaining of this kind needn’t be so large scale, smaller scale events for key clients and contacts can be held throughout the year.
The answer to the very important issues raised by Chief Justice McLachlin and others isn’t to accept the status quo. It’s time to begin the discussion and truly explore the opportunity for revamping an old and outdated business model.
Posted in Leadership | Permalink | No Comments »I was speaking with my colleague Joan Paul in Calgary last week. Like me, she is a Royal Roads University trained business coach who works with lawyers. She and I like to share ideas, and collaborate on articles and projects. This week we were talking about the optimum investment of lawyers’ non-billable time in business development.
How much time do lawyers really need to invest each week in business development activities?
Joan quoted Sally Schmidt’s book “Business Development for Lawyers, Strategies for Getting and Keeping Clients”, which suggests that if you are new to the practice of law you should spend 50 to 100 hours a year or 1 to 2 hours a week. If you are a senior associate then you are advised to spend somewhere between 100 to 200 hours annually. And if you a partner rainmaker you are likely spending in the range of 250 to 500 hours a year.
Joan and I both find that the challenge for many professionals is about how then to invest this business development time for best results. Joan told me she always begins by asking her clients:
- What are the results you want to achieve and by when?
- Who is your target audience for best results?
- What is the best way to reach that audience?
- What are the skills you can capitalize on to reach out to that audience? Are you a great writer? Speaker? Networker?
- How do you hold yourself accountable for your business development activities?
- How do you market yourself inside your firm or organization?
- What’s stopping you from developing and implementing a business development plan?
These questions can serve as a guide to making the best choices. In addition I like to consider the lawyer’s network of relationships. How developed is it? For newly-called lawyers it is important to be building relationships, and raising their profile both within and without the law firm. For senior lawyers with a well established network the question is how are you keeping actively in touch with the people you know?
And always it is vital to start with current client relationships. Existing clients are the best source of new and repeat business. Communicating with clients about their level of satisfaction, their needs and concerns, is always the first place to invest.
Posted in Leadership, Business Development | Permalink | No Comments »
Delegation is one of those soft skills that when mastered will have a major impact on your profitability, quality of work, and overall success as a lawyer. The hitch is that like so many of these essential skills, it’s not taught in law school, and is generally not on the CLE curriculum.
This week I met with Adam Pekarsky, Director of Professional Development and Recruitment at Fraser Milner Casgrain LLP (FMC). Pekarsky is great to speak to about soft skills like delegation. He is a former securities lawyer who discovered he had a passion for training and development. He gets excited about stuff like delegation, much like a senior litigator talking about his most recent court appearance. Pekarsky’s associate training program at FMC includes a seminar on the art of delegation. Over coffee he shared the highlights with me.
Delegation from 20,000 feet.
Pekarsky started by giving me the big picture: “It’s all about leverage”.
Law is a business. There are revenues and expenses. Partners are the biggest users of overhead. They have bigger offices, use more support staff, and more resources than associates. They also have much higher rates and can generate considerably more income. Pekarsky likened them to expensive race cars. If partners don’t delegate the lower level work then it’s like “driving a formula one race car around a Safeway parking lot”.
Delegating work to others is known as spin, as in “how much work did you spin down to the associates this year?”
Really successful partners keep the high quality work for themselves and spin the rest to others. They meet their billable targets as well as generating considerable spin. Pekarsky gave the example of a partner who bills a million dollars and no spin vs. a partner who bills 700,000 dollars and spins an addition million. It’s much better for a firm’s profitability (not to mention the lawyer’s lifestyle) to bill less and spin more. And Pekarsky added, the savvy compensation committees will reward partners accordingly.
What are the other rewards of spin?
Interesting work. A lawyer who spins down the work, keeps the most interesting, highly paid work for his/herself.
Making more money. The lawyer who spins doesn’t have to write down bills and gets paid at a higher rate.
Given the advantages, why wouldn’t a lawyer delegate?
One reason lawyers don’t delegate is they don’t have enough work. They might need to hold onto every piece of work in order to meet their billable targets. But when a partner is doing all the work – including the low level stuff – it means that he/she is going to have to reduce the fees. As a result their effective billing rate lowers and they have to work more hours to hit their target. They would be better off spinning work to juniors and investing some non-billable time on marketing and business development to bring more work in the door.
Another reason is that the lawyer may have picked up the bad habit as an associate watching other lawyers at the firm. Many firms have chronic hoarders, and they set a bad example.
When is it best for associates to begin delegating?
As an associate you are ready to spin work when you are at the level where you have some experience under your belt and there’s legal work that you have done twenty times and don’t really need to do again.
Pekarsky divided delegation into two types – healthy and unhealthy.
Heathly delegation is:
- Well intended. You want to pass on a piece of work to a junior who will have a chance to learn something new.
- Based on experience. You have done this type of work many times previously and no longer have anything to learn from it.
Unhealthy delegation is:
- Getting rid of a dog file. This is when you have a tough file that you are struggling with and instead of working through the issues you just pass it to someone else.
- I’ve never done it and don’t want to. You pass some work on that you have never done yourself.
To illustrate Pekarsky offered a quote from his drama instructor at Brentwood College:
“You can’t act on a stage unless you’ve swept it.”
Or in other words don’t delegate your dirty work to subordinates and hit the golf course. Don’t unload your dog files.
What can get in the way?
Here are some of the common objections to delegation:
“I can’t delegate because it takes too much time. It’s faster if I do it myself.”
That’s true, the first time. But the second, third, tenth, thirty-eighth times, it’s faster. And by delegating you will get to spend more time on interesting work at your top billable hour. If you don’t delegate you are going to get stuck in the trenches working even longer hours for a lousy effective rate.
Another common objection is:
“I don’t trust a junior to do the work as well as I can.”
Pekarsky’s response – “drop your ego.” Successful people surround themselves with talent. Your challenge is to help develop the juniors so that they do the work as well if not better than you do.
Closing thoughts…
Delegation is one of the lawyer behaviors that need to be rewarded by compensation committees. For a law firm to be most profitable partners are required to spin work down to juniors. Savvy compensation committees look at the combination of billable hours and spin earnings when allocating partner income.
For associates, delegation is one skill to start practicing early. Share the work that has become routine with the juniors. Reach for work that is challenging.
Spin your way to more interesting work for better money. Get out of the parking lot and onto Route 66.
Posted in Leadership, Training and Retention, Compensation, Delegation | Permalink | 1 Comment »For those of you who are interested in learning more about executive coaching or are thinking about working with a coach Fast Company’s blog site features a helpful introduction to coaching by Grace Andrews.
Andrews writes in her post Executive Coaching - Fuel or Folly?:
I believe that the answer to this question comes down to who is selected as the coach and how the selection process is structured. Just like most things you search for, like a good doctor, dentist, hair stylist or mechanic, it generally comes down to how well you know what you want and how good you are at researching who is the real deal versus who is a quack.
You have to be careful. I agree with Andrews that it is important to have a clear goal for what you want to get out of coaching and that you find a coach whose approach best suits you. She also provides a great list of questions for you to ask your potential coach, here are a few of them:
1. Tell me about your coaching process and philosophy? (Here, you are looking for a feel of what type of coach the person is and the length of the process, time commitment, and frequency of meetings. Also probe for some of the tools and resources the coach might use.)
2. Give me an example of a previous coaching experience that you would consider a success and what made it so?
3. How would you describe your coaching style?
4. How do you measure success?
In addition to the questions she recommends I would say look into the coach’s background. What education and training have they received? How much experience do they have? What references can they provide? Try out a couple of coaches. Many coaches will provide you with a short sample session. It’s a great way to find the coach that will work best with you. The key to achieving powerful results is in the relationship you form with the coach. It is essential to have a strong foundation of trust, respect, and communication. Don’t settle for less!
Posted in Leadership, coaching | Permalink | No Comments »
I was chatting with a lawyer friend over breakfast this morning and she recalled for me, with a shudder, a business development torture session from her days as a first year securities lawyer. She was told to attend a basketball game with a group of stockbrokers. “I can’t stand basketball, and the stockbrokers were appalling. I couldn’t understand why I was there. All I got out of the experience was being asked out on a date that I didn’t want to go on.”
What was wrong with this picture?
Alignment. Business development is effective when the lawyer’s goals, values, interests, and strengths are in alignment with the business development activity. In my friend’s case there was no fit beyond the fact that she was a securities lawyer and those were securities clients. This was a case of the classic rainmaker turn off.
One associates basketball horror story would be another’s great night at the game.
Sometimes you get just one chance.
So often when we are introducing marketing and business development to associates we really only get one chance. As soon as you make the mistake of sending the wrong person to the basketball game you are sending a powerful message to that lawyer. The message they get is:
“Business development is a painful and useless activity.”
“This is not me.”
“I don’t do this.”
Business development becomes something other people do.
Values are important. I have found that the clearest statements on personal values come from lawyers when you are trying to get them to do some “business development” activity that is in conflict with their values.
For example, one associate told me he couldn’t stand going to a particular industry networking event. There always seemed to be more lawyers than potential clients and it appeared to him that the non-lawyers in the room were surrounded by a pack of lawyers with carefully prepared elevator speeches and business cards at the ready.
So does this mean this associate is not a rainmaker? Does it mean that he is going to have to get over his inhibitions and jump into the fray?
No. In further conversation it became apparent that he values relationships. He values sincerity. He is truly interested in the industry and is interested in getting meaningfully involved. It’s simply a question of developing opportunities for him to meet with people from the industry that support his own further education and give him a chance to interact with the potential clients in a different setting. We found just the thing for him but as it is still in progress I can’t reveal more!
All of this is to say that there are many different paths to business development.
One partner I know in Victoria got involved in a cooperative daycare program when she had her first child. She got to know all the parents, contributed her one day a week at the centre, and no surprise, the parents who chose to trust their children to her care naturally decided to trust her to handle their legal affairs as well.
There are as many unique paths to developing business as there are individuals. The key is to support lawyers in building an approach to business development that aligns with their own goals, distinct skills, interests, and values.
Ban meaningless acts of business development. If it turns your stomach or makes your skin crawl you know that it is not for you. Instead, discover what is for you, and set it in motion.
Posted in Business Development, Training and Retention, Marketing, Thought provoking ideas | Permalink | No Comments »This spring I was invited to contribute to the ABA Law Practice Magazine’s April/May issue: “First Years: What every associate needs to know.”
The issue arrived in my mail last month and is now live on the web. Have a look. It’s a great guide for new associates to making the most of the first years and establishing a foundation for their legal practice.
My article is all about what new associates should know about marketing. I was directed to answer the question - what do managing partners wish their associates knew about marketing? I interviewed a number of managing partners and practice group leaders to find out what was most on their minds. Here’s what they had to say:
Understand that Law Firms Are Businesses
Invest Early and Frequently
Invest Non-billable Time with Existing Clients
Talk Less and Listen More
Develop a Meaningful Introduction
Learn How to Close the Deal
Find your Personal Style
Associates, if you want to end up with a practice you enjoy and clients you like, it is critical that you learn to chart your own course. Marketing can help you do that. It is your time to discover the kind of work and clients you find the most interesting. It is also time to explore the kind of marketing and business development activities that you like best. It might be writing articles or maintaining a blog. It could be you have a flair for presenting. Find out what works best for you while advancing you toward your goals, and do it. Don’t wait until you have some free time. Weave a little marketing into everyday. Keep your own professional goals moving forward.
Posted in Business Development, Marketing, Goals | Permalink | No Comments »Yesterday I attended an outstanding seminar on mentorship hosted by Arlyn Reid and presented by Laura Reid for the Legal Marketing Association Vancouver Chapter. The handouts and PowerPoint slides were detailed and packed with great ideas. They will be up on the LMA Vancouver website later this week.
I walked away from the lunch with a number of great new ideas on the subject. But here is my number one take-away from the session:
Mentors - don’t stop at one, have three, have four, have as many as you need.
That was a very new concept for me. I was always of the view that if you are lucky you have one mentor - and by mentor I mean someone who is actively playing that role in your life as opposed to someone who was assigned the role but doesn’t show up for the job!
Laura has a number of mentors. Recognizing that no one person has all the answers Laura has collected an assortment of mentors with different strengths and perspectives. For instance she has a hard-nosed business mentor who can be counted on to give her the “reality check”. She has a creative mentor for bouncing ideas around with. And she has a number of other mentors as well.
I’ve wasted no time and am immediately expanding my team of mentors while taking on some more mentees of my own.
If you are interested in bringing some mentors into your own life, take a moment to review the handouts on the LMA Vancouver site, and contact those people who you would like to have as mentors. Most people are honored to be asked. If you are practicing at a law firm that assigns a mentor, you don’t have to stop there. Consider taking the initiative to add another mentor with a different skill set to your mix and double your opportunities for learning. Mentorship relationships can be a great source of professional development.
“A single conversation with a wise man is better than ten years of study.” (Chinese proverb)
Posted in Mentorship | Permalink | No Comments »I had dinner with a close friend this week. She is a former lawyer who at ten years call left the profession to embark on an entirely new and unrelated career. She did not leave the legal profession because she was not good at it. On the contrary, she was very good at it!
When she took the bold step of leaving her firm she was amazed by the number of people who came up to her in confidence and told her how much they wished they could do the same thing.
They wished they could, but they couldn’t. There were two main reasons why they couldn’t. Here they are:
The first reason was money. They had family commitments, a mortgage, fiscal responsibilities that made it impossible to move.
The other reason was courage. “I just don’t have the courage to make a big change like that.”
I’ve told this story to illustrate two very common rut stories. In executive coaching we sometimes talk about rut stories and river stories. Rut stories are the stories we tell about our lives that keep us stuck. River stories are the ones that set us free.
I think almost all of us have rut stories we are holding on to. They are powerful stories. Some people would call them reality. Family and fiscal responsibilities are a reality. I’m not a courageous person is a reality.
Said like that, reality, becomes a sheer cliff face. No minor obstacle but an insurmountable one. A dead end. No options beyond this point.
Rut becomes river when we ask the question: what if that wasn’t a dead end? Imagine that the huge fiscal responsibility wasn’t an insurmountable wall, but was more of an obstacle blocking your path forward. How might you work around that? How could you design a professional life that both satisfies you internally and makes you enough money to care for your family? How might that work?
Rut stories are powerful. We give them meaning. We believe them. The process of transforming rut to river begins when we reflect on the limitations we impose, when we examine them, when we suspend reality - just for a moment - and new possibilities arise. Out of possibilities can arise action. Action leads to change. Rut to river.
Posted in Leadership | Permalink | No Comments »Just a heads up to all of you in British Columbia. The CBA and the LMA have joined forces to stage a second legal marketing bootcamp taking place in Victoria on April 20, 2007.
Here’s what some of the participants of Bootcamp 2006 had to say:
“[Boot Camp] was very informative and more importantly relevant. The speakers that attended did an excellent job. . . I would recommend the Marketing Boot Camp to anyone who is serious about wanting to learn about professionally marketing legal services.” David H. Pihl, Q.C. Pihl & Associates Law Corporation, Kelowna, BC
“This course gives you the knowledge and tools to start building your own identity and future without hiring expensive consultants.” Randall Walford, Walford & Associates, Kimberley, BC
“The speakers were entertaining and had useful information. I came away from the day with new ideas and a reminder of how to involve each member of the firm in marketing efforts.” Kerry L. Simmons, Cardinal Law, Victoria, BC
This is a great opportunity for any lawyers or administrators who are interested in learning more about marketing, or getting set to develop personal, practice group, or firm marketing plans. There’s still time to sign up.
Click here to read more about this event and to register.
Posted in Marketing | Permalink | No Comments »
