Marketing Tips for Lawyers

Trading On A Margin?

admin — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 19:06:45 +0000

When I shifted from practicing law to consulting and coaching, I realized that it’s critical for me to protect my own time and energy. I began to get a deeper understanding that in a very real way, I am my own product and I must protect my product. The irony, of course, is that the same was true when I was in practice. My hunch is that if I’d come to this realization sooner, I would have been less stressed out and I probably would have accomplished more.
One of the tools that’s been most important to me is building margins into my schedule. Rather than scheduling myself back-to-back, I leave gaps throughout the day so that I can catch a breath, handle the small fires that inevitably arise, and take advantage of new opportunities that pop up. The gaps can be fairly small, such as leaving 15 extra minutes on either side of an appointment so I don’t need to worry if we run a few minutes long. Sometimes, a gap can be as simple as a pause between calls to grab a glass of water, stretch a bit, and breathe deeply to get the oxygen and energy flowing.
When working on a big project, though, a big margin is helpful. That’s why I shudder a bit when a potential client calls me and tells me that it’s urgent to build his clientele because he has only two months of expense money in the bank or because she’s expecting to be

From Life at the Bar

Trading On A Margin? is a post from: Marketing Tips for Lawyers

Total Leadership

admin — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 16:38:05 +0000

Total Leadership: Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life
By Steward D. Friedman
Spurred by conversations I’ve been having with clients recently, this month’s book review focuses on “work/life balance” or (as I prefer to call it) work/life integration. As I’ve previously written, self-management is a critical skill for leaders. That it’s also a challenge is reflected on the number of leaders who excel at work but have less satisfactory home lives, or those who prioritize “success” above health and suffer the consequences.
In Total Leadership: Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life, Stewart Friedman urges leaders to seek “four-way wins”, meaning high performance in the four domains of life: work, home, community, and self (mind, body, and spirit). Achieving these wins creates “total leadership”, which in turn creates sustainable change to benefit the leader and the most important people around him or her.
Traditional “work/life balance” principles, which suggest that there’s one single point called balance and innumerable other points that are unbalanced. That connotation is why I prefer the phrase integration to balance, and why I find Friedman’s approach to be so helpful. By recognizing that our lives are more than “work” and “everything else”, Friedman opens the possibility that we don’t have to live on a see-saw. Instead, we can find give-and-take among the domains, ideally finding activities or ways of being that serve all four. Doesn’t that sound better than stealing time from work to serve life, or vice versa?
Scoring four-way wins is grounded in a clear view

From Life at the Bar

Total Leadership is a post from: Marketing Tips for Lawyers

Meet Your Future Connected Clients

admin — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 21:39:24 +0000

A peek at your future clients, from OnlineSchools.org:

From The [non]billable Hour

Meet Your Future Connected Clients is a post from: Marketing Tips for Lawyers

Wanting Creativity is Easier than Doing Creativity

admin — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 21:39:21 +0000

From the Freakonomics Blog comes news of a Cornell study titled, “The Bias Against Creativity: Why People Desire But Reject Creative Ideas.” Here’s an abstract of the study:
People often reject creative ideas even when espousing creativity as a desired goal. To explain this paradox, we propose that people can hold a bias against creativity that is not necessarily overt, and which is activated when people experience a motivation to reduce uncertainty. In two studies, we measure and manipulate uncertainty using different methods including: discrete uncertainty feelings, and an uncertainty reduction prime. The results of both studies demonstrated a negative bias toward creativity (relative to practicality) when participants experienced uncertainty. Furthermore, the bias against creativity interfered with participants’ ability to recognize a creative idea. These results reveal a concealed barrier that creative actors may face as they attempt to gain acceptance for their novel ideas.
The authors of the study propose that we should worry less about generating creative ideas and more about helping institutions to recognize and accept creativity. For many working in law firms — especially the marketing and business development folks — this will ring true.
In my work, I’ve found it isn’t enough to give people “creative” ideas. Too often, a great idea is met with a “We can’t do that here,” or “That will never work,” instead of a “Let’s try it!” It is far better to help people be creative as they develop relevant, innovative ideas on their own, and then giving them a framework and timeline for implementing

From The [non]billable Hour

Wanting Creativity is Easier than Doing Creativity is a post from: Marketing Tips for Lawyers

Create a Menu for Your Practice

admin — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 21:15:42 +0000

Do you know all the kinds of things your firm does? Perhaps you should take a page (literally) from the restaurant industry and create a “menu” of your services. Though you may not decide to use it with clients, merely deciding what goes on the menu — and what gets left off — makes you think a bit differently about your practice and the kinds of matters you regularly should say “yes” to.
And if you’re looking for some menu inspiration, I highly recommend the blog Art of the Menu. It has dozens of creative menus from around the country, and is sure to give you some ideas if you decide to make your “menu” a regular part of your practice.
I just created a Menu for LexThink that I’m going to print up on heavy card-stock like an actual restaurant menu . It is still in early draft stage, so I’d love to know what you think.

From The [non]billable Hour

Create a Menu for Your Practice is a post from: Marketing Tips for Lawyers

A Tale of Two Sales

admin — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 11:27:42 +0000

I went shopping a few weekends ago. I’m in the market for a new car, and I need a dark rose or burgundy tablecloth for my dining room table. I haven’t purchased either just yet (though I’m moving closer), but two very different sales experiences have offered plenty of insight.
Saturday afternoon, I went to the home department of a local department store and asked for tablecloths. The sales associate (Michele) told me that the store no longer carries tablecloths in the stores, only online. Great, I said, turning away, I’ll take a look.
But Michele wasn’t done.She asked what size my table is, and what color and fabric I was hoping to find. Michele suggested that I send her the dimensions on my table and offered to make the first cut of the hundreds of tablecloths I’d find online to narrow down to the ten or so that I might actually consider. I can’t wait to see what she finds. It’s an extra step, but how nice to have someone willing to shepherd me through the search and guide me based on my needs. That’s service.
What was right about this sales experience: Michele’s questions and suggestions were directed toward helping me get what I want and need with the least amount of effort and trouble on my end. As a result, I left feeling that she was helping me, not just out to get a sale, even though I’m sure she’ll get a commission if I order through her. Our exchange

From Life at the Bar

A Tale of Two Sales is a post from: Marketing Tips for Lawyers

Time to Change Your Clients

admin — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 20:25:21 +0000

I ran across a juicy bit of wisdom today in an article helping sales managers to identify the best time to fire their salespeople for underperformance:
“If you can’t change your people, change your people.”
Needless to say, the same is true for your clients. If you have a client who continually refuses to take your advice, show up on time, complete the tasks they’ve been assigned or (gasp) pay you, you’ve clearly not been able to change them.
So change them. Replace them with a better client.
They don’t deserve your best work — and probably aren’t getting it anyway.

From The [non]billable Hour

Time to Change Your Clients is a post from: Marketing Tips for Lawyers

Hello, Law Office …

admin — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 20:25:21 +0000

This may fall into the “completely obvious” category, but when’s the last time you or your staff have thought about telephone etiquette?
Here are four phone etiquette rules you and your staff should keep in mind before answering the telephone:

Use formal greetings. When answering calls always use a formal greeting. It is considered best practice to use sir or ma’am to address customers if names are unknown.
Speak clearly. Take the time to speak clearly and in a positive, professional tone. Doing so will put the caller at ease and diffuse an upset customer.
Listen & learn. Train your representatives to listen carefully to customers. Always allow customers time to finish his/her thoughts without interruption and ask questions that clarify information. Be sure to confirm understanding with the caller before moving forward.
No food or beverages. This may seem like common sense, -but stress the importance of this one. Representatives must refrain from consuming food or drink while taking a call. Customers do not want to hear gulping and chewing.

I’d also add: never answer the phone when you don’t have time to answer the phone. Picking up your cell phone — only to tell the caller you don’t have time to speak with them (or that you thought they were someone else) is rude. Let their call go to voicemail and call them back when they can get your undivided attention.
From Customer Service 101.

From The [non]billable Hour

Hello, Law Office … is a post from: Marketing Tips for Lawyers

Shake it up!

admin — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 08:18:37 +0000

What a week we’ve had with weather on the East Coast: if it isn’t an earthquake, it’s a hurricane. And for us east coasters, there’s nothing natural about that sentence. Long-time readers know that I think Seth Godin is a brilliant thinker, and he hit it again with his insight into earthquakes and human nature:

The first thing that happens after we encounter an earthquake is to wonder if anyone else felt it. The need for group validation is widespread and happens for events that don’t involve earthquakes as well.
[P]eople like to do something. Action, even ineffective action, is something societies seek out during times of uncertainty.

Do you see how these observations apply to business development, both from the perspective of you who’s developing the business and also from your potential clients’ perspective?
What’s more, seeming everyone on the East Coast wanted to share where we were when the quake hit, did we feel it, did we know what it was. The coverage probably would have continued for an even longer period had it not been interrupted by Hurricane Irene. Meanwhile West Coast dwellers were bemused at East Coast reaction to what would have been a non-event had it happened in California.
The earthquake was unexpected, uncommon, and thus worthy of discussion despite its lack of widespread impact. (The proof’s in the follow-up: how much have you heard about the 16 aftershocks, four of which were over the “insignificant” 3.0 magnitude?)
Finally, did you see that the news spread via social media much

From Life at the Bar

Shake it up! is a post from: Marketing Tips for Lawyers

Featured Links

admin — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 07:51:31 +0000

In this “fifth week”, I thought I’d share five notable blog posts from the last few weeks. Enjoy!
Lessons Law Firms Learnt From the Great Recession (Canadian flair, but widely applicable)
There Has Never Been a Better Time to Be a Lawyer (make your own opportunities and enjoy the changes that the new economy is brining)
Is Law a Business or a Profession? (same old conversation, with a fresh take on the answer)
Your Bio is Not an Obituary! (Read this, then re-read your bio and consider revisions. Most bios beg for a change.)
Use Your Next Team Meeting to Build Your Entire Company’s Social Capital (How brainstorming about valuable contacts for your team or your firm can pay off)

From Life at the Bar

Featured Links is a post from: Marketing Tips for Lawyers