Through years of school and various jobs and activities, we’ve learned how to persist even in the face of difficulties. Persistence is an important trait, since (in the words of one of my current favorite songs) “what’s worth the prize is always worth the fight.” No fight may mean no prize, and we’ve integrated that lesson in our professional lives. (Think back to law school, and I virtually guarantee you’ll remember at least one class that would have stopped you cold had you not been committed to fighting your way through.)
An opposing principle is the concept of diminishing returns, in which additional effort doesn’t produce additional results proportional to that effort. For example, when you draft a memorandum for a client, the first and second drafts are generally critical to the end result. By the time you get to the fifth or fifteenth or fiftieth draft (depending on the complexity of the matter at hand), you’re making only small changes and word-smithing. A single word can occasionally affect the impact of an entire document, so experience is often required to know when you’ve reached the point of diminishing returns. (Read the rest of the entry…)
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Last year was incredibly busy for me, first with writing The Reluctant Rainmaker and then with designing programs like the Lawyers Business Development Bootcamp, plus working with many 1-on-1 clients. It was a great year, but toward the fall I started to notice that I’ve met very few of my clients and newsletter readers in person over the last year. That has to change. And so, as I’ve been hinting, I’ve been laying plans for something new.
While it would be great fun to meet you in a social setting, I know we’re often too busy to set aside time just to chat. So, I created a 1-day workshop that I’m calling Effective Business Development Made Simple. In this highly interactive program, you’ll learn my 7-step Legal Rainmaker System, which will show you the steps you need to take to bring in the new business you need, and you’ll work on creating your own plans so you’ll have a roadmap to take back to the office with you. And then we’ll close the day with good conversation and refreshments at a reception. Presto – an opportunity to learn something that has the power to transform your practice, plus an opportunity to meet!
And, I’ve heard those of you who’ve been telling me that this economy has put a crimp in your budget: the workshop will be priced under $100 for the entire day!
Finally, I realize that it would be difficult for many of you to travel all the way to my Atlanta home base. That means it’s time for one of my favorite activities… A road trip! Effective Business Development Made Simple will be coming to TEN cities across the country. Here’s the list:
- Atlanta
- Boston
- Chicago
- Dallas
- DC
- Ft. Lauderdale
- Los Angeles
- New York City
- Philadelphia
- Seattle
I’m excited beyond belief at the prospect of meeting many of you and sharing the step-by-step process that will make your rainmaking efforts simple and highly effective! I’ll be announcing all of the details, including dates and exact locations, next week… So keep your eyes open.
Do you ever feel that you’re just one lawyer in a large sea of others? New lawyers often begin their practices wondering how to distinguish themselves from the hundreds or thousands of other lawyers occupying the same niche. And lawyers who’ve been in practice for some time may have the same nagging question. Though the question may fade, it frequently re-emerges when a lawyer is preparing to grow her practice or is considering some shift in substantive areas.
Differentiation from other lawyers and law firms is useful in marketing and business development conversations. So, how can you differentiate yourself? (Read the rest of the entry…)
By Shel Holtz and John C. Havens
I recently noticed a new television commercial for Domino’s Pizza, in which the company lays bare the perception that its pizza is bland and then describes new changes to the recipe, closing with an invitation to try the new Domino’s. That’s some transparency. But in today’s world, dominated as it is by social media, no company could credibly pretend to be unaware of discussions about it.
We’ve probably all seen the emails, watched the videos, or heard the audios in which a clueless or uncaring company drives a customer to fury — fury that produces a social media backlash. In the old days, we’d have been limited to telling a few friends (studies show that on average we tell seven others about negative experiences and tell only three others about positive ones), and they’d tell a few friends, and the word would get out…Slowly, and in limited distribution. Today, though, as Tactical Transparency describes, feedback can spread like wildfire, and corporations’ only choice is how to handle that feedback. (Read the rest of the entry…)
One of the top concerns for most lawyers is time management. We all have so much to accomplish in so little time, and it often seems that we’re always trying to cram more activities (whether professional or personal) into the non-negotiable 168 hours we have each week. Most of my coaching clients bring time management issues to the table at some point, and time pressures are largely responsible for the high levels of stress that many lawyers face.
One distinction, “urgent” versus “important,” can form the basis for effective time management. Urgent vs. important is a simple distinction that applies equally to the substance of a lawyer’s work as well as to practice or career management. Stephen Covey has written about time use and devised a four-quadrant chart to help us judge where we spend most of our time: (Read the rest of the entry…)
Leaders are often depicted as resolute, visionary, motivational, intent on reminding followers to get with the program or get off the team. And we’ve all heard that it’s lonely at the top. No question that leaders may be called on to make difficult decisions and to demand compliance with those decisions. To fail to do so would, at times, be an unforgiveable dereliction of duty.
Servant-leadership, which may incorporate similar traits and approaches, operates from the perspective of leading for the best interest of the people or organization being led. Robert Greenleaf coined the term in a 1970 essay that drew a picture of a different kind of leader: (Read the rest of the entry…)
It’s the time of year for holiday specials, and last night’s offering was Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town. And while I enjoyed the story and the theme, I was dumbfounded when I realized that there’s a bit of a link between Santa and client development! If you remember the lyrics to the song, you’ll know that Santa is “making a list and checking it twice, [and] he’s gonna find out who’s naughty or nice.” And we all know that Santa doesn’t reward the naughty.
Do you reward naughty potential clients by letting them hire you? Just about every lawyer has had the truly awful client: one who doesn’t pay or pays so slowly that the process is agonizing, one who blocks your efforts to get information you need to handle the representation, one who’s routinely rude or unduly demanding or critical, and so on. Unfortunately, naughty clients come in a lot of flavors. The good news is (Read the rest of the entry…)
A Sense of Urgency
by John P. Kotter
John Kotter, a noted expert on leadership and change management, fervently believes that attachment to the status quo is a silent but deadly killer. Through numerous examples, Kotter demonstrates that organization stall and atrophy as change fails. Kotter’s bottom line? If it ain’t broke, break it.
A Sense of Urgency draws on an earlier Kotter book titled Leading Change, in which he proposed instilling a sense of urgency as the first step of an eight-step process to implement successful transformation. However, he found that increasing urgency is the most difficult and the least developed of the steps, thus prompting him to write A Sense of Urgency. (Read the rest of the entry…)
Do you know how to get the most from your sponsorships? I was interested to see this article from The National Journal, with the headline, “No More ‘Chalets’; Legal Marketing Focuses on Building Business.” It shouldn’t be surprising that marketing efforts should produce new business, but lawyers sometimes confuse “brand-building” with business development.
If you’re building your “brand,” whether it’s your personal brand or your firm’s, the goal is to raise others’ awareness of you. It’s an opportunity to let them know what you stand for and what space you occupy in the market. (Read the rest of the entry…)
I recently spoke with a lawyer who had tried a variety of business development activities, all to no avail. She’d written articles, she’d taught seminars, she’d advertised, she’d attended some networking events, she’d posted her profile on various social networking sites, and so on. But after all of that, she didn’t have any results to report at all, and she was about to conclude that she just wasn’t meant to be a rainmaker.
That reaction is so common. It’s so discouraging to work at something — especially something as important as business development — and to see no results. But three mistakes often come clear when I talk with someone who has worked hard at rainmaking without meaningful results.
- The lawyer is measuring the wrong thing. Sure, new business is the clearest measurement of rainmaking success, but that’s like starting a diet and measuring success only by reaching goal weight. There are all sorts of (Read the rest of the entry…)
February 03, 2010 
