The Rules of Romance - and Marketing
Honest communications. "Honesty is essential. The slightest transgression takes you backwards a long way.
You would never want to get caught in a real relationship with exaggerations, or inflated statements - yet you do that all the time in marketing. Maybe it gets you laid, but if you're looking for a relationship, you just lost it."
Shut up and really listen. "Spend your time asking clients about them. Seek first to understand and then to be understood. How much of your marketing plans are seeking to understand?"
Frequent communication, especially when not needed. Maister encouraged partners to read the trade publication of their main clients. By doing so your partner can call a client to say, "I was reading your trade magazine and I see that your competitor's factory burned down, is there anything you'd like to do?" He added, "You can't build somebody's trust if you don't keep up with their interests," he said.
Be supportive and understanding. Treat clients gently instead of critically.
"How do you tell the client he was wrong and have him thank you for it? Ask yourself, 'how do I phrase this so that it comes across as supportive?'
There are few of us who find the right words instantaneously, but most of us have to think about it overnight. You might get caught off guard, and you'll feel you need to prove you're worth €250 per hour; but you must be more focused on the relationship than the present moment."
You actually have to care about the relationship.
"If your partners say, 'do I have to care?' your reply should be, 'if you do care, your life will get better. If you don't care, it's going to be harder.' What works in marketing is actually caring. For example, see if you can you actually ask sensible follow-up questions and keep a conversation going for 30 minutes?
Express appreciation. "A marriage will fall apart because you're taking it for granted.
Bringing flowers and chocolates on a birthday will get you some brownie points. But the real brownie points come when you show up on a day with no significance and say, 'I just wanted to tell you I love you.' You should call your main clients and say, 'I was just sitting here and appreciate the opportunity to work with you. I have nothing to report but am looking forward to seeing you soon.'"
Becoming a Trusted Advisor
According to Maister, a lawyer's goal is to become the trusted advisor of his or her clients. He identified four characteristics that influence trust:
Credibility, which is not the same thing as competence. "You may be skilled in your field but can you apply it to your client's world? To see you as credible, a client needs to feel not only that you're a great lawyer - but that you can bring your expertise into their world."
Reliability. A large part of being trusted is that a person can be relied on to act in a certain way. "Brilliant people who are unreliable lose my trust," Maister said. Part of getting trusted is about dependability, consistency and reliability. A lawyer's reputation is not how well he does on a good day it's what he does on his worst day.
Intimacy. "You don't need to know the names of your client’s kids and send them birthday cards. But you do have to know about your client's transactions. You also must understand that in all of your client interactions, you're dealing with a human being and that his emotions are part of it. It's about individuals."
Self-orientation. "If the client believes you are only in it for yourself, you won't be trusted. To be trusted you must convince the other person that you will earn whatever you are paid. Somehow you have to make people believe you care about them," Maister said.
According to Maister, most of us rate well on credibility and reliability.
"It's the last two that are less well done; not many people would get high points from their clients on being a person as opposed to a techno-nerd," he said. "Clients fundamentally don't trust lawyers because they think the lawyer just wants billable hours. Whether that's an unfair belief or not, it causes them not to trust you and to watch you like a hawk."
"Marketing works much better if you treat it as a moral point. You must know what your core principles are. Every time your core principles are tested, you have to answer the same way. You must decide if your firm is going to have any principles, any laws; "this is who we are but we don't do certain junk," he said.
Partners must ask themselves if they want non-negotiable principles or should we run it on expediency. Firms that have very clear principles, that are in fact actually lived up to, make more money. Firms that don't or who have ones that are treated expediently make less money," Maister said
Advice for Marketing Managers
Maister urged marketers to stop focusing on the firm, and instead start focusing on individual partners. "The best revenue generator is to work with an individual lawyer. Every marketing manager must be a trusted advisor, and deal with the partners' sensitive egos. That's how you build your power base - one by one, you get a group of partners who say you were really helpful.
"Most of your lawyers resent their clients - they don't like them, and they don't like the fee negotiations. They like the legal work. If you like your clients, you don't go cruising.
"Your job as a marketing manager is to work one-on-one with a partner and find out what he'd rather be doing than this. What part of his practice would he get rid of? Most valuable thing a marketing partner can do is to help people find their passion.
"Without the energy, passion desire, the command of marketing tactics is useless."
By Larry Bodine
This article originally appeared on the LawMarketing Portal, www.LawMarketing.com, where law firms find out how to get more business.
Source: Billy Linehan, email billy.linehan@celtar.ie, Profile www.linkedin.com/in/billylinehan Blog http://www.celtar.ie/blog/
Marketing & Maximising Your Sales
- Start Date: 7th May 2009
- From 18:00 – 22:00
- 1 night a week over 4 weeks
- Venue: National College of Ireland, IFSC