Can you begin a sentence with the words “and” or “but”?

Yes You Can!

Check it out: http://www.businesswritingblog.com/business_writing/2005/11/but_its_okay_an.html

Don’t be so fast to fire a “bad” employee

I know it sounds counter-intuitive NOT to fire a bad secretary, or any other bad employee for that matter.  But if you ever hope to get control of your law firm – so you can finally have a life – you have to approach the problem in a deliberate and analytic way.  You change one thing at a time.  And if you’ve changed the secretary a couple of times already & the problem doesn’t improve, then the problem isn’t with the secretary so you look somewhere else!  Most of the time the problem is in your systems, or lack thereof. 

If there’s interest in this subject I’ll expound upon it. 

My Lawyer “Wrote The Book” On This!

A lawyer recently what I thought about her idea of sending her elder law clients and their adult-children, home with a book about caring for one’s elderly parents.  She said she pays around $11 per book and find that the children (who are often very influential in the decision-making-process) often refer to the book when asking follow-up questions after the Sales Call.

I suggested to her (and to you) that you  you write your own book based on your own experiences with clients.  You don’t have to rip-off anyone else’s material but if you find a book on a similar topic relevant to your practice area, and the basic structure works, you can use it as an outline and tell your own stories. 

• Use real-life examples of situations you have helped clients with. 
• Use real-life examples where you were not able to help clients because they came to you too late in order to illustate the point about thinking ahead. 
• Tell clients ahead of time all the things you wish they knew ahead of time before they come into your office. 

And don’t be afraid to give clients enough info to help themselves if the problems they are bringing to you are simple enough.  If you have a high-end practice, then those are probably not the kinds of problems you want to be working on anyway.  And if you have a high-volume practice, the clients will hire you anyway, and with more confidence, when they appreciate just how much easier it is to pay you than try & do it theselves.

Send the book to the client or prospective client BEFORE they come to your office so that they are better informed, don’t waste your time or theirs asking basic questions you already addressed in the book, and already feel comfortable with you by the time they arrive at your office.  Your Sales Calls will go much easier because rapport will have been established for you and conversion rates will improve dramatically.  Plus, as an added bonus, your clients themselves will begin finding areas of work for you to help them with that you may not have discovered until much later in the process.

If you write a good book, or better-yet record the whole thing on CD for their convenience, you will soon also be able to increase your fees with little resistance. 

Where to find 700 great new clients

As reported in the ABA Journal, an annual survey of corporate counsel contains leads for where a Proactive Rainmaker can find more than 700 great new clients. . .

It seems some 70 percent of corporate counsel surveyed—most from Fortune 1000 companies—were dissatisfied with their primary law firms. A little more than half of the corporate counsel reported they had replaced or demoted at least one of their primary law firms in the 18 months prior to the survey—largely without any more notice than a reduction in assignments.

The survey report, How Clients Hire, Fire and Spend: Landing the World’s Best Clients, attributed the decline to three key factors. The law firms:

• Fail to keep up with clients’ changing needs.
• Do not articulate the value they deliver.
• Do not communicate well with clients.

The results show customer service in a corporate-client relationship is paramount, and it is "not just about returning phone calls," says BTI president Michael B. Rynowecer. "The major components of client satisfaction are the ability to make legal expertise client-specific, to understand the client’s business, to go beyond what’s anticipated and to achieve the client’s goals."

Does any of this sound familiar?  It should be old-news to the Rainmakers who have listened to any of my programs, attended any of my teleseminars, or read some of my free weekly e-zine articles.  PROBLEM SOLVING SELLING!

PROBLEM SOLVING SELLING!

PROBLEM SOLVING SELLING!

Half of responding companies reported that they planned to try at least one new firm.

And that, says the President of BTI Consulting Group, the market research and management consulting firm that conducted the survey, "creates an opportunity for a new set of customer-driven, proactive, savvy, well-positioned, innovative law firms."

If you are tempted to disregard this information because you think it doesn’t pertain to your small or even solo practice, you would be missing the point entirely!

Who to make sales calls on if you’re a family law atty. (advice applicable for non-family law attys too!)

A family law practitioner recently asked me “I don’t know
what kind of sales calls are appropriate for potential divorce, custody, child
support, termination of parental rights clients I might try without being
terminally tacky. I doubt any exist. I’d also risk soliciting business, which
is unethical practice in [my state].”

 
After some back & forth I figured out that what she was really
asking was “Who should I be making sales calls with?” not what kind of sales
calls should you make. 

 
The kind of sales calls that you should be making as a
family law attorney are those which focus on identifying, analyzing and helping
people to solve their problems. And the
people with whom you could/should be conducting these Sales Calls include
accountants, estate planners, family therapists, religious leaders in the
community, real estate agents etc. All
of these professionals have problems/opportunities you may be in a position to
help them solve whenever they encounter a person who needs to find a divorce
attorney, etc.

Admittedly the vast majority of my experience has been limited to working with small law firms (typically under six attys).  As you may expect, hardly any of my clients have the resources to conduct the kind of rigorous testing on new hires that the big law firms do. 

And arguably, it is the small firms that have the most riding on a good hire b/c there’s no-where to hide a bad hire within the organization…and no where to hide from the person if your office is only a few thousand square feet.  Here’s what I teach my clients. . . 

1. At the end of the day, most of what you are going to hire any staff person to do falls into either one of two categories.  Things you can teach; and things you cannot teach.

2. For the things you cannot teach, the ONLY thing that matters is attitude.  For the things you can teach, the most important thing is attitude. . . unless you get really lucky and the new hire happens to already be trained to do things EXACTLY the way you like, or can settle for.

3. Despite what they say to the contrary, no-one you interview plans to still be working for you in 5 years.  Anyone who really does still intend to be working for you in 5 years should probably be disqualified from consideration.  People work for their own reasons, not for yours and it’s a mistake to think you can figure-out their real motivations.  So much easier to simply let them know that you know, so they know that you know they probably don’t expect to be working there in 5 years.  Find out what their real ambitions are and try to figure-out if you can make the job one which helps them get there.

4. Trust your gut.  But don’t just trust an un-trained gut.  I highly recommend Gavin DeBecker’s "The Gift of Fear".  It has nothing to do with hiring or law firm management, and everything to do with learning how to trust you gut.  While you are at it, you may as well buy a dozen copies because as soon as you’re done you WILL go back for more to give to everyone you know!

5. Invest the time to document procedures for how you want tasks accomplished.  Then train to the documentation & evaluate to determine if there are flaws with the documentation or the person who either cannot or will not follow instructions.  The best hires will follow instructions and know intuitively that the most appropriate time to suggest improvements is not crunch time, but sometimes people in new jobs get nervous & try too hard to impress, so just tell them this fact ahead of time.

Hope this helps,

RJON

Questions Every Lawyer In A Small Firm Should Know The Answers To

Recently I was interviewed by Nathan Burke of LawFirmBlogging.com.  He asked me some great questions that elicited answers I think every lawyer in a small firm should know the answers to.

Below are Nathan’s questions.  Out of respect to him, I’ve included a link to his site at the bottom of this post where you can read the answers. . .

LawFirmBlogging: I’ve listened to your audio programs and know that you opened your own firm right after law school. Are you still actively practicing law?

LawFirmBlogging: You say that law schools do not adequately teach law firm management and marketing skills. Why do you think that is the case?

LawFirmBlogging: So, how did you learn the right techniques?

LawFirmBlogging: One of the biggest gripes I have with marketing books and speakers is that they will often try to make their material very generic; kind of a one-size-fits all approach. In doing so, they never give specific, useful techniques that can be employed right away.

With that said, are there certain practice areas that are better suited for the skills you teach?

LawFirmBlogging: On your website and printed materials, your tagline says “Helping small law firms make a lot more money.” What’s your definition of “small” and “a lot”?

LawFirmBlogging: I’ve read the articles from your free ezine, and there seem to be some common problems that many new solos face. What do you see as the most common, yet solvable issue facing the new attorney?

LawFirmBlogging: This site being lawfirmblogging.com, it’s pretty obvious that I’m a believer when it comes to using the internet and blogs for legal marketing purposes. What’s your position on legal blogs and web sites?

LawFirmBlogging: Marketing a solo practice differs from marketing a firm. In many cases a solo attorney does not have the budget, time, and resources to dedicate to traditional marketing activities. Or at least that’s the perception. So how can a solo make the most of their marketing time?

LawFirmBlogging: I’ve listened to several of your audio programs while driving, and must admit that it made me feel a little sense of accomplishment to learn while stuck in traffic rather than just swearing under my breath at the driver in front of me. Having an audio CD is a nice alternative, but I was wondering why you decided to make CDs rather than just books.

LawFirmBlogging: Rather than just harping on legal marketing questions, I’ve got to finish this interview with something a little bit off topic:

Apparently you really dislike traveling. In fact, on your bio it says:

After living out of a suitcase for several years, Robins now lives and works on Miami Beach where he enjoys boating and scrap metal sculpting instead of travel. Why do you dislike travel so much, and how did you get into scrap metal sculpting?

Click HERE to link to the full interview with answers.

Do You Get Referrals From Those To Whom You Refer Business?

Tom Kane at Legal Marketing Blog, inspired by Bruce Allen, addresses this question in "Do You Get Referrals From Those To Whom You Refer Business?"  As Bruce Allen had noted in his own post, “no need to keep watering dirt if grass just refuses to grow.”

I have a somewhat different perspective (big surprise, huh?) 

In my own legal practice and now with my Rainmaking clients, I teach them "Problem Solving Selling". 

In brief, that means we focus on identifying and solving the problems of our clients, prospects and potential referral sources.  We find this to be a highly rewarding way to market a small law firm, both personally and professionally.

As such, how many referrals someone has sent my way does not figure into the equation.  If they are the best fit for the problem I am helping someone to deal with, they get to be part of my team. 

Of course, all things being equal, the person who has referred business to me has the advantage.  However, in all of the solutions I have come-up with for my clients.  And in the thousands more solutions all of my Rainmaking clients have come up with for their own clients, I’ve never found the proverbial "all things are equal" to objectively exist. 

There is always a difference that makes one professional a better choice for the referral (unique experience, price, proximity, personality, etc.)  As such, I come back full-circle to my original point about not allowing the "referral ledger" (nice term)to cloud my judgment or affect my actions when it comes to who will be the best fit for a particular client’s needs.

Anyway, that’s my $0.02.

NOTE: I need to acknowledge that the first two sentences above come straight from Dan Hull’s What About Clients? blog.  Try as I might, I just couldn’t figure-out a way to set-up the sequence better than Dan did ~ Thanks Dan!

Abraham Lincoln was mistaken

What can Gordon Gekko teach you about law firm marketing?

Think about the immortal words of Gordon Gekko (Wall Street, 1987)  the next time you see an "equity owner" of a big law firm looking down his/her nose at your efforts to make it rain for your own law firm. . .

Gekko:  Well, I appreciate the opportunity you’re giving me, Mr. Cromwell, as the single largest shareholder in Teldar Paper, to speak.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, we’re not here to indulge in fantasy, but in political and economic reality.

America

,

America

All together these men sitting up here [Teldar management] own less than 3 percent of the company.  And where does Mr. Cromwell put his million-dollar salary?  Not in Teldar stock; he owns less than 1 percent.

You own the company.  That’s right – you, the stockholder.

And you are all being royally screwed over by these, these bureaucrats, with their luncheons, their hunting and fishing trips, their corporate jets and golden parachutes.

Cromwell: This is an outrage! You’re out of line, Gekko!

Gekko: Teldar Paper, Mr. Cromwell, Teldar Paper has 33 different vice presidents, each earning over 200 thousand dollars a year. Now, I have spent the last two months analyzing what all these guys do, and I still can’t figure it out. One thing I do know is that our paper company lost 110 million dollars last year, and I’ll bet that half of that was spent in all the paperwork going back and forth between all these vice presidents.

The new law of evolution in corporate

America

In the last seven deals that I’ve been involved with, there were 2.5 million stockholders who have made a pretax profit of 12 billion dollars. Thank you.

I am not a destroyer of companies. I am a liberator of them!

The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed — for lack of a better word — is good.

Greed is right.

Greed works.

Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.

Greed, in all of its forms — greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge — has marked the upward surge of mankind.

And greed — you mark my words — will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the

USA

Thank you very much.