Why Is It So Easy To Hire You?
Every so often I will point out things I think are worth reading for people interested in law firm marketing. This week I came across a post by Seth Godin on open buying and open selling. Seth is talking about the ease of getting something and its true value to the end user. This is a concept that is near and dear to me. If something is easy to get, how much could it be worth?
Let’s say you need to see a heart surgeon. It’s not an emergency but your doctor has detected an irregular heartbeat. The doctor doesn’t give you a referral (he doesn’t believe in them). So you are forced to find a heart surgeon on your own.
You go to the Internet and you call the heart surgeon who comes up on top in a Google search. You call the office at 9AM and get an appointment for 11AM. After a FREE consultation, you shake the doctor’s hand and he agrees to operate on you at 1PM.
What do you think? Is that guy most likely a good doctor or a bad doctor?
I know that sounds ludicrous but that’s what happens with many lawyers.
You can pick up the phone at 9AM, make an appointment for today at 11, go to the office for a FREE consultation and have an attorney retained by 1PM.
And the attorneys who operate this way wonder why they have so many clients who shop around.
It is not easy to hire a good lawyer. Good lawyers are selective in the clients they accept. Good lawyers are always busy…too busy to handle same day appointments or walk-ins…too busy to offer FREE consultations.
If you want quality clients you need to have a process in place to select them. If you want clients to listen to your advice they must perceive it as valuable. Law firm marketing helps influence that perception but commonsense must also have a role.
Clients get what they pay for…and they know it.
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EmailHow One Law Firm Created a Culture of Sales Success
Have you ever wondered why some firms struggle just to get by during an economic downturn while others flourish?
One of my clients, Phil, was promoted to Managing Director of a medium size firm in South Florida a little more than a year ago. His firm was heavily into representing condominium associations and real estate transactional work. Phil was the only “business law guy” (his description) in the firm so it was a bit of a shock to the team when the management committee selected him to become the top dog.
To make matters worse, the firm was decimated by the loss of several senior partners when two former shareholders basically raided the firm and took the “top talent” with them. Two members of the five member management committee were also calling it quits – one went to work for a client and the other thought he could do better on his own. The firm seemed destined to be absorbed by another, larger law firm. Phil’s partners agreed to give him a year to turn the place around or they would also bail out.
So Phil earned this promotion just over a year ago, and his task was clear: Shift the focus of the firm from a real estate shop to a business-focused firm as quickly as possible. (For those of you who have been living under a rock, real estate in South Florida is deader than Elvis). Phil was left with a core team of associates who had little business transaction experience and a few paralegals who had worked exclusively on real estate management and transaction issues.
Fourteen months later, Phil’s firm has doubled its billings. At a recent gathering of my clients, I asked him to give a presentation to the group and talk about how he did it. Here are his Million-Dollar secrets:
Remove the Pain for Financial Gain - Wrap Up
We just finished up a series on the consultative sales model that many attorneys are using effectively to develop relationships with their clients.
I used the acronym IDAP to help the attorneys I work with remember the different steps of the process.
This series of articles was designed to serve as an introduction to IDAP. Here’s what we covered in each article.
Remove the Pain for Financial Gain - Part 6 - Prescribe
This is Part 6 of the series of articles on the sales process for attorneys – Remove the Pain for Financial Gain.
The first five articles in the series are:
Part 1 – Attorneys are really Pain Relief Specialists
Part 2 – The Sales Process for Attorneys – IDAP
Part 3 – Develop a Relationship by Conducting an Interview
Part 4 – Client Diagnose Thyself
Part 5 – Agitate to Create Urgency
As a recap - the IDAP process is a consultative sales system that attorneys use to develop new client relationships.
IDAP is an acronym for:
- Interview
- Diagnose
- Agitate
- Prescribe
The focus of this article will be the prescription aspect of the IDAP process.
To understand the prescribe portion of the IDAP process we first must examine what happens when a doctor prescribes medication for a patient.
After conducting a thorough examination, a doctor will make a diagnosis and prescribe a medication that will help restore the patient to good physical health. In the case of a client and an attorney, the attorney has walked the client through the IDAP process to the point where the client needs help. In fact, by now he should be begging for assistance.
There are three ways you can tell if you are ready to move into the prescription phase of the IDAP process:
Remove the Pain for Financial Gain - Part 5 - Agitate
This is Part 5 of the series of articles on the sales process for attorneys – Remove the Pain for Financial Gain.
The first four articles in the series are:
Part 1 – Attorneys are really Pain Relief Specialists
Part 2 – The Sales Process for Attorneys – IDAP
Part 3 – Develop a Relationship by Conducting an Interview
Part 4 – Client Diagnose Thyself
Just as a refresher, the IDAP process is a consultative sales system that attorneys use to sign up new clients.
IDAP is an acronym for:
- Interview
Diagnose
Agitate
Prescribe
The focus of this article will be the agitation step of the IDAP process.
Many people misunderstand the agitation step of this process and they interpret it to mean that we want to agitate the client. They mistakenly believe that we have something to gain by making the client angry or upset. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In reality the agitation step helps relieve the agitation a client feels about an issue.
The agitation step is important and it is one of the “special ingredients” in the consultative sales formula.
Here’s why:
Remove the Pain for Financial Gain - Part 4 - Diagnosis
This is Part 4 of the series of articles on the sales process for attorneys – Remove the Pain for Financial Gain.
The first three articles in the series are:
Part 1 – Attorneys are really Pain Relief Specialists
Part 2 – The Sales Process for Attorneys – IDAP
Part 3 – Develop a Relationship by Conducting an Interview
As we have discussed the sales process for attorneys is summed up by the acronym IDAP which stands for:
- Interview
Diagnose
Agitate
Prescribe
We are now going to discuss the diagnosis phase of the IDAP process.
If you were to go to a physician with several symptoms of an illness, the physician would first interview you to make certain he understood everything that was going on inside your body. He would also probe into the outside factors that may be contributing to the situation. He may even order some type of tests to help him delve into the possible unseen causes of the illness.
In our world we follow similar steps during the interview phase of the IDAP process. In your interview you should have built up a bond with the client. You should have also reviewed all of the “symptoms” with the potential client and conducted any of your own “tests” to help narrow down the problem as much as possible. Your goal in the interview phase is not just to gather information, but to build up a relationship of trust with the client.
These steps are important – not only for you – but to convince the client that there is actually an advantage to solving this problem urgently. Many clients believe that they can “ignore” a problem into going away
In either case, your job is to help the client understand and diagnose for himself just how serious the issue is and how he must get to work on it immediately.
Here’s how we go about doing that:
Remove the Pain for Financial Gain - Part 3 - The Interview
In Part 1 of this series we discussed the attorney’s role as a pain relief expert. In Part 2 we outlined the process for pain relief – the sales process known as IDAP. This is an acronym for Interview Diagnose Agitate and Prescribe.
In Part 3 we will begin to get into the details of the IDAP process by outlining the Interview step.
Our goal in the interview step of the process is twofold. First, we want to establish an environment that allows the client to be open and forthcoming without feeling like he is embarrassed or uncomfortable. Second, we want to understand, in as much detail as possible, the issue that is affecting our potential client.
A good interview can help us achieve both of these goals. Here’s how.
