#239: How Lawyers Get Clients

[00:00:49] Hello. Hello, this is Heather Moulder host of Life and Law. And today we are going to get into something that has been coming up a lot at some of the events I've been to and some of the speaking opportunities that I've been asked to do over the course of the last, I'd say six to eight months. I want to get into what's going on, at least what I see is going on. Oftentimes when the traditional business development that we've all been told to do feels like it's not working, it feels broken.

[00:01:22] I am just going to say that oftentimes the problem isn't effort and it's not just about visibility. It's really about relevance. And that's what we're going to get into today. We're going to talk about my three top tips for getting clients. It's kind of your modern business development playbook. Now, a note though, a caveat maybe. It is at least somewhat about effort. The thing I would tell you is, is regardless of where you are, all these three tips are going to help you a lot.

[00:01:56] But if you're not going to implement them consistently and actually do the BD efforts, then no, it's not going to help. If you're going to be sporadic and hardly ever do it, nothing's going to change. So you do have to have the effort piece. That's obvious. But if you feel like I've done a lot, I've been doing this consistently for the past 6, 812 months or years. And yeah, I mean, I've had some successes. I. But I don't feel like it's enough for the amount of effort I'm putting in. Well, today is for you.

[00:02:28] So let's get right into it.

[00:02:30] Tip number one, get specific.

[00:02:34] So most lawyers that I see are often trying to sell whatever they can.

[00:02:42] What do I mean by that? They're trying to sell the employment law that the people down the hall can do. They're trying to sell the corporate work that somebody else can do. They're trying to sell any and all litigation that they could do.

[00:02:53] And that's not always. In fact, that's often not the best way to go. So sophisticated clients like yours don't actually buy that way.

[00:03:05] They have different service providers for different things, for different aspects of what they need when it comes to their legal work. Okay.

[00:03:16] And it's not to say you couldn't get in there and do it all. You could, and one day you very well might. But if you're just trying to get the door, that is not where to start. You don't start with it all. So you've got to get more specific. You want to be strategic here about what you're trying to market to them and sell.

[00:03:37] And there's two things. There's specificity on your part, and there's specificity on their part that you need to think about. So specificity on your part is the niche. When we are marketing and networking, we want to be able to explain what we do very clearly and concisely in one to two sentences.

[00:03:57] That tells people what you do, who for, and sometimes the result you get depending on what it is you're talking about. Okay? But it's got to be super clear. And unfortunately, most of us do a lot of different things or can do a lot of different things, but you got to step back and think, well, what's my niche, really?

[00:04:20] So that people will understand you better. If you're talking about too many things and you're a jack of all trades, no one's going to think of you, unfortunately. They're just going to think you're that lawyer. Oh, yeah, a lawyer.

[00:04:32] Okay, great.

[00:04:34] A lawyer doing what for whom? You've got to get more specific so that they can attach you to something so that they can think of you for something. So there's that specificity that starts with you, but then you've got to go even deeper and you've got to understand the specificity for the client.

[00:04:51] What is it that makes sense for them? What would they actually want most from you, given your knowledge, your expertise, your background?

[00:05:05] You need to put both of those together. That's what specificity is actually about.

[00:05:11] So let me give you an example of what I'm talking about. I have a client who's trying to grow his book, and he's a litigator. He can litigate on a lot of things, and he has litigated on a lot of things. But there are a Couple of things that he really has honed in over the last couple of years. And that is where he really wants to build his book, at least initially. It involves very high risk, high states, high stakes cases.

[00:05:37] And it doesn't, you know, a lot of things that come up for his potential clients would not be a good fit for this sell.

[00:05:47] Could he do it? Yes, but it wouldn't be a good fit for this sell for what he's actually honing in on now. Let me just note that oftentimes once we get the stuff we're selling and we prove ourselves, it does expand and often we end up doing that other stuff too.

[00:06:05] So don't think that doing this is going to limit you forever. Forever. It's not. It's just a helpful way in this particular client. Also happens to know that a couple of his prospects that he's talking to who seems somewhat interested in the high risk, high stakes matters already use counsel, which by the way, almost all of you I'm talking to at least if you're in a mid sized to big firm, if you are not selling B2C, you're selling B2B I E. Other businesses, they're going to use other counsel and there are reasons for that. There are cost savings reasons. There are sometimes they're using local counsel for specific types of things and they don't need a big firm for that. Right. So he's gotten to know them and he knows they hire local council a lot for certain types of work.

[00:06:53] It's more routine, they do good work at a good price. He can't easily compete with that. So it makes no sense for him to sell that. He's selling the high risk, high stakes because he knows that's when they would really need him. And do those cases come along every day? No, but they tend to come along. A couple of the matters get opened up per year based on the business that they're doing and that is what he's going for. And no, not all of those end up the big cases that take you really far. But again, this is a long haul game and he's got numerous potential clients but he's speaking to on this. So over time some of that will come in and then of course he can leverage it when it does within his marketing to showcase what he does and become known for it more generally and broaden the market or the networking market that he has. So this is what I'm talking about on specificity. You've got to be really strategic.

[00:07:55] What this means is that you've got. You've got to know what you do exceptionally well and actually enjoy doing. You've got to know what carries real downside or exposure for the client. You've got to know where the client would actually switch counsel or need somebody different.

[00:08:11] Knowing those things is super important to being specific like this because you've got to meet them where they are. You've got to sell them what they would actually want most from you. And again, you can build from there.

[00:08:28] All right, so that was tip number one. Be specific. And I've already started to get into tip number two a little bit, but we've got to go even deeper. I just said meet them where they are. That is actually tip number two. Meet them where they are.

[00:08:43] So what does that mean?

[00:08:46] You've got to know your clients and potential clients pretty intimately. What do they do, how do they do it? Be industry specific and client specific.

[00:08:56] You've got to understand their culture, their goals, their values, their needs.

[00:09:03] All of those things make up their priorities.

[00:09:07] You also need to understand how they make money. What are their revenue sources, what is their funding structure, what is their business model, do they have internal divisions with competing priorities?

[00:09:18] You need to understand these things because then you need to understand your role within their organization.

[00:09:25] What would your role be so that you can really meet them where they are and understand them as best as possible.

[00:09:33] So you are not there to sell them whatever you think they need.

[00:09:42] Just going to note this, you are not there to sell them whatever you think they need.

[00:09:50] You are there to understand them intimately so that you can position yourself as a strategic partner that assists them with making more money, being financially secure and profitable, doing business the way they want and need to be able to do business.

[00:10:11] And I don't care what type of law you practice, whether you're on the transactional side, whether you're a tax lawyer, whether you're a privacy lawyer, whether you're a compliance person, or whether you're a litigator. Once you understand these things about them and know your clients and potential clients that intimately, you are able to propose to them in a way using their language, but also strategically, in a way that makes more sense to them from a business perspective.

[00:10:42] That makes you a business partner to them. Not just some lawyer who costs them a ton of money, who's trying to get them out of trouble or reduce some risk or reduce something.

[00:10:53] You can't position yourself as a strategic partner if you do not understand what success looks like for them, what pressures they're under, and how legal fits into the business.

[00:11:04] So meeting them where they are gets to alignment.

[00:11:09] You need to understand them so well that you are aligned with them.

[00:11:16] All right, that was tip number two. Now let's get to tip number three, because even with specificity, even with alignment, timing still matters.

[00:11:30] And I think that sometimes we lawyers forget, but oftentimes it's a timing issue.

[00:11:38] So something I want you to be aware of is something called the fresh start effect. This is tip number three. Understand and know how to utilize the fresh start effect.

[00:11:50] So the fresh start effect is a psychological phenomenon that says people are more likely to initiate change, including hiring new legal counsel, following temporal landmarks.

[00:12:04] Temporal landmark means a fresh start, a new year, a new quarter, new leadership, a new product or service is being offered.

[00:12:13] They're entering into a new geographic market. There's a big regulatory or industry shift. Something new is happening, has happened recently or is about to happen that has you or what you do on the radar. It's more relevant to them in that moment. So this introduces relevancy. And here's the thing that you gotta understand.

[00:12:41] Hiring new legal counsel introduces more effort and more risk.

[00:12:47] We often don't see ourselves that way, but it's just true.

[00:12:50] Hiring anybody new is more risk. What if you don't work out? What if somebody doesn't, you know, like you? What if you give them advice they don't agree with or ends up being, in their minds, bad? There is risk involved. The other thing is there's a lot of effort and getting new people on board.

[00:13:07] Even when you're getting rid of somebody, a service provider like legal counsel, who hasn't done the best job, there are going to be people within the organization, oftentimes who will not like it because it is change.

[00:13:20] And they have to train you, they have to educate you. There are ways that they do things. There are things about their business and how they think and their goals and their priorities that you don't know.

[00:13:37] And they're going to have to educate and quote, unquote, train you. That's a lot of effort on their part.

[00:13:43] That's one of the reasons why it can be so hard to get in with new clients who already have counsel that they still don't love, but they keep sticking with. And we lawyers need to understand this.

[00:13:55] So fresh starts lower that resistance to change, because there is something already happening on the forefront that is introducing new change, or there's some new reason that it might make sense to make a change.

[00:14:10] So you want to utilize this to your advantage.

[00:14:16] Your job is to recognize those changes. To understand those changes. And let me just note, you can't do that. You can't use this tip without actually diving deep into tip number two.

[00:14:30] Again, you need to know these clients and potential clients intimately.

[00:14:34] What they do, how they do it, how they make money, what their priorities are. If you don't know those things, you don't understand their business. It's going to be a lot harder to identify the opportunities for the Fresh Start Effect to apply.

[00:14:50] Now there are the obvious ones, right?

[00:14:53] New Year's, new quarters, and I'm not talking just about a new calendar year. What's their fiscal year, new leadership that gets announced oftentimes. Although I will note if you don't already know them pretty well, you may not know it's coming. And you want to know it's coming. You want to get in ahead once it's already happened, maybe too late.

[00:15:13] But you also want to know your client's industry specific fresh starts and things that might be specific to them based on their culture, based on their values and their goals, based on things they might be implementing soon, internal things that are going on.

[00:15:32] So make a list of the things that might apply to your industry.

[00:15:36] Make a list with your top couple of prospects to the other things based on what you know that might apply as a fresh start.

[00:15:45] Think through company policies, company behavior, company leadership, implementation, all of those things.

[00:15:52] And then also make sure you're asking good questions when you're networking with these folks.

[00:15:57] Questions that are designed to surface upcoming changes, strategic shifts, internal transitions.

[00:16:04] Those are the things that are going on internally that are going to have the Fresh Start effect applying and then understand again, meet them where they are, understand them intimately so that you can position your services as support for what's already changing.

[00:16:25] That way the new is being introduced in other ways so you're meeting them where they are and helping ease that transition within their new thing as opposed to being the big change.

[00:16:43] That's how to utilize the Fresh Start effect.

[00:16:48] All right, so that is it for today. Hopefully you will be able to take these three tips, get a little bit more strategic in your marketing and your networking efforts and improve that ROI on your bd.

[00:17:04] That's it for this week. We'll be back next week. Bye for now.