[00:01:22] Hey there everybody. This is Heather Moulder host of Life and Law.

[00:01:26] And today we are getting into something that I was actually asked to give a workshop on a couple of months back.

[00:01:34] And I gotta say I was super excited about this workshop because this is an issue that comes up a lot in my coaching. It is something that I've found when I talk to attorneys generally I hear a lot of questions around, you know, how do I get these people to be my actual clients? I've done all the things, I network, I go to lunches, I invite them to things, you know, we take them to sports events, yada yada yada, you know the drill. We lawyers tend to do a lot of networking for business development and yet a lot of those relationships don't seem to pan out, or at least not very quickly. They take forever.

[00:02:12] Well, today we're going to get into kind of a little bit of what's going on and bigger issue. My top tips for how to convert these relationships into actual work into new clients.

[00:02:28] So something to note is this.

[00:02:30] When connections are not converting, it is often because of a couple of things.

[00:02:36] One, your mindset. There is an avoidance of selling or an overcorrection for feeling awkward that can come across as overly aggressive. I will say that people who worry about awkwardness can come across as a little over aggressive, sadly, even though they're not really trying to be. And then there's a lot of lawyers out there who just avoid selling in general. After today, you're going to quit doing that. You are going to adopt the right mindset and you're going to feel good about it. The second thing is a lack of strategy. Now we talked a couple of weeks ago about how to up your strategies to actually bring more clients in. This is a companion piece to that. This is really when it comes to, okay, you've built the relationships and you don't quite know what to say or how to make the conversion into making them an actual client.

[00:03:32] And we're gonna break down kind of a strategy piece that I see a lot where people break down and how to fix that so that you can really up your strategy even more. The third thing that I see a lot is there's no system or process.

[00:03:46] So you lose track of information. There's not enough follow up. As a result, the relationships therefore take a lot longer to build because if you lose track of things and you don't follow up consistently, it's obviously going to take a lot longer to build a real relationship. So you haven't built the relationship to the stage where you can actually make the ask, where it feels good making the ask. You don't know them well enough, et cetera.

[00:04:10] The good bit of news that I just want you to know if this is you, if you feel like, okay, Heather, I need this super badly today is that these conversions, these breakdowns, they happen at very predictable points, which means they're very fixable.

[00:04:31] Okay, so let's just get into it. My three conversion essentials are pretty simple and, and they're probably not going to surprise you, but I'm talking about them a little bit differently today. And then we are also going to get into, at the end of today's episode, some don'ts with the do's instead things I see a lot of times that we want to fix. So the three conversion essentials are one, mindset. Not going to be a shocker to anybody who's listened to this podcast or knows me. Everybody going to get into what that means and the mindset that you want and how to start taking on that mindset.

[00:05:08] Two, opportunity. You got to create opportunities and this is a big one. And it's where a lot of lawyers fall short. I wouldn't say they fall down. You do some of this but not enough of it. So we're going to talk about that. And then the third is actually taking action. And action is about, we've talked about this before. Won't be a shock service based selling. I E you serve and you actually have to ask. This is. Now, if you do the mindset piece and you do the opportunity piece, your action piece is actually going to be a lot easier. So those are your three conversion essentials.

[00:05:46] Now here's why mindset matters. Let's start with number one. Mindset.

[00:05:51] This unlocks everything because you go from selling, pitching, pretty, proving yourself, proving value to serving curiosity, giving real value, that's a lot easier, right?

[00:06:07] So how do you do this? Well, first off, you want to tap back into your curiosity.

[00:06:13] We humans are seriously curious people. We started curious. Everybody who has young kids or has ever had young kids or been around young kids knows how curious. Or we all start and guess what, you were that way once too.

[00:06:28] There's something that happens as we grow up. We're kind of that's tampered because we're told to stop asking so many questions. And we also get bombarded with so much other information that we're forced to kind of go into certain boxes. Well, I want you to tap back into that natural curiosity because guess what? You have it. You have it.

[00:06:47] Start getting curious about getting to know people, about getting to know the business, about getting to know the things that you don't even know what you need to know yet, but you want to know so that you can show up better for these folks, for these people, for these companies that you would like to assist.

[00:07:06] And remember, you're here to serve. You chose this profession for a whole host of reasons, but you are a service provider. Now. Most of the people I talk to choose the law because they want to serve, they want to do good, they want to help the communities, they want to help the people they're serving, they want to be there for others. There is a service based component to it. And if that is you, great. This should be really easy. Get curious about how you can get to know people better so that you can serve them better.

[00:07:35] If you didn't get into the law for that reason, there are other reasons too. And you do not have to be all service oriented to take advantage of this. Remind yourself that you are in a service industry. I mean, it is the role that you play. You chose to take this on, therefore it's okay, you can serve. This is what you're here for. You are in a service based business. You are a service based professional.

[00:08:00] Lean into that more and just take that on. Own it.

[00:08:05] And so start listening. Get curious. Ask questions. When you are at these networking events with people, when you are sending emails, follow up on things that they mentioned remember what they're telling you. Right.

[00:08:19] Follow up with curiosity.

[00:08:22] I hear a lot of questions oftentimes from people on, well, I met them at this one event and then, you know, I sent a follow up email and then we went to a lunch a month later. And now I want to reach out, but I don't know how. How do I reach out to them? Why would I even reach out to them? Well, what did you talk about the last time you met? What could you ask them about?

[00:08:45] If you're really curious when you're meeting with them, you'll have a lot of information that you can log and then you have reasons to reach if it's not about you. And let's just note, oftentimes it's not going to be. This is where curiosity really helps you. This is where service really helps you. Although you are a service based professional, your serving them does not always have to be as a lawyer, it could just be human to human. You are building a real relationship with these folks because hopefully you will get their business one day and you want to actually know them, you want to understand them so that you can serve them best. That is part of how we serve people.

[00:09:25] So get curious, listen attentively, pay attention also to natural openings for an ask.

[00:09:34] They sometimes come up and don't be afraid to make the ask. That's a little bit later. But you know, the one thing I'd say is you're not ever from a mindset perspective, trying to force an outcome, trying to force them to hire you, trying to, you don't need it. You don't want to come from a place of neediness. And this is probably the hardest place to get past when we are just getting started in building our book or when we feel really pressured from the powers that be that we need to bring in business, we feel needy because we are needy. And you've got to try to get out of this and just remind yourself that, look, if I do these things and I follow these steps over the course of 6, 8, 12 months, I will see results, but only if I go in with the right mindset.

[00:10:25] Curious, attentive, pay attention to natural openings. I'm not here to convince, I'm just here to serve.

[00:10:34] It will work and you have to trust in that and trust yourself. This is one of the things that I do work with my clients on a whole lot at the very beginning, those first three, six, eight months sometimes because it takes time. And I will tell you, usually when things start to go, you know, take off they do take off, but there's no guarantee on the timing of that. So don't put pressure on yourself. Just show up in this way and trust that it will work because it does.

[00:11:02] So that is the mindset piece. It is the foundation to service based selling.

[00:11:09] Number two, opportunity. You must create opportunities through the right strategies and systems. I call this the who, the what and the how.

[00:11:21] So let's start with the who and the what. The who and the what is the strategic part.

[00:11:26] Who are you investing in and what is it you're actually talking about? Who you invest in needs to be relevant and willing plus able. I've talked about this before, but this is really important.

[00:11:39] When you go to a conference, you're going to meet a lot of different people, right? Not every single person you meet is relevant to the book of business you actually are trying to build or even relevant to what your firm does. If you could cross sell.

[00:11:53] Not every person that is relevant is going to be willing or able to send work to you either in the near term or even in the long term.

[00:12:05] And it is your job as you build a relationship early on to figure those things out. I always have my clients ask these and rank, you know, basically ask how relevant and how willing and able. Two very specific things. And they rate each connection that they make on a scale of 1 to 5. One being not at all, five being out of this park. Oh yes.

[00:12:31] Now when you first meet people, you probably don't know their willingness and ability. It's quick. We usually figure out relevance a little quicker. Then we figure out willingness and ability. But that is always your job. If you don't know it, that's your job to find out. That's that next step before you can go any further.

[00:12:49] So rank them. And I always tell my clients, if they're not a 4 or 5 on the relevancy scale and a 4 or 5 on the willingness and ability scale, then it's probably not going to happen. Now if there are three, if there are highly relevant and there are three, willingness and ability, then you don't drop them. You figure out are they willing and able.

[00:13:11] What's the difference between a four and a five on willingness? I get this question a lot. When it comes to willingness and ability, what's a five and what's a four? A five is somebody who has basically said, I want to send work to you and I'm going to work to get it done.

[00:13:26] And I'm either able or I have connections to somebody who is able and I'm helping You get in front of them, that's a five, a four is.

[00:13:35] They seem interested, but they're not quite there yet.

[00:13:39] They need to get to know you better.

[00:13:41] You need to get to know others. They don't have the, the exact ear of somebody, but they can get you connected to somebody who does. Like there's some connection to somebody who's able to. And there seems to be a willingness. They want to talk.

[00:13:57] So that's the who.

[00:13:59] Make sure you are investing your time in the right people.

[00:14:05] People who are low on relevancy, low on willingness and ability are not people. Not that you can't be friends with them, but they're not targets for your business development.

[00:14:17] The what is what you talk about, obviously work. You know, what are they working on? What are they finding challenging? What are their business goals? What are the business priority? What are the business needs? This is where that curiosity gets really important. You get curious, ask more than you talk. You're not there to sell yourself ever. You're there to find out more about them. Because I talked about in that episode a couple weeks ago, you want to have alignment, strategic alignment in what you're trying to sell to them versus what they need.

[00:14:53] And you need to talk about these things, to figure these things out. You need to be asking these good questions.

[00:14:59] So you're talking about work, not just the personal. You're talking about industry things, industry issues, industry challenges and industry hot button topics that are coming up.

[00:15:10] You want to talk about business side stuff, not just legal.

[00:15:15] Again, go back to that episode. I think it's two weeks ago. If you didn't listen to it, we talked about meet them where they are. This is part of that.

[00:15:24] You want to be a business partner, a strategic partner, not just a cost to them.

[00:15:31] So get to know them and you want to know their goals, the organizational goals, the team goals, and even the individual goals.

[00:15:39] These are the things you're talking about. So the strategy is the who and the what, who you invest in and what you talk about. Then the next piece to create the opportunities that you're looking for is follow up. How you follow up. You need systems, y'. All.

[00:15:57] You need a system to track your conversations and capture what actually matters so that you can reach back out in a month and ask about something and show them that you care enough to have, you know, made note of it, to remember and to reach out and ask about how that went.

[00:16:15] You need to prioritize your follow up and you need systems for how to do that, by the way, because again, if you ranked people based on their relevancy and their willingness and ability.

[00:16:27] Obviously you're going to have. You can't follow up with everybody all the time. You can't follow up with 10 people every week. Let's say you have 10 people on your list, but you have a top three. And then the others are slower burns. Well, your top three you may want to be in front of monthly. The slower burns may be every two to three months. You're reaching out. So you've got to have a system not just for tracking your conversations and capturing, but to help you prioritize who to follow up with and how often and how. That's the next piece, how you follow up.

[00:16:59] So if you met him at a conference and then a month later you had lunch, the next time might be a nice email or picking up the phone just to check in on a conversation you had. Right. How you follow up can vary. You do not always have to be in person.

[00:17:13] So when you combine service based mindset, curiosity about the whole person and consistent follow up, you are naturally going to create deeper relationships, clear openings and low pressure transitions for making the ask.

[00:17:30] Which then leads us to the third piece of this framework, taking action.

[00:17:37] This is about service based selling.

[00:17:40] So service means giving real value. I've talked about this before, so I'm not going to belabor it too much here. I will put a link into the show notes to my other couple of episodes where we talked about this more deeply. And and I am actually also going to include an old older one with an interview of a former client who learned how to utilize service based selling. And I think sometimes it's easier to hear it from somebody else and how they did it. So I highly recommend you go back and listen to that. It's my interview with Alicia Voltmer.

[00:18:15] Okay. So service means giving real value, which can be a whole lot of things. It can be brainstorming an issue. It can be asking questions that are meant to broaden a perspective. It can mean reaching out just to check in on something you previously discussed. It can mean making an introduction, which by the way doesn't have to be legal or business related.

[00:18:37] It can be asking to assist them. That's the service based selling. It doesn't always have to be making the ask. It's about serving them. Meet them where they are. We talked about this again a couple weeks ago.

[00:18:50] And serve them as based on where they are as you can as a human, not just as a lawyer.

[00:18:57] But then make sure you're making the ask whenever opportunities Arise. When you do all of these things, you are going to create a load of opportunities for making the ask.

[00:19:11] So let's say you're brainstorming on something that they brought up, that there's a sticky issue. It happens to be in your niche in your area of expertise and you spend 20 minutes at lunch brainstorming on it. Well, that can lead to a natural ask. Hey, would you be interested in discussing how I can further assist? Would love to work with you on this.

[00:19:31] Let's say they share an upcoming deal that you could assist with. It's in your area. You know, I would love the opportunity to help with that. And by the way, oftentimes once they're sharing this with you, they already have somebody in mind. That's okay. You're planting a seed.

[00:19:46] They might say, you know, I should have thought of you. We've already decided to hire Great. They're a wonderful shop. How about you keep me in mind for the next time something like this comes up? That is totally okay.

[00:19:59] Let's say they need help with something very niche that your firm handles, but it's not you. But you hear about it and you ask questions about it and you discover more while you're at a lunch or on the phone and you say, you know, I have a colleague who is an expert in that recently he and you give him a little bit. Right.

[00:20:20] Would you like an introduction? Would that be helpful to you?

[00:20:25] These are very natural ways to make the ask. And they will come up again and again and again when you deepen relationships the way we've been talking about today.

[00:20:37] And the other thing I would note before moving on to the don'ts and do's, sometimes it's been a while before a natural opening happens, but the relationship has progressed to the point where it just makes sense to make the ask.

[00:20:55] It is still very normal and natural when you have this type of relationship with somebody.

[00:21:00] So make the ask. And that can be as simple as I would love the opportunity to work together. Could we set up a time to discuss that more formally?

[00:21:10] Yes, it is that simple.

[00:21:13] Let's get to the don'ts and what to do instead. Do not assume they know you want their work. Basic psychology tells us that we must ask. Yes, sometimes people will understand, will think of you just by staying top of mind and will make an ask. But I'm going to tell you that when you start making the ask more overtly yourself, you are going to get a lot more business a lot more quickly.

[00:21:41] Do ask and ask at the right time. Ask. When those openings come up, follow this formula and make the ask don't. Number two don't try to convince.

[00:21:56] Service based selling shows credibility and expertise quite naturally show your credibility. Instead, this is what to do through storytelling, through giving helpful tips.

[00:22:09] You don't have to convince them.

[00:22:12] Just assist and serve and it will naturally showcase your expertise, your strengths, your knowledge and how credible you actually are.

[00:22:22] This leads us into the next Don't. Don't focus on your credentials.

[00:22:28] Too many lawyers and these are the ones that get really awkward about making the ask. They fall back to their credentials. Don't do that. It's very awkward and very salesy and it kind of kills the moment. Instead, again, same thing for above. Demonstrate your credibility and your expertise through helpful insights, tips, questions. Serve them. It will showcase it easily, simply, seamlessly, obviously without you doing any quote unquote selling at all.

[00:23:00] The next Don't. Don't talk too much.

[00:23:06] This often happens to extroverts because they get on a roll and they're just kind of going. So if you're more extroverted, be careful, have some questions, force yourself to really listen intently.

[00:23:19] This also tends to happen to those of us who get nervous about making the ask.

[00:23:27] So let me just note that if you go in curious and use these tips we've talked about, you're less likely to do this. But if we do get nervous, we can fall back on old habits.

[00:23:38] So be sure you have good questions. Be sure you're listening actively and attentively and just serving whenever you can.

[00:23:47] Final don't don't treat no as forever. Treat it as a not right now and as a planting of a seed.

[00:23:56] Okay, you are seed planting by letting them know. You would love to assist them by letting them know. Also, when you make the ask about very specific things, you're going back to that episode a couple weeks ago. Again, getting specific with them about the things that you can do that they may not actually be aware of or have thought of as carefully as you would have hoped. Well now they they can and they will.

[00:24:22] You're planting seeds for the future.

[00:24:25] That is it for this week. Hopefully it will guide you to really get out there, network more effectively, create better opportunities and make the ask as often as possible in a very natural, organic way. Do that and I promise you your business will grow.

[00:24:48] Bye for now.