Five by Five - Second Edition Preview

After an incredibly successful first "Five by Five," I'm proud to announce that the second edition will be up on Monday. The question of the week is:

If you had the power to change five things about the practice of law, what would you change?

My panelists for the second edition are among the most influential and prolific legal bloggers. They also are really nice, cool people. They are:

Carolyn Elefant (My Shingle);
Scheherazade Fowler (Stay of Execution);
Denise Howell (Bag and Baggage);
Evan Schaeffer (Notes from the Legal Underground); and,
Ernest Svenson (Ernie the Attoney).

Tune in next Monday for their Five by Five.

Five by Five - Jennifer Rice

Last but not least are the wonderful suggestions of Jennifer Rice, the author of the What's Your Brand Mantra? weblog, and president and founder of Mantra Brand Communications, a brand strategy consultancy representing the voice of the customer within client organizations.

1. Focus. Pick a group like women business owners and learn what their needs are. The deeper you can understand a small group, the more effectively you can win business. You’ll begin attracting more new clients within that group because you’ll have built credibility and trust among other women just like them. Be sure to collect testimonials!

2. Find out how they perceive lawyers. Ask what their previous experience has been with lawyers; if they’ve had a bad experience, find out why. This will tell you what objections (logical and emotional) that you’ll need to overcome. You’ll be light-years ahead of the pack simply by finding out where she’s coming from.

3. If you’re a male attorney, check out how female attorneys market to women. Or find a female attorney with whom you don’t compete directly; learn new ideas and tag-team at networking events. Female attorneys are probably your strongest competition; personally, I prefer to work with women because the perceived trust level is higher. But a non-competing female attorney (or other professional like a CPA) can be a great advocate, referral partner and mentor for you.

4. Women rely on intuition more than men. Guys, you might think your argument is flawlessly logical, but women don’t make linear decisions. We pick up on small cues, usually subliminally, and incorporate emotion into our decision-making process. The end result is our ‘gut instinct’. If that bugs you, don’t try to get women clients. You won’t be on the same wavelength – which you may not pick up on, but women definitely will!

5. Yours is a relationship business; traditional advertising won’t be effective. Practice your listening and empathy skills on your wife, girlfriend, sister, and any woman that crosses your path. The quality of your relationships with the women in your life is a perfect barometer for your ability to attract female clients!

Thanks everyone! Tune in next week for another edition of the Five by Five. See you then.

Five by Five - Yvonne DiVita

We're hitting the home stretch here in Week One of the Five by Five. Up next for your consideration are the suggestions of Yvonne DiVita, a business and technology writer, president of Windsor Media Enterprises, LLC, and author of “Dickless Marketing: Smart Marketing to Women Online." Yvonne also writes the Lip-Sticking weblog.

Yvonne's responses:

The 5 Worst Mistakes a lawyer can make when marketing to potential female clients:

1. Assuming a condescending attitude. We know you went to law school, we accept that you know more about the law than we do---that's why we're there--but don't pat us on the hand with, "Don't worry, I'll take care of everything," blather or write your sales copy as if you're God.

2. Passing out flyers that have only men's pictures on them or heavily promote the executives in your firm--who all happen to be male! Or, looking around us for the 'man' in our lives.

3. Going overboard with pink. Guess what: Pink used to be the dominant color for boys. It was considered a watered down red and too ferocious for girls. Girls were dressed in blue. This is pretty much a 'christian' concept, notice that the Virgin Mary is always in blue. Today, women have adopted pink wholeheartedly, but that does not mean you should have a pink flowery background on your website or throughout your offices. Trying too hard to appeal to us using the color pink will backfire every time. We know frivolity when we see it!

4. Immediately calling us by our first name. Not many women openly admit this, but we are selective about getting personal with people. Getting to a first name basis is our choice, not yours. It's Ms. or Mrs. or Miss, and only Jane, Jill, or Sally if we offer that option. Business etiquette dictates a formal introduction. If you rush right into using our first name, we may not show it, but we're bristling inside.

5. Talking over us. Two ways this can happen: on your website or in your sales literature, using too much legalese...find a way to simplify your information without making us feel stupid. (hire a writer, if need be.) If we're visiting you in your office for the first time, don't interrupt before we're finished explaining why we're there. You may instinctively know what we mean after only a sentence or two, but let us finish anyway.

6. Oops...you only asked for 5. Okay...never mind.

Now, the 5 best things a lawyer can do to secure a female's business:

1. Make eye contact. In your literature, put women's faces in prominent places and use women's names---either clients who have given you permission to use their names, or made-up clients that represent smart, savvy women...yet, ones who may be overlooking critical needs you can provide.

2. Offer free consulting. I'm not saying you should "give away the store" but if you want our business, show us how knowledgable you are about what we need (there's that listening thing from #5 above), and that you not only can meet our needs but that you want to partner with us to solve whatever issue it is we came to you with.

3. Follow the lead of banks and offer specific programs aimed at women. Develop workshops for women entrepreneurs, for widows, for women entering into business partnerships, for single Moms, etc.

4. Expand your marketing focus to women in all walks of life. Approach women executives differently than you would approach stay at home Moms...do this by having separate marketing materials that speak to the individual's needs. Notice how financial firms have separate marketing materials for each service they offer, and they portray men and women together and separately.

5. ASK questions...and expect answers. Once in awhile, bring the stay at home Moms together with the business executives and entrepreneurs and listen to what they talk about. Build a community of women networking to solve family and business issues; they will ultimately see you as one of them and bring you more business.

6. Market 'couple' seminars or workshops to women not men. Show women and men together. Real life consists of real people, both male and female.Use the word partner...partnerships exist between couples, married, engaged, or merely cohabitating, and partnerships also exist between you and the clients you serve, making this word a powerful introduction to a long-term relationship.

7. Oops...there I go again...overkill.

Five by Five - Anita Campbell

Our third distinguished participant is Anita Campbell, the founder, president, and chief consultant of Anita Campbell Associates Ltd., a business consulting firm specializing in helping businesses in the technology, retail and varied services sectors grow. Anita is also the co-author of the Small Business Trends weblog, most noted for its "Power Blog Reviews."

Anita's contributions to this week's Five by Five:

When entertaining, choose an entertainment that is not a sporting event, unless you know for sure the woman is a sports fan. One law firm I know invited half a dozen clients to a hands-on crafts class in making metal lanterns at the local museum. Intended to build creativity and encourage easy bonding, it was one of the most memorable client entertainments I have ever experienced. I can't recall a thing about any of the baseball, basketball, or (yawn) football games I've been invited to over the years. But ten years later, I still have the lantern and vivid memories of the experience.

Show visible commitment to women's business in general. For example, volunteer to serve on a Powerlink (an organization dedicated to advancing women's business) advisory panel. Speak at local meetings of NAWBO (National Association of Women Business Owners). And, make sure you have a user-friendly bio in your marketing materials detailing this kind of commitment.

Nominate the woman whose business you are trying to get for a business or community award. Ask her to serve on a charitable board with. Do something such as this to demonstrate that you hold her in high professional regard. Women like to be around lawyers who make them feel intelligent and worthy.

In a professional services business, your best bet for getting business from women, or from anyone for that matter, is referrals. Ask other professionals in adjacent but different fields for referrals. Create referral circles, for instance, with an accountant, a financial advisor, a marketing consultant, and a management consultant. Make sure that you seek out women professionals in creating these circles.

This is something you should always do, but be especially sure you do it when you are entertaining a woman. Be respectful with female support staff at all times. Same goes for female wait staff in restaurants. If you want to get business from women, you need to show sensitivity to women's issue. That's tough to do when you're belittling female support staff or berating a female server in a restaurant.

Five by Five - Michele Miller

Up next is Michele Miller, author of the great WonderBranding: Marketing to Women weblog. She is now a partner in the Wizard of Ads, Inc. marketing firm, serving clients across North America. Michele is also the author of "The Natural Advantages of Women" (Wizard Academy Press), the audiobook that has been hailed for its concepts, principles, and new scientific information that explains how the female brain is "hardwired" for personal greatness. To watch a video of Michele, click here.

Michele's five ideas on the topic of the day:

R-E-S-P-E-C-T.
When marketing to a woman, never forget that her greatest strength lies in her individuality. You are not expected to treat a woman as being someone “special;” you are only expected to acknowledge and deal with her as an equal. Always assume that your potential client is smart and saavy. If you address a woman from that perspective, it will shine through your presentation and open many doors that are normally closed tight against the “typical” lawyer.

Give her the 4-1-1.
With four times as many connections between the left and right sides of the brain, women process information at very high rates of speed. They are not only masters of multi-tasking, they are expert gatherers of information and thrive on the word “share.” Approach your marketing from the “educational” angle and you will have clients for life – blogs, newsletters, free seminars, etc. are all excellent tools for positioning yourself as the lawyer who “cares and shares.”

Make it memorable.
Have something in your marketing toolbox that might not normally be associated with an attorney – something that shows you’ve connected with your potential client. Listening is key – what if you followed up an initial consult with a note or small gift that is related to a topic she discussed? It could be anything from the stock market to knitting. You have to go the extra mile here, but it creates clients for life.

How is the world inside your door?
Too often, business people forget that marketing is everything you do each day. Consistency of message is not just restricted to your marketing materials, website, ads, etc., but must extend to your office, and staff. Is your office conveniently located – is the parking lot safe? How is your office decorated – does it have a built-in comfort factor, or is it sterile and uninviting? What kind of magazines do you have in your waiting area…. is there reading material for both genders? How is the phone answered? The personal experience factor of a potential client is one of the biggest factors in your marketing campaign – the better the experience, the better you are at branding!

Who rates first?
As Howard Schulz, CEO of Starbucks says, “The customer comes second… employees come first.” He knows that if you focus on the happiness and stability of your employees, it naturally rubs off on to customers and clients. Are your employees given a “psychological contract” to try, succeed, and even sometimes fail if it’s for the betterment of your business? If they have your trust and training, they provide a confidence that often resonates more clearly to potential clients than anything you can do on your own.

Five by Five - Kirsten Osolind

First up in the Five by Five this week is Kirsten Osolind, the CEO and "Kinda Cool Chick" of re:invention, inc. re:invention offers marketing services for women-led businesses. Kirsten writes the re:invention blog, "a fun, flippant BLOG with points of interest about women & small business."

Now, for Kirsten's amazing answers to my first Five by Five questions:

What are the five worst mistakes a lawyer can make when marketing to a potential female client?

1. During your first encounter, suggest your inspiration and role model is Arnie on ”L.A. Law” or Reese Witherspooon in “Legally Blonde.”
2. Don’t bother sharing the possible adverse consequences if her case is lost.
3. Be “time stingy” and only allocate 5 minutes for her initial consultation (time IS afterall, money).
4. Forget to market to her in her world (i.e., don’t attend women’s events or write columns for women’s publications). Avoid all “gals only” networking events and media because they make you squeamish. Eeew!
5. Be openly inflexible about your billing or refuse to return any unused portion of her retainer (i.e., Be like Daffy Duck. “It’s mine! Mine! All mine!”)

Alternatively, what are the five best things a lawyer can do to secure a female's LONG-TERM business?

1. Identify a problem, suggest a solution, and show her examples of how it will work.
2. Promise to work hard for her, even if you can’t promise or guarantee you will win.
3. Make her feel comfortable during her first appointment and reserve plenty of time to discuss the details of her case.
4. Be a good teacher and take the time to educate her about the legal environment of her business. She’ll know you have her best interests at heart.
5. Explain your fee arrangements (no hidden fees) and give her a “freebie” every now and then. Heck yes I said a freebie. A freebie every now and again will keep her coming back for more.

Five by Five - First Edition

For my first edition, I've asked five seriously cool women bloggers for their five thoughts on the following question(s):

What are the five worst mistakes a lawyer can make when marketing to a female potential client?

Alternatively, what are the five best things a lawyer can do to secure a female's business?

I'm amazed at how great the ideas are, and how generous all of the participants have been with their time and advice. I'll post each blogger's ideas in individual posts throughout the day. Enjoy!

The Weekly Five (Week Six)

A new edition of the Weekly Five is up a bit early, as I'm going to be out of the office for a conference beginning tomorrow. Take a look.

Quote of the Week

"Having met some successful people, I can assure you that they didn't get that way by deserving it." - Seth Godin from this post.

Will there be a Wal Mart Law Firm?

Jeremy Wright at Ensight writes about how Wal-Mart is trying to commoditize the web design and web hosting industry. His advice to web designers includes these nuggets:

You can't service everyone. If this is your client base, and Wal-Mart serves them better than you, you can either change your client base or differentiate. If it isn't your client base, it hardly affects you. . . . This move may expand the segment more than crowd it. . . . Whether you want the clients who are willing to go after 5$ websites is up to you.

Jeremy cautions that focusing in areas where big businesses like Wal-Mart shine (doing it better, faster, cheaper) will lead to failure. Instead, he tells his readers they should:

1. Provide more value.
2. Have more skills.
3. Have a better relationship.

Reading his post, I wonder if legal services are capable of being commoditized. The large firms in the best position to work better, faster, and cheaper have squandered the opportunity to cut their costs because of their ties to the billable hour. A firm that bills by the hour has no incentive to decrease the amount of time it takes to do a given task or provide a given service. Until large law firms begin to approach their practice with the single-minded focus on efficiency that the "big box" stores like Best Buy, Wal-Mart, and the Home Depot do, perhaps us in small firms can be both "better, faster, and cheaper" and be more valuable, more skilled, and more likely to have a better relationship with our clients than the big firms can.

Evangelism from Evangelicals

Scoble has this great post summarizing a meeting he had with Brian Bailey, Internet technology manager for Dallas' Fellowship Church. Scoble summarized the ten evangelizm and IT lessons that have contributed to the church's success:

One: make it easy for everyone to learn about you -- on their terms.
Two: make it easy to experience your product's special attributes.
Three: to get word-of-mouth advertising you need to be remarkable.
Four: use IT to efficiently get close to your customers and take care of their needs.
Five: if you want to be better, make sure you're better from the first minutes of someone's experience.
Six: if you want to be seen as bleeding edge, invest to be bleeding edge and do so throughout your company.
Seven: extend the usefulness of your plant.
Eight: design your systems so they never go down and can expand for future growth.
Nine: don't be religious about technology, choose what gets the job done best for the least amount of money and staff time.
Ten: when you become successful, bottle up what got you there and sell it to others.

The lessons are great, and Scoble elaborates on each. Read the post, which I think is Scoble's best ever.

Good News for Small Firms

Thanks to Arnold Kling at EconBlog, I found this paper from William J. Baumol that explores why independent inventors and entrepreneurs contribute disproportionately to breakthrough inventions. This is good news for small firms and solo lawyers. Pull out the study whenever you are competing against a large firm for business:

The evidence shows that there is a rather sharp differentiation between the contributions to the economy’s technological innovation that are provided by entrepreneurs and those that are offered by the large internal R&D laboratories of established businesses. Large business firms, which account for nearly three-quarters of U.S. expenditure on R&D, have tended to follow relatively routine goals, slanted toward incremental improvements rather than revolutionary ideas. Greater user-friendliness, increased reliability, marginal additions to application, expansions of capacity, flexibility in design—these and many other types of improvement have come out of the industrial R&D facilities, with impressive consistency, year after year, and often pre-announced and pre-advertised. In contrast, the independent innovator and the independent entrepreneur have tended to account for most of the true, fundamentally novel innovations. . . . It is a plausible observation, then, that perhaps most of the revolutionary new ideas of the past two centuries have been, and are likely to continue to be, provided more often by these independent innovators who, essentially, operate small business enterprises.

What are your revolutionary ideas? Come on, small firm lawyers, we've clearly got the advantage here, so use it!

More LegalMatch News

Found this article today in ABA's e-Journal Report on the indictment of LegalMatch's founder and (former) CEO, Dmitri Shubov. Some excerpts:

Two days after his indictment, Shubov resigned as CEO, and Stuart Gross was named as his replacement. On May 24, another change of leadership occurred when Randy Wells, the company’s vice president of membership, officially took the helm.

One of Wells’ first projects is to contact every LegalMatch subscribing attorney about the change in management. Most attorneys are being contacted by phone, and a few clients (especially local attorneys) have had face-to-face meetings with LegalMatch management.

Wells expects the process of calling attorney-clients may take about three weeks. So far, he says, the reaction from most of the company’s subscribing attorneys has been similar to the Utah bar’s reaction: "Clients have been relieved that we took immediate action and are ready to move forward," Wells says. "Believe it or not, it really hasn’t been a major issue."

The person in charge of the marketing tactics of LegalMatch now appears to be running the whole show. Great!

Five by Five: Marketing to Women

The first Five by Five is on it's way. I've asked some seriously cool women for their five ideas on this week's topic. This week's roster of experts:

Kirsten Osolind, Anita Campbell, Michele Miller, Jennifer Rice, and Yvonne DiVita.

All are bloggers, and all have a unique insight into this week's question:

What are the five worst mistakes a lawyer can make when marketing to a female potential client?

Alternatively, what are the five best things a lawyer can do to secure a female's business?

Look for their answers next week.

Building a Strong Client Experience

Sam Decker at Decker Marketing adds his thoughts to this great post in Mark Hurst's new Good Experience Blog. Read both posts, but my favorite part of Sam's comments are here:

Building a strong customer experience is a constant battle of choices between effort to consistently meet and exceed the basics before getting fancy. First be confident you've built a strong foundational experience and can sustain and improve that foundation. Then venture off into fancy land

Starting my new practice, I have to be constantly reminded of this. Focus on the basics first, then work on the bells and whistles.

The Weekly Five (Week Five)

The Weekly Five is up again in my sidebar. Take a look.

Monkey Business at the Zoo

I don't post a lot of personal information on this blog, and I rarely let my sometimes sick sense of humor out in public, but I went to the St. Louis Zoo this weekend and happened upon this statue. I was laughing so hard, I could hardly snap the photo. Warning, unintentionally mature content.

Quote of the Week

The best swordsman in the world does not need to fear the second best swordsman, but the man ignorant of swords and knowledgeable about gun-powder. Mark Twain.

Correction. Reader Jack Moore writes, "A favorite of mine, too, but not exactly a direct quote. The actual quote is from Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court:

[T]here are some things that can beat smartness and foresight? Awkwardness and stupidity can. The best swordsman in the world doesn't need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand before; he doesn't do the thing he ought to do, and so the expert isn't prepared for him; he does the thing he ought not to do; and often it catches the expert out and ends him on the spot.

Mark Twain (A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Chapter XXXIV)"

Coming Soon - Five by Five

One of the ideas from my innovation weekend is a weekly forum I'll call "Five by Five." In weekly posts, I'll ask five people -- who are experts in their fields -- to give me five ideas on a given topic. Every week, the five people will come from a different (usually non-legal) discipline, but the topic will always focus upon the innovative marketing, pricing, and delivery of legal services.

I'm already working on my list of invitees and welcome any suggestions. All participants in the Five by Five will get their choice (and I'm completely serious here) of an official "the [non]billable hour" hat or t-shirt.

As a compliment to the weekly series, I've set up a kind of a [non]billablehour extranet/wiki for all my readers to participate in and contribute to the discussion. I'll unveil more details tomorrow.

Memorial Day Memory

My grandfather (age 95) came down this weekend for my family's barbeque. He hasn't talked about his military service much, but he and I spent the afternoon talking about his time as a Navy Commander in World War Two. He enlisted in the Navy the Monday after Pearl Harbor when a Navy recruiter showed up at his civilian flight school graduation. He was an agriculture teacher raising four young children (along with his two youngest sisters) with my grandmother in Highland, Illinois. I asked him why he enlisted in the Navy, when he could have easily gotten a deferrment (he was in his early 30's), and he said:

When I was nine, my father took me to a parade for returning World War One soldiers. He told me that every twenty years or so, the whole world went a bit crazy and went to war. I promised my father then that I'd be ready for the next one."

I don't know how many nine year olds feel the same way today, but I'm damn glad men like my grandfather did then.