eTips 2008
Power in your points - Tips for effective and compelling presentations |
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One proven path to raise your profile as a credible and expert professional is through presentations to the right audiences. |
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Let someone else ask your client the tough questions |
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There are things we'd like to know or find out, but it can be difficult for the professional in day by day engagement with a client to ask some of the tough and telling questions. If you want to get answers to the questions which matter most, it's best to enlist some support: someone external to the on-going relationship will get more frankness than you can expect in everyday professional contact. |
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13 strategies for your support staff to keep clients happy |
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The vital role your support staff play in client satisfaction is often overlooked. However a client’s experience at reception, or their first phone call to your firm can colour every other interaction - for better or worse. Here are 12 quick tips your support staff can use to represent your firm even better. |
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Everyone loves a winner … |
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Just as you’re more inclined to reach for that bottle of wine with the gold medallion sticker, or that novel with a Pulitzer prize, so clients and referrers are subliminally influenced by the prestige and recognition bestowed upon you and your firm by awards. Even more so when awards are from a credible source. |
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Impact = ideas + insight + innovation |
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Much marketing wallows in a sea of sameness. Enormous efforts are expended searching out small advantages in the quest to create differentiation among many apparently qualified, capable, and often similar professional service firms. Pursuing the holy grail of differentiation is often much less effective than going for the end game: impact. |
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How to achieve strategic relationships with clients |
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The eTip I wrote last week presented a checklist to help you assess which of your client relationships are truly strategic, and which belong in the categories of just long, or costly, or both. Here's how to get to strategic relationship status with like-minded clients who will value what you do - beyond its cost. |
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Unmet, unaddressed, and unrecognised needs are business opportunities |
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Clients have needs: some recognised, others unrecognised. Among the needs they recognise, some clients may have unmet needs - needs for which they have not yet found a professional service solution. Unmet needs present business development opportunities for an expert professional. |
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Don’t drive clients nuts ! |
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Each year, I conduct many personal interviews with high value clients of professional service firms. Every interview is different and each turns up something unexpected - often a new service opportunity. While interviewees are often effusive in praise of their lawyers and other professional experts, there is a pattern to irritations, annoyances, and things which damage relationships. |
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Drive valuable referrals |
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Julian Midwinter & Associates research is clear: the most successful and profitable professional service firms benefit hugely from referrals. For more than two-thirds of legal consumers we studied, referrals are the first- or second-rated factor in determining to which law firm their work goes. |
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Winning business with government |
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Beyond technical qualifications and relevant experience, all levels of government have overriding interests and concerns about appointment of their professional advisors. Whether you want to break into government business, or keep it, you'll need to come to terms with probity concerns surrounding appointments to win the business you want. |
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Second place can be a great spot ! |
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Large and significant clients frequently engage multiple firms within each professional discipline. |
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Communication hot buttons |
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Whether it’s your website, brochures, or important buying-time documents like proposals and tenders, make sure your written communications hit communication hot buttons for your clients and prospective clients. |
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Pre-proposal due diligence |
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Those who've done it know well that while tenders, bids, and competitive proposals are great ways to win work, it's easy to squander precious time and money on bids with limited prospects of success. |
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Showing we understand what they need |
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We’re all human. Clients and prospective clients want to be understood and, most professionals think they have strong understanding of clients.
But before you embark on your next tender, pitch or proposal, carefully consider whether you really understand what the client needs. |
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Will your governance and management make the cut ? |
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When leading and large clients determine their professional service relationships, one factor influencing their decision is how well prospective service providers fit with their own values, culture, and aspirations.
Will your firm governance and management make the cut ? |
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Sensitising yourself to relationships |
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If you're a professional who isn't already scoring 100% in managing relationships with clients, it's worth taking some deliberate steps to improve. |
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Magical metaphors |
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Clear, concise, and logical explanations are foundations of great client communication. But sometimes, important messages still don't make it through. To make a client really understand and help them come to grips with essential concepts, call in the magic of metaphor. |
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“By invitation only” bids |
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Did you want the opportunity to tender, propose, pitch or bid but didn’t get invited ? |
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Should I pursue this opportunity ? |
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In the professional services sphere, if each of us pursued only the "right" opportunities, most would be more successful, less pressured, happier, and much more profitable. |
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Only floss between those teeth you want to keep |
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No, it's not mandatory to floss between your teeth. Nor is it always comfortable or convenient. With your teeth in full view in the mirror, you'd see if there was a problem. Surely it isn't really necessary ? Some of our friends don't floss and one has 100% perfect teeth. Doesn't that prove it ? |
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Financial measures that matter |
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Properly dimensioning individual financial and strategic contributions to success of any professional services firm requires assessment of more than simple personal fee production. |
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Business development metrics |
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So many professional service firms we meet bemoan the track record of most of their folk in developing new work and new clients in attractive niches. More than occasionally a practice leader confides that their technically competent team knows only how to "feed on the carcasses I kill" or "live like a leech on me". |
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Start with the end in mind |
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Stephen Covey (Seven Habits of Highly Effective People) popularised the phase; “start with the end in mind.”
Never was it more true than of meetings. |
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Is your firm photogenic ? |
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Is your firm investing in professional quality photographs ? Here are some tips to ensure you get best results so you are happy to use the shots across your website, bids and other marketing collateral. |
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Getting to engagement |
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An astute student of behaviour will observe that clients “engage” a professional after being “engaged” by that professional.
The full meaning of engagement goes way beyond the narrow idea of a contract to provide services. |
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Business non-development |
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Many professionals open sales-targeted conversations with prospective clients using material unlikely to establish meaningful dialogue. In some cases, well-meaning professionals deliver monologues comprising information best classified as “business non-development.” |
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The parable of the novice and the expert |
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Let them say you're crazy ! It's not only seasoned professionals and business development experts who do great things. Sometimes, a novice with a great idea and bundles of energy can bring off an amazing scheme. |
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Proposals to procurement |
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Tendering, proposing, and pitching to procurement specialists is now intrinsic to the mix in the professional services sphere. |
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Sometimes slow is fast |
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In their haste to pick up extra work, maintain billable hours, and economise on non-chargeable time spent with clients, too many professionals rush through project debriefs and relationship reviews. They want to "cut to the chase".
But sometimes, slow is fast. |
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Standing out in the crowd |
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It's tough to stand out from your competition and keep great clients plus attract new ones. And it doesn't help when professionals so often put their marketing communication efforts - and dollars - into making themselves part of the crowd rather than standing out. |
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Pricing pointers |
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The game keeps moving on. Yesterday's best practice in professional services pricing may be today's problem, and a big loser tomorrow. Pricing is an important part of keeping business and winning new work. But there is no point in searching for a pricing panacea - it doesn't exist … |
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The silver lining after a loss |
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While a loss is always disappointing, the smart professional does not let all that time and effort go to waste. By asking the right questions in the debrief s/he can gain invaluable feedback for future improvements. |
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True professionals aren't pushy |
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Pushy professionals just don't get it. How likely is it that you'll establish trust, open dialogue, and build a great working relationship if you push prospective clients and contacts ? It's more likely that you'll succeed in increasing their wariness about you, make them defensive, and shut down any possibility of a future together. |
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Meaningful differentiators |
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Too many professional service firms spend far too long trying looking for one out-of-the-box differentiator to beat all the rest. Only rarely is it possible. |
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Cultivating gravitas |
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While some lawyers and professionals just have gravitas, others struggle to find it, and a whole lot simply don't realise they lack it. |
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Clients know when you put them first |
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I constantly advise professionals to put their clients first. Frequently, I write about it: in eTips, in articles, and in my book. |
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Trend watch 2008 |
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Business development fundamentals change slowly, if at all: establishing trust, demonstrating willingness to help, going "the extra mile", focusing on client needs and expectations, and the list continues ... But shifts do occur in how clients select and assess their professional advisors and collective shifts sometimes become trends. |
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A strategic relationship - or just a long and costly one ? |
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When professionals talk with me about their "strategic client relationships", I'm sometimes struck that what they describe sounds more like a costly relationship, or merely a long one, or sometimes even an old and expensive one. Earning strategic relationship status with your client is a privileged and valuable position. |
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