eTips 2011
A good time for a fee increase ? |
|
| The chant usually goes “now is not a good time for a fee increase - [some future time] would be better timing”. My take is that it’s never a good time to increase your fees: there are some better and worse times, but how you approach a price rise - and sell it to your clients - is more significant than its timing. Rate increases would almost never happen if managing partners waited for everyone to say “we should increase our fees now” before raising prices. Whether to increase your fees is not the same question as when to do so. |
|
| Read more » |
|
Make yourself more valuable |
|
| There’s price and there’s value. As Warren Buffet said “Price is what you pay. Value is what you get”. And how could it be other than in the enlightened self-interest of every professional to work on making themselves more valuable ? |
|
| Read more » |
|
Show prospective clients the reality of working with you |
|
| Before you’re engaged, prospective clients need to get a sample of the good things which will be theirs once they proceed with you. By showing prospective clients the reality of working with you, it’s more likely that they’ll become real clients. | |
| Read more » |
|
Getting through the door |
|
| We’re often asked how to get through the door to win a new client. While there are innumerable techniques, both our research and our experience show that there are some great ways, other right ways, some ineffective ways, and downright wrong ways to get through the door if business development is your goal. | |
| Read more » |
|
Being buyable |
|
| Becoming really buyable is a combination of being those things which make you widely attractive as a professional plus understanding buying then overcoming obstacles to being bought. | |
| Read more » |
|
Become really buyable |
|
| In many areas of practice, there are at least a few others (and sometimes scores, hundreds, or even thousands of others) who can do the job a client needs. So, it’s important to make yourself really buyable and that starts with getting the chemistry right. | |
| Read more » |
|
“Failure to thrive” afflicts professional services firms |
|
| Failure to thrive, a condition affecting young children, manifests as a relative lack of growth for age or even weight loss. Typically in children the condition is difficult to diagnose because ostensibly all is well and the child should be growing. Yet they are not. Inhibited growth also afflicts some professional services firms. They should be doing well and growing but aren’t. They may be ticking along year-to-year and apparently “just getting by” but are not prospering, growing, and advancing. Though not outright failing, they’re failing to thrive. |
|
| Read more » |
|
Don't measure only fees |
|
| So often, we find that professional service firms love what's simple. They love measuring fees. Fees are important. Fees are simple. We’ve all invested heavily in systems to accurately measure fees. However, a single simple fees metric is a "rear vision mirror" take on what's going on with an individual fee earner or workgroup, reflecting the business development effectiveness and strategic health of the past. Don’t fall into the trap of measuring only fees. |
|
| Read more » |
|
Brief writing |
|
| Preparing a clear, detailed brief will guide your marketing advisers, business development coach, agency, or strategic consultant. It can make or break some projects. | |
| Read more » |
|
Business development metrics |
|
| 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". | |
| Read more » |
|
Before embarking on your social media campaign … |
|
| Social media is the new communications frontier. Perhaps your firm has already recognised it can no longer be ignored, is threatening to do something about it, or it’s happening for you already. If your firm about to spend precious time and effort attracting and enticing prospective clients and referral sources through social media, RSS feeds, blog and Facebook posts, think before you tweet. |
|
| Read more » |
|
How to uncomplicate your firm |
|
| Uncomplicated means simplifying for the client, for suppliers, for outsourced services, and so the client community enjoys relating to the professional and firm. Mostly it’s easier to increase complexity. |
|
| Read more » |
|
Challenge: uncomplicate your firm |
|
| Uncomplicated is both a great attraction and a serious challenge in the 21st century. Today’s successful professional has to be sophisticatedly uncomplicated: easy to deal with, elegant in their simplicity, attracting attention for being different by being uncomplicated. Uncomplicated professionals will be winners. |
|
| Read more » |
|
Leading change - lessons from the bush |
|
| Introducing new ways or improvements to attract and retain clients involves change. Successfully implementing these changes across an organisation requires leadership. When creating a platform for change and taking the journey, there are important principles to remember. | |
| Read more » |
|
Let someone else ask your client the tough questions |
|
| 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. |
|
| Read more » |
|
Communication hot buttons |
|
| Whether it’s your website, brochure, or important buying-time documents like proposals and tenders, make sure your materials hit communication hot buttons for your clients and prospective clients. | |
| Read more » |
|
Should I pursue this opportunity ? |
|
| In the professional services sphere, if each of us as expert professionals pursued only the "right" opportunities, most would be more successful, less pressured, happier, and much more profitable. | |
| Read more » |
|
Earning general counsel status with your client |
|
| There is a class of top level professionals who don't have to quibble about fees and hourly rates, don't jump at shadows when a competitor makes a pitch, and don't worry about whether their firm we'll be the adviser chosen for the next important project. They're relaxed and quietly confident knowing that for as long as they are active contributors to the client relationship, behave with the utmost integrity and always put their client's interests first, they will be called on for wise advice and counsel on many key issues and decisions. This holds true among professionals, accountants, engineers, architects, management consultants, and more. |
|
| Read more » |
|
Coming under fire |
|
| All professionals face the prospect of coming under fire - mostly from clients, but also from regulators, media, the public, and government. Perhaps scrutiny or criticism is deserved. Perhaps it's even long overdue. But maybe it's unfair, unbalanced, or even hypocritical. |
|
| Read more » |
|
Marketing madness |
|
| Save time, money, and much angst by stepping into marketing ideas and plans long before they spiral out of control. Take the razor to grandiose schemes to avoid the cost and disappointment of flights of fancy which - so often - simply don't deliver. Good marketing attracts and keeps clients and work you wouldn't otherwise have. It also helps you achieve more favourable prices and terms than you'd otherwise command. A marketing scheme or activity which doesn't has lost the plot. You can put a stop to marketing madness. |
|
| Read more » |
|
How to achieve strategic relationships with clients |
|
| 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. | |
| Read more » |
|
A strategic relationship - or just a long and costly one? |
|
| 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 |
|
| Read more » |
|
Drive valuable referrals |
|
| 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. | |
| Read more » |
|
Competitive arousal |
|
| In the heat of competition, costly mistakes can be made in an adrenaline-induced state. Decision errors, miscalculations, and overreactions can follow. Competitor animosities fuel chest-beating displays of machismo. | |
| Read more » |
|
Second place can be a great spot ! |
|
| Large and significant clients frequently engage multiple firms within each professional discipline. | |
| Read more » |
|
Cultivating gravitas |
|
| While some lawyers and professionals just have gravitas, others struggle to find it, and a whole lot simply don't realise they lack it. | |
| Read more » |
|
Clients know when you put them first |
|
| How will your client know you’re putting them first ? | |
| Read more » |
|
Only floss between those teeth you want to keep |
|
| 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 ? | |
| Read more » |
|
Sensitising yourself to relationships |
|
| 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. | |
| Read more » |
|
Unmet, unaddressed, and unrecognised needs are business opportunities |
|
| 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. | |
| Read more » |
|
Start with the end in mind |
|
| 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. |
|
| Read more » |
|
Magical metaphors |
|
| 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. | |
| Read more » |
|
Everyone loves a winner … |
|
| 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. | |
| Read more » |
|
Getting to meet with a new prospect |
|
| “I want your work" doesn't mean that a new prospect will automatically fit you into their schedule. | |
| Read more » |
|
Standing out in the crowd |
|
| 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. | |
| Read more » |
|
Listen and learn |
|
| When we're selling services, we're mostly on a mission to persuade a client to our point of view, taking only minimum time essential to hear as much of their point of view as necessary to help us advance our sales argument and win the moment. But if you really want to develop long term business, and your practice, take time to listen and learn. |
|
| Read more » |
|
Writing to get read |
|
| If writing is merely a way of getting clarity around a subject for you, then maybe being read by an audience greater than one (you !) isn’t important. But if you write with the objective of being read widely, then these eTips are for you. |
|
| Read more » |
|
Zombie marketing - how dead marketing ideas still walk among us |
|
| When it comes to business development, zombie marketing still walks among us. A host of dead ideas and mindless marketing rituals circulate freely among legal and other professional service firms. Here is just a small selection. | |
| Read more » |
|
Cargo cult marketing |
|
| There remain widely held beliefs among partners and senior managers of many law and other professional service firms which are best described as “cargo cults". | |
| Read more » |
|
Success in 2011: identify your objective, plan the future, make it happen |
|
| Former French President, Charles de Gaulle, once said “success is a matter of identifying your objective, planning the future, then making it happen”. | |
| Read more » |
|
