Be Mediocre Less
Bob Lotich on the Church Marketing Sucks Blog writes a post outlining some of the reasons he's Run From Churches. In my original reading, I was thinking it explained why some clients run from their lawyers, but a second (and third) look at it made me realize he's outlined lots of the reasons why lawyers are running from their clients -- and the law practice all together.
His first point is that, in many churches, everything was mediocre:
Mediocrity has been too prevalent in the church today. Be it marketing, music, teaching, evangelism or anything else, it should be excellent. Just a few hundred years ago the greatest music, paintings, literature, etc. were glorifying God. It offends me that the word "Christian" is used as an adjective that is synonymous with mediocre by some non-Christians. It should not be.
Think about the legal profession for a bit. How mediocre have we become? To paraphrase Bob, mediocrity has been too prevalent in the practice of law today. Beit marketing, teaching, client service or anything else lawyers do, it should beexcellent. Just a few decades ago, lawyers were admired, honored andthe practice of law was a noble calling. It offends me that the word"Lawyer" is now too often the punch line to jokes by non-lawyers. Itshould not be.
So here's a challenge for you:
- Make a list of the truly "excellent" things your firm does.
- Now, compare that to a list of things you do like everyone else. That's your "mediocre" list.
Which list is longer? Can you think of a way to focus less on mediocrity and more on excellence? If you pick just one item from your mediocre list each week (or month) and make it better, your clients will notice.
Take Your Customers to Work?
In the her Nature his Nurture blog, Sean Hazell suggests having a "Take your customer to work day." Here's how it'd work:
- Invite your customer into your workplace to shadow an employee; parties are encouraged to sign up and then paired.
- Open your office, back-shop, or factory doors for the day to giveyour customers a behind the scenes glimpse of your working environment.
- Your employees represent your brand for the day.
- Customers see for themselves what truly makes your company special.
Still trying to figure out just how this could work with lawyers (client confidentiality and all that), but would it be impossible to have a "take your clients to court day" once a month to give clients with upcoming court dates a stress-free preview of their day a the courthouse? They'd get a chance to know where to meet, where to park, how to get through security, etc. I did this once with a Chapter 7 Bankruptcy client (she accompanied me when we filed) and she was much more comfortable during her hearing than everyone else around her.
And, if you can't bring them in person, do you at least have pictures of what these places look like that you can share with them before they go?
A Great Traveler's Tip: Let Me Give You a Clue
Gretchen Rubin at The Happiness Project shares a great tip for traveling parents:
A friend of mine has a great tradition when she and her husband travel away from their children.Like many people, she brings her kids little presents from trips,but instead of just handing them over upon her return, she makes sureto pick the presents early in the trip, then allows her children to askfor clues. Each child gets one clue per day, and they have tremendousfun coming up with the questions, coordinating with each other aboutwho will ask what, keeping a list of the clues that have been revealed,debating amongst themselves, etc.
She says that the gift itself brings them much less fun than the guessing game.
As someone who's on the road a lot, I absolutely love this idea. Not sure it would work for clients awaiting your trip back from court.
Your Customers Don't Want to Need You
I've been doing a lot of speaking lately, and have been revamping my presentation quite a bit to focus on just a few key themes. I'm going to share a few of them in the blog, and would love your feedback. Right now, I'm organizing my talks around a series of truths or "new rules."
Here's the first:
Your clients need you less than you need them. They don't want to need you at all, and they're willing to pay for the privilege.
What's your practice plan?
Michael Hyatt shares the importance of having a "Life Plan." He talks about why it is important, and openly shares quite a bit of his own. Under the "My Colleagues" category of his plan, Michael writes:
I want my colleagues to remember my servant-leadership, myintegrity, my humility, and my commitment to having fun. I want them toremember how much they learned and grew as a result of knowing me. Mostof all, I want them to remember how I empowered them to accomplish farmore than they ever thought possible.
When you read his post, think about the things you'd include in a Life Plan for your practice. The quote above would be a great start for the "My Clients" section. Give it a try.
You Always Have to Say "I'm Sorry."
Want to keep your unhappy clients from suing you? Apologize. Bob Sutton writes about the Virtues of Apologies and shares a NY Times article about how doctors and hospitals are reducing malpractice claims (by a sizable amount) by simply apologizing. Read the article and the post for some of the reasons why you should apologize.
What I want to share, though, is this gem from Bob's post:
[T]he best single diagnostic question fordetermining if an organization is learning and innovating as it movesforward is: What Happens When People Make a Mistake?
What's the answer for your firm?
Use "You, We, I" to Jumpstart Difficult Conversations
Steve Roesler at All Things Workplace shares this great "You, We, I" tip for starting difficult conversations. It works like this:
When you approach someone to talk, you're asking for their time and theirattention. Your topic might be interesting, it might have some tensionattached, or maybe it's about something you want to change. Regardless,the other person wants to know that you are thinking of them.
The next time you need to engage someone--especially if it's a difficult conversation--approach it by thinking this way:
You are important to me and this conversation.
We are in this together.
I (hope, need, want) ...
Visit the post above to see some examples, and think about starting your next difficult client conversation the same way.
Women and Word of Mouth
I've been dying to read Michele Miller's new book, The Soccer Mom Myth. For long-time readers of this blog, you'll remember Michele as one of the first contributors to my Five by Five series. In the Church of the Customer blog, Michele shares 5 Things You Need to Know About Women and Word of Mouth. Here arethe key two for me:
What can you do to make increase women’s word of mouth?
Here’sthe wrong way to do it: “Sign up three friends and we’ll give you a 15%discount.” This feels like you are asking her to sell out her friends.Instead, change the offer to “You and every one of your friends whosigns up will get a 15% discount.” Now she has special access to adiscount that she can pass along to friends. You’ve made her the hero.She can offer value to her trusted network. She has just increased hertrust and standing.
What about asking women for referrals; good idea, or bad idea?
Thisis tricky. Because women are such great referrers, it seems logical.If you are doing business with her, and she values your relationship,it may seem perfectly acceptable to ask her for a list of friends whomight benefit from your services. But that may not be a good idea, evenif she thinks you’re the best thing since Starbuck’s drive-thru. She isthe gatekeeper of her relationships. She’s not being stingy, she’sbeing protective. A better idea might be to give her a few of yourbusiness cards and say, “if you know of anyone who might benefit frommy service, feel free to give them my card.”
Unless you don't have (or want) women as clients, read her book. I've just ordered mine.
Mistake-Proof Your Practice
Haven't read this one yet, but it saw a review of Mistake-Proofing: Designing Errors Out on Kevin Kelly's "Cool Tools" Blog. One of the excerpts really made me say, "Wow!" because it is so head-slappingly obvious:
Employees experience a continuous stream of encounters - one defect is a low failure rate. Customers experience a single defect as a 100% failure rate.
Think about that for a minute in the context of your law practice: if you fail to keep just one of 100 client commitments, you're batting .990. However, to that client you let down, you're batting .000.
Three Things Wrong? Move On!
Saw this tip about buying antiques on the Rules of Thumb Blog, and thought it applied even more to potential clients:
Don't buy a piece of antique furniture if you can find three things wrong with it.
So, if you've just finished your first interview with a potential client, and there are three (or more) things about that person or their case that don't seem right, take a pass. You'll be glad you did.
Pick up the phone!
Just a reminder to call your clients every week:
Each week, no matter the condition of the weather, the color ofEthan's mood ring, or the extra hours it will take to meet ourdeadlines, we call each of our clients. We check in, ask how they'redoing, and give them an update on the activities surrounding theirproject. We call every week throughout the project, and even two tothree weeks past the time we've delivered our work—all to make sure theclient doesn't have any last-minute needs, or has run into any problems.
That's how we roll. We care like that.
Got Anxious Clients?
Think about it. Every client who enters a lawyer's office is anxious. In fact, they'd probably prefer going to the dentist. That's why this article on How to Deal with Anxious People is important reading. It sets out some research, with some valuable tips for deciphering visual cues, that every lawyer should know. Here's why:
The more you talk over or at anxious people, the more pressure youput on their middle brain and the more they will close their minds towhat you are saying.
Alternatively, the more you talk to an anxious person -- or even better yet, with them -- the more you alleviate that pressure and the easier it is to access their upper brain and open their minds to you.Here's a critical point, though: the approach you may think you aretaking in a conversation with an anxious person may not be the approachthe other person perceives.
Also worth remembering when you are confronted with that big guy in the bar who accuses you of cheating at pool.
(How) Do You Take Credit?
Here's a great idea for ways to remember the folks who've helped you along the way, from this post on How to Take Credit:
So when the time comes to take the stage, remember that you didn’t get here alone: go ahead, grab the microphone and acknowledge your team. Do it before a crowd and in e-mail. Say it with bonuses and baked goods -- but be sure to say it. No one likes to be left out. By sharing the credit the right way, you won't diminish your own accomplishments, you'll add to them by building a reputation as the kind of person people want to work for and for your focus on developing others.Not sure whom to credit? In their book, Becoming a Resonant Leader, Annie McKee, Richard Boyatzis and Frances Johnston suggest keeping running lists of peers who have helped you along your route to success -- along with notes about what you actually learned from them. Keeping such a list will likely help ensure that you don’t forget them in your acceptance speech.
I really like the idea of keeping a running list of people who've helped you along with a note or two about how they've helped. This is a pretty powerful way to not only remember how you've gotten to where you are, but to also remind you to give help to others who seek it from you. More on this in the next post.
Simple Solutions, Informally Delivered
Paul Graham shares his product development strategy in a wonderful essay:
Here it is: I like to find (a) simple solutions (b) to overlooked problems (c) that actually need to be solved, and (d) deliver them as informally as possible, (e) starting with a very crude version 1, then (f) iterating rapidly. When I first laid out theseprinciples explicitly, I noticed something striking: this ispractically a recipe for generating a contemptuous initial reaction.Though simple solutions are better, they don't seem as impressive ascomplex ones. Overlooked problems are by definition problems that mostpeople think don't matter. Delivering solutions in an informal waymeans that instead of judging something by the way it's presented,people have to actually understand it, which is more work. And startingwith a crude version 1 means your initial effort is always small andincomplete.
Paul suggests that his technique extends beyond startups to any type of creative work, and I'm inclined to agree.
In the delivery of legal services, what are the overlooked problems that can be simply solved? How many of us ask our clients (before, during or after they've engaged us) about the one thing we could change in our practices to improve their experience? Is it something as simple as shifting our office hours to be available when our clients can see us? Or, is it something more profound like changing the way we charge for our services? No matter what that one thing is -- and it could be a different one thing for every client -- what's keeping us for trying it? Just once. To see if it works.
New Research Explains Billable Hour's Staying Power!
Well, not exactly, but this article in the Telegraph discusses an experiment exploring humans' preference for a familiar (though less efficient) path, and found:
most of us are happy to play follow-my-leader, even if we aretrailing after someone who does not know where they are going andtaking the most meandering route. Even more striking, even when we are shown a faster route, we prefer tostick with the old one and tell others to take the long road too, afinding that could have lethal implications when it comes to evacuatinga building or ship in an emergency.
In the study, participants were led from one room to another. When asked to return to the first room, almost all took the familiar path back, even when they were aware of a shorter path:
All but one person took the route they had beenled. What we were surprised by was how strong this effect was, evenwhen the alternative route was much shorter .... They preferred the long route even when the experimenter had drawnattention to the alternative route, or when the experimenter took thelong route solely to pick up a fallen poster, eliminating thepossibility that participants thought the experimenter had a good, butunknown, reason to take the long route. By askingparticipants to collect the next guinea pig in the experiment, thescientists observed that each person in the chain copied the route ofthe participant before them: a simple tradition that meant thealternative route was never discovered.
Interesting food for thought, don't you think?
Can You Build a Firm this Cool?
Need some inspiration as you build your firm? Check out HiQ, an English auto repair chain. Rethink your model. Put the customer first. I know I'd at least check this place out if there were one in my neighborhood.
Tags: HiQ, Autoblog, Customer, Inspiration
Got an Ass for a Client?
If you aren't sure if one of your clients is an ass****, take this handy-dandy test. Better yet, have your secretary, assistant or associate complete it for each client. Fire those clients that "pass" the test. Sad, but true.
Debrief your Client (Engagements)
LifeHack has a great list of questions has a great list of questions to answer once you get finish a big project that should go on every lawyer's file closing checklist. You have one of those, don't you? Here they are:
- What was the outcome of this project?
- What is good about the outcome of this project?
- How do I feel about my performance?
- What mistakes did I make that slowed or otherwise negatively affected the completion of this project?
- How could I avoid making those mistakes in the future?
- What was the best part of the project? What was the worst?
- What strengths did I discover in the completion of this project?
- What new abilities or knowledge have I learned from doing this project?
- What do I wish I had known when I started this project?
- In one or two sentences, what were the lessons of this project?
You should answer these questions (and some others posed in the article) after every client engagement. However, don't file your answers away with the now-closed client file-- especially the answers to the last two questions. Instead, keep them in two documents titled "What I need to know before starting a project," and "Lessons I don't need to learn again" that you review every time before accepting a new client.
Keeping Tabs on Clients
I seem to be thinking a bit about client monitoring today. Here's another interesting service called RivalMap, that is "a web-based collaboration software that gives companies a central place to share and address information about competitors and their industr[ies]." Seems like a great place to keep tabs on what your clients (and their competitors) are up to. Check out a review here.
Tags: RivalMap