Try to be Bob

Genius Hugh MacLeod has another gem (I've collected so many, I might add them to my garage sale).  Hugh writes about his favorite cab driver, but he could be writing about any service professional he uses:

About once a week, I have to catch the late train home. Bob the cab driver always meets me the station and drives me to my house.

Bob’s got what Seth Godin calls “The Free Prize”. He's got what Tom Peters calls “The Wow! Factor”. He's got something I like that no other cab driver has. It might be his jovial manner, it might be I like the fact his car is colored red. It might be the fact that he's very reliable. The reason doesn't matter so much. Regardless, Bob gets my business 100% of the time. When he can't make it I let his brother pick me up instead, but that doesn't happen too often. I call no other cab service but Bob's. There are a lot of cab companies where I live. Cab driving is a pretty commodified business. But I call Bob. Every time. I like Bob.

The minute he pisses me off for whatever reason I’ll find another cab driver I like just as much.

Don't forget that last sentence when you are dealing with clients.  The biggest mistake lawyers make is to overestimate their client's loyalty and tolerance for inattention.

Real Estate Lawyers -- Pay Attention!

Two from Michele Miller in the same day! Michele links to this white paper authored by Real Living, a growing nationwide real estate company. The paper is a must-read for any real estate lawyer. Here are some excerpts:

Historically, consumers relied on real estate professionals for almost all information concerning the buying and selling of a home - a transaction model which positioned real estate professionals primarily as information disseminators. According to Real Living, women now rely on the Internet to gather information upfront, often before contacting a real estate agent. However, women who are short on time and long on needs place a high value on the agent to guide them through the home buying process once they have used the Internet to educate themselves and narrow down their home search criteria. This shift in behavior now positions real estate professionals as negotiators, time-savers and efficiency experts - demanding that brokers and agents find new, innovative ways to serve consumer needs for convenience and control.

Real Living advises that brokers and agents of the future must fully integrate technology into their normal course of business in order to maintain a competitive edge with today's increasingly connected consumer. Key suggestions outlined in the white paper include:* Offer anywhere, anytime access to robust listing information (such as property details, virtual tours and mapping) to drive efficiency, convenience and control for consumers

* Deliver online customer communication, comparables and transaction forms to add value to the agent-consumer relationship.

* Leverage the Web as a real-time-marketing medium to provide home buyers with immediate access to all homes available for sale on the market.

* Target female decision makers through integrated, robust Internet marketing strategies supplemented by traditional advertising mediums such as print, radio and television.

* Meet consumer needs for efficiency and convenience by serving as a source for one-stop-shopping referrals for related services such as mortgage, title, relocation and home warranty services.

These tips are not only for real estate agents. This is sound advice for lawyers too.

Still Not Marketing to Women?

Michele Miller of Wonderbranding points to two interesting statistics she saw in this Business Journal article. The amazing stats:

85 percent of women will at some point in their lives be solely responsible for their homes,

and

90 percent of women will be solely responsible for their finances at some point in their lives.

Now, how are you tailoring your services to help these women? For some great advice, go here, here, here, here, or here.

Why is customer service so hard?

I closed a few bank accounts yesterday that were left over from my solo days. The accounts were in the bank where my parents and I have banked since 1968. Then, it was the local "Farmers and Merchants Bank," but in the last twenty years it has gone through four ownership changes, becoming first Eagle Bank, then Landmark Bank, then Magna Bank, and now Union Planters. The beautiful downtown building is nearly empty, with two tellers and a bank manager in the space that once housed almost fifty employees.

While I was closing my accounts, a woman in her mid-forties came in and asked the teller if she could cash a check for a hundred dollars. She said she was from out of town and visiting her mother-in-law, who was too ill to come to the bank herself. The teller told her that unless she had an account there, "bank policy" said she couldn't cash the check. When the woman said her mother-in-law banked there, but was too ill to come herself, the teller apologized but told her she would have to go elsewhere. I observed the exchange while sitting with the bank's manager, who watched the entire episode unfold but did nothing.

All afternoon, I tried to answer the question, "How many accounts will this bank lose over a single $100 check?" Certainly the mother-in-law's account. If the ailing woman has any family in town, those accounts too will likely move elsewhere. Friends, family, and neighbors may move their accounts as well. I know I'm glad to have severed my relationship with the bank.

All for a hundred bucks. As for Union Planters, are its policies so inflexible that they can't accommodate the visiting relative of an ailing customer? Are the managerial employees of this bank so afraid of breaking the "rules" that they are willing to jeopardize thousands of dollars in deposits? Do the employees get any customer service training at all?

How many little interactions like this do you have with your clients or customers? How many times has a "firm policy" kept you or your employees from doing what is right? I was almost sick when I saw how upset this woman was when she left the bank. I hope I don't have clients leaving my office with the same feeling.

Jeff Bezos on Legal Advertising

Well, not really, but Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com CEO, was recently interviewed (registration required) in Business Week Magazine. When asked about Amazon's (lack of) advertising, Bezos replied:

We don't do any television advertising, and we take all of the money that we would put into television advertising, and instead put it into things like free SuperSaver shipping [free shipping on most orders over $25], lower product prices, category expansion, and invention of new features. We take those funds that might otherwise be used to shout about our service, and put those funds instead into improving the service. That's the philosophy we've taken from the beginning. If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful.

What if lawyers took their money away from the yellow pages, and instead spent that money improving the service they offer. At my firm, beginning next year, our "advertising" budget will become our "client appreciation" budget. Apart from a single line listing in the yellow pages, we're putting all of our advertising money (for us, nearly $1,000 per month) into improving our client experience. We'll be finding new office space with room for clients to use as kind of a "business center" with free wi-fi, coffee, etc. We are also bringing our client concierge on board to coordinate our client service initiatives and surveying new and existing clients to determine how we can serve them better.

Working with the Older Client

David Wolfe writes a fascinating post in his Ageless Marketing Blog about the differences in marketing to older vs. younger consumers. I work with a lot of older (65 years and up) clients and found his tips very interesting:

Older consumers’ more inner focused decision processes pose challenges to marketers who are more accustomed to pitching to the objectively biased minds of younger consumers that favor direct, unambiguous marketing statements. Brain scans in fact have shown that younger minds struggle more with clarifying ambiguity than older minds generally do.

In fact, older minds are more quickly repelled by black-and-white marketing claims. The ambiguity implicit in saying something “could be” or “perhaps is” is less likely to challenge the older person’s need for feeling independent in making decisions about the worth and meaning of what a marketer says.

One of the biggest differences between younger and older consumers in how they make buying decisions can be boiled down to the fact that younger consumers want to be told what something is worth and means while older consumers are more like to make that determination for themselves.

Something to think about when working with (or marketing to) the older client.

Positioning your Firm

One of the (many) struggles lawyers have is carving out a niche for themselves in their firm or community. I ran across this post by Laura Ries in her new The Origin of Brands Blog titled, "Positioning is Alive and Well."  She gives several ways to position a product (or service).  Her examples:

1. The Open Hole. Price is the easiest hole in the mind to understand and it’s one of the easiest holes to fill. Haagen-Dazs’ decision to introduce a more expensive line of ice cream set up the "premium" ice cream position for the brand and made Haagen-Dazs one of the enduring marketing successes of the past several decades. What Haagen-Dazs did in ice cream, Heineken did in beer, Rembrandt in toothpaste, Evian in water, Orville Redenbacher in popcorn, Rolex in watches, Mercedes-Benz in automobiles. High price is only one of the open holes in the mind. Low price is another. What Haagen-Dazs did at the high end, brands like Wal-Mart and Southwest Airlines are doing at the low end.

2. The New Category. Sometimes there are no open holes in the prospect’s mind and you have to create one. We call this positioning strategy, “create a new category you can be first in.” Gatorade, for example, was the first sports drink. PowerBar was the first energy bar. Red Bull was the first energy drink. UnderArmour was the first in performance workout clothing. Zima was the first ... well, what was Zima the first of? The label said “ClearMalt,” but nobody knew what that meant. The television announcement ads were no help either. “What’s in it?” asked a bartender. “It’s a secret. It’s something different,” replied a mysterious pitchman in his white suit and black hat.

3. The Number-two Brand. Consumers like choice. Sometimes you can build a powerful brand just by giving consumers an alternative to the leading brand. But what strategy can best deliver the No. 2 position? “Maybe if we can produce a better product than the leader,” goes the thinking, “we won’t necessarily overtake them, but we will wind up in the number two position.” This is the worst possible approach. Why is this so? Because the leader in your field already has the perception of producing the better product. Then how do you become a strong number two brand? You become the opposite of the leader. Coke was for older people, so Pepsi became the cola for younger people. Listerine was the bad-tasting mouthwash that killed germs and odor in your mouth. So Scope became the good-tasting mouthwash and a strong number-two brand. Home Depot is the leading home-improvement store, but its crowded aisles and jammed shelves appeal more to men than women. So Lowe’s became the home-improvement store for women with clean layouts and wide aisles.

4. The Specialist. Every coffee shop in America sells coffee, but they also sell hamburgers, hot dogs, French fries, apple pie, donuts and dozens of other foods and beverages. So Starbucks specialized in coffee and became a very successful brand. So did McDonald’s which specialized in hamburgers. And Dunkin’ Donuts which specialized in donuts. And Subway which specialized in submarine sandwiches. Enterprise Rent-A-Car specialized in the “insurance replacement” business and became the largest car rental company in America.

5. The Channel Brand. Sometimes you can position a brand to fill a channel hole. L’eggs, the first supermarket panty-hose brand, became the largest-selling panty-hose brand in the country. Today there are opportunities to create Internet channel brands. Amazon.com, eBay, Monster.com and Salesforce.com are just some of many successful “Internet-only” brands. Paul Mitchell became a $600 million hair and skin-care brand by focusing on the professional hair salon channel. Ping did the same in golf clubs by focusing on the pro-shop channel.

6. The Gender Brand. Sometimes you can build a big brand by focusing on half the market. Marlboro because a big brand by positioning itself as the first cigarette for men. Virginia Slims became a big brand by positioning itself as the first cigarette for women. Curves became a big brand by positioning itself as the gym for women. Secret became a big brand by positioning itself as the first deodorant for women. There’s a lot more to say about the subject of positioning. I suggest you get yourself a copy of the 20th anniversary edition of Positioning. You can’t go wrong if you simply take your mind off your product, your brand and your company and focus instead on the mind of the consumer. Since it is in the mind of the consumer that the real marketing battle is won or lost.

What position is your firm in? Where do you want it to be?

Laura has a lot of other great stuff at her blog. Check it out.

How to get Ink and Links for your business.

I'm proud to announce that this weblog has been named to the EDDix 50 - a list of the top 50 legal weblogs. I'd like to thank my parents for raising me the way they did, my lovely wife, my beautiful daughter, my agent, my producer ....

Really, I'd like to give kudos to the folks at EDDix, a new company in the Electronic Data Discovery business (get it, EDD). With a significant amount of work, they've managed to get most of the top "blawgs" to link to their new business site without paying a dime in advertising! Don't get me wrong, I think my inclusion on the list is really cool, and Michael A. Clark and the others at EDDix have taken a lot of time to compile a great guide to legal weblogs, but I'm most impressed with the sheer brilliance of the marketing behind it. And like any list of Top 50 anything, there will be a bit of controversy -- all to generate more links and traffic to the site.

What kind of thing could you do to get your clients or competitors talking about you? For lawyers, how about beginning a "Top 10 Small Businesses" award? Accept nominations from the public, have a panel of "experts" pick the winners, and invite all of the nominees (with their staffs) to a banquet you sponsor to honor the winners. Have a keynote speaker talk about a unique issue facing small businesses. Make sure your marketing materials are front and center and that you meet and greet every nominee. Arrange for photographs of the winners accepting their awards (with a firm member in each one), and send the pictures to the local paper along with a press release, or ask the paper to cover the event with a reporter. Total cost -- a few thousand dollars. The ability to meet and interact with dozens of your target clients (and their families and staffs) -- priceless.

I like this idea so much we'll work on "The Silver Lake Group Award for Small Business" and see if
we can get it up and running for next year.

Satisfy the Unexpected Wish

Designer Rick Landesberg gives some great advice in this article on the HOW Design web site. Landesberg writes about taking a lowly job and making it into a meaningful project. His tips:

First: Don't think about the money. Not your fees, not the budget, not the print costs. If the solution answers the need in a way that delights and surprises, the money often works out.

Second: Be sure to also present a solution that responds to the client's request. If you disregard what he specified, your client might take offense. Do what is requested and do what it ought to be.

Third: Don't presume your brilliant solution will be accepted. If it never gets out of the gate, your client will appreciate the extra effort nonetheless.

And finally: Cultivate a mindset that constantly goes beyond the client's stated needs. Listen carefully and critically, and dream on your client's behalf. Satisfy the unexpressed wish.

Great advice for lawyers, too. HOW Design has some more great articles on creativity here.

Creating Client Evangelists

Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba, authors of Creating Customer Evangelists, have authored a FREE new e-book titled "Testify, How Remarkable Organizations are Creating Customer Evangelists" with additional profiles of companies that have made their customers fervent evangelists for their businesses. There are just too many great examples to list them all. The e-book is a 50 page PDF. Download it and read it today.

Googlize your Firm

Anyone who is anyone has been given several G-mail invites to hand out like exclusive backstage passes(I don't have one yet, so that confirms my belief that I am not anyone). Google has gotten people talking about their service (that is going to be free anyway) for months before its official rollout.

This got me thinking about what my firm could give away to build buzz and get our new name out there. I don't want to just give away trinkets, mugs, calendars, etc. Instead, weve been thinking about doing small business incorporations for free. No strings attached. Of course, we'd pitch our monthly service pricing package to each small business and hope they'd retain us as their counsel. We might even pay the $150 filing fee to the Illinois Secretary of State out of our own pockets.

Why do I think this might work? Well, not everyone gets the deal. We limit the number we do every month to five or so, and businesses that want their free incorporation must apply by giving us a business plan or some other evidence they are likely to be around for a while. So, even though we are doing the work for free, we are getting to pick the applicants most likely to succeed and become long term clients. Mirroring the G-mail plan, current clients will get anywhere from 1-5 "invites," and anyone who is referred by an existing client automatically gets one of the free monthly slots.

All of the month's clients will have to come to a seminar where we cover the basics of incorporation, so we don't have to cover the basics with each one individually. We'll even bring in a CPA to cover tax issues with them.

Assuming we can cover ourselves from a malpractice standpoint, we will essentially be paying $150.00 (plus the time, of course) to acquire a new client and build goodwill. I'd love your comments.

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!

Law Firm Naming (Again)

Wordlab has a great post on law firm naming. From the article:

As today's law firms grow or downsize, merge and emerge, keeping the letterhead, website, and collateral marketing materials current with the legal partnership name can be a regular challenge. And maintaining consistent brand awareness in a firm's marketplace can be frustrated by a naming strategy that is focussed on the partnership roster, and not on the firm's brand from the customer's point of view.

Business-minded lawyers name their law firms with their customers in mind--not to assuage the partners--and thereby protect their investments in the business. Better to have a partnership interest in a law firm with a strong brand than to have one's own name listed with many other partners on a "shingle" few customers can remember. The classic parody of traditional law firm naming is Jerry Seinfeld trying desperately to remember the name of the firm where the beautiful lawyer, Vanessa, works; repeating the mantra "Simon, Bennett, Robbins, Oppenheim & Taft" over and over.

Wordlab is a free naming thinktank that's worth a look. Some really fun things there, including my favorite, the Band Name Generator. Thanks to Abnu for the heads up.

So, what do you do?

Don the Idea Guy's Brain Blog posts a link to a site called 15SecondPitch.com. From the site:

"So, what do you do?" It's one of the first questions people ask. Your 15SecondPitch lets you answer with confidence and get them interested in learning more. Enhance all your relationships, business and personal, by marketing yourself more effectively.

The site also helps you craft an elevator speech with the help of a "Pitch Wizard." You can put the result on a business card purchased from the site -- which I think is a great idea. I've been working on my pitch for quite some time. As a general practitioner who also mediates, it has always been very hard for me to answer that very question, "So, what do you do?" But here is my best effort so far:

My name is Mathew Homann and I am an attorney and mediator. As an attorney, I help individuals, businesses, and organizations cope with day-to-day legal issues and plan for the future. As a mediator, I help those same kinds of people resolve their personal and business conflicts in a peaceful and cost-effective way. My firm, the Silver Lake Group, constantly strives to improve the way we work with our customers and we guarantee they will be happy with our service.

I'm still not 100% happy with it, but if you don't start somewhere, you'll never get anywhere.

Word of Mouth for Lawyers

In this post, Creating Customer Evangelists author Ben McConnell comments on the recent Time Magazine Article on the new movie Troy. From the Time article:

Before a movie opens, studios can generate inauthentic signals by securing a star and advertising heavily, creating the impression of a phenomenon. This puts butts in seats on opening weekend and gets the competition out of the way. "You can orchestrate an opening," says [economist Arthur] De Vany. "What you're doing is briefly dominating supply. That's not demand. The long-term demand necessary to sustain a blockbuster is still dependent on the authentic signal, word of mouth

Ben's take:

In other words, you can advertise the hell out of a movie, or a product, and create artificial demand, but it's still word of mouth that drives long-term, profitable success.

We lawyers already are at a disadvantage when it comes to this kind of customer evangelism. Our profession is so maligned that we must first convince our clients/customers/prospects that we are, "not like other lawyers." Once you get past that barrier, however, good "buzz" or word of mouth will be your best measure of success.

Naming, Again.

I came across this post at Scobleizer, a blog by Microsoft employee Robert Scoble, about naming products.  Here is an excerpt:

One thing I've noticed about Microsoft. We come up with boring names for products. Yesterday I gave Peter Loforte, an exec on the Tablet PC team, heck for the naming of the latest Tablet PC software: Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005. 

Can you imagine Starbucks coming up with a name for its latest coffee drink like that? "The Tastes Like Last Year's Coffee, But Is Sweeter, And Is This Year's Version."

Compare the official Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, 2005's name to the code-name for the same product: Lone Star.

Lone Star is so much cooler. And doesn't try to communicate marketing information in the name. All of our code names are cooler than our product names. Whidbey, Longhorn, etc.

Let's go over to Nike. Do they try to name their shoes something like "Mike Jordan's technology, updated for 2005." No, they come up with wacky names like "Air Huarache" or "Zoom Generation" or "Shox."

Why does this matter? Because of word of mouth. Because of how our brains remember things. Be honest. Without looking at my previous posts or up above, tell me what the official name for the next version of the Tablet PC software is. Did you get it right? I didn't. I had to look it up on Web.

Now, without looking up again, tell me the name of a Nike Shoe. Get it right? I bet more of you did.

If you tell someone your law firm's name, can they repeat it to you five minutes later?

LegalMatch Comments

I was going to write another long post about LegalMatch, but, frankly, am getting tired of the whole conversation. One thing I did notice was that a comment I received here from LegalMatch user "Marty S." was very similar to a comment Jerry Lawson received here several months ago on the same topic on his eLawyer Blog from LegalMatch user "Adam."

The funny thing is that both "Marty S." and "Adam" had the same e-mail address. What's more, when I tried to thank "Marty" for his comments, my e-mail was returned as undeliverable because the yahoo account was canceled. Why would Adam and Marty respond to LegalMatch posts in almost the same way with different names from the same invalid e-mail address? Are they really satisfied LegalMatch users -- or LegalMatch insiders? Things that make you go Hmmmm.....

What business are you in?

Mark Cuban (outspoken owner of the NBA's Mavericks, technologist, and blogger) persuasively argues that the NBA is not in the business of basketball, but of entertainment.

There are those around the NBA who think the business of the NBA is basketball. They seem to think that there are enough basketball junkies and purists out there, that if we “let the game of basketball alone”, we would fill arenas, the games would be more enjoyable and TV ratings would skyrocket. They probably also think that the tooth fairy is real.

Reality is that basketball is not the business of the NBA. Entertainment is the business of the NBA. Every single night of the week we battle movies, books, restaurants, TV and Cable programs, talking a walk, everything and anything that is an alternative to going to or watching an NBA game.

What is your business? Is it law? Trust? Peace of mind? Are your competitors other lawyers, accountants, business advisors? As a business lawyer, my competitors also include electricity, transportation costs, employee salaries, and rent. In other words, I am competing for my clients' business dollars against the other things they spend money on. Unless I can articulate the value that I can give them and persuasively show them how I can save them money, time, frustration, or worry, I am just another line item in their budgets that they will cut in hard times.

More on Naming your Business.

This five-star standard of business naming comes from Naseem Javad at the Wisconsin Technology Network (via David Young at the Branding Blog):

A five-star standard of business naming: To qualify, a name must pass each of the five following criteria to get a star. If it fails at any point, then your name is in serious naming trouble. Anything less than five stars is really a liability wasting valuable branding. Is your name: 1) Very distinct and very unique? 2) Short, simple with attractive alpha-structure? 3) Highly related to the business? 4) Globally trademarked and protected? 5) With an identical URL?

My new firm name, The Silver Lake Group, gets at least four of the five stars. "Silver Lake Law" seemed a bit hard to say, though it did a better job of identifying what the firm actually did. I hope to take care of that with a tagline that will accompany our name and logo. I'm meeting with a graphic designer tomorrow to narrow down the field of logos, and I've already reserved www.silverlakelaw.com as a domain name. Trademark applications are next on the agenda. The name, logo, and tagline will all be unveiled here first on May 1, 2004.