Looking for Cool Ways to Connect with Clients? -(STOP)-
Telegramstop is a company that will send an old-time looking telegram to anyone in the world for under five bucks. Could be a cool, retro way to connect with some clients or friends.
The Math of Justice
I'm a big fan of Craig Damrauer's New Math site. He combines simple text and visuals with math to describe sometimes complicated concepts. Here's his latest:
And my favorite:
Get Up and Think
Sitting at your desk trying to solve a complicated problem? You might be better off getting out of your chair and moving around. In this study, researchers found that, "a person's ability to solve a problem can be influenced by how he or she moves." In other words, our minds and bodies can work together to help us solve problems:
The new findings offer new insight into what researchers call "embodied cognition," which describes the link between body and mind, Lleras said.
"People tend to think that their mind lives in their brain, dealing in conceptual abstractions, very much disconnected from the body," he said. "This emerging research is fascinating because it is demonstrating how your body is a part of your mind in a powerful way. The way you think is affected by your body and, in fact, we can use our bodies to help us think."
Next time you've got a problem to solve, get up off your butt, move around a bit, and you might find that your body helps your brain find the answer.
Ten Rules for Conference Vendors
In March, I shared Ten Rules for Conference Attendees. As the spring and summer conference seasons heat up, I've put together Ten Rules for Conference Vendors. Here they are:
1. If the only way you can sell your value proposition is with a white paper, you don't have a value proposition.2. You do not earn my attention by giving me a pen. You earn it by solving a problem I can't solve without you.
3. The more your booth looks like everyone else's the more I think your product does what everyone else’s does, too.
4. Don’t get offended if I don’t believe your product will do what you promise. I’ve been burned before by people who sounded and looked a lot like you.
5. Everyone working your booth should have a 7 word answer to the question “What do you do?” The first three words of that answer should be “We help you…”
6. The number of words on your booth is inversely proportional to the likelihood I’ll read any of them.
7. These five words should NEVER appear on your booth: Trusted, Leading, Innovative, Premier, and Unique. If they do, you probably aren’t.
8. Dump the booth babes. If I can’t trust you to make good decisions about your marketing, how can I trust you to make good decisions about serving me?
9. Your product’s benefits are not as different from your competitors’ as you believe them to be. Instead of selling me “unique” features, sell me outstanding service.
10. Capture my attention before you capture my contact information. A one-dollar USB drive in exchange for a year of emails and telephone calls is not a fair trade.
You can read the rest of my 10 Rules Posts here.
Ten Rules of Networking
Networking events are part and parcel of a business person's life. Next time you find yourself at a networking event, keep in mind these Ten Rules, and the people you meet will thank me:
1. “Network” isn’t something you do, it is something you build.2. Meeting someone for five minutes at a networking event does not entitle you to become their “friend” on Facebook. Ever! Feel free to send them a LinkedIn invite, though.
3. It takes more time to recover from a weak handshake than it does to learn to give a firm one.
4. Your life story is far more interesting to you than to someone you've just met -- and you've already heard it before.
5. Stories that start with, “This one time, I almost ….” are boring as hell. Learn to embrace experiences instead of avoiding them.
6. Never enter a conversation at networking event with more than half a drink in your hand. Needing a refill is great excuse to leave.
7. Asking someone "What do you do?" w/in a minute of meeting suggests your interest in them depends on their answer.
8. When you meet someone for the first time, make certain they don't hear you complain. About anything.
9. The most underrated skill to possess at networking events is ability to end conversations, not start them.
10. Never "network" to meet people. Network to help people.
You can read the rest of my 10 Rules Posts here. I'll see you at the next networking event!
100 Tweets: Thinking About Law Practice in 140 Characters or Less.
I really like Twitter. For those who follow me, you know that I try to share lots of legal-themed tips, thoughts and ideas. In fact, most of my Ten Rules posts started out on Twitter -- where I'll test 15-25 "rules" to see which ones work best before picking the ten favorites.
However, there's lots of stuff that lives on Twitter now that used to live here on the blog. And since I don't expect everyone reading this to follow me there (or go back and read through my 2000+ Twitter messages), I decided to compile a "Best Of" list of my favorite tweets.
So, here (in .pdf form) is a little e-book I've titled: 100 Tweets: Thinking about Law Practice in 140 Characters or Less. It contains my favorite 100 tweets, in no particular order, and should give you a sense of what I share on Twitter that you don't always see here.
If you enjoy it, and would like to follow me on Twitter, I'll see you there.
Selling Through a Slump E-Book
I had the privilege of contributing the legal chapter in the new Selling Through a Slump: An Industry by Industry Playbook.
Oracle and The Customer Collective co-sponsored the guide, which contains great advice for selling in multiple verticals, including accounting and consulting, retail, the public sector, health care, insurance, telecommunications, services, technology, media and manufacturing. The author list reads like a who's who of industry experts, and I'm honored to be in such great company.
Check it out here. Registration is required, but the download is free.
Ten Rules PDF Preview
As I gear up for several speaking engagements this summer, I'm putting together my slides and handouts this week. While most of these will ultimately live at my LexThink site, I thought I'd share the first one with you here on the blog.
Here are my Ten Rules of Client Service (from my original post here) in a spiffy new pdf format that I hope will turn into an e-book of sorts.
I hope you enjoy the look, and find the pdf easy to share. Let me know what you think.
Talk to Me About...
Instead of using name tags at your next event, try this tip (found at The Kitchn blog) to get conversations started:
The idea is that instead of "Hello my name is..." stickers, you give your guess ones that read "Talk to me about..." Guests can fill in their career specialty, their hobby, their passion of the moment, or their favorite meal (just keeping it foodie, here!).
We picked this suggestion up from SwissMiss, who used it at a talk she was facilitating, and we think it's a brilliant idea for all sorts of social situations. Name tags like these are guaranteed conversation starters!
We think they also take away some of the discomfort factor. Personally, we feel much more comfortable approaching someone who wants to talk about a subject in which we're interested than we would just striking up a random conversation.
I'd take it a bit further, and give each guest 4-5 name tags. Every 30 minutes or so, have them switch out their "I want to talk about..." tag with a different subject.
Wonder what my friend Scott "The Nametag Guy" Ginsberg would think?
Get a Life -- In Only Two Days
I've been spending some time talking to the organizers of the Get a Life Conference, after connecting at Techshow and on Twitter. It looks like a great event, and I'm really working hard to figure out a way to make it -- and perhaps do some cool LexThink-like unconference stuff with them if I do.
Lots of great speakers, including the incomparable Gerry Riskin, are on tap. Expect lots of talk about practical ways to make your law practice a more profitable business. From their site:
In this two-day workshop, you’ll learn how manage all the moving parts of a successful law practice and still have a life. But there’s one very important thing missing – you! One of the greatest challenges you have is making time for what’s personally important to you – your hobbies, friends and family.
It happens May 27th and 28th in Chicago. Check it out, and if you'd like to go, here's a link to a 25% discount (Enter INSIDER upon check-out). I hope to see you there!
Unofficial Techshow Pub Crawl
This Thursday (April 2, 2009), I'll be leading the second annual Unofficial Techshow Pub Crawl at ABA's Tecshow. We took a year off last year, but are back in 2009.
We'll meet up at the Hilton Chicago Lobby at 8 and head out for a few beers at 3-4 bars in the neighborhood. Expect a great time, good fellowship and a hangover Friday morning.
UPDATE: Here's the "agenda" for our evening:
8:00 - 9:30: South Loop Club, 1 E. Balbo Ave. (about a block from Hilton)
9:30 - 11:00: Hackney's Printer's Row, 733 S. Dearborn
11:00 - 12:00: Villains Bar and Grill, 649 S. Clark
12:00 - ???: Kitty O'Shea's in the Hilton Chicago
Here's the map:
[googlemaps https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=113120818844087991030.000466495c503eb129dbb&ll=41.872507,-87.624269&spn=0.007608,0.005748&t=h&output=embed&w=425&h=350]
If you want to join the group early, many of us will be convening at a Tweetup here.
For real-time Twitter updates from the Crawl, you can follow me (@matthomann), or follow the Unofficial Techshow Pub Crawl hashtag (#utspc).
See you in Chicago!
Ten Rules for Conference Attendees
With the ABA's Techshow and the LMA Annual Conference kicking off in tandem this week, I thought it was a good time to revisit a list I did a few years ago about attending conferences. Here are my Ten Rules for Conference Attendees:
1. The amount of preparation you do before the conference is directly proportional to the benefits you'll receive after it.2. Never attend a conference without at least three questions you want answered. Never leave until they have been.
3. Your ability to pay attention to conference speakers and attendees is inversely proportional to your ability to pay attention to the outside world. If you can’t leave the real world behind for an hour or two, please don’t leave it at all.
4. The most important people at the conference are sitting next to you. They are like you. They can help you. Ignore them at your peril.
5. Vendors know your industry and the other attendees better than you do. Talk with them. Learn from them. Then take a few pens.
6. A conference rolls thousands of first impressions into a three-day period. Be kind, listen well, don’t dress like a slob, and pick up the tab every once in a while.
7. Don’t go to a conference until you can answer -- in less than 5 seconds -- the question, “What do you do?”
8. Don’t tell someone you’ll follow up unless you intend to. Breaking the first promise you make to someone makes them believe you’ll break others, too.
9. The only thing you need at most conferences is an exhibit hall pass. The true value of the event is in the conversations and not the presentations. Forget the sessions, hang out in the hallway (and the bar) and listen. A lot.
10. Knowing someone online is not the same as knowing them in person. Don’t assume that someone you follow on Twitter, friended on Facebook and linked to on LinkedIn knows who the hell you are. Introduce yourself as if you’re a stranger, make friends the old fashioned way and your relationship will be stronger as a result.
You can read the rest of my 10 Rules Posts here. I'll see you at the next event!
Your Clients Multiply Your Mistakes
Another fun "Rule of Thumb" that sounds about right, even with no empirical proof:
Every time you mess up, your boss will remember it as three times that number. If the total number of actual mess-ups is greater than 3, your boss will remember it as "always."
Works for clients, too!
Say My Name!
Here's a quick and cool idea from a Smashing Magazine post on building a perfect portfolio website: Tell your customers how to pronounce your name. Here's a snippet from designer Chikezie Ejiasi's site:
If you've got a hard-to-pronounce name, tell web visitors how to pronounce it. You'll make it a lot easier for them to ask for you by name. I'd think about doing this with business cards, too.
If you're designing a law-firm website, you can do a lot worse than to check out the rest of the article for lots more great ideas.
Afraid to Innovate?
Afraid to try something new in your business, figuring that if it really worked, everybody else would already be doing it? Think again! Here's a re-imagining of the lowly paper clip (from picocool):
Now, what's stopping you from thinking differently about your practice?
Client Collaboration and the IKEA Effect
One of my favorite lists of the year is Harvard Business Review's Breakthrough Ideas for 2009. As always, the entire list is worth a read, but the one that caught my eye is one labeled The IKEA effect, which suggests that people are willing to pay more for things they had a hand in creating:
When people construct products themselves, from bookshelves to Build-a-Bears, they come to overvalue their (often poorly made) creations. We call this phenomenon the IKEA effect, in honor of the wildly successful Swedish manufacturer whose products typically arrive with some assembly required.In one of our studies we asked people to fold origami and then to bid on their own creations along with other people’s. They were consistently willing to pay more for their own origami. In fact, they were so enamored of their amateurish creations that they valued them as highly as origami made by experts.
What does this mean for professional service providers? Instead of defaulting to a "Let me handle that for you" position with clients, require them to actively participate in their case. By collaborating with them, and allowing them to make meaningful contributions to the work you (both) do, they'll likely value your services more and be happier with the end result.
Ten Rules of Client Service
Quick, name your favorite customer service class from law school. Can’t do it? I’m not surprised. Most lawyers don’t learn much about client service in school, and the only class that touches upon service at all is Legal Ethics -- which is kind of like teaching someone to ride a bike by showing them lots of bicycle accidents.
By delivering great service, you can delight your customers, increase their satisfaction (and reduce malpractice exposure), cut your marketing budget and turn your clients into your best salespeople. And because many of your peers believe something as simple as returning client calls is optional, the bar to delivering the best client service in your community is set pretty low.
Here then, are 10 simple “rules” to help you remember that it is your customers who keep you in business, and when you work to delight (instead of frustrate) them, you’ll both be successful.
1. Just because clients don’t expect great service from lawyers doesn’t excuse you from providing it.2. Don’t assume you’re great at service because your current clients don’t leave. Many remain your clients because they fear their new lawyer will treat them just like you do.
3. It costs less to delight a client than it does to frustrate them. You pay to delight them once, but you pay for frustrating them forever.
4. It is also far cheaper to compete on service than it is on price, because there will always be someone far cheaper.
5. People tell others about service they receive, not competence they expect. Ever heard someone brag about how clean their dry cleaners get their clothes?
6. The time clients care about isn’t yours, it’s theirs. Build your practice to save them time and they’ll be less reluctant to pay you for yours.
7. Though you might be measured against your peers in a courtroom, when it comes to service, you’re measured against everyone. If your clients named the top ten places they get great service, would your business make the list? It should.
8. Eighty percent of your time should be spent on satisfying your clients’ expectations and twenty percent should be spent on exceeding them.
9. You can’t measure how you’re doing when you only ask how you’ve done. Improving client service begins with learning how to serve your current clients better.
10. If your clients can go months without hearing from you, they can go forever without recommending you. To lawyers, indifference and incompetence are two different things. To clients, they are one in the same.
If you'd like to see some more posts like this one, check out: Ten Rules of Rainmaking, Ten Tweets about Twitter, Ten Resolutions for the New Year, Ten Rules for Law Students, Ten Rules for the New Economy, Ten Rules for New Solos, Ten Rules of Legal Innovation, Ten Rules of Legal Technology, Ten Rules of Hourly Billing and Ten New Rules of Legal Marketing.
Also, if you'd like to see hundreds more ideas on creative ways to deliver great client service, check out all of the Client Service posts here on this blog.
Replace "Fiance" with "Client"
Found this one over at Rules of Thumb. Replace Fiance with Client and Married with Retained:
If your fiance does something that bothers you before you're married, it will bother you ten times more after you're married.
Let Your Clients Decide Your Price
One of the biggest barriers lawyers must overcome when contemplating alternative pricing models is understanding just how customers perceive the value lawyers provide.
One of the ways I've combated this in my consulting practice (and at LexThink Innovate) is I let customers set the price of the work I do -- after it is done.
Below is a copy of my "You Decide Invoice" that I use for all my consulting work. The relevant provisions read:
YOU DECIDE: Your absolute satisfaction with LexThink isn’t just our goal, it’s the measure of our worth -- and the determination of our fee. The rules are simple: you pay us what you feel we were worth to you. You decide, no questions asked. The only rule? We want to know why you paid what you did, and how we could have done better.
and
WHEN TO PAY: While we leave our fee in your hands, we can’t leave it there forever. Please send us your payment and feedback within 21 days after you get this invoice. Please send a copy of this along with your feedback and your payment. Thank you for your business.
On the second page (not shown), I ask for feedback from the customer:
Tell us, in as many words as you want, how we did. Think about your expectations, the result, and how it felt to work with us. Also, let us know if we can share your feedback with others -- and if we can give you credit. Attach more sheets if you need to.
That's it. I explain to the customer before they engage me that they'll set my price, and then give them the invoice as soon as the engagement's done. So far, I've always received at least as much as I've expected -- and most importantly, usually more than I would have charged if I'd set my price before beginning.
I also know that when I will ultimately receive less than I expect (or not get paid at all), it will tell me I need to learn lessons from the engagement, and improve my services (or be more selective with my clients) so it doesn't happen again.
What's keeping you from experimenting, and letting a few (trusted) customers name your price?
LexThink Testimonial: "Format both innovative and effective"
David Gulbransen writes another LexThink testimonial I wanted to share:
Matt Homann has posted 10 reasons why you should attend LexThink:Innovate in March. And while I can actually cook 2 'three minute' eggs in less than six minutes, the LexThink conference format is both innovative and effective. Well worth the time, in my book. And Matt's put his money where his mouth is with a "name your own price" guarantee. When was the last time you saw a conference do that??
The timing of the conference couldn't be worse for me (work projects) but I'm still trying to find a way to go... you should, too.
