by Lawrence M. Kohn

Earlier this month, we discussed reaching out to people as a way to weather tough economic times. Another way to generate business in the short term is to start a blog. Blogging is a technology that's new and exciting because it does a couple of important things.

First, blogging helps you condense an important topic into a couple of paragraphs, allowing you to communicate something important in a limited number of words. In addition to communicating something that might be important to a prospect, you're scripting sales dialogue. Writing a blog post clarifies your thinking about a particular issue that could be a need of people with whom you want to do business.

Then you send the blog out into cyberspace, and the world begins to get exposure to you. But that's only the beginning, because you should also send an email to everybody you know, saying, "I've started a blog. I invite you to take a look at it. I've made an entry. Please give me your comments."

The fact that the blog exists is a reason to reach out to people and communicate with them. Then you might begin a dialogue with people that you know or don't know about a particular issue, and we're seeing that turn into business in a relatively short period of time.

For more tips, check out our ABA Publishing Presents podcast "Business Development in Tough Economic Times."

Labels: marketing, rainmaking

by Lawrence M. Kohn

Last week, we discussed reaching out to people you already know as a way to drum up business during tough economic times. It's also important to reach out to people you may have fallen out of touch with.

Many of our clients are finding success in this area with social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Plaxo. By logging in and seeing whom you already know, these sites identify the people whom they know that you also might know but have forgotten about. For example, you might have gone to law school with someone whom you had a good relationship with but have allowed to slip through the cracks. You might be able to reconnect with him or her on a social networking site or by going through the roster of your alumni association.

Start really looking at these names, one name at a time, and asking yourself, "Is there a marketing opportunity here? Is there a way for me to reach out that I feel comfortable with?" In some cases you won't. It'll be too distant. But in other cases, you'll say, "Well, I'd love to talk to him or her!" Pick up the phone right then and there.

So many times, our clients have picked up the phone and called somebody they hadn't talked to for years who said, "I can't believe that you're calling me right now. I have a need for a lawyer in your state. Here's a problem I've got." Of course, we can't promise that that's going to happen, but it's happened so many times with clients of ours in the past that we feel comfortable in saying that the odds are good that you could pick up the phone and somebody might even need you right now.

For more tips, check out our ABA Publishing Presents podcast "Business Development in Tough Economic Times."

Labels: marketing, rainmaking

by Robert N. Kohn and Lawrence M. Kohn

Selling is always important, in good times and in bad. However, selling is particularly important during a recession because there's more competition pursuing less business: Clients are more cost conscious. They may be looking for lower-price firms. They may be sending out less work to their existing law firms. And to make matters more difficult, many lawyers who previously hadn't done as much marketing are now trying to do it more. So in order to compete, to get what work is out there, selling becomes more important.

One of the lessons learned from this recession, or any recession, is that selling always has to be a part of your practice. You should always be thinking about who your best contacts are and whom you should be communicating with so that when the recession comes to an end, you're going to be in a better position to take advantage of the recovery.

Think about the relationships you have today and the people you know right now. People often know more people than they're aware of. Now, if you've only been practicing law for a short time, maybe you don't know many people, but if you've been practicing law for several years, you've probably come into contact with many more people than you're even aware of. Go through your Rolodex and mailing list and start compiling a list of names of everybody you know who's in a position to help you because they either know somebody or they have needs themselves.

We're not suggesting that you would necessarily call everybody or reach out to everybody, but it's important to know who these people are. It takes a long time to build relationships with strangers, but with the people you've already met, the relationship process is further along. They're more likely to trust you; they're more likely to accept your call. So the very first step when you get started in marketing is to go after what we like to call "low-hanging fruit" -- the people who are most likely to help you today because they know you and because you feel comfortable reaching out to them.

So for a short-term, immediate benefit in tough economic times, look at whom you know and recapture the people you've allowed to slip away. And for the long haul, once you meet people, never let that happen again. Put those names into your database and stay in touch with people for the rest of your career.

For more tips, check out our ABA Publishing Presents podcast "Business Development in Tough Economic Times."

Labels: marketing, rainmaking

by Larry Kohn

Many lawyers have learned -- and rightly so -- that whatever success they've had up this point has come from serving their clients. As a result, they develop a pattern of serving the client, serving the client, serving the client. Nothing gets in the way of serving the client.

(That's not to in any way imply that you shouldn't serve the client. If anyone walks away from this blog thinking that we're advising that they shouldn't serve their clients, then they're misinterpreting the message. Yes, you must serve your client.)

But there's more to the rainmaker model than serving clients, and what we often see is that the desire to serve clients is so profound that people can't take five minutes -- literally five minutes -- away if there's something that they need to do for a client.

Lawyers need to come up with creative solutions to solve their clients' problems. The way they find creative solutions is by immersing themselves in the work. That means that whenever they have a free minute, it's in their best interest to immerse themselves in the work because that's what's going to help them find the more creative solution down the road.

If you really own this belief, if you're in this pattern of solving problems by being immersed, then there is no free time. Free time no longer exists because all free time needs to be invested in immersion in the clients' needs.

Now, that's an entrenched habit, and while it may be true that immersion in the clients' needs does result in creative solutions, if you believe that that's the way you must live in order to serve your clients, you never make time for rainmaking.

Let's face it: Clients die. Clients merge. Clients leave because a new decision maker chooses another lawyer over you. While there may be some friendship among clients, there is often very little loyalty, and it is unbelievably dangerous to allow your career to be dependent upon the whims of existing clients. So it's fundamental to any business to be diversified. It is remarkably dangerous and irresponsible for lawyers to depend on this pattern of client-servicing as the path to success.

Instead, set aside five minutes in the morning before the day really heats up. Once you're in that client-servicing mode, later in the day, it's very difficult to get out of it, and by the end of the day, you're tired, and when you're tired, you should be doing the things that you love doing, not the things that you're less inclined to do. For example, I don't try to balance my checkbook at the end of the day when I'm tired.

During those five minutes, first thing in the morning, review your targets and marketing plans. Then close the file and just go on about your day. What happens is these marketing targets and plans then begin to percolate and incubate. And then during the day, you begin to connect the dots. You'll be servicing one client and all of the sudden you'll hit on an idea for another. You begin to become aware of marketing opportunities that you would normally not be aware of had you not gotten grounded in marketing at the very start of the day.

Yes, serving your existing clients is important, but so is finding new clients. Don't let this entrenched habit get in the way of building your rainmaking machine.

Labels: marketing, rainmaking

Labels: elevator speech, rainmaking