Serving Not Selling

Traditional sales techniques are largely ineffective when selling professional services. Instead of talking about your services, demonstrate your ability to serve through your actions. You will feel better about the sales process and more importantly, you will be more successful.

Careful Who You Refer

In general, referring a strong candidate to your firm can elevate your standing at the firm. But be careful in making referrals. A poor candidate can reflect badly on your own reputation. If you know a law school classmate well, go for it. But if you know nothing about someone's work style, experience, etc., then think twice before putting your own career in jeopardy.

How to Lose Clients

Here are 10 great ways to lose business! Sometimes mistakes are the best teachers!

The Importance of Small Talk

Small talk is an important career skill. While small talk may seem trite or unimportant, it is actually critical in helping us to build rapport. If you are unwilling to make small talk with another individual, you are actually communicating that the other person is not important to you. Here are some good tips for making small talk.

The Best Referrals Come Unsolicited

If a lawyer or other professional service provider asks for referrals, he or she runs the risk of making a client feel uncomfortable. Better to deliver great service and then respond when a client asks how they can be of help to you.

Surefire Ways to Fail at Business Development

Coach Ellen Ostrow offers some ways to ensure that you will be unsuccessful at business development (inter alia: chose a specialty that does not interest you, start networking only when pressured to do so, focus only on getting the business when meeting with prospects.)

Should You Have an Elevator Speech?

Maybe. But it is much more important to engage prospects by finding out about what they do and what their needs might be. No one likes to listen to a monologue and pithy "hooks" can backfire.

Managing Our Business Relationships

David Maister suggests that we can find guidance for navigating difficult business relationships by thinking about our other relationships in life. If you are having trouble deciding how to deal with a difficult client, try thinking about how you would deal with this individual if he or she were a colleague, a friend or a relative.

Communication is Not About You

Here are 13 reminders which will help you communicate more effectively with clients and opposing counsel.

Listen, Understand and Be Responsive

Here is more evidence that listening is the key skill in marketing professional services. In a study of common marketing mistakes that professionals make, "didn't listen to me" and "did not understand my needs" were the two top reasons that might convince someone not to use a professional service provider.

Ways to Build Business Relationships

My article on ways to develop business relationships was republished in Rain Today.

Closing Business--How to Get the Clients to Commit

Here a marketing consultant suggests a somewhat agressive technique for "closing business". For a more organic approach, here is an article I wrote a while back for Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly.