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In our role as relationship development coach, we instigate dozens of actions which lead to successes each week. Many of these actions are inspirational and transformational. Successes from coaching come in large and small packages. As you'll see from these nine stories, they cover an entire spectrum from the interesting to the mundane.
An intellectual property lawyer within a large firm had scheduled a meeting with a prospective client, who was a senior executive of a specialty food manufacturer. He took our admonition to go into the meeting prepared seriously. A few days before that meeting he carted his three kids off to the grocery store for a family adventure. He turned the due diligence process into a family outing by asking each child to go on a scavenger hunt looking for every product they could find with this company's label on it. The child who found the most products with that label wins bragging rights. They found two dozen products. He purchased every product and then went home and sampled them. He was impressed with the quality of their products. That gave him plenty to discuss with his prospective client including ideas on color schemes and other nonlegal matters. This senior executive walked out of their meeting with 20 ideas. Needless to say, this lawyer got all their IP business. The two partners who attended the meeting with him were blown away too. A senior associate with a large firm started our coaching session by lamenting his lack of a network and expressed a desire to build one. Three minutes into the meeting we learned that he had been a professor at one of the local universities before going to law school. Turns out he had a list of the names of his former students--all 2000 of them! We asked him if he maintained contact with his former students. He said, "no." He believed that contacting his former students for marketing reasons was somehow unethical. When we asked him if he genuinely wanted to reconnect with his former students even if they never hired him he said, "absolutely." We suggested he go for it. We also pointed out that he was allowing his belief to keep him from doing something that he really wanted to do. In no time at all, he generated a list of more than 60 former students he wanted to contact. He embarked on a plan to call a few people each week and offer to meet with them for lunch. He went from lacking a network to having one of the largest potential networks in a firm of 500 lawyers! From that point forward, instead of dreading the thought of marketing he had incredible fun marketing. The shift of mind was all that was needed.
A banking lawyer who was also the department chairman and a highly accomplished rainmaker had prepared extensively with us for a meeting with a prospective client. The meeting went so well he walked out of it with a file and promise of more to come. He learned several lessons from this meeting but the one which stood out for him the most was that "you can have a pretty good meeting without being prepared, but you can have great meetings when you're well prepared." Many lawyers we work with have been to many marketing meetings, but rarely have they gone into these meetings fully (or partially) prepared. When lawyers experience what it feels like to go into a marketing meeting fully prepared most are transformed permanently. It becomes a self-reinforcing experience.
An Arizona OSHA lawyer was scheduled to speak at a general contractors meeting in Nevada. He wanted to expand his contacts in Nevada. He had spoken many times but it never occurred to him to contact people he didn't know and invite them to his talk. We discussed several actions he might take to expand his Nevada practice which included a call to people in Nevada that he'd like to meet and invite them to his talk. He contacted four clients in Arizona that also had offices in Nevada and got the names of their Nevada counterparts. He called these four Nevada contacts and invited them to attend his talk in Nevada. During one of these calls he learned the prospective client had just gotten an OSHA citation for $150,000. This prospective client wanted to attend but had just withdrawn from the organization. The OSHA lawyer cleared the way for this person and one other to attend as his guest. The prospective client came to the talk with the citation in hand and hired this lawyer after his talk. If he had balked at extending the invitation he'd never have gotten the work. A Toronto lawyer was very resistant about contacting someone whom he considered a prospective client. In our conversation he developed and rehearsed the questions he might ask this person during a phone call. He also defined a concrete objective he intended to work toward during the call: namely get a meeting. After considerable rehearsal he mustered up the courage to call, set a meeting, did homework before the meeting and went into the meeting confident and relaxed. His contact did not give him any work directly, but she gave him a referral which did generate work.
A partner in a large midwest firm called and offered to do a summary for his client regarding a white collar criminal investigation. The client was delighted that his lawyer offered. The partner did as we discussed during the coaching session and offered a summary in three specific areas. The client also asked him for a fourth one. The level of enthusiasm coming from the client surprised him. He said it was likely the client would have eventually called him and asked for these summaries, but he was pleased that he beat the client to it. We had originally contemplated doing this summary gratis, but that wasn't necessary. Through further prompting from his coach this partner spoke with his client to find out which summary he wanted done first. He originally thought he knew which one the client wanted first and felt there was no need to check with the client. After some cajoling he agreed to call his client. He learned that the one the client wanted first was not the summary he had assumed. He also asked his client if the one he sent met his expectations. It was close but the client asked him to change one part of it. He learned that his client might use the summary internally whereas he originally assumed his client would only use it with the government.
One real estate lawyer in the midwest realized she was unwittingly sending a negative signal to clients and prospective clients. At our urging she stepped outside her comfort zone and arranged a meeting with her client with nothing on her agenda except gathering client feedback. From this conversation with her client she learned that her client thought she was too busy to do their work. This lawyer was stunned. She inquired with the client as to what she did to give the client that impression. The client was unable to pinpoint any one thing, but she added that several of her employees reached the same conclusion about this lawyer's work load. This lawyer resolved to never again complain about being busy. Instead she would adopt the practice of dealing with every client as if she had all the time in the world for them even though she might be incredibly busy. Regardless of the compensation system, your passion for your work can be a great catalyst for cross-selling. For example, during a coaching meeting with two lawyers (one an employment lawyer, the other an intellectual property litigator) from the same firm we asked them each two questions: "What do you do?" and "What is it you love most about the practice of law?" For more detail on why we asked these two questions see my February newsletter on Networking with a Purpose. Their answers to the first question were perfunctory, but the employment lawyer's impassioned answer to the question of what he loves most triggered an immediate reaction from the IP litigator. The IP litigator realized that one problem he had been dealing with during the course of a lawsuit he was currently handling was also an opportunity to introduce the employment lawyer to his client. He also volunteered that until that moment he had been viewing the employment issues in his case as problems to solve rather than as an opportunity to introduce the client to his partner. The story doesn't end there though. Cross-selling doesn't occur until the employment lawyer is introduced to the client. In this case, it took the IP litigator several more months of prompting from his coach before the meeting was ultimately arranged. It's not that the IP litigator was unwilling to set up a meeting, it just wasn't very high on his list of priorities. In our experience, lack of follow through is one of the most common reasons why cross-selling gets bogged down.
Often coaches can help lawyers crash through psychological barriers that they would not surmount if left on their own. Steve, a young partner, had never been out on his own to a marketing meeting. He always took along a mid-level partner as a safety blanket who would end up doing most of the talking. During his coaching session with us, Steve was able to wean himself off this career limiting practice. We persuaded him that going out on a solo meeting was a "victory" regardless of the outcome of the meeting. He was in win-win territory the moment he went to his first business development meeting alone. As it turned out, Steve was able to secure work from the first client he met going solo. His confidence shot up thereafter. Maraia
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