Rainmaker scouting

On a recent cross country flight, I had the opportunity to sit next to a chief scout of a major league baseball team.  To a baseball junkie, this was like Charlie getting the golden ticket.  After 4 hours, I doubt he felt the same way..

We talked recruiting and scouting and what makes the best of the best.  What good scouts look for besides the numbers.  The underlying traits that a major league scout looks for to determine if a prospect will grow, peak shortly, or their best days are behind them. 

He identified 5 traits that major league ballplayers and top rainmakers share:

Preparedness and Work Ethic:  In baseball you have to be ready every day, not like football where a weeks practice goes toward one game a week. This requires discipline.  He gets to the park early to watch players and detect attributes in their pregame rituals.  Higher achievers are more focused on the details and don’t put up with distractions.

Concentration and Focus: Although related to preparedness, this is more related to how a player conducts themselves during a game.  Pitch by pitch, play by play, they are in every moment.

Competitiveness:  This may seem obvious, but everyone takes their lumps at some point.  Perhaps a slump that lets self-doubt creep in.  When this scout sees someone with talent underachieving he said he wonders ,”Is there a desire to succeed to the degree that there’s a failure mechanism kicking in? Is there a fear of failure. Is the desire to succeed significant enough to overcome the fear of failure?”

Stress Management and Humility: It’s a cliché about how you can fail in baseball 7 out of 10 times and end up in the hall of fame. The ability to cope with failure requires a short term memory and a sense of humor. He likes watching how a player reacts after making a mistake.  Does he hang his head or smile it off as fans are screaming at him and come back with a big hit. I’ve spoken with some of the biggest name attorneys in the country who are the most approachable and self –effacing people you will know, and I’ve spoken with junior partners at small firms that think the Sun rises and sets on their streams of consciousness.  Like the old adage goes, if you are that good, your actions speak more than your words.

Adaptiveness and Learning Ability: How successfully is the player able to process new information during a game? Listen to advice.  How does he adapt when his life situation changes.  The idea of coming out of law school and 10 years later being a rainmaking partner is rarely a straight line even for the most talented.  Attorneys and ballplayers cant be too rigid in their mental approach.  What works for the top rainmaker in their firm may not work for them.  They find what works for them but always look for ways to tweak their approach.

Everyone is being scouted.  How would you scout yourself?

Andrew Wilcox, Andrew@Wilcox-legal.com, 850-893-8984

Spider Sense

Have you ever thought about what you are really selling?

Experience, firm name and presence, practice area knowledge, customer service, risk mitigation, your record…

These are the usual items that end up on a whiteboard when I consult with firms and ask some variation of this question.

Problem is, EVERYONE sells these things. If all of this cancels out with what other attorneys and firms offer, how much of a commodity is your practice? Can clients get what you are selling at a cheaper price, or would you doubling your rate not even cause your clients to blink.  Cost vs. Investment.

I grew up loving Spider Man.  Aside from thinking it was cool to swing between buildings, the most important trait that he had was his Spider-sense.

Spider- Man had “Spider-sense”, attorneys have knowledge and experience.

Wikipedia defines Spider-Man's "Spider-sense" as a "tingling feeling at the base of his skull, alerting him to personal danger in proportion to the severity of that danger." It is the sensation that something bad is about to happen. It is his unique ability to sense peril ahead, sort of his early warning system that he needs to take action to avoid trouble...or meet it at a position of advantage.

Addressing issues before they become problems.  Spend 100k in fees to avoid millions in lawsuits for instance..

Do clients pay you to do legal work or for your spider-sense? The fresh set of eyes on what they see as day-to-day events.  Knowledge and experience that enables you to see around a corner when they can not.  Hearing the ominous music as pending doom is about to occur while they are walking into…(stay tuned for the rest of that story on next weeks episode..)

How do you sell what nobody knows will happen?

Put them in the grave and take them out.  What has your knowledge and experience seen? How has it helped other clients bottom line?  What bad things have happened to other companies in their sector? How has it damaged them and what could have been done to avoid it?

Know the enterprise. Whether they are one person or a Fortune 100 company, learn everything about them.  Every division, every company goal, every stakeholder. Everyone does a Google search, few read a 10-Q. Fewer ask to spend a day meeting with people throughout an organization.  You may not have practice area experience, but someone in your referral network should.  Take a team approach to address every pitfall from HR, operations, marketing, IP, tax, etc  The trusted advisor that they can’t live without and that has touch points deeper than one area. If they don’t find the value in the time that you want to invest in getting to know them as a whole, maybe they are just wanting to hire someone that is a commodity and wont cost them that much. Your value is worth the investment!

Measurement. Establish a baseline.  If they don’t have anything to measure and no reason to change what they are doing, why should they hire you?  What are they paying in labor lawsuits in a year? Fines, compliance, delayed product launches?

Please contact me to discuss your client development goals: Andrew Wilcox, Andrew@Wilcox-legal.com, 850-893-8984

Premature Elaboration

Over the holidays you have a chance to catch up at parties with people you don’t see every day.  It’s also a great time for storytelling.  Reflecting on the year. Old stories that get better with time.

There are stories that you can sit and listen to for an hour.  So filled with detail and cadence that it seems to bring everyone in the room around to it.

Some stories that I call Facebook stories.  25 minutes of inside family humor about how lil Becky said something cute in the middle of the Chik-Fil-A to the “big cow”.  They seem to love the story so much that it bears repeating.  If there is a party repellant spray to be handed out next year that keeps them away, you hope that you are doused in it.  They corner you as you can see the rest of the party is caught up with Mark Twain reincarnate across the room.

Then you have the story killers.  You know them.  The story is about to get good and the spouse or the person that has heard the story jumps in, interrupts, or gives away the ending.  Yeah, I would have been fulfilled with It’s a Wonderful Life after 10 minutes enough to flip over to Duck Dynasty. ..

As a teen boy, I recall asking my older brother how to get girls to like me. What do I say? What story should I tell them?  He said “Be yourself…just not too soon..”

The way that people engage your services has changed.  Everyone has the name of a good attorney, and everyone gets a few names.  Who are you at the party though? Do you ask questions that bring people out?  Similar interests?  Common purpose?

The process of asking questions to form your story around their goals and needs.  Some people need a quick story, some need details.  Their fulfillment is found in them taking ownership through the process of being asked about what is important to them. It’s also artificial patience to you who have probably heard their story a thousand times with a thousand clients.

Does your web bio tell a story or just a couple of bullet points on practice areas?  When you engage a client or prospective client in a conversation do you bring them into the story and make it personal to them, or do you give the same story to everyone only to be interrupted by the noise in their head. In seminars, do you talk or interact? Is social media one-sided or does it solicit feedback?
 

Please contact me your client development goals at: 850-893-8984, Andrew@Wilcox-legal.com

Leverage

As I talk with attorneys about their career goals, I have recognized a dramatic change from a few years ago.  Prior to 2008, there was an arms race for good partners and associates.  Fast forward a few years and the days of walking across the street for 20, 30, 40k raises in base salary are gone.

Successful law firms squeezed out expenses, got a lot better at due diligence in hiring, and offers now come with a certain risk adjustment reflected in salary or draw.  What a lot of them squeezed out, and have created a void that successful partners are now needing, is leverage.  

The graying of the workforce with the chopping that many firms did of their bench has created a gap that has left many firms in a precarious position that will continue to build.  

The frustration around being capped at the amount of work that they can actually do.  Bringing in more work, but not having  quality associates, service partners, or even assistants that were able to handle billable work at a competitive blended billable rate.

Leverage has become geographic and enterprise as well. Altman Weil documented that 2012 is a historic year for firm mergers. Work that single offices used to get is now being lost to larger firms that leverage clients from one city into business in other cities where they don’t have a presence. Small firms that were once happy with staying independent are now open to merging.  

Everyone needs leverage and yet it is the one thing that is becoming more rare. How do you leverage your partners, associates?  How do you leverage the percent of business that you get from existing clients into additional work for you and others in your firm? Is there a gap in the work that you can generate and the work that you can do?

So what does this mean to your practice?

As you look at year end planning and goal setting for 2013, think of ways that your practice can leveraged better and ask a few questions:

What partner to “quality” associate ratio do I need if I were to grow my practice by 10%, 20%, etc?

Are you at the top end of your bill rate or can you raise rates and retain your client base? 

Conversely, are you being mandated to bill at a rate that is causing clients to go elsewhere for work that you or your firm could be doing?

Do you have what you need to grow your practice or are you in a firm of similars that have found a comfort zone? Does that work for you?

Every business struggles with converting data to applicable knowledge.  How you apply that knowledge is what will leverage your practice.

Please contact me about how you would like to further leverage your client base at: 850-893-8984, Andrew@Wilcox-legal.com

Lawyerball

“How can you not be romantic about baseball? Love that line from Moneyball. In the movie, Billy Beane, played by Brad Pitt, opines after being dealt huge budget cuts, another tough year, and the same competition that has unlimited resources and seems to always win.  Faced with finding a way, he employees a metrics man to find the key to success with a budget a fraction of what other successful teams have.  

Baseball and client development success can be reduced to one number and it’s not what you think.  Conventional wisdom says better players hit more home runs.  Beane went for on-base percentage.  Homeruns are great but they are quick.  Repeatedly getting on base puts pressure on the opposing team that leads to errors, it creates opportunities to score in bunches, it wears pitchers out.  Getting on base consistently involves discipline at the plate, taking the walk, fouling off pitches.

On a daily basis, I speak with attorneys that I can put in 3 categories: Rainmaker, Utility Players, Service Partners.  

Rainmakers may hit homeruns, but they get on base better than anyone.  Their pipeline is full of deals.  Some homeruns, some triples, some doubles, and lots of singles. Keep their heads up as they round first and know when they can stretch a single into extra bases.  They go to the plate every time with a plan.

Utility players are good but not great at client development.  They peaked at some point and have found a range.  They wish that they made more money and had more business, but hitting .250 is good enough to keep management generally happy and every once in a while they get a big hit that they can point to, but struck out a lot for that one big hit.

Service partners get paid more than they bring in.  Good attorneys that have never had to, or never wanted to deal with building a client base.  During a rough patch, their salaries are the easiest to cut to make room for someone else on the roster.  They aren’t very marketable to other teams and they have an expensive contract that they are playing under.  Tough spot to be in when dealing with firms that are looking at bottom lines and each persons metric.

One of my favorite movies is Bull Durham and a classic scene about metrics that you can apply to client development:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBgGaGUnvA0

A gork, a ground ball with eyes, a dyeing quail.  “Just one more dying quail a week and you are playing in Yankee Stadium.”  Not the homerun.  The one more thing a week is the difference between being cut from a roster spot or being a rainmaker.  One email, one lunch, one call, one seminar, one trade show, one blog posting… 

Going into the week with a plan on how you will get on base just one more time a week.

Please contact me about how you would like to further develop your client base at: 850-893-8984, Andrew@Wilcox-legal.com

Word matters

Recently, I had the opportunity to sit in on interviews at law firms around the Southeast with lateral partners and provide feedback.  I also had follow ups with the firms and measured who they extended offers to and compared them with my notes.  The biggest indicator that I discovered was not the way that they dressed.  All had figured that out years ago.  Wasn’t experience.  By the interview they had been vetted by experience.  Wasn’t the client base (although how they articulated how that client base could be leveraged into that firm was important)  It was the words that they used.

After one such interview session, I treated myself to a spicy chicken sandwich at Chik-fil-A and have discovered what I now coin the “No problem” versus “My pleasure” speaker.  

Client calls and say that they have an emergency, you handle that emergency.  They say “thank you”.  You say ”no problem”  Well it was certainly a problem for them, and if it wasn’t for you then why are you billing them for it..

Go into any Chik-fil-A, order something and say “thank you”.  They say “my pleasure”.  It is part of their brand, and how words are delivered are part of each attorneys brand that I sat with. 

If I had a dollar for every “probably”, “maybe”, “kind of”, “sort of”,“possibly” that I heard I could retire.  When I work with attorneys before an interview I use the example of “I think” vs. “I believe”.  What is stronger?

The weak words had a direct correlation to the interviewers notes of not being prepared, not articulate, not a good listener, untrustworthy.  Does that represent a brand that you believe any firm would want to put forth?

The tragedy is that that does not at all represent how good of an attorney that person is.  If they eliminated those words would it change anything that they were trying to convey? Most of the time, the words are just fillers.

Your words are your brand.  Your assistants words are your brand.  The receptionist that hands a client coffee and welcomes them to your office is your brand.  The words on your website is your brand.  It is either weak or strong. When clients are evaluating options, who do you believe that they want?

Some fun from My Fair Lady: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAYUuspQ6BY

Have a little fun with the folks at the office and think of the most popular weak words that you know.  When someone says them they owe a dollar for each offense. To be kept hermetically sealed in a mayonnaise jar until the end of the week. Then cater a lunch from Chik-Fil-A with the money raised. It will be their pleasure…

Please contact me about how you would like to further develop your client base at: 850-893-8984, Andrew@Wilcox-legal.com

Where the Clients Are

Do you know how many customers that you have lost?

A recent study by the Huthwaite Group says that you were part of an evaluation that you didn’t even know that you were part of.

The study shows that when a prospective client had a need for your services they began to do research of who could help them.  With the internet and word of mouth they evaluated about 30 options in a short period of time.  In that evaluation, they lowered that down to 3 options. From that, over 88% went with the first one that they met with.

As someone that spends my days on law firm websites, I can tell you that there is a huge gap that most attorneys and law firms don’t pay attention to. It’s the “What does this attorney really do” issue.  An entire body of work wrapped up in two word capsules.  Products liability, construction litigation, white- collar, insurance defense, tax law, etc…  If I cant figure out if you are a Plaintiff or Defense attorney, what are the odds that someone that doesn’t work with attorneys on a daily basis will figure it out.  On to the next option..

If we can all agree on the fact that engaging an attorney’s services usually is because of a risk or bad situation, why would you buy from someone that doesn’t give more details on how they have helped others.  Within Bar guidelines of course. When was the last time that you bought a generic car, house, or TV.  It’s the capabilities that match the needs.  The understanding of a buyers situation that makes for the sell.

With access to information, potential clients no longer have to meet to get that information and do an evaluation.  They don’t even need to be in the same city, state, or country in many cases.  They are ready to make a decision by the time that they reach you.  By providing that information, and managing your online and network brands, you save them and you a lot of time and close more business.

Please contact me about how you would like to further develop your client base at: 850-893-8984, Andrew@Wilcox-legal.com