Larry Bodine's LawMarketing Blog

The Most Dangerous Letters in Sales are RFP

RFP means one of two things. It's either 'Real Fools Participate' or 'Request For Probing,' according to Steve Waterhouse,  the Principal and Founder of Waterhouse Group, a sales consulting and training company.
 
Real Fools are the ones that read the document and believe every word, he says. It wil state, "All questions must be in writing" and "Contact with the company must be through the purchasing office." If you play this game, you are falling into the trap of thinking that this makes a level playing field for all bidders.

The probability of winning business from responding to an RPF where you have no relationship with the client is so close to zero as to not be worth discussing. Unfortunately, everyone has won one or two and believes that they are the exception, Waterhouse says. Studies done by the Waterhouse Group and others show otherwise.
 
He advises:

• Refuse to look at an RFP as an immediate need to begin preparing a proposal. It's not. In fact, in most cases, you would be better off making another cold call than responding to the RFP's terms.
• Redefine the RFP as a Request For Probe. That means, the prospect has sent up a signal flare that identifies a source of potential business. Treat it like any other hot lead.
• Assuming that the business outlined in the RFP is business you want or that it could lead to business you want, start digging.

For the rest of the story, visit the LawMarketing Portal.

News Flash: NJ puts "Superlawyers" ban on hold

This just in: the New Jersey Supreme Court stayed the decision banning lawyers to advertise themselves as "Super Lawers" and "Best Lawyers," based upon appeal filed by N.J. Super Lawyers organization.  For background see NJ Stupidly Outlaws "Super Lawyers" and "Best Lawyers."

Justice John Wallace Jr. issued the stay at the request of Super Lawyers Magazine's management and the State Bar Association, after the Committee on Attorney Advertising in Opinion 39 banned lawyers from advertising in Super Lawyers and Best Lawyers publications.

Wallace's decision "has taken us back to the status quo before Opinion 39," Bennett Wasserman of Newark's Stryker, Tams & Dill, one of the Super Lawyers counsel in the case, told Law.com.

State Bar President Wayne Positan says lawyers didn't know what to do: pull ads, take Super Lawyer plaques off their walls, reconfigure letterheads and Web sites at great expense or do nothing and risk disciplinary action.

The opinion, which had taken effect upon publication on July 24 [185 N.J.L.J. 360] affected Best Lawyers' 744 New Jersey selectees and Super Lawyers' 1,669. They couldn't advertise their inclusion in the services' lists or participate in the selection processes, under Opinion 39.

The opinion stated that promoting a lawyer's selection as a Super Lawyer or a Best Lawyer in America violates ethics rules against misleading advertising by creating an unjustified expectation about results the lawyer could achieve, the opinion stated.

Super Lawyers magazines appear in 22 states. "This Opinion's adverse effects on the Bar have been immediate and widespread," says the petition by six New Jersey attorneys listed as Super Lawyers and by Super Lawyers' parent company, Key Professional Media of Minneapolis.

"An entire publication has been shut down and scores of New Jersey attorneys that previously used their Super Lawyers selection to promote their practices can no longer do so," according to the petition, prepared by Wasserman and John Gibbons of Newark's Gibbons, Del Deo, Dolan, Griffinger & Vecchione.

As I predicted, law firms in New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Oregon and Minnesota have withdrawn, withheld or suspended commitments for advertising and attorneys in Missouri and Tennessee have asked to be dropped from inclusion on the list.

In a July 21 letter to the advertising committee, Positan wrote that firms with expensive ad campaigns are "now facing the prospect of trashing brochures and other materials, and having them redone minus any 'Super Lawyer/Best Lawyer' designation."

He noted that there was no warning to lawyers about propriety of such advertising and that he was not aware of any state with similar restrictions. "That being the case, it seems unfair that lawyers should now face considerable uncertainty and suffer financial loss before the process of reviewing the opinion has even commenced," Positan wrote.

Having won the stay, advocates of the rating systems can now concentrate on trying to get the Supreme Court to reverse the opinion.

ABA Lawyers Behind the Times

Only 9% of ABA members are aware of someone in their firm maintaining a weblog, or blog, while over half (55%) said no one in their firm was maintaining a weblog and 36% did not know.  These statistics from the 2006 American Bar Association legal Technology Resource Center Survey Report show that ABA lawyers are stuck in the last century when it comes on online marketing.

It's a sad state of affairs.  Many of today's smart lawyers are actively blogging. According to Blawg.org there are 1,391 lawyer blogs in 214 categories.  According to an article by Jim Calloway and Tom Mighell in the ABA's own Law Practice Today e-newsletter, a new blog is created every second of the day. 8,000,000 people have started blogs as 32,000,000 Americans are blog readers.  But apparently few ABA lawyers are doing either.

"As in previous surveys, e-Lawyering initiatives still are not taking off; self-help legal guides (12%) are the only online legal service offered on more than 10% of respondents' firms' websites, while other services, such as client intake questionnaires (just shy of 10%), real-time consultations with prospective clients (2%), online form preparation (5%), online dispute resolution (less than 1%), expert systems (1 %), showed no significant gains over previous years," the report states on page 13.

Respondents to the 2006 survey represent a wide cross section of firm sizes:

• Twenty two percent of respondents are solo practitioners
• 27% work in small firms (2-9 attorneys)
• 20% are in firms with 10 to 49 attorneys
• 7% are in firms with 50 to 99 attorneys
• 23% are in large firms (100 or more attorneys).

This year more large firms and fewer firms with 2 to 9 attorneys are represented than in the 2004-2005 survey, by about 5% each.

If you're not familiar with blogs and online marketing, please join the ABA Law Practice Management Section, and start reading their publications and start attending their meetings. 

Effective Marketing: Put a Client in the Ad

Once again Holland and Hart of Denver shows its marketing savvy by putting an ad in the September 2006 issue of Corporate Counsel magazine that features a client in the ad.  (Click on the image to the right to see it full-size.)

It's smart marketing  because:

• The ad is all about the client, not the firm.
• It depicts David Jacobs, founder and CEO of Spyder Active Sports, Inc., a Holland and Hart client that makes cool sportswear, which incorporates Bluetooth technology to use with an iPod or cell phone and high-tech shock-absorbing material.
• The scene is clearly in the Colorado mountains, underscoring the firm's tag line "The Law Out West."
• The ad lists the name of a person to call as well as the firm web site.
• It positions the law firm with the innovativeness of its client.

Kudos, again, to "Marketing Guy" Mark Beese at Holland & Hart.

Audio Testimonials from Summer Associates

Nothing beats a testimonial in marketing.  To entice the iPod generation,  Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Aronoff LLP in Cleveland and Columbus is making a novel use of a podcast for recruiting.  Summer associates Rebecca from Ohio, Calista from Cleveland, Angela from California and Christian from Buffalo can be heard talking about their experience working at the firm.

The audio MP3 recording “Summer Associates Speak Out! featuring Benesch's 2006 Summer Associates” is the August 17 edition of “The Benesch Beat,” a series of business law podcasts on the firm’s Web site at www.bfca.com. The podcast directory is located at http://www.bfca.com/docs2/Podcasts.aspx.

Rebecca says she likes trademark law and litigation, saying, “It was a challenge to get an assignment and not know anything about it.” Calista learned about corporate and transactional work, noting, “some law firms are all about wining and dining.  I wanted to grow as a young professional and that’s what Benesch has to offer.”

Angela said, “What’s really nice about working at Benesch is that you get to apply the things you learned in law school.  It’s not all theoretical, you actually see clients and issues, and how they work.”

Christian discovered he likes suing people.  “I like litigation, the adversarial part.  I like to be persuasive as opposed to objective, and let someone else decide who’s right or wrong.”  This kid will go far in the profession.

Calculating ROI on Partner Business Development Time

Partners are expected to generate new business, but they don't have the time or desire to bring in new files.  It's essential that the time actually spent on business development shows a worthy return-on-investment.  The July issue of Inside Public Accounting published a handy formula to determine if a business development initiative is really paying for itself:

Use average partner income plus a factor for partner expenses on the financial statement.  Take that cost times the number of hours you spend with growth activities. Compute a 20% return on that investment and then consider the margin on the average dollar of revenue the firm produces to determine the revenue that must be generated from the time investment in business development activities.

Here's an example:

• 300 hours per year on growth @ $150/hour
• Cost per partner = $45,000
• 20% ROI on partner time = $54,000 ($45K + 20% of $45,000)
• Revenue at 30% margin = $180,000

In law firms, partners may bill much more than $150 per hour, and a law firm's margin is typically 40%.  However, typical lawyers spend much less than 300 hours per year on business development.

What should we do with this information? This scenario demonstrates how important it is to focus on the right activities. Once a partner sees the need to bring in $180,000 in sales this year, he or she will likely concentrate on activities that produce results. After thinking of ROI on business development in this way, partners should ask themselves:

• Am I spending too much time but not getting the results? If so, maybe I need training. 
• Am I positioned with the right centers of influence to attract this much annual volume?
• How am I going to accomplish this goal? Should I spend all of my time promoting one-time project work, such as single transactions or litigation, instead of pursuing clients who will pay $25,000 per year for an average of 10 years?

Women of Color Used as Tokens in Marketing

The new ABA report, Visible Invisibility: Women of Color in Law Firms, published by the ABA Commission on Women in the Legal Profession, describes the grim lot of female minorities in law firms, who are hit with a "double whammy of gender and race."

"The combination of being a racial and a gender minority has a particularly devastating effect on women of color’s personal and professional lives," write Paulette Brown and Arin Reeves, Project Co-Chairs.

"Forty-three percent of women of color but only 3% of white men had limited access to client development opportunities. Women of color stated that they met with clients only when their race or gender would be advantageous to the firm; they frequently were not given a substantive role in those meetings. This kept them from developing business contacts that they could use to develop a book of clients or as resources for finding subsequent positions."

Here's the bad news:

• Almost half of the associates in private law firms are now women and 15% are attorneys of color, but in 2004 only 17% of law partners were women and only 4% were attorneys of color.
• As of 2005, 81% of minority female associates had left their law firms within five years of being hired.
• It's been this way for 134 years: In 1872, Charlotte E. Ray became the first African-American woman admitted to the bar in the United States. Despite her renowned legal abilities, she had to give up the practice of law because, as a woman of color, she could not attract sufficient clients to stay in business.

For more information, see http://www.abanet.org/women/VisibleInvisibility-ExecSummary.pdf

Generation Gap Hurts Law Firm Marketing

Not only are lawyers typically reluctant to market their practices, now we learn that many associates aren't even interested in becoming a partner or staying in the profession.  It's impossible to market a service that you don't want to perform.

69% of associates don't see themselves making partner, according to the August 2006 issue of American Lawyer.  Even worse, about 55% aren't sure they'll stay in law practice.  No wonder these young lawyers aren't interested in marketing.

That's because Generation X, associates aged 27 to 41, are loners who question authority, can be cynical, pessimistic, think in short time horizons and have a "prove it to me" attitude, according to author and consultant Cam Marston, of Marston Communications in Charlotte, N.C.   

Add Generation Y to the mix, aged 26 or younger, who are "adultolescent" individuals who have never known hardship, yet stressed, at a young age, and may have huge goals but are clueless on execution.

They don't want to be like the people who are in charge of the firm, the Baby Boomers who have a strong work ethic, are competitive, optimistic and show success visibly with trophies and plaques.

Baby Boomers are "frustrated by the younger generation's seeming reluctance to step up to the plate and take on the same responsibilities that Boomers themselves eagerly took on at their age," Marston said.  And this includes marketing.

Why Law Firms Should Check Their Web Site Statistics

Many law firm Web sites are a billboard out in a cornfield -- hastily built with almost no one looking at it.  To the unhappy surprise of a law firm my firm is advising, only a smattering of visitors were going to their very expensive, Flash-adorned Web site.  They didn't even know it.

It turned out that no one was checking the traffic statistics to the site. At first, they weren't even sure whom to ask to find out. Later, I read through the traffic logs and found that fewer than 1,000 visitors per week went to the site, which is very low for a law firm Web site. The partner I reported this to was very sad.

To make it worse, I reported that 80% of their visits came from lawyers and other employees from inside the law firm.  So only 200 people per week from outside the firm were visiting the site.  Now the partner was really sad.

I could immediately tell what the problems were:

• The Flash graphic on the home page was causing the bots and spiders sent out be search engines to bounce off.  Search engines index text, not graphics.  We're going to make that a static, non-animated graphic.
• The site had no <title> or <meta> tags.  There was no bait to attract the search engines.
• There was no text on the home page.  This meant that there was indeed nothing for the search engines to index.

Fortunately, these are all easy things to fix.  My point is that you must know the basics about your Web site.  You wouldn't drive your car without checking the gas and looking at the speedometer.  Similarly, you shouldn't put a Web site online without checking the traffic statistics.

The One Piece Of Advice You Can't Sell Without

RainToday.com just published a collaborative e-book, The One Piece Of Advice You Can’t Sell Without. The book is a compilation of the advices of 11 experts (including me) in selling professional services.  To get your free PDF copy of the ebook, visit http://www.raintoday.com/onepieceofadvice_bodine.cfm

The experts are:

• Seth Godin, best-selling author of 7 books including Purple Cow and Permission Marketing.

• Keith Ferrazzi, speaker and author of Never Eat Alone, and a columnist for Inc. Magazine and Fast Company

• Sam Reese, CEO of Miller-Heiman, The Sales Performance Company

• Alan Weiss, CEO of Summit Consulting Group and author of Million Dollar Consulting

• Mike Schultz, Publisher of RainToday.com and Principal, Wellesley Hills Group

• Paul Dunay, Director of Global Field Marketing for BearingPoint

• Jill Konrath, Chief Sales Officer, Leapfrog Strategies and author of Selling to Big Companies

• Frank Stasiowski, President of PSMJ Resources, serving the architecture / engineering industries

• Paige Arnof-Fenn, CEO of Mavens & Moguls and a columnist for Entrepreneur

• Michael W. McLaughlin, co-author of Guerrilla Marketing for Consultants with Jay Conrad Levinson and editor of Management Consulting News.

• Li'l old me, Larry Bodine, Owner-Operator of the LawMarketing Portal and Larry Bodine Marketing, serving law firms.

I think you'll enjoy my chapter, "Listening Your Way to New Business."  I probably shouldn't have revealed so much about these successful selling techniques, because it's the actual advice I give to my own clients.  But they are merely the lessons I have absorbed over 15 years of selling and marketing, learned from people who were way smarter than me.  Here's how it starts:

According to a German proverb, “A man has two ears and one mouth so that he hears much and speaks little.”  Mark Twain followed up the thought by saying, "If we were meant to talk more than listen, we would have two mouths and one ear." And I’ll add: We were given two ears and one mouth, and they should be used in that proportion in a sales call.

To get your free PDF copy where you can download the ebook for free, visit http://www.raintoday.com/onepieceofadvice_bodine.cfm