The Role of Client Care in Profitability (Part II)

This article discusses marketing strategies and ways to keep your clients.

Training Partners and Staff

Culture

Marketing and selling are not issues that are discussed on a regular basis in professional firms, particularly below partner level. It is therefore important to identify who is expected to do the marketing and who is expected to do the selling. Marketing may be defined as the identification of target areas and the development of leads, while selling is the process of converting a lead into new work. Some firms are extremely good at marketing but do not fare so well at selling, while a few firms are good at the selling but not so good at marketing. To generate a constant supply of new work, care needs to be taken over both these aspects of the generation of new work.

Creating new work should not necessarily be left just to the partners. In particular, assistant lawyers may derive a great deal of benefit and enjoyment by becoming involved in the marketing aspects even if they do not have the confidence to go out and sell services directly to potential or existing clients. There is often a problem within a firm that assistant lawyers are worried about marketing and selling to existing clients because they feel that they may be treading on the toes of partners. To overcome this problem, it is important for partners to discuss these issues with fee earners and to establish respective responsibilities. Fee earners in most firms see the generation of new work as a partner responsibility and often partners reinforce this perception. In reality, most firms would like fee earners to become involved in this activity and it is probably worthwhile committing this to writing through detailed job descriptions. This will ensure that staff understand that partners do want them to become involved in the process.

Client care training — changing procedures

Any firm, whatever its previous experience, can always improve the care that it provides to its clients. Improving client care is not a state of mind, it involves action. Client care needs to be applied consistently by every member of the firm and not just by certain people, otherwise clients will perceive inconsistencies in the service. When developing a client care policy or updating an existing policy, it is important that everybody in the office be involved. Simply imposing a new policy and telling everybody to comply with it may not lead to the desired result because people need to be committed to the changes if they are going to put them into effect.

One method of developing a client care policy may be to hold office meetings during which the principles of client care are explained and where everyone is invited to contribute to a list of possible actions. Areas for discussion at such a meeting may include the following:

• the way in which clients are greeted in the reception by the receptionist and staff alike;
• the speed in which clients get a response to correspondence;
• the turnaround time for faxes, telephone answering and call back procedures; and
• the style of letters and reports that are issued to clients.
  

It is a mistake to try and do too much at one go and greater long-term benefits may be gained by simply implementing two or three ideas per month and sticking with those ideas until they become routine. New ideas can then follow. This approach to client care can provide much satisfaction within the office but is also likely to be sustainable given that everybody in the office is invited to take part in it.

Budgets and targets

Training people to become better at marketing and selling would cost a firm both in terms of the time invested in training and in terms of cash costs. The cost does not need to be too high as much of the training can be provided internally. It may help to bring in an outsider initially if for no other reason than to show the commitment of the partners and to create some initial enthusiasm and momentum. Firms can devise their own measures to assess the effectiveness of marketing and selling and the increased activity. Some of the following measures may be relevant to any firm:

• the number of meetings attended;
• the number of clients called proactively per month;
• the number of articles written;
• the amount of time spent at clients’ premises;
• the number of opportunities to quote;
• the proportion of pitches that lead to new work;
• new fees generated; and
• hours spent on marketing and selling.
  

Presentation skills

A firm is presenting for work even if it is a one-to-one situation and simply involves sitting across a desk. Presentations also include standing up in front of a team of people from the target client. The biggest mistake made by most practitioners is that they do not rehearse their presentation thoroughly beforehand. A live presentation should be the best performance and should therefore always be made after the presentation has been rehearsed.

Have the partners and fee earners in a firm been trained to present professionally? If they have not, then other firms will have a clear advantage even if the technical ability or substance of the service that is being sold is deficient. Some of the key skills of presentation that can be acquired through training are:

• effective movement;
• full use of the voice;
• getting started and maintaining interest;
• controlling nerves;
• eye contact and looking at the audience;
• dealing with errs, ums and pauses;
• designing and using visual aids;
• dealing with difficult questions; and
• gaining participation and making it a two-way process.
  

Even if a lawyer has been trained to make presentations and there has been a rehearsal, this does not guarantee success. One of the major reasons for not winning work is that when making the presentation, the lawyer, through anxiety, makes no real show of commitment and enthusiasm for doing the work. It is important to have an extremely positive mental attitude when pitching for work. Body language is all important: smiling, looking confident, standing upright and talking assuredly all add positively to the image being presented.

Beauty parades

When pitching for new work it will not always be necessary to stand up and make a formal presentation, but increasingly this will be the case. The training skills mentioned above are important but there is also an element of psychology that needs to be considered. It is common sense that, when asked to pitch for work, you do as much research and speak to as many people as possible about the target client before the presentation. The purpose of such research is to gain as full an understanding as possible of the client and of the services required. It is always possible, however, that one misunderstands the business or its needs or that one has actually been given incorrect information.

It is extremely important at the start of any presentation, therefore, to list the needs that have been identified and to ask the client for their observations before proceeding. If the prospective client explains that some of the perceived needs which have been identified are not actually relevant, then it is important to change the script and not talk about those areas any more. Equally, if the client identifies additional potential problems, then these should be added to the list of things which are to be discussed. The prospective client will appreciate that if it is not part of a prepared presentation it will not be presented as professionally but will nevertheless be impressed by the fact that the firm is trying to service the needs of the client and is not simply trying to tell the client how clever or comprehensive the range of services being provided by the firm are.

Pricing

Do not undervalue

An obvious way of generating work in a new area, or of increasing work in a particular sector, is by offering an extremely competitive price. While this may attract the attention of a potential client because the service is cheaper than that being offered by competitors, it does not necessarily follow that, in subsequent years, having obtained the work, it will be possible to force up the fees. The aim when generating new work is to generate profitable work and even if this does not happen in the short-term, it should flow through in the medium-term. The whole effort will be wasted if each day, and indeed the years ahead, are filled with work that does not make an adequate level of profit.

Although it is a strategy, it is probably not ideal to pitch for new work on the basis of price. There are plenty of other strategies that can be adopted and if the right one can be found at a commercially sound price then that is likely to be more effective.

Pilot schemes

One often hears about firms who have ‘low balled’ to obtain new work. Low balling is designed to generate new work when it is believed that there will be no other way of gaining the work.

Some of the most common reasons given for not being awarded work are that either the price is too high or there was insufficient experience in the particular type of work. A method of overcoming both these objectives is to reduce the price to make the tender extremely attractive and then, when you have won the first piece of work, you are able to quash the other objection, namely lack of experience, because you will then have a client in that particular sector.

An alternative strategy, which may be more successful, is to offer clients or potential clients a free service which is designed to test out the service that is being provided. The benefits of such an approach are numerous, including an opportunity to obtain genuine feedback from a client, the opportunity to ask a client what they think the service is worth once they have seen it and the opportunity to refine the service before it is offered on a commercial basis. It may also be that, after working with a particular client and providing the client with a benefit, the client may be able to offer some useful leads to other potential clients. The final benefit of such an approach is that it is then possible to say that the service has been provided already to another client which immediately overcomes one of the primary objections described in the previous paragraph.

Build value

Many lawyers avoid the issue of pricing when quoting for new work. It is clearly a most important issue in the eyes of a potential client. If the lawyer does not raise the issue first, then the client will, and by doing so, will take control of the conversation. The answer, therefore, is to strike first and raise the issue early in the discussion. By doing so, it is possible to get a feel of the client’s perceived value of the service before actually quoting formally. It is not too difficult to catch a client by surprise if early on in the discussion the client is asked if they would mind discussing fees. The obvious response is that they do not mind, and by giving such a response, they put you in a position to take command of the discussion.

The most important thing to remember when quoting fees is to build value first. If one simply suggests a price, whatever is quoted will seem expensive. Before any attempt is made to quote, the first thing that should be done is to describe exactly what is involved and the value that will accrue to the client from the services being provided. It may then actually seem more reasonable.

It is important to go through this process with confidence. It is important to rehearse in advance of a meeting, the value that is being provided to a particular client. If the same service or product is going to be provided to a number of different clients then it should not be too difficult to think through this process in advance. Having developed a clear understanding, it is then simply a matter of repeating the benefits to a range of clients.

In the next issue, we will discuss Marketing Methods.

Stanley Jeremiah
Goodwins Law Corporation
E-mail: stanley_jeremiah@goodwinslaw.com