8 minute read
What Are You Selling Your Clients?
SELLING WHAT ARE YOU Your Clients?
by LE ILLE
When I mention the word “sales” to most lawyers, I usually get one of three looks in response. Sometimes I get a horrified look, like I just told them their child is ugly. Sometimes I get a look of indignation, as if the concept of sales is beneath lawyers, like the mud on the bottom of our wingtips. And sometimes I get a coy acknowledgment that “selling” exists but is not something that is discussed in polite company.
Sales is a dirty word to many lawyers, but it is an integral part of running a law practice. Selling is simply the act of persuading a prospective client to buy your legal services. Every law practice does it, whether you call it that or not. If you can’t convince people to buy your services you won’t be in business long, no matter how great a lawyer you are.
Unfortunately, many lawyers are not very good at sales. We went to law school to be lawyers, not salespeople. In the past, a lawyer or group of lawyers could hang their shingle and expect new clients to soon start walking in the door. It was a seller’s market, the number of lawyers was relatively low and firms didn’t really need to
advertise. Sales was little more than an initial meeting with an engagement agreement being signed at the end (and sometimes not even a written agreement).
We are now in a buyer’s market, though, and clients have the power. Choice abounds. The number of lawyers continues to increase each year. Non-lawyer legal service providers offer alternatives to hiring lawyers for many legal issues. It is time for lawyers to acknowledge that we can’t just wait for clients to come to us—we have to sell our legal services. And—we mostly suck at it.
When lawyers do try to sell their services, most try to sell one of two things: their time, or their experience.
Clients don’t buy your time
You can’t sell time and clients can’t buy it. Time is a constant constraint, not an asset (or a cost). You can’t hoard time like emergency supplies. You can’t trade time to someone else like baseball cards. Time has no value. i
As a constant, it is always moving forward. No matter how nicely you try to package six-minute intervals, you can’t sell time (what you are really trying to sell is the work that you do for the client during that time, but most lawyers don’t talk about it that way).
Assuming that you could somehow sell time, clients aren’t buying. Clients don’t care how long it takes a
lawyer or paralegal to perform a task, no more than you care how much time the plumber spends under your sink. The only time a client cares about is turnaround time; how long before the case is resolved, how long until the drain stops leaking. And in fact, the shorter the turnaround time, the more value to the client (and the more likely they are to hire you). How much work a matter will require from you is irrelevant to clients.
Clients don’t buy your expertise
Much of the lawyer marketing out there is based around the experience of the lawyers, the cases won, or the awards and accomplishments received. Let’s face it: we lawyers like to talk about ourselves. If you take a look at the typical lawyer or law firm website, for example, there is a lot of talk about the lawyers and how great they are.
While I have no doubt you are a great lawyer – after all, your website says so – most clients don’t care. Clients assume you are a good lawyer, or at least that you know the law. More important to them is whether you can solve their particular issue. Can you help prevent my ex-wife from pulling the kids out of their current school, as she recently lost her job and wants to move with the kids to live with her parents in Florida? Can you keep me from losing my driver’s license over my fifth OVI charge?
Can you use your experience handling certain types of cases to show clients that you can handle their specific case? Sure. If you have been representing fathers in child custody matters for 15 years and know the specific laws that can keep their ex-wives from moving the kids out of state, that will differentiate you to a prospective client in that situation. But the experience needs to be tied directly to the client’s issue rather than a general statement of years of practice.
What do clients want?
In order to be successful at selling your services to clients, you have to sell what the client wants. Clients aren’t looking for a lawyer; they are looking for a solution to a problem. It just so happens a lawyer can provide them with that solution.
It is painful to admit it, but to most consumers of legal services lawyers are fungible (at least when initially searching for a lawyer). If you want a prospective client to buy from you over the lawyer down the hall, you need to be selling what they want to buy.
How to sell your services to clients
First, you need to get beyond the belief that “selling” is a dirty word. Lawyers don’t think twice about taking a potential client out for a round of golf or dinner with the hope of winning their business. You may call that “business development,” but it is just as much selling as talking to a prospective client on the phone or during an initial meeting. If you have a legal solution that can help solve a prospect’s problems, you should want to sell that solution to every person with that problem.
Second, selling is all about the buyer. Buyers have many options when it comes to getting help with their legal issues. You are asking someone to give you their hardearned money in exchange for your services. How do you convince them to do that? Try the following:
1. FOCUS ON OUTCOMES.
Clients buy solutions to their legal issues. Lawyers are merely the conduits to those solutions. People can be motivated to act by one of two forces: the removal/
avoidance of pain or the gaining of pleasure. ii Most legal consumers seek lawyers to help them get rid of or avoid some sort of pain. It might be the threat of jail time. It might be the resolution of a lawsuit brought against them. Or it might be anxiety about whether a business deal will close. If you can speak to the prospect’s pain and how you are a solution to eliminate it, you now have the prospect’s attention. People will pay money if you can take away their pain.
2. DON’T TALK ABOUT YOURSELF.
People—and as lawyers we are no exception—like to talk about themselves. However, when you are trying to sell something you want the discussion all about the buyer. What is their current situation? What are their pain points? What outcomes are they trying to accomplish?
The Greek philosopher Epictetus is credited as saying
that we have two ears and one mouth, and so should
use them in that proportion. iii That is definitely true
when selling our legal services. Ask pointed questions and then let the prospect talk. Only talk about yourself if the prospect asks about you or the firm.
3. SPEAK IN THE CLIENT’S LANGUAGE.
One of the bad habits that we pick up in law school is the use of legalese and Latin phrases. Law school casebooks are filled with them, and they quickly find their way into our everyday conversations (much to the dismay of our significant others). There is a time and place for these words and phrases, but not in marketing materials or at an initial consultation. Nonlawyers (AKA “normal people”) don’t know what most legal phrases mean, let alone use them. When lawyers use Latin phrases in conversation, clients can get lost and confused. And that is the last thing you want when trying to convince someone to hire you.
4. USE EMPATHY.
Most legal issues come with a host of emotions for clients. For example, a party to a divorce might feel anger at their spouse, fear of not being able to maintain their lifestyle on a single income, rejection that their spouse no longer wants to be married to them, or embarrassment that they weren’t able to make their marriage work. Often, as lawyers, our clients unleash these emotions upon us.
In these situations, clients are simply looking for someone to vent to. Acknowledging their feelings can help you foster a relationship with them. After all, people
do business with those they know, like and trust. iv If they like you because you seem to understand their situation,
Reliable expertise WE OWN IT .
250 W. Old Wilson Bridge Rd., Suite 250 Worthington, OH 43085 614.540.6633 www.cecinc.com
and trust you because you have created a safe place for them to exhibit their feelings, a prospect is more likely to hire you.
i Ron Baker is the godfather of value-based pricing for professional service firms. From https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-timesheets-focus-firm-leaders-wrong -things-ron-baker/ ii In Freudian psychoanalysis, the mind seeks pleasure and avoids pain. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleasure_principle_(psychology) iii From https://dailystoic.com/two-ears-one-mouth/ iv Bob Burg, from his book The Go-Giver. From https://www.entrepreneur.com/ article/245160
Bradley Miller, Esq.
Miller Law LLC brad@bradleymillerlaw.com
