Picture yourself for a moment in another career. You own a burgeoning sports store specializing in the sale of hot-air balloons and you recently ran a full-page ad in the local newspaper trumpeting a sales bonanza. As interested prospective customers stream into your retail location, you show them the latest ballooning equipment, recounting the features and benefits of your hot new line, Beanie Balloons. As they feast their eyes and lay their hands on this shiniest of new gear, you offer to take them for a test ride. "Wow, that would be cool!" most respond. Up they go, and down they come, ecstatic and ready to buy. Sale done.

All right, back to earth. You are a lawyer. "Customers" don't stream in, nor can they take test rides. Moreover, the last time you placed a tasteful professional service ad in the newspaper, you probably got few results. What's wrong with this picture?

Lawyers, as well as a host of other service professionals, suffer from the lack of a tangible product that can be pushed out into the market and sold by virtue of features, benefits and test rides. Although lawyers are keenly aware and practiced these days in the process of marketing, the integration of sales skills, as they apply to the marketing of an intangible product -- expert air -- bears exploration for a number of important reasons.

Sales skills, per se, have not received the attention due them in the world of professional services marketing. Yet, ask any clients why they chose to hire a particular lawyer or firm, and a litany of demonstrated sales skills are articulated: "A friend of mine recommended him or her to me." "I felt comfortable with them because they seemed to be action-oriented." "They've worked with many clients like me." Behind these statements, taken from actual client interviews, is the work of face-to-face persuasion (read "sales") skills.

Marketing vs. Sales

Marketing's domain is to target prospective client audiences and display your expertise through a variety of tactics -- speaking engagements, networking, publishing articles, and client functions, among others. Granted, while you are engaged in these marketing tactics, you are indeed selling. However, for the sake of examining sales skills, I want to segregate them to face-to-face encounters so we can see them clearly.

For example, you have just finished a speaking engagement, and a listener approaches you and asks, "Tell me more about your practice." Or you're at a PTA meeting, and the person sitting next to you starts a conversation that leads to "What do you do?" For the sake of discussion, I want to look at sales as the final piece of the marketing process, one that entails subtle, yet identifiable, face-to-face persuasion skills.

Push vs. Pull

For lawyers, these interpersonal skills are different from those used by the hot-air balloon store owner or any other tangible product salesperson. People who sell tangible things can "push" their products into the market via advertising and sales techniques that focus on the product itself -- its benefits, pricing value or warranties.

Attorneys themselves are the product. So push marketing doesn't work, and it sounds a tad uncomfortable. Sales (and marketing) techniques that are appropriate for lawyers to use should "pull," or attract prospective clients to them. Good examples are referrals from present clients (literally pulling sales leads through them), speaking engagements and writing assignments that attract notice, and networking among referral sources such as your clients' networks, trade and business associations and other magnet groups. These settings allow prospective clients to get to know both your expertise and your personality -- those interpersonal attributes that are most persuasive with the lay public.

If these are the settings, then what is the sales pitch to move you along the marketing-to-sales continuum? The answer in Sales 101: Pitch your unique, professional attributes; use narrative techniques to demonstrate your previous client work; ask for feedback; and share your own business strategy.

"I'm Different"
Oh, really. . . .

Picture this. You are at a networking event -- let's say the trade association of a really good client. Your client has run off to refill his plate and you are all alone, munching on a shrimp puff (you think). Summoning your courage, you wend your way into another group, and as eyes turn toward you, someone says, "And what do you do?"

The usual responses occur to you: "I'm a lawyer"; "I do litigation"; "transactional work"; "trusts and estates." But having noticed in the past that these responses may cause people's eyes to glaze over, you think perhaps something more distinguishable is due here.

You are right. What you say about yourself should tell how you are unique, so that listeners can latch on and remember you. In Sales 101, this is called an initial benefit statement, and it answers the question in the listeners' minds: "Why should I listen to you before my eyes glaze over?"

An initial benefit statement is structured around two critical points of information: 1) It speaks to the real or perceived needs of the listeners and 2) it says what unique benefit you bring to folks like them. Your response to a business owner group: "I help business owners like you avoid employment litigation so your company is more profitable." Contrast this with "I'm a business lawyer." Sound different? Which would encourage your interest? Or contrast (at the PTA) "I do trusts and estate planning" with "I help parents preserve their money so their children can go to college." (Or to law school, hot-air balloon school, etc.)

Whether you are face to face over shrimp puffs or across the conference table at a business meeting, you have about 30 seconds to articulate your differences in a manner that allows the listener to understand you are not just one of a legion of lawyer clones, all of whom purport to be "professional." As a practical matter, before you meet prospective clients, script out what you will say that articulates how you are different and how you can help them. Now, let's flesh out this sales dialogue.

Tell (Real) Stories

Having piqued prospective clients' interest, you now have to move them along the persuasion process. Since you can't take them for a test drive, stories of how you have helped similar clients are your substitute. Stories can be remembered; a litany of facts cannot. Furthermore, these stories and anecdotes allow the prospect to imagine what it would be like to work with you without the virtual experience. These stories (made anonymous, of course) demonstrate without explanation your willingness to take action, strategize, advocate and empathize with the client -- all without boring the prospect with your legal credentials. Prospective clients don't connect with credentials anyway; they want to know you. Paint them a vivid picture.

In social conversation, working your way into telling these stories requires you to ask open questions so you can draw on information from the prospect's world. Sometimes it is inappropriate to move to this level of sales dialogue in the first conversation. You may wish to get together at a later date, or send the client an article you have published that tells some of your stories, or connect the prospect with an appropriate contact who can "speak" for you through the intrinsic value of the contact itself, or that person's knowledge of you.

Provide References

Telling stories makes your unique expertise real, tangible and palpable to a prospective client. But let us not forget the most potent of these reality checks: references -- clients who can speak for you.

In commercial sales, it is commonplace for prospective buyers to ask for references, and references are requested more and more by corporations looking to retain outside counsel. Although a growing trend, it is unusual for solos and small firm practitioners to offer to prospective clients the names of current clients who can attest to the lawyer's good work.

Have a ready list of clients who can act as references for you. In each instance, do your homework. Check first to make sure the references understand you are asking them to talk about specific attributes of your working relationship. Explain who the prospect is and why the reference would be appropriate. Then, take down specifically where and when the prospect should call -- home, or office, times -- so you don't intrude.

Most important, if all goes well and you secure the new client, say thank you via a phone call or a personally written note.

Shortcut: Pull Referrals

All of the Sales 101 I've discussed can be greatly embellished by getting referrals from your present clients. In fact, in almost 90 percent of the instances when a present client refers someone to you, that person will become a client. However, there's an art to getting referrals on a regular basis. It entails more than just asking for them, which to some people is offensive. Rather, remember to perform these two sales steps with every client: 1) Ask for feedback and 2) share your business strategy.

At the end of a matter, or during the course of long-term representation, set up a specific meeting with your client to discuss the qualitative aspects of your working relationship: "How are we doing, specifically?" "What else can we do?" "How else can we improve on the specific items you have mentioned?" All worthy questions.

When you ask for advice and feedback, you have the opportunity to build a more enduring relationship. The economics of client retention are paramount to any practice -- particularly smaller firms. If you don't ask, you won't know, and you can't fix. Small, unfixed problems lead clients to seek another lawyer for the next matter, or refuse to give a referral.

This "client review" process is important for another reason. Going over the past allows you both to look forward. First, it reminds the client of the work you have done (because you market intangible services, the client will forget in a New York minute). Second, with this platform from which to look forward, there may be other services you might offer. Asking for feedback is not a sign of weakness, but a true strength leading to cross-selling, new matters and referrals.

Sharing your business/practice goals lets clients know more about you and lets you sell other services without being offensive. During the client review, articulate where you are focusing your marketing energy so the client has the opportunity to refer others to you or to utilize other areas of your expertise.

As a capstone to your client review, take time to specify your other areas of practice and other types of clients, or those of your colleagues.

Buffing Up Your Sales Skills

Do you remember how you learned all the exceptions to the Rule against Hearsay? You studied and you practiced on your feet. Improving your sales skills requires much less intellectual devotion, but small increments of learning, grafted onto your extant advocacy and persuasion skills, will produce very credible results.

Bookstores are replete with books, tapes (audio and video) and interactive CD's in the sales area. Training organizations such as the American Management Association and Dale Carnegie offer a full menu of courses, public seminars and study- at-home tools. Then there's the Web, with lots of sites devoted to sales and sales management right at your fingertips.

Good selling!

© Copyright 2001, The Success Group

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