Observed

The ancient Romans (and many other cultures) understood the importance of perspective to beginnings and transitions. That's one of the reasons they created Janus, the (sometimes mixed gender) diety with two faces, one looking to the past and the other to the future.

What clients want from their professional service providers is pretty well established.  According to many experts, when prospects visit your law firm or architectural practice’s Web site or pick up your brochure, they probably have three questions in mind:

1. Can you fix my problem?
2. Will you make my life easier?
3. Will I like working with you?

Despite abundant evidence of this buyer’s perspective, a lot (no, most) of the marketing content I see (especially from law firms) puts the focus on the provider’s or the firm’s credentials instead of on the client’s needs.

Kon Leong, on the other hand, gets it.  He’s the co-founder, president and chief executive of ZL Technologies, an e-mail and file archiving company based in San Jose, Calif.  Here’s how he described his approach in a recent New York Times “Corner Office” interview:

One of my early jobs was selling computer hardware. What I learned about selling was probably more valuable than my M.B.A. I had seen selling as a process just about logic. Then I realized that has nothing to do with it.

You have to present your story in their context, not yours. They don’t really care if you’re standing on top of a robot and quoting equations. If they’re in the deep part of the forest, you’ve got to talk the language of the deep forest.

So, demonstrate (through case studies and the like) that you’ve solved your clients’ problems.  Demonstrate — don’t merely assert — that you care about client satisfaction by interviewing and surveying your clients…and then publishing the results.  And tell your readers what you’re like and what you do in your spare time, instead of treating this kind of Web content as something beneath you.

It’s simple.  Be practical and responsive.

At least, according to a panel of managing partners convened earlier this month in Boston.  The occasion was the annual conference organized by the New England chapter of the Legal Marketing Association.

Why practical and responsive? The reason they offered was just as simple:  It’s what clients’ customers expect from them.

It occurred to me that this is an extension of the wisdom imparted by Laura Meherg — namely, that clients tend to want lawyers who can:

1. Fix their problems.
2. Make their lives easier.
3. And, are nice to work with.

The challenge is how to best convey practical and responsive to your clients and prospects, short of demonstrating it.  In other words, how can your marketing content reflect these abstractions.

Consider case studies.  Here are a couple of real-world examples:

• A major engineering company brought John into a case after being hit with a variety of commercial and IP claims by an oil and gas equipment company in Texas.  “My strategy was to aggressively develop evidence before I even asked for documents.  So, I examined a key executive who had all of the information and was driving the dispute…before my opponent’s defenses were in place.”  As a result, John got damaging admissions into the record early, changing the risk calculus for both sides and setting up a favorable settlement.
• When a competitor sued a global manufacturing company with a patent infringement claim, John suspected that there was another, more deadly scenario in store for his client.  “My sense was that my opponent was leveraging the patent infringement claim in an attempt to get information to support a trade secret claim and get an injunction against my client.  If successful, this could effectively shut down my client.”  John developed a strategy based on what was best for his client in the long-term by admitting the patent infringement claims and, thereby, initially denying the competing company the ability to assert the more damaging trade secret claim and quickly enjoin his client.

Well, what do you think?

Hockey players understand this.  It takes somewhere in the neighborhood of 8 to 11 shots to score one goal.

At least according to David Freeman.   Freeman was one of the keynoters at the recent annual fall conference of the Legal Marketing Association — New England chapter.

Of course, Freeman was analogizing to business development.  As in, you’re not finished when you hit SEND.  Probably not even close.

So, while it’s important to be efficient, remember that once is not enough.  In fact, once is a waste.

The average client or prospect is simply too busy and too human to remember you or me and the first seven times we blogged, called, e-mailed, tweeted or had coffee with them.

Or, more importantly, the last time we did any of those things. Capice?

By the way, while it takes repetition to be remembered, keep in mind that people make lasting impressions based on the smallest detail.  Ironic, yes?

Oh, Freeman and others at the conference also noted that clients are looking for two deal-breakers in every business relationship. They’re asking, Are you practical? and Are you responsive?

Thanks, LMA-New England!

Google has smartened up. The search engine has learned to give its users an opt-out choice as a way to avoid getting too personal.

Where, exactly, is the boundary for online privacy?  It’s a line that changes almost daily – and a line that business writers would be smart to track.

A recent article in The New York Times illustrates this. The piece reports how sophisticated online e-personalization has creeped out a lot of shoppers, causing them to experience something psychologists call the uncanny valley.

Say you’re shopping for a specific brand of shoes.  You go to a few sites to look around, and before you know it, shoe ads start popping up…everywhere.  On your Gmail, on your Facebook, everywhere.

Cue the uncanny valley.  You suddenly realize that your Internet activity is being monitored, analyzed and exploited. You realize that what may resemble good, old-fashioned customer relations is really a high-tech, customized feedback loop based on your “private” keystrokes and mouse clicks.

The ads are more than just coincidence.  By tracking your browsing habits and purchase history, e-personalization companies like Monetate can learn things about you.

The Times tells the story of Urban Outfitters’ marketing director Dmitri Siegel.  Years ago, he used e-personalization to market men’s clothing to men and women’s clothing to women.  However, he was surprised when some female shoppers (who frequently buy men’s clothing) complained about the company’s gender-stereotyping.

So, limit personalization to a few broad categories.  For example, offer discounts to first-time visitors, making them more likely to buy.  Or, market winter coats to people in cold climates.

PS:  Here’s Monetate’s response to the Times article, saying that balance is the key when it comes to e-personalization.

Personalized on-line ads may LOOK real. When we realize that they’re really the result of Internet overlords stalking us, it tends to creep us out – an impulse that psychologists call the uncanny valley. Kind of like how you feel when you watch this scene from Aliens.

Mari Smith gets it.

The ability to call up and get a real human being — the companies who can do that and go back to basics are really the ones that will be winning out and humanizing their brand.

The social media consultant was quoted yesterday in a New York Times piece about how big, tech companies like Google have ditched their phones.

As things currently stand, momentum is shifting toward impersonal digital and away from person-to-person analog.  This often boils down to numbers, with hundreds of thousands of customers (or more; think Facebook) funneling down into a relative handful of employees available for tech support or customer service.

Plus, there’s culture.  More and more of us — especially the younger us, asocial programmers and others in Generation Asperger — who just really Not Like the phone.  Or talking.  To another human being.

Ironic, considering how enamored we seem to be with the notion of story telling.

PS:  It’s not hard at all to find reporter Amy O’Leary on the World Wide Web.  She wrote the Times piece on tech companies and telephone use.  I’ll give a prize, however, to anyone who can find her phone number.

Before someone might hire me, they have to trust me.

1. Trust that I can fix their problem.
2. Trust that I can make their life easier.
3. Trust that they’ll like working with me.

Before they can trust me for any of these things, I have to demonstrate that I can be trusted.  There are a bunch of other ingredients and nuances, but that’s pretty much it in a nutshell.

What are some of the ways I can demonstrate that I’m trustworthy?  A resume is just table stakes.  Plus, even a sparkling resume, five-star testimonials and the like don’t really establish the kind of trust that I believe clients want.

I’m talking about the type of trust that includes an emotional connection.

The key word here is demonstrate.  The more tangible, the more personal, the better.  Because when I demonstrate that I care by sacrificing time or something else, I help establish a personal emotional connection — which is what is most likely to get me hired.

That’s why I was totally blown-away when I recently bought shoes from Zappos.

Things started out simply enough.  After going to the company’s Web site to buy a cool pair of black Keen loafers, I ended up on the phone with Christian, a customer service rep in Hendersonville, Nev., to close the deal.

Now, I like to gab.  So, I asked her, “Where are you?” and “What kind of shoes are you wearing?” and what have you.  Nosy meets voluble.

Well, I not only bought the shoes, I had a good time.  Best time I’ve ever had on the phone that didn’t involve…well, never mind.

(NOTE:  My shoes arrived THE NEXT DAY.   Zappos has its warehouse about half an hour away from me in Shepherdsville, Ky.)

As a first-time custie, I wasn’t prepared for what happened next.  A few days after I got my shoes, a small envelop arrived from Zappos with a Nevada postmark.  IT WAS A HANDWRITTEN THANK-YOU NOTE FROM CHRISTIAN.

I felt like a schoolboy.  For about 15 seconds.  Which was when I Googled “Zappos handwritten notes.”

That turned up an excellent post by Stan Phelps, “Zappos and the Importance of Making a Personal Emotional Connection:  PEC in the form of Thank You Cards.”  Phelps explains that what Christian did — on the phone and afterward — is typical of the customer service branding practiced by all 1500 Zappos employees.

From now on, I plan on buying all of my shoes from Zappos.  And, I’m so asking for Christian.

How does a rainmaker make it rain?  How do these dinosaurs manage to walk into a room and suddenly, magically seem to own it…and leave with a satchelful of new clients?

First, there’s nothing sudden or magical about it.  In all likelihood, it has taken:

• Years of hard work. Mike O’Horo, Malcolm Gladwell and lots of others have spoken about the years of constant practice it takes to master anything — including business development.
• Vulnerability. Along the way, that means kissing a lot of frogs.  The typical rainmaker has become conditioned to dislike taking the hit (at least a little) and doing it anyway.

There’s more.  And, sure, there are the exceptions, the tireless extroverts who edited the law review, thrive on rejection and delegate easily.

A silver bullet?

For now, however, it’s important to acknowledge that there’s no silver bullet.  It’s not, as O’Horo and Dave Waldschmidt argue, about working smarter.  “To grow your book,” Mike wrote, “you must get out there and compete.”

Which brings me to Frank Bruni and Phil Libin.  The former writes for The New York Times, and the latter is the autocrat founder in charge of Evernote, a company that peddles note-taking and archiving technologies.

Mr. Bruni recently noted that under-25s had better pick more marketable college majors and get some help making the mountain of debt many take on look more like a molehill.  Otherwise unemployment or underemployment in their ranks will continue to top 50 percent (according to the Associated Press based on 2011 data).

What he and his hundreds of commenters (as many as I had time to read) failed to mention, however, is that finding work also takes time, hard work and a bunch of flexibility.  Especially the most rewarding kinds of work.

As for Mr. Libin, he boasts that he banished landlines on a whim when he set up shop in Mountain View, Calif., in 2008.  (The company also has an office in Austin, Texas.)  He says,

We thought, why do you really need a phone?  If you have a phone at your desk, it’s just sitting there and you’re kind of encouraging people to talk on it.  Everyone’s got a cellphone, and the company pays for the plans.  There are phones in the conference room.  We’re not a sales organization, so we’re not making a lot of calls, either.  If you’re at your desk, you should be working.  And that’s actually worked really well. I don’t think anyone misses phones.   Even though it’s one big room, it’s actually fairly quiet because no one is sitting there talking at their desk. The culture very much is that if you want to talk, you go 10 or 20 feet in some direction to a quiet area.

Hey, I have news for anybody who buys the bit about we’re not a sales organization.  We’re ALL sales organizations.

First, we all have relationships inside and outside the company with people we’d better be treating as if they were our customers…or, we’d better be OK kissing those relationships good-bye.  And second, no one can express or accurately read the range of emotions it takes to sustain a relationship without hearing a voice and, even better, seeing a face…in person.  At least occasionally.

Add these up and you get sales.

Ramping up to a point about competitive advantage

Banishing landlines — and the conversations that they nurture — is nothing new or surprising.  Mr. Libin just happens to be one of the more flamboyant examples of the digitally cocooned of our times.  (He also deploys a robot surrogate with telepresence when he’s not in the office.)

In a recent article, Sherry Turkle recounts a scene in a Boston law office described by a senior partner.

Young associates lay out their suite of technologies: laptops, iPods and multiple phones. And then they put their earphones on. “Big ones. Like pilots. They turn their desks into cockpits.”  With the young lawyers in their cockpits, the office is quiet, a quiet that does not ask to be broken.

Ms. Turkle, an MIT professor and the author of Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other, also notes that we “seem increasingly drawn to technologies that provide the illusion of companionship without the demands of relationship.”

As Ms. Turkle notes, “Face-to-face conversation unfolds slowly. It teaches patience.”

The silver lining in this cloud (finally!)

In a world that texts and wears headphones (or earbuds), fortune favors the exception, anyone willing and able to pick up a phone and carry on a conversation.

So, that’s how.  That’s how (OK, one of the hows) a rainmaker gets to be (and to stay) a rainmaker.

PS:  If you have some thoughts about how, I’d love to know.  Call me.

When I connect with clients and others at Kentucky Derby time instead of (or, in addition to) the Christmas holidays, I'm being asymmetrical. The better to get noticed and remembered...something I learned a long time ago from Jim Durham.

The calendar says The Holidays are still eight months away.  For business development purposes, however, you might want to try a strategic re-frame.

Over the past few days, for example, I’ve been leveraging one of the times of year that makes Louisville (my home town) Louisville.   I’ve sent a bunch of cards and gifts to clients, prospects and referral sources that follow a Kentucky Derby theme.

When I do this, I…

1. Stand out from the crowd. While I call or write clients and others during the holidays, I understand that I’m probably lost in the deluge when I do that.  Not so when my people get a quirky note or Derby tschotske from me in late April.
2. Brand myself. Most of my clients are on the coasts in major markets.  It helps me to be known as That Writer from Kentucky.  I mean, where else can you claim Hunter Thompson, Robert Penn Warren, Bobbie Ann Mason, Barbara Kingsolver, Louis D. Brandeis, Marsha Norman, Silas House, Ed McClanahan, Sue Grafton and a poet by the name of Muhammad Ali?
3. Show some flair. Hey, it’s Derby!

You get the idea.  When the objective is to Get Found, make it easy.

PS:  This one’s for you, Jim.

Take a look at Seth’s post from this morning.  Tell me if you agree that vendors and clients live in the binary world Seth seems to describe — where we either use our power to choose or we don’t.

Or, as Seth puts it, we abdicate.

So many things are now completely up to us, more than ever before. Where and how and when we work and invest and interact and instruct and learn…

If you think you have no choice but to do what you do now, you’ve already made a serious error.

It seems to me that passing the buck on this merely because it’s easier than choosing is precisely the wrong strategy. It enables an abdication of power that will be very hard to reverse. It’s up to you, and that’s part of the power that you’ve got.

I get that I have the power to choose.  I also understand that my clients have the same power, authority and ability to choose that I have.

In the best, most satisfying relationships, however, I’ve found that my clients and I share.

I typically, for example, offer my clients options.  I might say, Would you like me to make some recommendations?  Or, perhaps, I might even ask, Would you like for me to choose?

They might say no.  They might say yes.  Whatever they say at any given moment, it’s part of a conversation that reflects the respect we have for ourselves and for one another.

And one that reflects the need to be willing and open to the possibilities of collaboration.

OK, granted, you’re probably not writing for fans of Fergie or will.i.am.  Work with me anyway, because I see a connection between the digital freneticism of the Black Eyed Peas and your visitors’ non-linear distractability.

If your goal is to get read (much less, remembered), keep your content short.  Probably under 250 words for anything you might consider a page — such as a bio, practice group description, About Us…or, this blog post.

The Nielsen Effect is why.  As in Jakob Nielsen, a Danish software engineer considered to be one of the foremost user experience gurus.

Nielsen and others have found, for starters, that we read online content 25 percent slower than we read the same content in hard copy.  As Nielsen characterizes this and other Web visitor behaviors,

“[U]sers are selfish, lazy and ruthless.”

Here’s a still-timely 2008 Michael Agger post that explains this and more…including the average user’s unwillingness to scroll.

Distractable

We’re addicted to Anything But This.  I check Facebook, listen to BEP on YouTube, look out the window, tweet something…etc., blah.  You?  It’s not in the DSM (yet), but some psychologists label it Fear of Missing Out.

And, my sense is that it’s in our DNA.  That we survived on the ocean or in the jungle or on the savannah or prairie by being hyper-alert and hyper-vigilant.

In other words, we didn’t have the luxury of The Long.  So, Keep It Short.