Legal News

Tips for Lawyers from Legal Marketing Experts: Part 4 Intelligent Selling / Alvidas Jasin

By Gina Rubel

In my last post, I shared my Twitter notes from Leveraging Marketing Tools to Increase Your Exposure presented by Ross Fishman at the 2010 Legal Marketing Association (#LMA10) Annual Conference. Ross is CEO of Fishman Marketing and an organizer of the Just JDs program. He presented as part of the Just JDs: Business Development Strategies for Lawyers along with me, John Hellerman, Partner and Co-Founder, Hellerman Baretz Communications, James A. Durham, Chief Marketing & Business Development Officer, McGuireWoods LLP (and author of The Essential Little Book of Great Lawyering), Deborah Knupp, Partner of Akina Corporation and Richard P. Klau, who at the time was the Business Product Manager for Blogger, Google and who is now leading the charge for Google Buzz.

Also among the line-up was Alvidas A. Jasin, Director of Business Development of Thompson Hine LLP. To wrap up the morning program, Alvidas presented Intelligent Selling: Using Competitive and Client Intel to Grow Your Book. I have compiled my Twitter stream from insightful program. When reading the tweet tips, please note that the language and text are informal and stay within Twitter?s 140-character rule.

March 10, 2010 / 12:30 p.m.

• Alvidas Jasin of Thompson Hine up next at Just Jds #LMA10 on Intelligent Selling: Using Competitive and Client Intel to Grow Your Book.
• Client intelligence = "Asking your clients" ? Are they satisfied? ? use third party (someone other than you) then USE the data.
• If you ask for feedback, be prepared to act on it! Otherwise, your credibility is shot.
• Ask: For which areas of practice do you use outside counsel but not us? You may find out that they don't know you do that work.
• Create Client Service Teams (lawyers, paralegals, staff, marketing, etc) around top clients ? bring together regularly and status.
• Client-centric law firms conduct end-of-matter reviews ? shows you care, uncovers issues early, provides opp for new biz.
• End-of-matter reviews should be done w/i 30 days.
• Never do a presentation without sending around a sign-in sheet so that you can follow up with your contacts and provide a service.
• Ask: How do you feel about the deliverables as they compare to the objectives communicated up front?
• Ask: At any point in the matter were you pleasantly surprised? Disappointed?
• Make annual client meetings mandatory at client site, off meter, where you were, where you are, where you're going.
• Set up a separate charge code for unbilled time and track it. Show clients what they were billed vs unbilled as investment time.
• Don't use annual client meetings as opportunity to sell - use it as a time to listen. Offer before you're asked.
• Don't sell oranges to someone trying to bake an apple pie ? if a different practice area makes more sense for a client, let them know.

I will be adding more blogs on tips from many experts over the next few weeks so stay tuned to hear more tips on business development, marketing, public relations, and measuring ROI. And be sure to check out all of the folks listed in my previous blog ? they?re all thought leaders in legal marketing.

Gina F. Rubel, Esq., is the owner of Furia Rubel Communications, Inc., a public relations and marketing agency with a niche in legal communications. A former Philadelphia trial attorney and public relations expert, Gina is the author of Everyday Public Relations for Lawyers. Gina and her PR and marketing firm have won numerous awards for legal communications, public relations, media relations, strategic planning, corporate philanthropy and leadership. She maintains a blog at www.ThePRLawyer.com, is a regular contributor to The Legal Intelligencer Blog and blogs for The Huffington Post. You can find her on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/ginafuriarubel or follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ginarubel.  For more information, go to www.FuriaRubel.com.

Full post as published by The Legal Intelligencer Blog on April 30, 2010 (boomark / email).