Last week I had the pleasure of attending my first Legal Marketing Association (LMA) Annual Conference, a 30 year old institution which started, like a lot of great things, in the Bay Area. My mission was to catch up on trends and as usual be a nerd about how technology can help enable better marketing.
For my post today, I’m going to avoid too much “tech talk” and tell you instead about the ABCs I learned at LMA15. The ABCs have changed over the last 30 years but they are just as fundamental and important for you to master as they were when you were three years old.
The new ABCs:
The first LMA conference was held in San Diego in 1985 and focused on education and training for legal marketers. In 1985, I Will Survive by Gloria Gaynor was top of the charts and the first .com domain was registered. Top of the billboard charts in January 2015 was Blank Space by Taylor Swift with the lyric of “I’ve got a blank space baby, and I’ll write your name”. While I’ll come back to the ABCs, a topic woven throughout LMA is how access to information has changed our marketing environment from of “buyer beware” to “seller beware”. Consumers have enormous access to information and power to give feedback. In the legal context, client are no longer just “surviving” but really writing the rules of client engagement.
So about those ABCs. The conference keynote address was given by Dan Pink. Dan held the rapt attention of the LMA audience by focusing on three principles: the ABCs. Dan gave us another historical touch point by looking back at how these ABCs have changed since 1984 David Mamet play Glengarry Glen Ross when the ABCs were “Always Be Closing”.
Dan taught us that the new ABCs for a successful marketer are:
A = Attunement, or as Dan put it “get out of your own head and get the other person’s perspective”.
B = Buoyancy, or “stay afloat in an ocean of rejection/noise/confusion”.
C = Clarity, or “be a problem finder not a problem solver, curate information don’t just access it”.
So 30 years after the first .com domain is registered, “buyer beware” has become “seller beware” and our ABCs have shifted from “Always Be Closing” to put yourself in your clients’ shoes, focus on getting them information that is valuable to them and persevere because there is a lot of noise out there.
A new equation, focus on value:
Following the keynote, I had the pleasure of attending a session entitled Looking Back to Look Forward. Burkey Belser, Jim Durham and Kim Perrett presented here and quite refreshingly stood up and spoke about real programs, real impact and real formulas they have used to be successful in this new selling environment.
Kim told us about a competition she had at her firm called the “6 in 90”. Partners at her firm had to visit 6 clients in 90 days and not sell anything. This sounded like Attunement and Clarity to me. Jim talked about how his client team program, just getting internal partner teams together to talk about client issues (Clarity) pulled average revenues increases for key clients up from 3% to 30%.
Jim presented a great equation:
V=WYG-$$
The equation means this: V (the value of a service) is equal to WYG (what you get) minus $$ (what you paid). If you get exactly what you paid for, the value of the service is $0. The challenge for all of service providers is to deliver more than what people want in order to deliver real value.
The other sessions worth mentioning here were the GC panel and the session focused on client service models. The incredible GC panel told us they really do take law firm relationships seriously but they are fundamentally trying to manage risk and costs together. One panelist said he thought it was unlikely he would be able to justify the value-add of service from a law firm with a Manhattan address. This sounded like firms are not delivering on the V side of the V=WYG-$$ equation.
Discussions around client service models focused on the principle of “serve first, bill later”. Clients need to be shown extraordinary service to get the value of the legal fees they are incurring (and that service cannot be strictly the legal advice you are paid to deliver). This brought me back to the ABCs. Law firms need to see things from their client’s perspectives (Attunement), they need to appreciate that changes in processes of legal service hiring are not directed at them personally but impact them greatly (Buoyancy), and finally they need to help curate the latest and best information for their clients in order to prove their value (Clarity).
Here at HighQ, we focus on how technology can empower our clients to work together with their clients more efficiently, curate knowledge so they can engage their clients on topics of real concern, and deliver real value. There has been a lot of change in the legal industry, marketing, and client service in 30 years and we’re excited to be right in the thick of it, re-learning our ABCs just like everyone else!
