Thanks to database technology and various analytics that we have access to we are able to more narrowly define and target subsets of our clients and prospects.  This is often referred to as vertical marketing.

It’s been interesting to me to reflect on our industry over the past 12 years and see the very significant differences in the way that we practice business development and marketing in 2008 versus that way it was done in the 1990’s.  Marketing is no longer as effective when done with the shotgun approach.   Mass media still works, but other types of relationship driven strategies are becoming far more effective.

Are you engaging in a conversation with your clients and propects?  Is there a developing relationship?  Have you embraced social networking and all that it has to offer?

Over the last few months I conducted a series of market research surveys in law firms throughout the country.  One of the things I assessed is the most important factors for choosing a law firm.  The number one answer was “someone you trust recommends the firm.”

Let’s think about that.  If your clients are most likely to come to you because someone they trust recommends you, then doesn’t it makes sense for us to spend far more time building relationships…the kind of relationships that lead to great word of mouth on your behalf?

I’ve known Shirley for about 5 years now and she’s one of my dearest friends.  Shirley just celebrated her 85th birthday and she still runs circles around most people.  I stopped by her house today and she told me a story.  It was about 2 different department stores that we have all heard of.  She visited them both today and one provided great service and one was substandard service.  As she told me the stories I thought about it from a marketing perspective.  What makes this account especially fascinating to me is that Shirley is what I would call an “influential.”  Shirley is a “go to person” for many of her friends.  She is very bright, knowledgeable on numerous topics and has lots of life experience and common sense.  Besides all that she is absolutely delightful, entertaining and lovable!

So here’s the story.  Shirley happens to have a 55 year old handicapped son, Glenn.  She brings Glenn home every weekend.  Well, with summer approaching and Glenn’s birthday being in the summer, she was out shopping for an air conditioner for his room today.  She began the story by telling me this - “Target has so many helpful people all over the store that it’s just wonderful.”  As she began her shopping excursion in the store several employees were helpful right off the bat.  She was having trouble finding the air conditioners and so she asked for help.  A very pleasant employee told her to look just beyond where she was and pick up the phone.  He told her that somebody would then come to help her within 60 seconds!  Did you get that?  60 seconds.  Shirley’s next words to me were “58 seconds later, I had help.”  A woman arrived, she had a walkie talkie and she was heard saying - “I’ve got it, I’m here.”  It almost sounded as if a team of people were standing by to make sure Shirley got her help.

There’s more to the story than that but this struck me.  If I perceive this story correctly, I believe that Shirley was very pleased with the service but she was WOWED by one particular policy and that was the focus of her great “word of mouth advertising” on behalf of Target.  It was the “60 second rule.”

I can tell you that it is very likely that the Target experience and the 60 second rule will be repeated multiple times because Shirley is an influential and she talks to a lot of people.  It was a little thing, but I think that is a big part of her VERY favorable impression of the store.

What happened next was also fascinating from a marketing perspective.  Shirley then went to another department store that will remain nameless.  The first thing she said about it was this - “there was no one around anywhere to help me.”  For me as a listener, I immediately had a bad impression of the store.  But as she went on I learned that she got some great prices and some other very favorable things happened at that store.  She also said that she “finally found someone and she was very nice.”  But Shirley had already compared this store to Target and their 60 second rule.  Target won by a landslide.

Application for us?  What kind of word of mouth do you think your firm is getting?  What do your clients say about you?  They are probably not talking about your legal skills.  As I’ve said before, your competence as an attorney is assumed.  They are probably talking about service issues.  They may be saying - they’re a great firm, but it’s hard to get somebody to call you back.

Here’s my marketing recommendation for the day.  Put a system in place so that every client phone call - whether new or existing - is returned in 60 minutes or less.  That doesn’t mean that you need to have an attorney call back with an answer.  It means you need to have a knowledgeable and professional staff member call back to say - “we got your call and Mr. X will be following up with you tomorrow morning.  Is there a good time to reach you?”

How are you creating the WOW factor?  As I survey PI clients across the country I can tell you that the top 2 things that they consistently report as being most important to them as clients are:

1. Phone calls are returned promptly
2. Legal staff is knowledgeable

What are your “Shirley’s” saying about your firm?  If you instituted a one hour call back policy - I bet that would be part of what they’d be talking about…

Last week I had the opportunity to travel to Las Vegas to speak to the Network Affiliates Group on the subject of Designing an Experience Your Clients Will Talk About.  The conference was held at The Wynn Hotel which is an experience in and of itself.  Steve Wynn certainly knows how to build hotels. 

In preparation for the presentation I surveyed the group on a number of topics.   Here are the key findings:

• 71% indicated that they have 10 or more brand ambassadors for their firm
• 53% categorized their employees as “highly motivated.”
• Only 35% stated that they have “excellent employee morale.”
• 47% believe that their client satisfaction is excellent
• 53% have very low employee turnover - that is lower than 5% turnover
• Only 24% indicated that they believe they have an “excellent system for hiring the right people.”
• I was happy to see that 65% have a right hand marketing person
• 59% conduct client satisfaction surveys
• Only 41% affirmed the fact that 80% of all decisions are made emotionally.  Some believed that number to be as low as 20%!
• Only 24% have a system in place to keep staff informed of firm progress, goals, challenges and successes

We had some great discussion and I want to thank Harlan Schillinger, Norty Frickey and Tammy Kehe for inviting me to come.  I always walk away having learned far more than I taught.

One of the things I really enjoy is reading case studies by some of my favorite marketing guru’s.  One of those that I think has a lot for all of us to learn is Dan Kennedy.  In his blog today he wrote about his business partner, Bill Glazer, and one of the tactics he uses to achieve “marketplace dominance” in the retail industry.  I think it has some lessons for us.

Dan says of Bill:

“He very diligently makes certain that every customer that walks into one of his stores never leaves without his sales associates asking them for their complete contact information (name, address, phone, email, etc.).  Now, depending on their spending, he communicates with them often.  In fact, certain customers will receive from his store yearly:

• 18 mailings
• 4 personal calls from their sales associate
• 4 voice broadcasts
• 52 weekly emails

Now in marketing, this is what we call marketplace dominance.  It doesn’t matter how many expensive TV spots the big box retailers buy, they canNOT compete or make the impression that Bill’s store makes with his customers.”

In the legal industry, I find that many firms fall short when it comes to prioritizing building their databases and then systematically cultivating those relationships with consistent and varied communications.

My recommendation is that every single contact be put into your database - clients, referral attorneys, vendors, employees, etc and then each target audience should receive varied communications at pre-determined timed intervals.  This is one of the very best ways to stay top of mind with your various audiences, thereby positioning your firm for a steady stream of referrals.

The best customer service comes from the heart.  I think the video below is the best example I’ve ever seen of the heart of customer service, of making a difference.  I hope you’ll take a few minutes and watch it.

http://www.stservicemovie.com/

In 2006 Vertex Data Science, one of the world’s largest provider of call center outsourcing did a comprehensive study to improved the performance of its telephone sales operators.  What they learned is fascinating and I think it is applicable to our call centers in the PI industry.

Successful operators, it turned out, speak little and listen much.  When they do speak, their voices fluctuate strongly in amplitude and pitch, suggesting interest and responsiveness to the customer’s needs.  Operators who speak with little variation come across as too determined and authoritative, but by speaking invitingly, being responsive but not pushy, a skilled operator can let callers find their own way to a sale.  “Like a mother speaking singsong to a baby, variation sounds perky and inviting.  If operators do it right, they’re almost certain to be successful.” 

These valuable insights have allowed the company to train operators to converse more effectively, and it helps them seek new hires who exhibit these speech patterns.  They say that the system has improved their telephone sales performance by 20 percent or more.

During the study, the scientists were able to very accurately predict the success or failure of the call very early in the conversation based on how things were said, not what was said.  There is a growing volume of other evidence that confirms that the old theory is flawed - that theory being that what is said is more important than how it is said.

Let’s apply this to our industry.  Wow, where do I start!  I have done ghost calls at firms throughout the country and I can tell you that in most cases the operators do a good job of working their way through a script and getting the facts, but all too often they do a poor job of showing warmth and interest in the client’s situation.  What is lacking in those instances is any kind of a connection.  And only rarely do I find an operator that is innately a good listener.

A few months ago I did a study, in a firm, of conversion of new case calls by operator.  We looked at this with the understanding that all calls were randomly distributed to the 6 operators.  Yet the conversion rate differed quite substantially.  The intake person that had the highest conversion had already been singled out by the firm as their “best operator.”  What set her apart is the warmth in her voice, the genuine interest she had in helping people, and the connection she made with most of the callers.

Let me give you a real life example of how training for your intake people could heavily impact your bottom line.

Let’s suppose you get 300 new case calls a week.  You currently sign 20% or 60 cases a week.  If we could train your staff so that each operator converted just 2% more of the cases that are currently lost that could add as many as 6 cases a week.  If the average value of a case in your firm is $5000, that could mean a difference of $30,000 a week.

You may have a completely different set of numbers but I want you to think about  what the impact would be of adding 2% more cases to your bottom line.  I think it will make you consider prioritizing training for your intake operators in the coming year.

USA Today had an article in yesterday’s paper that talked about the continuing decline in viewership for television.  But the statement that really grabbed me was this one:

I was speaking to a group a few months back and I remember asking them if they think their clients are talking about their yellow page ads?  There were quite a few chuckles.  Why?  Because, it sounds ridiculous.  Let’s face it…nobody is talking about your yellow page ads.  They’re just not memorable and that is not what gets you noticed.  That’s why I continually encourage attorneys to reallocate some of the traditional mass media advertising dollars to technology and relationship driven marketing strategies.

One way to get noticed and make an impact is to create a system whereby your team designs memorable client experiences.   In this audio session I will discuss some strategies to help you build that kind of system for your firm.

Absolutely.  My best advice to you is to find a way to embrace Web 2.0 as soon as possible.  It is changing the way we acquire and nurture clients and you need to understand that before your competitors do. 

The average PI client is about 35 years old.  Do you really think they are looking for a lawyer in the yellow pages?  Probably not.  Instead they are becoming increasingly sophisticated web users that demand a significant and credible web presence from their vendors of choice.

A basic website is no longer sufficient.  We now need to concern ourselves with understanding blogs and podcasts, rss feeds and social bookmarking, online video and tags. 

We must have an online visibility that breeds confidence.  That means showing up in Google, Squidoo, Digg, Technorati, Del.icio.us, Zoom, and My Space - just to name a few. 

By the way, here’s my Squidoo site.  It’s fun and it’s free!  http://www.squidoo.com/cindyspeaker/

The choices are truly endless.  That’s why the pursuit of greater online visibility and credibility requires study and research.  Focus your efforts in the right area.  Web 2.0 efforts are inexpensive but labor intensive.

We’ve been hearing for quite some time now that in the near future, ads will be a common occurrence on cell phones.  I don’t know about you, but I have resisted believing that such a thing could really happen.  After all, who is going to stand for being charged to receive intrusive sales pitches on their cell phone?  Well, it seems that advertisers are already making headway in this effort that has been aptly referred to as ”mobile marketing.

”First of all, 75% of the United States has cell phones.  That equates to about 225 million people.  Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt predicts that we will soon see free cell phones, with the cost of a service plan subsidized entirely by ads.  As a matter of fact there is apparently already a Google-branded phone in the works.

An existing business model for “SugarMama” provides some insight as to how the near future may look.  The Virgin Mobile service provides 4 million users - mostly teenagers - with up to 75 minutes of free airtime a month if they watch ads and answer questions to prove they paid attention.  Since its launch in May, SugarMama has been used more than 2 million times, and it’s gaining about 1,000 new users a day.  It has also attracted advertisers such as Pepsi, Sony Pictures, and the U.S. Navy, which gives the small mobile operator a welcome stream of nonvoice revenue.

Just imagine the power that will go to the early adopters of mobile marketing in the soon to be golden age of cell phone innovation!