The Challenge:
Fortune Top 1000 corporate clients are firing their primary law firms in unprecedented numbers. Statistics offered by The BTI Consulting Group, Inc. would suggest that if you serve a Fortune Top 1000 client, your chances of being fired within an 18-month period are greater than 60%. Your belief that you are good lawyers doing good work and that you deserve to be the preferred provider is irrelevant and, quite frankly, worthless.
The news gets worse; even if you can be counted in the minority of firms that will not experience being fired by a Fortune Top 1000 client, more than half of your competitors will. How do you think such competitors will react when they lose a significant client (including the loss of millions of dollars in revenues)?
Simply put, your best clients will almost certainly be under assault by your competitors. The better the client, the more likely some other firms want to serve them. What can you do to protect, or bulletproof, your clients from that assault?
The art of discrimination
You cannot super-please all your clients all the time. Good effort across the board is required but extraordinary efforts must be reserved for the chosen few, with emphasis on "few." Perhaps our sense of equity encourages us to want to be fantastic for all clients, but successful bulletproofing requires focusing on your chosen few.
Selecting the bulletproofing clients
There are many ways to analyze clients by a series of criteria, but the simplest is the secretary's horrible phone message test. Your secretary reports to you that a client has called requesting that all of its files be delivered immediately to a competitor law firm. Which client do you hope it isn't? The first client that came to mind is the one you should bulletproof first. Repeat the process a couple of times and you will have the two or three clients on which to focus.
The art of bulletproofing - "high touch" sport
Obsessed with the billable hour, we are tempted to do this by remote control, perhaps with client gifts and eloquent correspondence (and a shiny, client-centric brochure thrown in for good measure). The inescapable truth is that the solution involves hand-to-hand contact. We must visit the client in person.
The bulletproofing meeting objective
The first decision is to determine what we are not going to do during our bulletproofing visit. We know that the client may raise issues that would create further service opportunities, and if we want we can take the client's satisfaction temperature. However, we are visiting to do neither of these things. Those purposes are for other meetings. It follows that the client relationship is not about a single meeting, but many. The strategy of a bulletproofing meeting is to explore needs. (See the detailed "possible" Bulletproofing Meeting Agenda later in this article.)
The bulletproofing attitude - "humility"
Lawyers grasp concepts quickly. This is good; it creates tremendous self-confidence and courage. But it also can lead to the vulnerability of a failure to realize what we don't know. Engaging in a bulletproofing meeting with excessive self-confidence can lead to a reluctance to listen and learn. Listening and learning are the backbone of a successful bulletproofing meeting. The ego must be checked at the door. The purpose of the meeting is to learn, not to impress.
The preparation for bulletproofing
Achieving the meeting objective requires skill. This skill is acquired through rehearsing and brainstorming possible resistance or problems that might threaten to derail the meeting. Go in with a few options and alternatives ready, rather than waiting to be blindsided (and being brilliant in the shower the next morning).
The needs exploration
At the heart of the meeting is the exploration of needs, from the routine to the unmet, and from the explicit to the latent. It is at this elusive latent need plateau that you separate yourself from your competition. This is not easily done, but it is possible. It involves creating such a high level of trust and interactive communication that the exploration becomes a true act of teamwork between the client and your firm. These needs transcend anything that could have been conceived by you or your client independently.
Living the learning
The conceptual work is over. It's time to act on the precious jointly-discovered ideas in order to breathe life into the notion of actually meeting your client's latent needs. This requires determination and sacrifice (in the form of some quality non-billable time). Ideas are easy - execution is hard. It is in this execution, however, that the client is truly won over and becomes bulletproofed such that the spear of the competitor simply cannot penetrate the armor you and your client have jointly created.
Three key steps for an effective bulletproofing meeting:
- Step One - Accept hospitality: If you are offered a cup of coffee and you would prefer water, it's alright to say so. What is not alright is to decline the offer entirely. You may believe that in declining such an offer you are being less of a nuisance, imposing less. Not true. Declining that offer can have the same impact as refusing to try one of your grandmother's freshly baked cookies. This is a good strategy only if you want to offend.
- Step Two - Ask a smart question or two: Smart questions reveal preparation. They contain a premise or fact that you could only know if you have done your homework. "We noticed that you have built new facilities in three Asian countries in the last year. Is this part of a larger expansion strategy? Will you be moving into South America as well?" Your questions should demonstrate your desire to further your understanding of your client's business and also telegraph your knowledge that could only have come from preparation.
- Step Three - Focus on undiscovered client needs: In a highly interactive discussion that remains focused on the client - not you or your firm - explore ways that working together might produce unanticipated value. What information or processes or protocols might yield unimagined benefits to your client? Could reconfiguring reports to the client in ways that are more compatible with the client's internal systems yield greater value? Could offering bulletins based upon your industry knowledge provide your client with valuable information not otherwise available? You can only accurately assess such value by effectively communicating and listening to your client. No one, regardless of intelligence, has a hope of determining how to offer undiscovered value unilaterally.
The capacity of the legal profession to satisfy its clients seems to be on the decline. Our research suggests that the number one reason for that is that clients do not believe that their firms truly understand their business. Many lawyers do not appreciate the distinction between knowing the client's legal needs and knowing the client's business. Lawyers tend to see their clients through a filter of the client's legal needs. Clients protest loudly that their business is not a series of legal issues but rather business problems. The power, value and resulting effectiveness of proper exploration of the needs of crown jewel clients will yield true competitive advantage. Understanding and exploring needs at the highest levels of abstraction is not possible without truly understanding the client's business. The encouragement we would offer is that the client has a lot at stake in this equation and therefore, when properly invited, is likely to offer extraordinary cooperation and participation in the process.
Gerry Riskin is a former Managing Partner, a co-founder of Edge International, and an internationally recognized lawyer, author and management consultant. Contact Gerry at riskin@edge.ai or call his global iPhone (202) 957-6717.
Robert Millard is a partner in Edge International and is one of the co-directors of the London-based Managing Partners' Forum ("MPF") Strategy Panel. Contact Robert at millard@edge.ai or call his global phone (202) 957-6717.
Gerry and Robert acknowledge the substantial contribution of their Edge International partner, Patrick McKenna, to Edge International's work in this area. Thanks also to the Managing Partners' Forum, for whom the article was originally created.