A lifelong journalist and writer, Larry Bodine is the Editor in Chief of Lawyers.com the busiest online destination about legal issues for clients and lawyers. He defines the editorial focus and assigns all the original content.
He has written the LawMarketing Blog since 2004, and it has received half a million unique visitors. The blog covers business development and marketing for lawyers.
His prior work includes being Editor and Publisher of the ABA Journal for 8 years. Earlier he was a print journalist for several newspapers, including the New York Daily News, where he won several prizes for his reporting, and the National Law Journal, where he was an assistant editor.
He practiced law in Madison, Wisconsin, as a litigator, and was the marketing director for Sidley Austin in Chicago for 9 years. When he is not in an airplane, he enjoys spending time in his offices in Glen Ellyn, IL, and Tucson, AZ.
According to a German proverb, “A man has two ears and one mouth so that he hears much and speaks little.” Mark Twain followed up the thought by saying, “If we were meant to talk more than listen, we would have two mouths and one ear.” And I’ll add: We were given two ears and one mouth, and they should be used in that proportion in a new-business call.
Listening is the one sales technique that I can’t live without. It saves me from having to make a pitch. Prospects hate being pitched (see discussion below).
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There is a critical step in the marketing and business development process that I have seen many lawyers miss, time and time again. Lawyers have spent countless hours and hundreds of dollars pursuing potential clients, but they left money on the table because of this omission. It may seem obvious when you read it, but the missing step is following up.
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Search engine optimization (SEO) is the science of refining your website so that it attracts more visitors, thus producing new business leads and calls from potential clients. Research shows that firms that the top fact that the No. 1 online marketing tactic used by high-growth firms is search engine optimization.
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One of the best ways to pursue face-to-face legal marketing is to become visible in a trade or business organization. Becoming a leader in a business group is one of the best ways to increase your word-of-mouth advertising.
But lawyers have told me, “I belong to the bar association, my alumni group, a biking club and my kids’ school board. But none of them generate any business, so obviously joining organizations doesn’t work for law firm marketing.”
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When most lawyers think about selling legal services, an image comes to mind of a smarmy guy on a used-car lot selling a pink VW. The good news is that selling is not about pitching or convincing the other person to buy. It’s about asking questions.
In fact, your law firm marketing plan should include selling like a doctor who asks questions about “where it hurts” and listens attentively to the answer. Doctors are some of the best salespeople there are.
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Many a lawyer has wondered as they drove past the headquarters building of a corporation, “why aren’t we doing work for that company?” As they roll by, lawyers can even see some of the executives through their windows, working and sending legal work to other law firms. Wouldn’t it be great if there were a free, easy way to identify these executives, contact them and get to know them in person?
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Word-of-mouth advertising is the most powerful way to generate new business. We lawyers innately know that what is said about us becomes our reputation. What we don’t always realize is that we can influence and even improve it.
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