Do Lawyers Sell?
Wednesday, June 25th, 2008Have had a few calls recently from law firms who feel the need to train their attorneys how to sell. The one hurdle they must get over is the word “selling” as it relates to that profession.In short, “yes” they do sell and for those that do it well, they prosper.An Antiquated Way of Thinking: “The old way of thinking is that when a client needs something, they’ll call. And it does me no good (as an attorney) to call them when they have no issue at hand.”BS.That presumes a very faulty piece of logic: that a person knows when they have problems. Of course, when they get sued, that’s a “no-brainer.”But aren’t there many other business problems that would require the competent hand of an attorney to solve? And is it possible they might not know they have them?I worked with a law firm last year and trained a few of their new staff of lawyers.We made progress in changing their minds, but it was hard work. They couldn’t make the leap from ‘they’ll call me when they hurt’ to ‘I need to proactively help them see if they have issues that could cause problems later.’Are You Helping Them Recognize Business Issues?If you’re in a professional service practice of any kind (consulting, law, accounting, engineering, design) the highest service you can be to prospects is to continue to see if they have business issues that you can solve.Connect with them once in a while to see what’s on their mind in their business. Have an audit/assessment that you run to help them discover for themselves any potential pains they may run into.And when they have those issues that you can help them with, you’ll be the one to know first.
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