wjqedasn_ni-jeffrey-wegrzynHas everyone got their “fa la la” on yet?

While the holidays are often a mad rush for all of us, it seems that this year especially, everyone is behind with wrapping up their end of the year duties (and wrapping up their gifts), while we try to figure out shortcuts for how to manage to get everything done before family and friends descend on us (or you head out the door yourself). In among all of the holiday madness are your professional pressures, which, of course, take priority.

So rather than a thought-provoking, meaty post today, let’s look at some (mostly) quick ways that you can engage with your clients and other relationships – these can be done over the holidays, if you find you have some down time and you want to get a jump on 2017, or they can be things that you pencil into your schedule for next year. While the options for engagement are endless, and many of them are really in-depth, today, we’re going to focus on some of the simple ideas that can add a little boost to your relationships.

  • Send a New Year’s Card: If you didn’t send holiday cards out this year, consider sending out a card in the early part of January with wishes for a healthy and happy 2017. It’s important that if you’re going to take the time to send a card, there should be a personalized note with it (yes, really), so if this leaves you feeling overwhelmed, reduce the number of cards you plan to send to your top clients, or clients you’d like to engage with better, and make the notes a priority. You’ll stand out from all of the holiday cards that they received in December and connect better with a handwritten message.
  • Follow Your Clients on Social Media: Depending on which social media sites you use, take the opportunity to connect with your clients using these tools. If you’re an avid Instagram user, do a contact search to see if any of your clients pop up. Find out whether any of your clients share your love of Twitter. Audit your LinkedIn list to make sure you’ve recently updated it with any new or potential clients you’d like to be connected to. Pro tip: whenever there’s an opportunity to personalize the message inviting them to connect, like on LinkedIn, make sure to do so.
  • Connect to Your Referral Sources on Social Media: Referral sources send you work because you’re on their mind. Social media can be a way to remain connected, and top of mind, with the people that are most likely to send you business. So reach out to the people that you are most likely to send work to, and receive work from, and connect to them in the places that you’d like to foster the relationships. While Facebook does remain the most personal of the social media tools, it can be a valuable option for developing relationships, so don’t rule it out when it comes to engagement – just consider it carefully before you click “Add Friend.”
  • Set up Check-in Calls: Never underestimate the value of a phone conversation with a client (it should go unsaid that you’re not billing for this). One of the things we did this year at the ILN was to set up calls with our members to discuss their feedback on conferences – the calls were more than just about the subject at hand, though. They were an opportunity to open additional dialogue with the members, one-on-one, to hold additional discussions on other issues and ideas that the members had, and to increase engagement overall. The idea worked so well, that we instituted it on a committee that I’m part of for another organization, where it was also extremely well-received. People like to be heard, and to know that you’re open to listening to them – and sometimes, this requires you to initiate the conversation.You may already have a feedback program in place for individual matters, but consider this to be a different type of check-in call. Perhaps develop a set of questions unrelated to any previous work or upcoming matters – for example, you can say that you’re asking your top clients for their input on what they like best about your website, or what should be changed (if you’re considering a website revamp), or ask them to weigh in on the firm’s office space if your lease is coming up. You may even want to use the opportunity to discuss co-authoring an article, but also use the call to ask them “is there anything else I can be doing to help you?” The idea is to hold one-on-one conversations with a handful of people that you’d like to improve your relationships with. I split it up so that I reach out to five people a week to schedule calls (my goal is to talk to all of our members), so give some thought to what your goal might be for 2017, and how best to fit that into your schedule to achieve it.
  • Do a little Internet Stalking: While I’m generally against internet stalking, it can come in handy for business purposes. And in this sense, I’m talking again about looking at your top clients, and the clients you’d like to be doing more work for. There are a couple of things you can easily do to get yourself set up for being more aware of their needs in 2017:
    • Set up a Google alert: If you haven’t done this yet, set up a Google alert for your clients. This will allow you to monitor any news or web items that are associated with their name. Depending on the company name, you may need to put quotation marks around the search term to assure that the search is returning only the exact match for the name. You can then edit the alert for frequency, the sources it draws from, language, region, how many results it returns, and which email address it’s sent to. Then, let Google do your homework for you on an ongoing basis. Consider doing this for important search terms in your practice area as well, and your top competitors.
    • Set up a Twitter search: If you’re a Twitter user, you can set up a column in Tweetdeck that returns results based around a particular search term or name – it works like Google alerts, in that it’s doing the work for you, but you will need to log into Tweetdeck to see what the latest tweets on that topic or company name are. This is also useful for particular hashtags that are used in conjunction with your clients’ brands. You may also want to consider setting up Twitter lists for your clients’ Twitter handles, so that their tweets all show up in a single column for you to view – these lists can be private so that you’re the only one who knows who is a member of them.
    • Check out their websites: We can often forget that our clients’ websites are a great use of information unless we need something from there. Sometimes, I’ll check out a client’s site, only to realize that they’ve redesigned it, or they’ve listed several new events they’re hosting, or announced an award that didn’t make it to a social media mention. Take a look through to see what new features you may want to mention to them in your next conversation, what upcoming events you might want to mark on your own calendar, what pain points are highlighted that might be a conversation starter, and maybe even what risk factors you identify.
    • Use LinkedIn search: Unfortunately, LinkedIn is actually reducing their search capabilities a little bit, but they still offer a fairly robust search. Do two things with their search – the first is to make sure that you’re following the company pages for all of your top clients, and any clients that you’d like to do more work for. Also follow along on the company pages for any potential clients you’d like to work for. Secondly, use the search function to ensure that you’re connected to all of the people you should be connected to at those companies. Perhaps you met someone at a recent sit down, and you forgot to add her on LinkedIn afterwards. Or you’ve worked with someone for a couple of years and assumed you were already connected, but a quick search showed that it turns out that you’re not. Add the connection, with a short note as to why they should accept.
  • Do some Competitive Research: Now is also a good time of year to take a look at what some of your top competitors are doing. This doesn’t have to be too in-depth (though with more time, it can be). Look at their websites and check out their news and latest articles. What events are they offering? As we suggested earlier, consider setting up Google alerts, as well as Twitter searches, and following the firms on LinkedIn. Don’t forget that in today’s marketplace, your competitors may also include non-firm companies as well. Look for not only what those firms/companies are doing that you could also be doing, but also what gaps in the marketplace that you could be filling for your clients that you and they are currently not meeting.
  • Set up Your Calendar: If you do ALL of these things, it will take a lot of time, which is why it can be more efficient to piecemeal it and/or treat this like an a la carte offering of engagement ideas based on what works best for you, your client base, and your goals. These, along with your other marketing and business development efforts, are often not top of your priority list, and so they can easily slip your mind. So one of the things you definitely want to do is set up some calendar reminders for yourself. These can be weekly, monthly or quarterly, and will depend on what your goals are. It may be something as broad as “Look over business development plan” for a Tuesday morning at 11am in January. Or it may be “Set up calls with 3 clients” on the first Monday of the month. You can be flexible with these agenda items as your schedule dictates, but the idea is to set them up NOW, so that you have a rough reminder of when you’ll be aiming to do them. When they pop up on your calendar, you can either knock them off the to-do list right away, or work them into your schedule for a more convenient time. Either way, scheduling them now means that you’re essentially setting and forgetting it – you don’t have to try to remind yourself three months from now that you wanted to check in on your clients’ websites, or review what your competitors are up to.As you are setting some of these items up in your calendar, consider doing this for your overall business development and marketing plan as well too, if you haven’t already. I’ve shared before that I calendar a reminder to review the plan quarterly, and then schedule the pieces of the plan for the following quarter that I’d like to achieve. That way, I’m able to stay on track with those efforts as I’m working through my other daily activities and priorities.

Most importantly at this time of year, though, is to take a break, use the time as a refresh to get yourself re-energized and excited for the new year, and to come back fresh and ready for a strong 2017. Happy Holidays to all of our Zen readers!

Print:
Email this postTweet this postLike this postShare this post on LinkedIn
Photo of Lindsay Griffiths Lindsay Griffiths

Lindsay Griffiths is the International Lawyers Network’s Executive Director. She is a dynamic, influential international executive and marketing thought leader with a passion for relationship development and authoring impactful content. Griffiths is a driven, strategic leader who implements creative initiatives to achieve the…

Lindsay Griffiths is the International Lawyers Network’s Executive Director. She is a dynamic, influential international executive and marketing thought leader with a passion for relationship development and authoring impactful content. Griffiths is a driven, strategic leader who implements creative initiatives to achieve the goals of a global professional services network. She manages all major aspects of the Network, including recruitment, member retention, and providing exceptional client service to an international membership base.

In her role as Executive Director, Griffiths manages a mix of international programs, engages a diverse global community, and develops an international membership base. She leads the development and successful implementation of major organizational initiatives, manages interpersonal relationships, and possesses executive presence with audiences of internal and external stakeholders. Griffiths excels at project management, organization, and planning, writes and speaks with influence and authority, and works independently while demonstrating flexibility in thinking, especially in challenging situations. She also adapts to diverse and dynamic environments with constant assessment and recalibration.

JD Supra Readers Choice Top Author 2019

In 2021, the ILN was honored as Global Law Firm Network of the Year by The Lawyer European Awards, and in 2016, 2017, and 2022, they were shortlisted as Global Law Firm Network of the Year. Since 2011, the Network has been listed as a Chambers & Partners Leading Law Firm Network, recently increasing this ranking to be included in the top two percent of law firm networks globally, as well as adding two regional rankings. She was awarded “Thought Leader of the Year” by the Legal Marketing Association’s New York chapter in 2014 for her substantive contributions to the industry and was included in Clio’s list of “34 People in Legal You Should Follow on Twitter.” She was also chosen for the American Bar Association Journal’s inaugural Web 100‘s Best Law Blogs, where judge Ivy Grey said “This blog is outstanding, thoughtful, and useful.” Ms. Griffiths was chosen as a Top Author by JD Supra in their 2019 Readers’ Choice Awards, for the level of engagement and visibility she attained with readers on the topic of marketing & business development. She has been the author of Zen & the Art of Legal Networking since February 2009.