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We’ve talked a lot in recent posts about the idea of “relationship equity” and I’d like to revisit it again today – it particularly struck me as a friend of mine recently accepted a job offer and when she announced the company she was working for, suddenly people were coming out of the woodwork to ask her for favors and help. Many of those people aren’t connections she’s regularly in touch with – in other words, they have no relationship equity with her. It reminded me of another story.

Recently, I received an email from someone I don’t know – like everyone, I get LOTS of these, but this one struck me. He must read my blog, because he mentions it in his note. He even manages to spell my name correctly.

However, the purpose for his email is to tell me about this blog post he wrote, to suggest that I use it as the subject matter of one of my own posts, and that I tweet out his link to my Twitter followers. In fact, he goes so far as to mention that his is a topic worthwhile of discussion by the entire legal blogosphere. Really?

Well, I’m certainly not biting.
Continue Reading You Won’t Get Anywhere Without Relationship Equity

Today, I’m bringing you a post from an ILN marketer, Amanda Schneider. Amanda is with ILN member firm Epstein Becker Green, where she is the Chief Marketing Officer. Amanda provides tips on how firms can leverage the multigenerational attorney workforce through involvement in business development initiatives.

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It is critical for firms to understand that attorney engagement in business and client development must begin in the early stages of an attorney’s career to ensure that he or she is prepared for the prospect of partnership. However, in order to do this, the firm’s culture must be accepting of providing true business development opportunities to non-partner attorneys.
Continue Reading How to Leverage Multigenerational Talent to Achieve Business Development Success

It can seem like the reason that Disney is so successful is truly a dose of magic.

But when you break it down, they have a real formula for excellence – excellence in leadership, creating and sustaining the right culture, and pursuing client satisfaction. All of the pieces of that formula are important, but even after putting them together, what truly makes Disney successful is their ability to bring people back again and again. And to do that, they need connection with their customers, and to empower their customers to tell the stories that make other people want a piece of the Disney experience too.

That isn’t much different to the way business development works for lawyers and law firms.
Continue Reading Connection Brings People Back – Business Development Lessons from Disney

We’re ending the week on a high note, with a guest post from Lance Godard, of The Godard Group. For over 30 years, Lance has worked with lawyers and law firms to help them craft their messages, so if you’re looking for someone to help you with your content, look no further than The Godard Group. Today, he gives us some solid tips for conducting a quarterly tune-up of our marketing/BD plans.

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Just as you regularly perform maintenance on your car, you need to regularly tune-up your marketing and business development efforts, objectives and plans in response to changes in your practice, your client base, your experience, and your network. In fact, it’s a good idea to do that quarterly, because three months is enough time to determine how well your plan is working or, more to the point, how well you are working your plan. Here are three things you can do:
Continue Reading Say Goodbye To Q1 With A Tune-up Of Your Marketing & BD Plan

Success that starts with leadership and continues with having the right people makes complete sense – but all of that doesn’t mean much if your clients aren’t satisfied. And that’s the third piece in Disney’s philosophy.

Disney’s strategy is to exceed their guests’ expectations by paying attention to every detail of the delivery.  Paying attention doesn’t cost money, just time – and that’s something that firms can be doing as well.  While I recognize that time does equal money for law firms, what Disney says next makes sense – there can be big wows (like building a new rollercoaster), but paying attention to the small details changes the experience – it’s easier to do 100 things 1% better than to do 1 thing 100% better. When you link all those little wows together, you create a big wow.
Continue Reading Success Requires Client Satisfaction – the Disney Philosophy

Starting at the top is essential, but you need the right mix of people within your firm to really be successufl. Disney calls this “cast excellence.” The corporate culture at Disney is, by design, well-defined, clear to all, and goal-oriented. It can seem challenging to implement this at a law firm, but I’ve seen it done (take a look at our member firm in Australia, Hall & Wilcox, with their emphasis on Smarter Law). Jeff Williford of the Disney Institute challenged firms to think about their corporate culture, and whether the existing culture is what they want – internal branding is important, as is communicating your culture up front and early.

If you communicate your culture up-front, others can make the decision if they want to engage with you or not.  For example – Disney doesn’t allow anyone with visible tattoos or mohawks to work there, and they communicate that early so people can self-select out. Similarly, Hall & Wilcox has a transparent culture of collaboration and community, with a fully open plan in their offices – when you interview, you know right away whether that’s something that would work for you or not.
Continue Reading Success Requires the Right Culture – the Disney Philosophy

We’re so pleased to announce that we have welcomed a new member firm, Royer Cooper Cohen and Braunfeld LLC, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Royer, Cooper, Cohen and Braunfeld is a 35 lawyer, full service firm with offices in the Philadelphia area. RCCB’s partners brought to RCCB a wealth of experience practicing in large multi-national law…

Several years ago, I had the opportunity to attend a keynote session focused around Disney’s approach to business excellence. The recap I shared has been among one of my most popular posts, and the advice provided by Jeff Williford from the Disney Institute proves to be timeless. Despite a changing marketplace, the tenets that underlie their success remain the same – and that’s perhaps why Disney has proven to be so successful in a sustainable way.

I’d like to break down the post into a series to revisit the key points that Jeff raised in his speech, and why they’re still relevant today. Although his presentation was about how Disney creates a truly magical experience, there are a lot of parallels for the legal industry – we’re also a service industry after all!  Any of the particularly important points that relate to law firms will be in bold throughout the post.

He told the audience that Disney employs more than 60,000 people from 65 countries, with 10% of those being interns, and warned us that his presentation on Disney’s approach to business excellence would be like drinking water from a firehose. But he did say that Walt Disney reminded everyone in 1955 that “it all started with a mouse.” (Which inspires me to encourage all of us to think about how and why we got started – where are OUR roots? Who is OUR mouse?)
Continue Reading Success Starts with Leadership Excellence – the Disney Philosophy

It’s no secret that attending an industry event can lead to business opportunities. When you choose the right one, the networking alone provides the return on your investment.

But we’re often so eager for the actual attendance to equal business that we forget that as with any business development opportunity, it’s not one-and-done. In the dating game, while it might be possible for you to meet someone and marry them the same night, and find lasting happiness, it’s much more likely that you spend time getting to know each other before making a commitment. Your business relationships are much the same.

How can you translate those conference attendances into business opportunities? There are as many articles and blog posts on this as there are ways to do it, but today, I’m offering up three tips to use after your next event to move the needle. 
Continue Reading 3 Tips to Translate a Conference Attendance into Business Opportunities

Here we go, folks, it’s the post you’ve all been waiting for. What are the truly ugly commercials from this year’s crop of Super Bowl ads?

Before we dive into this year’s, I wanted to take a look back at some of the ugly commercials from previous years. Which made me realize that we’ve been doing this annual round up for seven years. WOW. Looking back shows me that we really have improved in the “ugly” category. In this year’s group, we have two, where we used to have 5 or more! If you’d like to enjoy a trip down advertising memory lane, here you go:

Some other interesting observations strike me from looking back:

  • It’s been a few years since we’ve seen a Go Daddy Super Bowl commercial. Historically they haven’t been overly well-received, and that’s probably why they’re not investing in the Super Bowl anymore. But they certainly got a lot of name recognition from it. Does that mean the adage “there’s no such thing as bad press” doesn’t hold true here? Have you even thought about Go Daddy recently?
  • Where has Snickers gone? They’re another disappearing brand from the Super Bowl radar. I don’t think Snickers are in any danger of disappearing any time soon, but give some thought to the idea of what might happen if you’re not regularly reaching out to your clients, and especially not reaching out to them in the big moments. Looking back, I realized that Snickers is missing. But otherwise, I wouldn’t have thought about it. Would your clients even notice you were missing if they didn’t hear from you?
  • Historically, I’ve apparently really disliked Coca Cola commercials. But this year, they really came around. That shows that you CAN turn around someone’s opinion on your message, and that messaging is an important factor. Although, interestingly, I had to look back to remember feeling that way about Coca-Cola. So also worth considering is the idea that when your BRAND is incredibly strong (is it?), you can withstand some messaging mishaps. Doritos has also improved, but I was WELL aware that I usually don’t like their commercials when their ad started. I was pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed their commercial so much. It shouldn’t be a surprise to a client to have a good interaction with your messaging, even if they generally like working with you.

Continue Reading Super Bowl Commercials – The Ugly of 2018