Networking & Business Development

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I’ve been debating whether or not I wanted to jump on the bandwagon and address yesterday’s social media debacle with Kenneth Cole.  If you’re not familiar with what happened, both Nancy Myrland and Gini Dietrich wrote great posts that also recap it here and here.

I decided that I did want to add my two cents – I was certainly dismayed by Cole’s tweet yesterday, though not surprised.  If you’ve driven down the FDR in Manhattan over the last ten years, you’ve seen his snarky political billboards on the side of the road.  Why I think non-politicians shouldn’t use their power and money to push their political philosophies on the rest of us is a whole other post, but I thought Cole really stuck his foot in his mouth yesterday.

As Nancy mentioned in her post, he needs some serious crisis communications work – we had a speaker on this very topic back in 2007, so I thought I’d dig through my conference report archives and share some of his wisdom with you.  Although I’m particularly disgusted by what Cole said yesterday, social media and other gaffes can happen to the best of us, and we need to know what to do if we’re in the same situation.Continue Reading Communication Crisis – My Two Cents on the Kenneth Cole Scandal

If you love shoes like I do, you’re familiar with Zappos.com, the online shoe and clothing shop. Since it was founded in 1999, it has grown to be the largest online shoe store.  How did they do it? Largely, in thanks to their CEO, Tony Hsieh.  According to their website: 

In 1999, at the age of 24, Tony Hsieh (pronounced Shay) sold LinkExchange, the company he co-founded, to Microsoft for $265 million.

He then joined us [Zappos] as an advisor and investor, and eventually became CEO, where he helped us grow from almost no sales to over $1 billion in gross merchandise sales annually, while simultaneously making Fortune magazines annual Best Companies to Work For list. In November 2009, Zappos.com, Inc. was acquired by Amazon.com in a deal valued at $1.2 billion on the day of closing.

 Not too shabby, huh?Continue Reading Lawyers: What Can We Learn From Zappos?

Ah December.

The time of year when everyone is rushing around trying to finish end of the year projects and planning for next year is already underway.  

There have been a lot of "end of the year" posts lately, and I’ve been debating whether to throw my hat into the ring.  

I’ve been thinking about this post for a week and couldn’t decide what to write about.  I wanted to reflect on what I’ve learned in the last year, but should it be what I’ve learned personally? Professionally? Through Zen Legal Networking? Through our lawyers? 

I just couldn’t come up with a theme.

Until I read this post over at The Bloggess.

And I cried.Continue Reading It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Last week, the ILN hosted our 2010 Regional Meeting of the Americas in Houston, Texas.  I’ll be putting up some posts this week re-capping some of the sessions, but I thought I’d start today with my recommendations for what to do when you get home from a conference.

At our meetings, although the business sessions…

Dear readers, I have not forgotten about you, but with our European Regional Meeting fast approaching, I’ve been concentrating on those details and not on my blogging.  However, I have been reading some excellent posts from colleagues recently, which I wanted to share with you.  So grab a cup of coffee and take a read!

Over at Nancy Myrland’s Myrland Marketing, she’s been talking about some important messages:

  • In "Sales is Not a Dirty Word," Nancy reminds us to be our "client’s advisor, their mentor, their solution to a problem, and sometimes even their friend." 
     
  • In "You Are Who You Are. I Am Who I Am," she addresses a lot of the recent bashing we’ve seen by blog commenters and people on Twitter and encourages us all to embrace each other’s differences with a little respect – great message.

At the Legal Watercooler, Heather Morse has been using Mad Men to teach some valuable lessons about legal marketing – even if you’re not a Mad Men viewer (which I’m not, but I love a series that connects television with business), her posts offer great points:

  • In "Mad Men, Lawyers, and Legal Marketing," Heather advises lawyers that it’s "YOUR job to turn YOUR success into new BUSINESS," just as senior partner Bertram Cooper from Mad Men tells Don Draper "Turning creative success into business is your work."  
     
  • In "Mad Men, Lawyers, and Client Relations," she points out that we’re all a personality type and "By better understanding how we personally process and receive information, and by learning how to identify how others do the same, we best communicate and work with one another."

Continue Reading What I’ve Been Reading

I read an interesting article this afternoon from the New York Times, called "Mind Your BlackBerry or Mind  Your Manners." It brought up the controversial topic of whether or not it’s appropriate to be fiddling with your smart phone during a meeting. Since I know that lawyers are often tethered to their Blackberries (and I’m starting to see a lot more iPhones with our group!), I thought it might be an interesting topic to delve into further.

Though there are some things I take a firm stand on (dogs, not cats, coffee, not tea), this is one of those grey areas for me. And I think the answer is "it depends."

In the article, the author mentioned an instance where a company required all of its employees to take meeting notes on their Blackberries, which made one VP look as though he was paying less than full attention.  I’m often found in a conference tapping away on my iPhone, not because I’m checking email or Facebook, but because I’m tweeting the relevant points to my followers and using that as my note-taking system for a later blog post.Continue Reading Tethered to Our Smart Phones – Good Business or Just Rude?

For my last session of the conference, I attended “The Digial Firm 2015 – The Changing Face of Professional Services Marketing Communications,” with opening remarks from Anthony Green, President of Concep, moderated by Dwain Thomas, Managing Director of Concep, and panelists Susan M. Snyder, Senior Consultant at Hay Group, Jodie Kaminsky, Vice President of J.P. Morgan Asset Management, and Royal Simpkins, Firmwide Communications Manager at Sedgwick, Detert, Moran & Arnold LLP.  The panel looked at new marketing channels and how they impact marketing professionals in a fee earning environment.  When the room was polled, we learned that a lot of the audience is using social media in their communications mix.  Jeannette McGarr wondered on Twitter what her attorneys would say about social media becoming the norm in firms. 

The panelists went into three case studies of firms using digital strategy with Concep, starting with J.P. Morgan.  They needed a reduction in cost, which for them, meant getting away from paper. They were looking for both strategic and tactical recommendations to help them to migrate their current contact strategies to digital, and used their competition to convince naysayers to get into social/digital communication tools.  It took 2-3 years for them  to switch entirely to digital communications, and now their marketing plans are much more integrated with digital media and have the same messages across platforms.  At the start of this process, they had 15 different databases, and have since merged all of them.  When all data repositories begin to communicate, the power is exponential for intelligence and relationship management.  Continue Reading LMA 2010 – The Digital Firm 2015 – The Changing Face of Professional Services Marketing Communications

For the first session of the day, I was in Track One – the Business of Law: Recovery: Refocusing the Inside Counsel/Outside Counsel Partnership to Maximize Profitability.  Presenting was Harris E. Berenson, Esq., the Assistant Vice President/Chief Counsel for Liberty Mutual and Senior Counsel for Liberty Mutual Insurance Company.  His presentation focused on the idea that inside and outside counsel have a partnership, and he started by saying that a partnership, at its core, is nothing more than a relationship.  However, although this is a simple concept, the challenge comes when trying to execute it.  Relationships, both personal and professional, must be built on trust, support, consideration, respect, caring and the mutuality of responsibility.  Inside counsel are looking for a long-term partnership – similar to what people are looking for in a relationship as they get older.  They don’t want someone who just wants to be “on the list;” they want a true business partner who knows their business and understands industry issues.  Because of this, they’ll often go with their gut instinct and recommendations from trusted friends and colleagues.  Berenson said when looking for outside counsel, he checks with his counterparts, industry peers, and internal teams – when later asked, he emphasized that he does not look at directories and rankings lists for outside counsel and said “they don’t matter.”   

Once the decision is made to work together though, how do both sides get the most out of the relationship?  Berenson said there needs to be a “mutuality of expectations.”  As an example, he said that if the client needs the firm to be available 24/7, the firm needs to be able to articulate how they will do that, not just that they can.  He said there must be “mutual hand-holding,” similar to being in a romantic relationship, but he clarified that by “hand-holding,” he didn’t mean constantly taking people to lunch or asking for their business, but showing the client that you’re a valuable business partner.  He also said that lawyers should show their clients that they can do what they said they could do, to suit up and show up, and to keep their promises.  Berenson said that each side comes with their own baggage, and it’s up to each side to figure out what that is, and how they can learn from each other.  Continue Reading LMA 2010 – Recovery: Refocusing the Inside Counsel/Outside Counsel Partnership to Maximize Profitability