Are You Cross-Selling? Or Just Sharing Space?

It's not all that surprising that more lawyers don't cross-sell (just ask Dan Hull). But it's good for you. And not coincidentally, it's good for your clients too, when you do it right.

But knowing that doesn't fix the problem. You need to make time to get to know your colleagues, writes Tim Corcoran in Law Firm Cross Selling Basics:

Work from another office periodically. Pick two or three colleagues you don’t know, even if your clients have never had a need in this area, and take them to lunch this year. When traveling to a client site, if there’s a satellite office nearby, drop in and walk the halls. Your colleagues will refer business to you when they trust you, and they won’t generally trust you until they know you.

Read the post. Then get up out of your chair and onto your partners' schedule. You'll both be better off.

The Secret of Client Development?

The secret of client development really isn't a secret. It's straight-up, hard-working, honest to goodness client service. Service that would make your mother proud, that makes your best clients pick up the phone to tell their friends about they great lawyer they've hired.

That's why you need to read Dan Hull's "world-famous and annoying but highly correct, inspirational and soulful" 12 Rules of Client Service:

The client is the main event.

Structure and deadlines. They're not just for clients.

Dan Hull's "In Praise of Structure" from his blog "What About Clients?" This post nailed it so well -- the working style of this culture, of the BigLaw environment where I learned how to work -- that it reached out of my computer screen and slapped me in the face. There's no guarantee it will do the same for you, but chances are pretty good that it will cause you to think about your work habits, about your project management skills, about the importance of setting deadlines and sticking to them. On every single project you touch. And it will also serve to remind you that no matter what you might read elsewhere, you can count on Hull to tell it like it really is, to tell you what's really important, to articulate why perfect is the new good enough.

Solving your client's problems. The right way.

Dan Hull's "Cross-Selling: You Folks Really Partners? Or Just Sharing Space?" at What About Paris? Cross-selling isn't up-selling, convincing the client to buy additional services merely because you offer them. It's knowing your client, her legal needs, her business objectives, her pressure points. It's knowing your partners, their strengths, their experience, their weaknesses. It's putting the pieces together to determine if indeed the solution to your client's problem sits in the office down the hall. When done right, cross-selling is introducing one friend with a problem to another with a solution. Isn't that what you do, solve your client's problems?

Some lawyers believe cross-selling is a myth. Not Hull. And he's right: cross-selling isn't a tall tale, it's your job, your duty to your clients and to your partners.

Today's Law Marketing Resource

Holden Oliver's "Rule 5: Bombarding the client in real time" from What About Clients? Over-communicating is rarely a bad thing, especially when you're being paid for the work you do on someone else's behalf. Not the "man, I had to work so hard for you today, stayed up all night" variety, but the kind that sounds like "this is what I did today, who I talked to, what I wrote. And here's your copy." If your client doesn't know you did it, you didn't. Make sense? It makes even more when Oliver says it. Read this post.