Business Development Blog

Moved to: Economic Changes Call for Tactical Adjustments

In these uncertain economic times, my experience tells me that there are still people out there who need your services. But because they are more concerned with getting the best value for their increasingly scarce resources, they turn to the people they trust to introduce them to professionals who deliver value.

Said another way, referrals are how good business gets done when times get challenging.

Who are your best referrers?

Have you thanked them?

Have you reached out to find out how you can help them?

Are you relying on a small group of people to refer you or have you systematically positioned yourself to be the recipient of your perfect referral over and over again?

Or are you still relying on a random stream of referrals?

I’ve been advising my clients to get proactive. Especially now. Because even if only 25% of their business comes from referral, if that business dries up and goes to someone else, they are in trouble.

Take action now!

1. Audit your last 3 years of clients.

Determine to the best of your ability where each piece of business came from. What did it add to your top-line revenues? What did it add to your overall profitability? What source stands out as needing immediate attention? If it is a person or a firm, what’s the current state of your relationship?

One client who did this exercise noticed that there were several distinct groups of people who referred him business. He broke them up into areas – real estate, import/export and invited them to a luncheon at his office. He introduced them all to each other and had them share what they needed to be successful – resources, contacts, etc. He shared the same thing – and his practice grew 30% in under 6 months.

2. Connect with your referral sources.

Cement your relationships. You know what needs to be done. Do it. Don’t put it off. In the current economic climate, those relationships can be the access to your very best clients – because those sources have social capital behind their recommendations and provide social proof that you are the attorney with whom they should be speaking.

I spoke on the phone this morning with another client who had changed firms and never reconnected with old sources of referrals. She shared that just by picking up the phone and reaching out to people who used to send her cases, she increased her business immediately – one sent her a new case that morning.

Connecting frequently and consistently is the key to staying top of mind. Enlist your staff to help you make this happen.

3. Actively reproduce your best referral sources.

Take a look at the characteristics of your best referral sources. What is their profession? Do they belong to a specific professional association? Get clear about which are your best sources and begin recruiting new ones just like them. LinkedIn® is a great resource for this project. If you don’t know how to use it – Learn.

Think about what would happen to your practice and your pocketbook if you added a zero to the number of people who actively refer you your ideal client. Come up with a project to build 20-30 relationships who can keep you and your firm busy and profitable.

4. Develop a regular touch strategy.

I know you are busy. All professionals are. But the most productive have systems in place that allow them to accomplish the repetitive tasks that create continuity in relationship. The old adage “Out of sight, out of mind” can wreak havoc on your referrability. Set – or have your staff set – lunches at regular intervals. Get a system to regularly send out birthday and anniversary cards. Involve your support staff in collecting and sending clippings of pertinent articles or snippets of what they read in on-line news. The key here is to stay ‘top-of-mind’ while you deepen the relationship.

5. Train your referral sources

You know what you do. But do your referral sources? Really? Ask them what they think you do. You’ll be surprised at some of the responses. If your sources don’t know what you do and who is best to send your way, chances are referral quality is poor.

Most importantly, get clear which problems you solve that keep your clients up at night – from their perspective, not yours. “I’m a intellectual property attorney” is very different from “I help the creative protect and defend their million dollar ideas.”

Draft a document which illustrates what you do (not just a list of services) and for whom. Clearly articulate who your ideal clients are and then share that with your sources. Encourage them to do the same for you.

Building reciprocity builds relatedness. Relatedness is a trigger for referrals.

6. Develop a stable of professionals that you can refer – and refer them.

Referrals out can be tricky for some attorneys. The concern about liability is one I often hear from my clients. However, reciprocity doesn’t work if you don’t refer out. One of my clients dealt with his concern this way – when he passes a referral he uses this disclaimer – “I recommend X – s/he’s done a great job for my clients in the past. You should do your own due diligence, though, as s/he’s not always a fit for everyone.”

You do not serve all your clients’ needs. You can position yourself, in their minds, to do so by developing a stable of reliable professionals who serve those needs which you do not, and educating your clients as to their availability. Listen for opportunities to refer. Be known as a resource for your clients AND as a referrer by your key sources.

7. Repeat this process

Referral development is a process, not an event. Relationships are not event driven and credibility is something that is built – over time. If you have three to five hours a week – think lunches and breakfasts – you can easily roll this out over a year long program. It takes some planning and discipline, but the payoff far exceeds the perceived pain.

It takes something to alter results you are currently getting. The biggest hurdle you will have to conquer is the belief that you “don’t have the time” or that you are “too busy” to do something different.

The most productive and profitable firms have handled these conversations and developed the skills and the networks to consistently land the right kind of profitable business.

I encourage you to do the same.

Raymond Chip Lambert
Network 2 Networth
Your Outsourced Business Development Training Partner

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Originally published in the inaugural Edition of The Rainmaker Advisor - for attorneys

Let’s face it – you’re busy. You may even fall under the classification of “very busy”. When it comes to developing business, you are faced with all kinds of options: a website, blogging, networking, referrals from current clients. The question is often where do I start? And how do I manage the ethical considerations? Especially because I’m so busy.

My advice – start with what you’ve already got. Then leverage it.

Enter LinkedIn.com, a free online social networking site for professionals.

Unlike Facebook.com or Myspace.com, LinkedIn® focuses on a business demographic¹:

• Average Age – 41; 
• Average Years of Experience – 15;
• Average Household Income – $109,000;
• 46% of it’s users are Decision Makers;
• Executive from All Fortune 500 companies are represented inside LinkedIn®.

These are folks who use legal services.

I train my clients to view LinkedIn® as a technological backbone to place underneath their already existing network of relationships. With 21 million people using the service, you may be surprised to find that many of the people that you know professionally are already users.

Add three levels of depth (seeing who your contacts know, and who their contacts know) and a search engine to explore those resources, and you have an extremely valuable resource to leverage.

By having a systematic approach, you can use this free service to become a magnet for referrals, business opportunities, and profitable alliances.

Here are the Seven Steps for Using LinkedIn® as a Business Development Magnet:

1. Perfect your Profile

Your LinkedIn® Profile is an online hub for Business Development Objectives. A well designed profile lets your contacts, prospective clients, and prospective referral sources know who you are, what you do, and what you are looking to accomplish. Make sure that you spend plenty of time perfecting it. Fill out all of your education. Fill out your past employment and experience. People feel like they know you when you disclose those things. Because LinkedIn is a Social Media, you want to bring down the barriers that people experience to getting to know you and your firm. This step is critical.

2. Learn the system

The power of LinkedIn® is the platform. The social software allows you to do advanced searches, connect to your current websites and blogs, promote your profile to current connections and people who could be connections, answer questions of users who are looking for someone like you and your firm, etc. Understanding the capabilities of LinkedIn® will allow you to leverage them once you’ve built out your network in their system.

3. Reach out to people you already know and build your network

You’ve spent a lifetime making connections. You already belong to multiple networks: your firm, your law school, your alma mater, your professional organizations, your place of worship, the PTA. All of these people know people. They all have connections that have potential value to you. And you have connections that have potential value to them. By reaching out to your already existing contacts, you will quickly reproduce your existing networks and be ready to use the technology to explore the opportunities that already exist in your first level connections, as well as your second and third level connections. You will never know if you don’t build it.

4. Get strategic

Know exactly what you want to accomplish. Write out your Business Development Objectives clearly and concisely such that anyone who read them could tell if you reached them or not. Are they specific? Are they measurable? Once you are clear, consider that you have an enormous network of resources available to you via your LinkedIn® network. Now answer the following questions:

• · How are you positioned with the people in your network?
• · Do they really know what you and your firm offer? If not, why not?
• · How could you communicate that to them?
• · Does your firm have a newsletter? Put a link in your profile so people can subscribe.
• · Do you blog? Via your profile you can direct people to your blog so they can read more about you.
• · Who refers you on a regular basis and why?
• · Do you have enough of these people in your network?
• · Do the people you know have contacts that could be referring you?
• · Do you know the characteristics of the people who refer you?

Once you have the answers, look newly at the network you’ve built. You will see opportunities that you didn’t see before. They were always there. Now leverage them.

5. Use the system to manage relationships

The advanced features contained in the toolbars that LinkedIn® offers give you powerful tools to manage your interactions with the people in your network. Download them and learn to use them. You can keep track of birthdays and overlooked emails. You can get updates from the people in your network as their profile information changes. You can keep track of your searches. Via a scan of your regular emails, you can find new people to connect with and continue to build and cultivate your network.

6. Reach out to meet new people through your contacts

Once you’ve built out your network and cultivated deeper relationships with the people you already know, begin to browse their networks. Look to see if they know people that will help you achieve your Business Development Objectives. You can even do deep, specific searches to find experts, vendors, specific people, and specific companies. Using the built in features of LinkedIn®, reach out to those people through the people that you already know. Use some of that Social Capital that you’ve built up with people. You’ll be surprised how willing they are to help you achieve your goals.

7. Be Consistent

The key to any Business Development strategy is consistency. Schedule 10 minutes a day for the next 90 days to work inside the LinkedIn® system. Not only will you find it enjoyable discovering new sources of business, but you will also build a habit that will transfer into your day-to-day habits and translate into a profitable world of new opportunities.

Social Networking is not a new thing. Professionals have been doing it from the dawn of commerce. Social Networking Software like LinkedIn, however, provides an opportunity to take those networks you’ve built over a lifetime and put them to use.

By developing a systematic approach to developing your network, and a technological backbone to uncover the hidden connections contained in that network, you have the opportunity to set yourself apart from other firms, and produce the kinds of result that Senior Partners in the big firms produce on a regular basis.

In our next article, we’ll address privacy concerns, ethical concerns, and demonstrate how LinkedIn®’s system is built to handle this.

Meanwhile, enjoy building what will likely be one of the best Business Development tools you will ever encounter.

Raymond Chip Lambert, of Network2Networth, is a Business Development expert who works exclusively with seasoned professionals to leverage their existing relationships through time tested Business Development strategies and online Social Media strategy thereby unlocking the value of their existing network connections. He can be reached at 602-635-4541 or www.network2networth.com.

¹Linkedin.com-http://www.linkedin.com/static?key=advertising_info&trk=hb_ft_ads

I am constantly amazed at the resources that are available for those of us who work in the area of Business Development. In the last few weeks I've used the following resources to narrow down potential clients and potential target markets given my 'Perfect Client Profile'.  If you are taking or have taken one of our Business Development Intensives, you may find these resources invaluable.

ReferenceUSA - This database is available at your public library.  If you are not a member, go to www.scottsdalelibrary.org and sign up for a card.  It will allow you access to their databases. 

Reference USA is an InfoUSA company.  You can drill down on local businesses by multiple criteria (which we talk about in our classes) and pull up a list of companies and contact info for those companies.  It's a great way to begin to narrow your search for your perfect client.

LinkedIn - Now that you know what companies to target, you can go to your LinkedIn network and see who you know or who knows someone who you need to meet.  It is likely that there is a pathway into these companies that will get you introduced to the right person THROUGH someone you know.  Can you cold call?  Sure.  If you have trouble cold calling, check out my friend Connie Kadansky from Exceptional Sales Performance.  Her programs get you out of the headgame you play with yourself.  I highly recommend her.  However, if you prefer to be introduced, LinkedIn provides a fantastic resorce to do that.

Furthermore, you can begin to do some research when you find the right people.  The old Axiom "Birds of a Feather Flock Together" applies here.  What groups do they belong to?  Where do they hang out?  Where might you "bump into" them or other folks like them?  This is where social media gets interesting.  You not only learn about the people you know, but you can learn about their companies, their interests, and as you aggregate this info across prospects/potential clients, you get some pretty serious intelligence about your markets.  This leads you to get ENGAGED with your markets.

Remember, from the Cluetrain Manifesto, "Markets are conversations". If you learn the conversations in the environment they are happening, you are positioned to deliver the the correct message into the correct context. It's like learning a foreing language - listen, repeat, learn, create.

These are a few of the concepts we cover in our Business Development Intensive.  If you fit our 'Perfect Client Profile', please consider having a conversation with me about how it could dramatically improve your results!

Raymond Chip Lambert
Network 2 Networth
Deep Business Development

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Those of you who subscribe to my blog know that I am as strong believer in building solid, strategic, well-thought out networks.  Further, I am a HUGE proponent of LinkedIn (that's why I teach courses on getting started with LinkedIn) because we spend the majority of our lives engaged in our professions - and the social falls out of that.

I got an email and a request to forward and introduction today that I thought I would share with you.  It illustrates the magical, wholistic nature of networks.  The introduction request looked like this:

Hi Chip, you've inspired me to explore LinkedIn in more depth! See my note to XXXX. This is a CLASSIC example how this power here.
A----

A---- R---’s note to XXXX:

Hello XXXX,
I found your profile today when I was doing a search for Bob Proctor. I love his work and get his Daily Insight email. Then, your profile shows that we have a contact in common, Chip Lambert. I also noticed that you have a Nikken site. My good friend J-- W---'s wife is really into Nikken here in Arizona. You two should talk!

Gotta love how LinkedIn works!

And it was quickly followed by an email to both myself and J--:

Just wanted to share this experience I have with LinkedIn this am. You and Chip have inspired me to explore it further, so I was doing some searches for people I know and admire. I typed in Bob Proctor to see what I could find. At the top of the list was a woman named XXXX. She must work for Bob's coaching organization. Then, I saw that Chip was one of her connections! In reading here profile I saw that she is a NIKKEN rep! I contacted her and told her about (your wife) and that the two should talk. 

This illustrates the power here! Literally one blind search connected several dots with people I know. (emphasis mine)

A---

While names here are withheld to protect privacy, this illustrates the power of networks.  Especially online SOCIAL networks.  The technology unlocks the true potential of your network because it connects the dot for HUMAN BEINGS. 

We are social creatures.  Our friends - social.  Our colleagues - social.  Our prospects - social? Our customers - social?  You betcha.  And if you miss that point, you are missing the opportunity of a lifetime.

Why do you think 18 million people use LinkedIn?

Why do you think the blogosphere is so enormous?

I suggest that we are in the middle of a revolution in our capacity to relate.  And revolutions cause chaos, confusion, misunderstanding, uncomfortableness, skeptics, zealots, humbugs, and millionaires.

Which are you?

Jump in.  The water is profitable.

Raymond Chip Lambert
Network 2 Networth
Deep Business Development

 

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I met today with one of my students who has been in his industry for decades. He said something that I found intensely interesting - he was so confused and suprised about how he was getting business. He recently brought on a younger associate who was flyering and was getting business that way. "I thought that was long dead" he said to me.

It got me thinking - how many of you are confused and surprised about where your business comes from? How many of you are so busy trying to get business that you've forgotten to really look and see where your business really comes from?

We spent about a half hour really looking and came up with the following assessment:

General marketing - flyering, direct mail
Telemarketing
Referrals from past clients
Referrals from a specific set of industry partners

I asked him what his strategy was with each and he looked at me blankly. "What do you mean?" I just do whatever comes my way (not an exact quote - just the gist).

Sound familiar?

Imagine what could happen to your bottom line if you put some thought into your general marketing strategy - what tactics actually produce results? And are those tactics habituated or are they only there when you get to them? How could you systematize those strategies that work?

Do you consistently touch base with your past clients and offer them something of value? Are you at the top of their mind when they need what you sell? If not, why not? What could you do to habituate consistent past client follow up? What patterns could you put in place in your daily routine? And are you asking for referrals to people like them? Do they know that you grow your buisness by referrals? Or are you functioning under the hope that because you did such a good job that they are going to refer you in the future? Face it - if you don't keep yourself in front of these folks, they forget you - they have lives of their own with problems that crop up every day. They aren't thinking about you. You have to be thinking of them.

Have you identified key industry partners who could be referring you because you are a natural complement to what they offer? Have you considered how you could make them look good? Have you approached them to propose an alliance? Think about the impact of habituating contact with these folks - a steady stream of referrals to your perfect client.

Getting business is not hard. Getting good business is even easier. But you have to step out of the day to day operations of your enterpise and examine what you are doing in order to tap into the opportuinties that are right under your nose.

There's an old saying in the insurance industry "That worked so well we stopped doing it." What have you stopped doing that gets you the kind of buisness you really want?