How to Make 2018 Your Best Year Ever

It’s already February; is it too late to discuss firm development mistakes to avoid in 2018? Or lessons learned in 2017? It doesn't matter what month or year it is, for some firm development lessons are timeless, and furthermore, we need to revisit them on a regular basis.

Here are four universal business development lessons that are often forgotten:

1. No more Think-It-Over’s

It's better to get a NO than a THINK-IT-OVER. Declare a “sixty-day war on TIO’s.”

Here’s a sample of my journal entries when I find myself accepting THINK-IT-OVERS:

“Day 22 of my sixty-day war on Decision Deficit Disorder (DDD) – Yesterday, there was collateral damage. An owner of a small firm called me and said that she wanted to get together to see if I could help her client development process. Her biggest problem – handing out lots of suggestions and advice to potential clients who then tell her they need to think–it-over. So, I suggested that she be prepared to make a yes/no decision at our meeting. She said she just wanted information so that she could think-it-over. I told her if she could not make a decision at our meeting, then we could never fix her problem with potential clients. She canceled our meeting.”

As I journaled through the war, I got better and better at recognizing all the clever ways people DELAY in the client development process. I also realized (again) that when people are afraid to make a decision, it doesn’t help matters for me to allow them to TIO.

Lesson relearned: When you give your best presentation, and all you get is a TIO, be gutsy enough to CLOSE THE FILE and tell your prospect, politely, “It’s over.”

2. Stay out of the buyers’s system.

Potential clients have a well-defined system for buying. They MISLEAD, gather as much free information and consulting as possible, DELAY with some form of TIO, and then go into hiding. As soon as I give away my valuable product/firm/service information without a solid commitment as to what I’ll get in return, I’m in the buyer’s system. Once I do that, I’ve lost control, and my chance of getting a profitable client is close to zero.

Lesson relearned: Stay in control. Firm development should be an honest, mature, adult-to-adult interaction. For it to be that, I must stay in MY system, not the client' system.

3. Client development success is all about behaviors and activities.

Most legal professionals responsible for firm development tend to get lazy on activities to find new clients as soon as we get a solid client base. Once we stop developing clients, the pipeline empties quickly.. Do you have a COOKBOOK of required daily/weekly firm development activities? Do you do what you need to do to be successful? Or do you endlessly check your e-mail and rearrange things on your desk?

Lesson relearned: Firm development success is greatly dependent on executing the right behaviors every day.

4. Confront Your Fears.

The one thing that holds most legal professionals back, more than anything else, is FEAR. Fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of not making money, fear of hearing “No,” fear of not being liked; the list goes on and on. If you don’t face your fears head on, and deal with them, they’ll paralyze you! It helps to remember that the best lessons come from your biggest failures, that’s a valuable consolation prize.

Lesson relearned: It’s OK to be scared; it’s not OK to let that paralyze you.