Stop Selling and Start Helping

So many attorneys are hesitant about developing business because they don’t like the concept of ‘selling.’ They bristle at the thought of picking up the big, scary telephone or meeting with a prospect one-on-one to ‘pitch’ their services or, even worse, having to ‘close’ business.

If you are one of these lawyers, I have good news for you: you don’t have to ‘sell’ to develop business. In fact, I don’t even recommend it. Experience teaches us that a sale is often just the pleasant by-product of helping a Client succeed. So instead of selling, you should be in the Client success business. 

To help your Clients succeed, first you must first understand their needs. To do this, you have to do your homework to gain an understanding of their business and industry. Then you need to plan and prepare to have a business conversation them. This conversation will involve a ‘needs assessment,’ which simply means asking questions that are designed to surface the Client’s challenges, issues and/or problems – aka needs…