Getting it . . . or not

I remain puzzled as to why some people who should know better don't seem to get how client relationship works.

I was recently told about a senior partner in a law firm, who was asked if he was free to meet a new client - a client whom the firm in question had been assiduously courting over a long period. The client had eventually been landed, and work was starting to flow. The partner had not been involved in the process but his department had been.

The partner's response was, "Do I have to? Now we've got the client, and the work, is it really necessary?"

You may be thinking that I have made this story up. Sadly not. 

I wonder how long that client will stay.

Some thoughts about value

The end of November and we were in a hotel, a little north of London. I had booked the room online, after a fairly hurried web search (grandchildren don't arrive to a timetable). With few hotels in the area, the choice was limited. 

The hotel's website looked good: clean design, good images, and not too much guff. What I didn't do, but will in future, is look at what people said about their experiences of staying there. I did that the following day. A little too late.

What we found, within a short time of arriving, was a gap between what the website promised ("gracious country living"), and what the hotel delivered ("old, and tired, and dirty") - the language is my wife's. To some extent, there is always going to be this risk. I have learnt, over the years, to treat hotel websites with a degree of caution (a passing acquaintance with the potential deceit of marketing is useful) but what really got me this time was all about price and value.

The hotel wasn't cheap. Perhaps not quite Central London rates, but not far off - and had they delivered on the website promise, we would have felt we had had value. As it was, we felt ripped off. It is a hotel we won't be going to again, and even if we haven't posted any comment on TripAdvisor, we have told a lot of people about it.

And it made me think about how law firms and their clients look at value and price - and why when I talk with clients in the course of client feedback interviews, what they want to talk about when we talk about fees is not price but is value. For when clients are making decisions about their lawyers, and whether they are going to instruct them, or instruct them again, what the client will look at is value. And yet many lawyers are not capable of articulating what value they deliver, and, worse, many still make assumptions about what their clients value - rather than asking them.

Don't assume you know the answer, ask the question!

Client feedback is always interesting. Well, it should be, and if you are naturally curious, and allow the client time, it almost certainly will be. But be prepared for there to be resistance: the lawyer closest to the client may fear a loss of control; the client may think this is simply another box its lawyers want to tick; lawyers generally, as I have said before, rarely like questions being asked where they don't know the answers.

And it always seems easier to make assumptions about how things are going. After all, surely if the client is continuing to give you instructions, and is paying you, and if she hasn't complained, all must be well? 

Perhaps - but then again, perhaps not.

Earlier in the autumn I called a client about setting up a client feedback interview. Her immediate response: "I don't really do satisfaction surveys". We talked some more. I explained that it wasn't just about satisfaction (or dissatisfaction), but was an opportunity to talk about what really mattered to her in the relationship with her lawyers. And that we would likely be done in an hour. Two weeks later, the hour stretched to nearly two, and the insights she gave about the law firm I was asking about, and her group's approach to how they engaged with lawyers, and what they were really looking for, were useful, and are thought provoking. And they helped me make sense of some of the research I had done before I went to see the client.  

How the firm uses that knowledge is now for them to decide - but they have asked the questions.

And if you want to talk about how a client feedback programme might work for you, and what is involved, give me a call or drop me a line.

Variations on a theme

My time and attention has been on family, not work, the past few months. After some 40 years of it being the other way round, this has been both instructive and novel. Whether I had wanted to or not, I have stood back from the day job. Instead my priority has been settling my frail uncle safely in to a nursing home and getting to grips with his affairs - his bank accounts, tax return, subscriptions, bills, receipts, direct debits, standing orders, council tax, community alarm, flat, neighbours, the rest of the family.

And I have found myself standing on the edge of his life and that of my aunt, now dead some 10 years. Going through their papers (my uncle has kept everything) I found a cutting from The Guardian, a short piece, Little boxes of past lives, by Peter Preston - about how the memorabilia stored in our garages and lofts will mean little to those who one day clear them.

My uncle is still alive, but clearing his - their - flat, I have been doing just what Peter Preston and his siblings and step-siblings did when his stepmother died. And as I have gone through my uncle's brown cardboard boxes, files of papers, treasures and bric-a-brac I have travelled the years of their lives, 40 before marriage, 40 married, and my uncle's last lonely 10. And I keep thinking not just about my uncle's prescience in keeping that article, but that his plunge into dementia has robbed me of the opportunity to have the conversations we might otherwise have had - not just to fill the gaps in his life but in those of his wife's. For it is just the bare bones of those two lives in the boxes; the remainder - their real lives and the life they lived together - is now for ever locked up in his head.

So, conversations.

When I set out on 1 August, my aim was to help lawyers and marketers understand each other. To bridge a gap that I experienced first hand in my two years as a Director of Marketing. 

But time with and for my uncle has allowed me space to reflect on the challenges that law firms, law firm leaders, and lawyers have to meet - and the need for honest conversations about them. For sure conversations are held in law firms, but for all those that are, there are as many that aren't. Worse, there are those worthless conversations which convince us we have had them, when we haven't.

And in all of them it is as much about what is not said as what is.

Over the next few weeks this website will change, to reflect a widening of the focus. No longer just conversation about where lawyers and marketing meet, it will be much more about how best to have that much wider range of conversations - and in particular the ones lawyers would prefer to avoid.

Not quite starting again - I already have three projects on the go, each at various stages. Listening to clients, to learn what they are really thinking; a project to find out why law firm leaders and partners avoid discussing what may happen next; and a project to look at why, even now, we don't feel able to talk about mental heath and wellbeing in law firms.

But a change of direction.

Some thoughts on branding

Back in 2005 I read Good companies are from Venus, a piece by Richard Tomkins in the Financial Times. I still have the index card on which I copied out a quote (I have a number of these, all now somewhat dog-eared). This is one I often refer to. For in less than 100 words Tomkins catches what “brand” means (and in doing so highlights the particular challenge for law firms when thinking about brand, if indeed they do).

A high quality product is just the price of entry to a market. Beyond that, what companies are really selling is the thing they can use to differentiate their products from their A high quality product is just the price of entry to a market. Beyond that, what companies are really selling is the thing they can use to differentiate their products from their competitors: the set of emotions, ideas, and beliefs their brands convey . . . The most successful brands and companies are those that establish a relationship with consumers based on communicating with them, understanding their needs and empathising with them.

Although Tomkins was writing about companies, much of what he said is equally applicable to professional service firms.

Law firms, by and large, accept that to succeed in today’s legal services market they need to establish differentiators (see my last post Futurology sucks). Not least, as in terms of legal expertise there is often very little to choose between good law firms and good lawyers.

Where lawyers have difficulty, is in articulating their brand, and communicating it. Lawyers don’t really do emotions, ideas, and beliefs - well, not in business. What they do is “law” - but then so do any number of other law firms.

Asking law firms to think about the intangibles of "brand", rather than what they do, is not always a very rewarding exercise. But it should be, because this is the first step for a law firm and its lawyers in identifying and then realising their brand. And in helping them to use this to build those long term relationships with clients which are so necessary to the success of the law firm.