Just too good to say no? Really?

You'll know the scenario well. It's late on a Thursday afternoon, and you get an email or a call. They're offering you a last minute opportunity to sponsor a column, buy advertorial, take a table at a dinner, entertain clients at a sporting event - and in each case the USP is that the cost has been heavily discounted.            

What do you do?

What I suggest is that you take a deep breath, pause, gather your thoughts - and then say "Thanks, but no thanks". Particularly if it is an opportunity that you turned down when it was first offered. If you didn’t want to do it then, why would you want to do it now? And don’t say because it is cheaper. And if you hadn’t heard about it before, why is it being offered now? There is only one reason - they couldn’t sell it before. OK, perhaps they got the pricing wrong (but if that is the case would you trust them to run the event?), or someone has dropped out at the last moment (it happens - but again why?). My money would be on them having to sell it, and thinking that reducing the cost will make it irresistible.

And what if you are persuaded to say "Yes."

You will have a very short timescale to prepare, to find the guests, write the copy, or design the advertisement. And does it really fit with your firm's business strategy? Is it aligned with your business development objectives? 

We have all done it. The combination of the sales pitch, the “saving” we are making (actually, you’re not: it's just the hole in the budget won’t be as big as it might have been), and the need to be seen to be doing something may just make it too difficult to say "No".

But try to.

And this may be why the next time (and there is always a next time) it's not you who are contacted but instead one of the partners. If that happens there are two things you are going to have to do: say "No" to the partner, and then have words with the salesperson. 

But once you have done it once, it’s easy.

Conversation needs engagement

This may seem rather an obvious thing to say, but all too often law firms fail to engage. Rather than a conversation, they end up simply broadcasting: one way traffic, the content chosen by them, and to all intents and purposes no more than upmarket brochure ware. Telling us what they have been doing, or, worse, what they are (and in the language of law firm websites - have you ever seen one that isn't sprinkled with "expertise", "commercial awareness", "solutions", "depth of experience" etc. etc.).

The lawyers' argument is that this is what everyone (i.e. other law firms) does, and why do differently? Of course there is a place for what one of my acquaintances calls "bread and butter press": the announcements of new wins, or the appointment of new partners. But, really, is this all they can do?

I wonder. If I was being critical, I might think that the real reason is that anything else is just too much like hard work.

For conversations to work, there has to be both intellectual engagement and emotional engagement. The latter, particularly for lawyers, is sometimes difficult - and both make demands on time and resource.

But without conversation developing a relationship is going to be next to impossible.

Starting the conversation

Welcome to this first post.

In Conversations,⁠ Theodore Zeldin writes,

It is time that in our work we get rid of some of the barriers which prevent us from sharing the thoughts and language and style of other professionals.

In particular, he is thinking of people whose mindset is “confined to a single profession”, and his argument is that there is a real need for conversations at work.

My experience is that lawyers are as guilty of this mindset as any other professional. So I have called this blog Conversations, as I hope that each post will spark thoughts, comments, debate: in short, conversations, and particularly between lawyers and marketers.

Please join the conversation: the comments are switched on.

Theodore Zeldin, Conversations,  Harvill, London (1998)