Berbay's Blog: Marketing for law firms, engineers, CPAs, architects and other professional services

About 20 years ago when I first worked in downtown Los Angeles, my office at Arthur Andersen was located across the street from the L.A. Public Library. There had been a fire in the library; the building was fairly damaged and the neighboring “park” had a tall fence around it.  Overall, it was an unkempt area.  There was talk that a new park and a restaurant were going to be built there, but this seemed such a distant prospect as to be unreal. In general, downtown was ailing, and from my perspective, it was not improving

Two decades later, lo and behold, the library has been restored, there’s a beautiful café and a lovely park next door. The city center is experiencing a dramatic revitalization and was immediately apparent when I recently took the 9^th Annual Fall Downtown Los Angeles Program and Tour, a fascinating survey of new and renovated downtown properties that was offered by the Downtown Center Business Improvement District. From the retro offices at the Spring Arts Building, the luxurious apartments at the Orsini, to the pioneering shops along Seventh Street, it’s clear downtown is becoming a real destination.

This got me thinking: It didn’t happen all at once. As a young professional at Arthur Andersen, I didn’t have the perspective necessary to see that progress can, and more often than not does happen gradually. This holds as true for urban development as for professional services marketing and business development.  Getting all your marketing pieces into place—your website, blog, newsletter—can seem as overwhelming at the outset as a blighted neighborhood. But one need only look at the property-by-property, block-by-block rejuvenation of downtown L.A. to see that if you take the process one step at a time, building upon what you’ve completed and remaining positive, the results can be pleasantly surprising.

Who is the last naked lady? Well, first, she’s not always a who; sometimes, she’s a what. Second, she takes many forms (sometimes even professional services marketing-related, I swear; bear with me). Most of all, the last naked lady is difficult to relinquish, though her relinquishment brings greater rewards than her possession.

OK, OK—enough riddles. The last naked lady is an idea. It came to me after a male friend of mine told me why, even after having dated his then-girlfriend, now-wife, for about five years, he feared the commitment of marriage: “I was afraid to commit to the fact that she could be the last naked lady.”

This friend now has been happily married for more than 20 years. In retrospect, he admits his fear was misguided. But, of course, he’s not alone in having felt that way. Man or woman, in our relationships and in our careers, we are often afraid to commit to being whom we want to be (or, sometimes, whom we already are) and bid adieu to the last naked lady—to our other options.

Among Berbay’s clients, this fear of commitment takes the form of professional services firms being scared to define what they do—to declare, “Our focus is representing entrepreneurs in the food industry,” instead of, “Our focus is representing entrepreneurs in general” (Ever tried to find those general entrepreneurs, much less, cost-effectively market to them?).

Why this fear? Why do our clients have such trepidation about targeting a defined market? It’s understandable, really. They’re concerned that if they promote themselves as focusing on one or two areas, prospective clients and referral sources won’t think of them for opportunities outside those fields. But, in reality, more often the opposite happens: A referral source thinks of a client because it has a specific, memorable focus. The referral source comes to the client and says, “I realize you specialize in food-industry entrepreneurs, but a widget entrepreneur I know has a need. Can you work with her?”

Of course you can. Let the last naked lady go, and you’ll find you never needed her after all.

I was asked a question in a meeting with a prospective professional services firm yesterday—a question I’ve heard a number of times before, and that always puzzles me: “What trade or professional organizations should our professionals be involved in? Where should they be putting their time and energy to meet the people they need to meet?”

The reason this question perplexes me is, there’s really no mystery there. Finding relevant organizations is not the challenge.  Determining which organizations to actually invest in demands a bit greater—but still not much—of a time commitment (We recommend that you select three to five organizations and go to a couple meetings of each to figure out whether you want to get more involved). No, it isn’t a matter of locating the organizations—it’s whether your professionals will in fact go to the meetings, get involved and invest the time necessary to create visibility, demonstrate their credibility and expertise, and build relationships.

Many times, we have identified organizations for a client, notified them of the time and place of the groups’ next meeting—even offered to accompany their professionals so that they are not as uncomfortable. But if the professionals won’t go to a meeting or put forth the effort to get involved in an organization, then all our support is for naught.

If and when a professional has chosen to participate in one or two organizations, then she faces a real hurdle: Distinguishing herself from the other professionals in the group who are in the same field. For example, there’s probably not a trade or professional organization on Earth that doesn’t already have an attorney who has already claimed the attorney spot. They’ve been involved, visible and created name recognition.  That doesn’t mean, though, that another attorney can’t join the group and offer an alternative; perhaps the new attorney practices in a different area, or maybe some people in the organization don’t especially like the first attorney. Carving out a niche for oneself—not simply finding a group—is the true challenge when it comes to professional organizations.

An article that recently appeared in the Los Angeles Daily Journal, “Coming in out of the Cold: In-house Counsel Say Cold-Calling Is Not Always Best Sell for Firms,” had me re-reflecting on a professional services marketing truism: No marketing strategy is a “silver bullet.” Rather, most marketing strategies can be successful if they’re implemented well.

The article was a summary of a session at the Legal Marketing Technology Conference where a panel of general counsel discussed what is the best way for lawyers to approach them about getting work. Many lawyers “cold-call”—or, more accurately, send “cold letters”—to general counsel at companies whom they know are being sued. The letters typically introduce the attorney or firm and offer their services, touting their experience in the practice area in which the company is facing legal action. The question the general counsel were talking about was: Does that work?

One panel member said it doesn’t—or at least, he had never called a lawyer who sent him a cold letter. Other general counsel, however, said they had called cold-letter-senders—when the letters were executed well. For example, one general counsel said she had replied to cold letters that proposed alternative fee structures. Another said the letters that caught her attention included a thoughtful proposal about the particular litigation the company was facing.

Pitching a custom-made, if brief, legal strategy requires more effort than just sending a form letter. But reading these general counsel’s comments, it seems that’s what it takes.

The question isn’t, “Do cold letters work?”, it’s, “What kind of cold letters work?”

It’s not, “Is this a silver bullet?”, it’s, “How do I shoot this?”

I did something in a meeting yesterday that I had never done before.

I and a Berbay account manager met with a few members of a prospective client firm. At some point in our discussion, one of the prospects mentioned that he was a friend of one of our former clients (I’ll call her Jane Doe), and that he had seen her name on the list of representative clients on our website. He asked me what Jane Doe would say about Berbay if he asked her about us.

Here’s the thing: Our experience with Jane Doe didn’t work out that well. We have many satisfied clients, but naturally, we’ve had some clients for whom we weren’t a good fit (and vice versa). Jane Doe was one of them.

I didn’t get the chance to answer the prospect’s question right when he asked it, but at the end of the meeting, I said, “Listen: I’ve never done this before, but I’ll tell you that if you ask Jane Doe about us, you won’t hear great things. We’ve been around for a long time; we have a lot of happy clients, but not everyone works out. But I would recommend you talk to her and see what she says.”

Like I said, this was a first for me. I didn’t want to sit around after the conversation, worrying about whether the prospect would actually get in touch with Jane Doe, and what she’d say. I wanted (like any good PR pro, I suppose) to take the bull by the horns. Who knows what the prospect actually thought, but he did say he appreciated the honesty.

The entire episode leaves me with two questions:

1. The obvious one: Did I do the right thing to address our experience with Jane Doe head-on?
2. The prospect had seen his friend’s name listed among our representative clients on our website. Should clients that weren’t 100% satisfied with us be listed on our website? We include them because, whether or not our experience with those clients was positive, it was still an experience—we learned from it, and it helps us work better with other clients today.

Readers, what do you think?