Winning and keeping clients is the substance
of any business. The core is actively
convincing a person interested of the value
of one’s own product or service so that the
person becomes a customer.
Let us have a look at that statement in
general and from the point of view of the
legal business in particular.
If we enter a supermarket and buy a package
of washing powder without the help of a shop
assistant, this is not the result of a
selling process but the consequence of the
marketing of either the supermarket or the
brand building of the manufacturer of the
washing powder. Hardly ever will we find a
shop assistant whom we want to influence us
what product to choose.
If we enter a shoe shop to
buy
a pair of business shoes after our
graduation for the first time in our life we
normally start asking peers where to go to
get that type of shoe. With the
recommendation of our peers we enter the
shop, tell the shop assistant what we want
and then start trying different models and
discussing the pros and cons. At the end of
the process, we decide for a pair that the
shop assistant made us feel comfortable and
well with. Often, we spend more money on the
shoes than we originally planned - but we
are convinced that it was a good choice. To
a large degree we trusted the advice of the
shop assistant who seemed to feel what
suited us.
Lawyers offering their services to the free
market basically have the same tool set as
anyone else to find customers. The main
difference to the buying and selling
situations just mentioned is that a lawyer
sells know-how and not a product. This gives
selling a dimension that is worth looking at
in some detail.
In a broad sense, a lawyer is a professional
service provider for legal questions. The
system that he or she is an expert in, is
comparable to a doctor who is an expert in
biology and psychology, an IT consultant who
knows everything on the collaboration of
different software moduls in an information
system or a financial consultant who has an
in-depth knowledge of the risks of different
types of investment. All three expamples
have in common that the difference in
know-how between the professional and the
client is normally huge. If the expert does
his profession real honor, it is so immense
that the client cannot easily assess the
level of expertise a professional in these
areas has and, particularly, what level of
expertise is needed in the specific
situation a client is confronted with.
Winning a new customer is the trust in the
promise of an expert that he or she can
close the gap between what is needed to
solve a specific problem and the point where
the client is. This can be done by our
normal selling techniques - most of which
are ways to convince a client of a specific
solution or approach for his current
problem. If successful, we have a foot in
the door and can go the first steps to a new
business relationship.
From a financial perspective, winning a new
customer is the most expensive part of our
business relationship for us. What we want,
therefore, is to keep a customer as long as
possible. One way of achieving this can be
learned from a trend which we see at the
moment particularly in the IT industry.
The complexity of current IT landscapes with
a multitude of solutions for the same
problem makes it difficult for clients to
find an appropriate solution for their IT
challenges. Often they do not even know what
the challenges are. As a consequence, the
customers very often trust solution
offerings which are in the limited portfolio
of a specific vendor. They neither do spend
the time nor undergo the effort to broaden
their choice by consulting more than one
solution provider.
What IT companies are doing now is to
position themselves not as product sales
organisations but as guides through the
labyrinth of possible solutions. They offer
their know-how independent from the actual
selling of products. They position
themselves as solution architects who are
willing to bring in other experts when
needed. They promise to find the best
solution not only for the current customer
situation but lay the foundation for a
strategy which will make future decisions
easier, faster and cheaper. Doing that, they
get rid of the bias of a result or deal
driven salesperson and win the trust of the
customer as an advisor.
Decision makers and executives bring in
experts if they have an issue they cannot
cope with alone. IT consultants solve
specific problems in information systems and
lawyers help through the jungle of rules for
a specific hazard. The next level of help
can be that such executives ask for help in
a neighboring field and offer the expert the
opportunity to extend his or her offering.
The objective of the customer is still to
get a specific problem solved. The more
issues the partners handle the more valuable
the resource becomes for the customer. The
stage of a trusted advisor is reached if the
specialist is brought in to comment on and
beyond the broad context of his expertise.
He is invited to influence the setup of
whole systems and the integration of
external factors. The individual project or
problem solved points no longer stands for
itself but becomes just another milestone in
the common project and in maintaining and
preserving the relationship. With every
issue and advice, the expert proves that it
makes a difference to work with her or him.
If we look at this approach, we find that
the approach itself is not new - successful
business partners have been using it for
generations. Be it the traditional house
bank, the old fashioned family lawyer or the
tailer as of old - they brought this idea to
life without giving it the modern tag.
Nevertheless we can deduce valuable insights
from them and try to transform them into our
own enterprises.
The trusted advisor approach does not only
bet on the expertise of the advisor and its
extending realm and value for the client. It
also requires the right type of customer for
such an approach and our attitude towards
him. Those customers seem natural partners
who have a proven record to work with
professional advisors on a long term basis.
A good reputation in their ecosystem and the
power to make and follow strategic decisions
help to transform our advice into results
for such customers. Thy have to allow us to
work out before or with the first real issue
what is special and different about them so
that we can adjust to their individual
character.
Expertise may be the basis, the right
customer the prerequisite, but the main
factor of the trusted advisor approach is
the advisor himself. Like in any other
relationship the advisor gains his role
through his personal attitude. "Personal
trustworthiness, independence, judgement,
risktaking, big-picture thinking and
empathy" are the epiteta that Andrea Sobel
sees in his book All for One (2009)
as the basic traits. Without them, a lawyer
can win cases for his customer in many cases
but cannot develop into a trusted advisor on
a long term basis.
These views on expertise, the right customer
and on one’s own personal attitude make it
obvious that the path from a problem solving
or avoiding lawyer to trusted advisor is a
long and very personal one. It is more like
a project than a single step or act of will
or a single decision. It is a philosophy of
selling by engaging in a long term
relationship with clients and it is much
more than the relationship between customers
and a shop assistant who sells them a new
pair of shoes now and then.
Dr. Josef G. Boeck
began his career at Singhammer Datentechnik
GmbH in Munich in 1987 after obtaining his
doctorate; until 1997 he was general manager
for services and finance there. In 1998 he
formed Singhammer IT Consulting AG, of which
he is managing director. Since 2007 Dr. Böck
has also been working as a commercial judge.
Since 2012 he has been a lecturer at the
Munich University of Applied Sciences.
He has a long record of dealing with sales
in a professional service environment. Being
a long time sales person for big and
international accounts he has learned his
professional skills in IBM, Microsoft and HP
trainings. He has been invited on numerous
occasions to present his sales experience in
peer rounds, at vendor and manufacturer
panels and the Chamber of Commerce, Munich.