Linda Julian, who offers strategic practice development counsel to lawyers and other professionals throughout Australia, New Zealand and South East Asia, wrote a smart and very applicable article entitled "Zombie Marketing - How Dead Marketing Ideas Still Walk Among Us" for LawMarketing.com.
This is an article that every professional service firm marketer (and rainmaker) should read. Chances are, you'll recognize your firm and your partners somewhere among her points (and you might even recognize yourself!).
Linda details a few "dead ideas and mindless marketing rituals [that] circulate freely among legal and other professional service firms." If you are a marketer, chances are you have had a partner or two come into your office or cube and share their latest and greatest business development idea - many of which Linda deems to be zombie marketing.
Her points are dead on. One of the things that struck me was her use of the term"random acts of lunch," when talking about the time-honored business development ritual of taking a prospect to lunch. Linda identifies this zombie marketing technique as:
“We really need to take [that client or prospective client] to lunch.” Lunch and other informal, semi-social settings can be great opportunities to build relationships and chew the business fat. Many qualify as zombie marketing because they’re “random acts of lunch” which amount to time squandered by the ill-prepared with the wrong people.
Rules of engagement around lunch vary enormously between sectors, corporations, and according to personnel level within organizations. Frequently, the busy and influential with plenty of spending power either don’t have time for lunch, or don’t want to be courted by prospective professional service suppliers for the price of a nice plate of food. They’d rather do their business, maybe including a quick coffee, and then spend their time with professionals and other folk they’ve come to respect and like as they talk over the deals and matters they’ve worked on and even celebrate successes together. (emphasis mine)
Her point is a good one and one that I've been pondering. Fifteen years ago, even ten years ago, it was pretty easy in my profession to gain an appointment with a prospect or take them to lunch. Over the years, it's gotten much more difficult - for a variety of reasons.
One reason is we have much more competition in our industry today than we had fifteen years ago so there are more of us knocking on their door.
A second, and much more important, reason is people today can't or won't take the time to meet with you unless there is immediate value to them. A recent post by Ian Brodie ("What's Your Step #2?") spoke to this clearly:
Maybe you’re a bit like me too. I’m desperately short of time. And my business is doing very well – so I have no desperate issue to solve that will spur me to have a meeting with someone who could help.
I don’t want to have these meetings, because to be frank, I get no immediate value from them. (emphasis mine)
When faced with this challenge, what is a professional to do to develop as well as further a relationship? Ian suggests moving from Step #1 (the initial contact, e.g., meeting at networking function, connecting on LinkedIn, etc.) to Step #2 in which you add value immediately:
So Step #2s that work to get me engaged with you today are things like:
- Inviting me to a seminar you’re running on a topic of interest to me
- Offering to share some benchmarking information on what my competitors are doing in a 1-1 meeting
- Sending me a report or video with ideas I can immediatley apply to improve my business
- Inviting me to a webinar where you show me how to do something I’m struggling with right now
In other words, you need a Step #2 that actually adds value to me right away.
By adding real value, you can differentiate yourself and your firm and have an opportunity to get that next meeting to further the relationship.
No more "random acts of lunch." Let's think about Ian's ideas and how we might add value to our prospects.
Image: Life.com
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