YOU REALLY SHOULD LEARN TO SELL

The legal services professional is the marketing plan, the marketing medium and the marketing content so unless she puts her back into it there is no plan.
It is not like with regular products where there is the motor vehicle sitting in the factory and then there is the marketing team on the first floor coming up with ways of communicating the quality and uniqueness of the car. NO.
In the case of the lawyer it is his knowledge, his intuition, his judgment and his perceptions that are being sold. These things are not separate from who he is as a legal professional so to sell his services he must be at the centre of every idea and plan to generate business.

With the regular heat from competition, it is now the case that you are fully in the marketing business and the law is the tool to your marketing. This is not really a damninf on legal it is a trend across major industries where the entire selling process is determining how much of an edge the company can get in the market from Nike to Coca-Cola to Skadden.

Learning to sell your legal services means using the wide range of tools at your disposal, understanding how each one works and what it can do. If a conversation will do the job and you are using an article or if a three-man team is what is needed and you do not use it, what kind of results can you realistically expect?
An article is good for getting your ideas and practices into the minds of the client so they know what you are about and the service levels you have or at least aspire to but to close the deal, hand to hand meetings will have to happen.

The underlying idea for learning to sell are that the benefits are quite a few:

1. With the oft mentioned competition, the law firm that can make the best presentation with what it has wins over others: the best seller wins.

2. For the partner track, business development skills are a premium and an edge over other candidates and they are a valid bargaining chip that both contribute to the firm and the individual's development.

3. For the individual associate, having selling skills means access to clients on a level that gives independence and opportunity for implementing innovative ideas in keeping with the times.

The end game of learning to sell is to use a variety of tools and moves at the disposal of the lawyer to bring the client and the lawyer to the place where the lawyer can do the actual selling: Showing the client why she should say yes.