Maybe you’re one of those fortunate professionals who has such a stand out service to offer that it’s clearly technically superior, demonstrably better, and so reported by objective analysts and high-profile “industry authorities”. More likely, the professional services you offer - while better than many - are neck-and-neck with alternatives.

If you belong to the second category, it’s essential to work hard on perceived advantage.

In the first category, you already have a clear advantage, but adding perceived advantage is always a good idea.

Perceived advantage is about what happens in the mind of prospective clients and clients. It results from:
• branding
• profile
• reputation.

A professional services firm with strong and distinctive brand personality, impressive profile, and the right reputation will enjoy success with even “average” products. Their perceived advantages may be sufficiently strong to overcome apparent service weaknesses, at least for a time. (Beware: never recommended to rely on marketing to paper over problems !)

You can also develop perceived advantage by designing and developing your service delivery processes to:
• more comfortably fit with clients
• ease interaction between your business and theirs
• provide minor desirable add-ons at no-charge
• minimise their concerns
• mitigate the insecurities and risks they perceive in proceeding with your service.

A better professional service may deserve to win over the rest, but the fact is that perceived advantage often wins the race.

At moments of truth - the critical times when consumers are selecting the professionals with whom they will entrust their work - by mustering the most appropriate and effective business development behaviours, you will create and leverage strong perceived advantage.

Copyright 2006 Julian Midwinter & Associates Pty Ltd

You may remember that old warning from your childhood: “beware - your eyes are bigger than your tummy”. This was occasionally uttered when someone wanted more on their plate than they could possibly finish, but more often when someone took on too large or challenging a task to maintain interest to completion.And so it is with some clients: their “eye” for your expert work is bigger than their “tummy”. These are the clients who like the look and sound of what you can do, and even become swept up in the excitement of having it all, but their real capacity to digest - and pay for - is much smaller than their appetite.

Beware clients whose “eyes are bigger than their tummies”. Classically, they present as:

• less-astute clients who suddenly want the “best of the best” for their business
• clients who, usually acutely cost-conscious and looking for “no frills” solutions, suddenly “fall in love” with expansive plans
• giving rapid-fire agreement to every optional extra, including those of marginal benefit
• allowing substantial project scope creep, without taking stock how all the bells and whistles will add up.

Risks you face in allowing clients to be swept along by an appetite for your work which [no matter how fine] might ultimately prove indigestible to them include:

• embarrassment for them
• cooling in your relationship
• loss of trust and confidence
• angry outbursts
• time spent handling problems
• delinquent bills
• reputation damage.

Protect your clients from this syndrome and do yourself some big favours at the same time by:

• putting yourself into the client’s shoes and working out those items from which they’ll derive most benefit and focusing on those
• being wary of clients who take an uncharacteristically “no expense spared” approach
• resisting the temptation to sell clients of more than they can afford
• being clear about budget
• rather than selling a client of modest means the “whole box and dice” fully-featured service package up-front, breaking your service offering into a series of stages or “chunks” which deliver benefits and bills, one piece at a time
• for those who insist that they want to embark on a full-scale project right away, segmenting work to deliver interim benefits and bills and so maintain affordability
• encouraging clients to work through cost and timing of likely benefits before embarking on large-scale work
• reconfirming along the way that the grand vision holds, together with budget capacity to achieve it.

Often, it’s the very best professional experts - those with passion for excellent work and results - who are at most risk in this area. Their enthusiasm sweeps not-so-strong clients along.

But the very essence of professionalism is exercised in understanding what’s good for a client, appropriate for them, financially prudent for them, organisationally “digestible” by them, and then doing the right thing by preventing all that attaches to the “eyes bigger than tummy” syndrome.

Copyright 2006 Julian Midwinter & Associates Pty Ltd

Vague claims of greatness, history, longevity, size, pre-eminence, full-service, and so on don’t make much sales progress. Prospective clients reading proposals, tenders, or hearing a sales pitch are (mostly) unpersuaded by vague claims like this. Specifics sell.

Readers (or listeners) want proof - not just assertions. Give them what they want and need to be persuaded and sold.

Introduce proof from the outset. The more proof you can offer, the better. And, the earlier you offer a range of evidence, the stronger your impact. You’ll establish credibility early, and as your tender or pitch unfolds, you’ll be more likely to be trusted.

Proof is strong evidence from multiple sources.

Persuasive evidence includes :
• statistics
• case studies
• anecdotes
• flowcharts, process maps, and diagrams
• graphs and trend lines
• whitepapers and articles
• client lists
• project or deal lists
• client references and testimonials
• expert independent reviews.

If you don’t have persuasive evidence, then develop some.

A focus on proof will reduce possibilities of blandness - assertions tend to be bland and undifferentiated. If you cite evidence, you’ll avoid general “me too” claims of being “pre-eminent, full-service, cost-effective, client-focused” - that is, just like most of the rest of those who propose.

To write or pitch persuasively, use specifics to sell.

Copyright Julian Midwinter & Associates Pty Ltd

Each year, lawyers and other expert professionals are confronted with a series of decisions around listings and presence in myriad business and professional directories, and the Yellow Pages.  While most would prefer work to flow from our hard-earned reputations, stand-out profiles, or referrals from trusted network contacts, for many professionals, directory listings or Yellow Pages are necessary elements of work acquisition.

Yellow Pages remains an important general directory of business and trade services for many community members. Whether in old tree-ware form, or on-line, it’s a source for certain socio-demographic groups shopping for some legal services.

Yellow Pages plays - not at all - to many markets and psychodemographics.

As a doyenne of the advertising industry once said, 90% of all advertising is wasted - the trouble is, working out which 10% is effective.

Given how easy it is to make expensive mistakes, here are some Yellow Pages insights [framed in terms of legal services] to help you make better business development decisions.

While just about all firms are “listed”, a relatively small proportion pay for Yellow Pages advertisements.

Smaller law firms dominate the advertisements. Few take large, high-priced space.

Our sample research indicates that return on Yellow Pages advertising expenditure varies widely. Disappointingly few firms rigorously measure results and benchmark them against other avenues for work acquisition.

Law firms who have large, well-placed ads early in the listings report satisfaction with this choice but others who’ve made more modest investments are similarly satisfied. Quality of leads generated is mixed, regardless.

In the United States, research by the American Bar Association reveals that including photographs is especially effective and offering consumer information (such as lists of credentials) is the next best thing. Beware: reactions in other markets are not always in line with North American experience.

The clean, uncluttered “less is more” style of many modern graphic designers is probably not the most effective ad layout for this medium.

Local sampling indicates that private client services are more effectively promoted through the Yellow Pages than small business services. Services where a lawyer is needed “in a hurry” - for example, criminal law - or in an unfamiliar location, are good candidates for Yellow Pages promotion.

That same sample of law firms tells us that their Yellow Pages campaigns have increased their revenues together with increasing time they spend dealing with enquirers, screening for suitability, and “selling” themselves over the phone.

If you choose to invest in Yellow Pages, evaluate outcomes - quantitatively and qualitatively - and benchmark against the alternatives so you can refine decisionmaking with time.

Copyright 2006 Julian Midwinter & Associates

As I write eTips each week, it’s often the product of business development challenges and behaviours I’ve observed among our clients, or learned second hand. Now, I need your input on the eTips topics you find most relevant, how eTips can improve, and what you’d like more of.

This week, please take this brief, three to five minute survey, and tell me, and the whole JMA team, what you think.

As a thank you, you will be entered into a draw to win a bottle of fine wine.

Of course, if you have any queries or other comments, do get in touch.

Thanks for your support and important feedback.

Linda and the team at Julian Midwinter & Associates

Much marketing wallows in a sea of sameness. Enormous efforts are expended searching out small advantages in the quest to create differentiation among many apparently qualified, capable, and often similar professional service firms. Pursuing the holy grail of differentiation is often much less effective than going for the end game: impact.It’s an equation: insight + ideas + innovation = impact.

High impact is the product of:
• drawing on deep insights
• bright ideas
• lots of innovation.

You’ll gain great business development advantage when you:
• actively draw on deep understanding you’ve accrued about significant problems and business issues before your clients and target clients
• take a hard (and fresh) think about their challenges and opportunities to which you might make a positive contribution
• brainstorm to formulate some big ideas in response
• experiment with what may prove radically better ways to tackle the problem or work
• show the positive and measurable results your client can expect from your well-conceived and innovative service.

Rather than endlessly pondering minor points of difference which are unlikely to resonate with clients and prospective clients - or, worse, be meaningless and valueless to them - invest your efforts in increasing your impact, using our formula. We’ve proven it over and over.

Copyright 2008 Julian Midwinter & Associates Pty Ltd

Clients have needs: some recognised, others unrecognised. Among the needs they recognise, some clients may have unmet needs - needs for which they have not yet found a professional service solution. Unmet needs present business development opportunities for an expert professional.By implication, unmet needs can be classed as:
• those which are unsatisfied - no satisfactory service has been availed
• those which are unaddressed - no solution has yet been sought
• those which are unrecognised - they don’t yet know they have a need.

Unsatisfied needs are great business opportunities since the client understands what they need and is likely to be open to a well-conceived solution.

Unaddressed needs yield the myriad benefits of greenfield opportunities for an imaginative and persuasive professional.

Unrecognised needs only become worthwhile opportunities for professionals prepared to do the groundwork to create need recognition with an action-oriented client.

In the legal services sphere, our research reveals several clusters of unmet needs. These include:
• intellectual property
• commercial dispute resolution, without recourse to litigation
• information technology services
• communication and entertainment technology services
• compliance awareness and training for front-line client personnel
• streamlining multi-handled processes involving internal and external resources and expertise
• workforce risk reduction and legal support for best practice in human resources
• financial risk reduction
• small business structuring and risk management
• family financial arrangements, estate planning, and intergenerational wealth transfer
• part-time outsourced general counsel.

Rather than battling for market share among clients whose widely understood needs are already being satisfied by others - and possibly with a long queue of aspirants jockeying to competitively displace the incumbent - why not create business development leverage by pursuing unsatisfied, unmet, or even unrecognised needs ?

Copyright 2008 Julian Midwinter & Associates

Whether it’s your website, brochures, or important buying-time documents like proposals and tenders, make sure your written communications hit communication hot buttons for your clients and prospective clients.While every client is different, my analysis reveals striking similarity among the outbound written business development communications of many law firms. The bad news is that this great raft of material on which cases are built to win clients and business clusters around themes which are unlikely to be “hot buttons”.

So, what’s hot and what’s not ?

Clients are individuals with different tastes, interests, and issues - that is, every client is different. Undoubtedly, some will warm to themes which leave most cold.

I don’t have a neat list of hard and fast rules for each and every circumstance. But I can share with you that these are most likely to be at the warm to hot end of the communication continuum:
• your passionate commitment to help clients
• focus on clients and their needs
• willingness to go the extra mile to understand your clients
• immersion in your client’s business and industry
• how easy and flexible you are to deal with
• specific, case-study style examples of how you’ve helped others with innovative approaches to old or tough or big problems.

Check that you’re not stuck in the sameness zone - that low impact communication area where so many law firms “invest”.

Communication around these themes mostly hits cold, cool, or luke-warm buttons:
• your wide range of services
• national coverage
• impressive international connections
• technical qualifications
• your quality management system
• the beautiful decor and artwork in your prestigious offices
• long lists of professional memberships
• sponsorships
• history of your firm
• friendliness of your people.

If you’re investing in marketing communications, make sure it produces the business development returns you want by hitting the right buttons.

Copyright 2008 Julian Midwinter & Associates

Make sure you set yourself on a course for successful business development in the new financial year.

Listen - especially to unwelcome news. Listen to what your clients say. Listen to unpopular views, and listen extra carefully to what you don’t really want to hear.

Do the research - make sure you gets much input as possible on a subject. Disparate input will help you come to terms with the issues. You need a wide range of information from disparate sources to form a sound basis for the decisions you must make.

Make a business development plan write it down and stick to it. A written plan communicated to everyone is much more likely to succeed than any amount of talk. Review progress against your plan.

- take responsibility for tough decisions. Good decisions are often lonely, and sometimes unpopular. You can’t depend on consensus to make the right decisions in marketing. You will be constantly faced with new opportunities - you can’t pursue them all. So, be prepared to be tough enough to let an opportunity pass

Copyright Julian Midwinter & Associates

“Risk happy” is the only way to describe the many law firms and other professional service providers who allow -
and even encourage - a single lawyer or professional to “own” the relationship with a key client.

Julian Midwinter & Associates research shows that, contrary to the protestations of some “relationship owners”, most clients are far happier, more secure, and reassured by being networked into the firm, rather than just relating to a single professional.

Letting an important client become attached to only a single person in your firm is never a good idea.

Manage the many inherent risks by:

• Developing a service team.

• Making the client familiar and comfortable with the whole team.

• Introducing new professionals through roles as team members on large matters or projects.

• Making key clients aware of your on-going training, recruitment, and development processes.

• Showcasing achievements of all members of your firm to clients.

• Regularly surveying client satisfaction with the service team.

• Encouraging relationship reviews which include your managing partner, marketing director, or an expert external consultant.

Not only are these steps good insurance, but they will help you to cross sell.

Copyright Julian Midwinter & Associates