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"Turn the key on maybe tens or hundreds of thousands or more in business..." Praise for ORIGINATE!

Are you serious about growing your practice and becoming more proficient at business development? ORIGINATE! is our new monthly online newsletter with experts you can rely on within the legal profession. Complete with Personal Coaching, Ongoing Training, and Peer Support. Click this title to learn more.

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The focus of this issue is wisdom, the power in every lawyer to be not just good, but great.  As our contributors show, it's not smarts that make the difference, or innate gifts, or secret powers. Instead the climb to the tree of wisdom starts with two fundamentals: 1. Putting the client first; and 2. Working from strength. Click this title for the full overview.

Michael Cummings shows how one associate, Jennifer Zimmermann, turned as entrepreneurial as her clients by building a team of allies – and successfully seizing a service opportunity for her and her firm through effective cooperative marketing. Her experience reveals how most lawyers can do the same by following similar steps.

You can overcome the very common aversion to marketing, says Lisa Grafstein, Esq., by facing the fears that stop you cold, and then gaining control by putting a plan in place to organize your marketing efforts. Here's how to stop being a reluctant rainmaker.

Larry Bodine profiles three rainmakers who don’t have much in common except an uncommon ability to bring in the business. Each exhibits his own special approach to the challenge of personal marketing. Yet they share some important traits that all successful business getters should learn from them.

"A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption of our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider of our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favour by serving him. He is doing us a favour by giving us the opportunity to do so."

Business relationships are the fuel that can propel your success, but you need to light that fire. This tip from Mike Cummings details how you can get more and better introductions to potential clients – whether you’re a veteran partner or new associate – and rocket your practice to new levels of growth.

Speech-making is a frequent choice for lawyers in their marketing programs. Too many, however, fail to get much out of them in terms of results. Just never forget, suggests Barry Schneider, that marketing is a contact sport. With some smart advance work, you won’t lose out on effective ways to stimulate meaningful contact.

Rainmakers always aim for a strong game plan, and they make it stronger by garnering market information to form a good offense for targeting prospects or competitors and a good defense for delivering to their own clients or adding services. Larry Bodine profiles three leading info tools that can make your plan stronger.

Looking at what distinguishes women who are successful at making the sale from those who struggle at it, Allan Boress has observed three big selling mistakes women make that cost them business they otherwise would have won. If you have trouble closing the deal, see what you can do to improve what you do.

Darryl Cross finds that lawyers collect new-fangled marketing tools and philosophies like many of us collect gym equipment. What’s needed for good marketing health, he argues, is not the next fad, and certainly not the illusion of shortcuts, but a good dose of basics.