By Andy Havens

Mr. Havens is an experienced marketing practitioner as well as consultant, managing worldwide marketing programs for OCLC OnlineComputer Library Center in Ohio and for clients of Sanestorm Marketing (www.sanestorm.com), where he is President. He also offers a popular blog (www.TinkerX.com). He can be reached at awhavens@sanestorm.com or 614.395.4134.

In my August 2008 column, I introduced the idea of a 12-step sales pipeline for planning your marketing activities. I promised that there would soon be a spreadsheet to help get things started. Well... I lied. Or, to be kinder to me, I was getting ahead of myself. I think, now, that what I'll do is go through the 12 steps and present a sales forward activity for each. Then, at the end, we'll put them all together in a sample spreadsheet. That sounds more logical.

As a reminder, a sales pipeline is a way of managing the process whereby you get folks who have never heard of you to be your clients. That decision is rarely made in one swell foop. But many lawyers like to think that the "need for my services" simply pops from a perspective client's head like Athena from the brow of Zeus. It almost never works that way. Whether you know it or not, clients are on a journey of discovery about who you are and what you do. Managing your sales pipeline lets you be their tour guide, rather than just taking the business that wanders in looking for directions.

Havens' 12-stage Legal Sales Pipeline  Pre-Sale     1. Never heard of you     2. Have heard the name, but can't identify what you do without help.     3. Know your name and what you do.  Active Selling     4.Will take your call about specific matters     5. Will consider you among other competitors     6. Intend to use you at some point in the future  New client     7. First time client, beginning of matter     8. First time client, at matter completion     9. First time client, after matter completion  Repeat Buyer     10. Repeat client     11. Strong preference to use you.     12. Would never go anywhere else for your kind of work. Ever.

The clothes make the man

We've all heard this rule and, in some cases, ought to believe it. You're not going to buy a house from a guy that looks like a complete slob. Judges and juries like to see people clean up for trial. If you can wear a suit and tie, you've passed a test. Which test? The test of bare-minimum social intelligence – you knew that a suit was appropriate, and you made an effort to wear one. Lawyers know this. They dress for client meetings because your lawyer should never be the most casual person in the room.

Advertising is clothing for your business.

We're dealing here with the first step of my legal sales pipeline model, the "Pre-sale" section, where potential clients haven't ever heard of you. Now, many activities can change that. But we'll see as we move through the pipeline that folks can meet you for the first time at just about any point in the process. Where lawyers often get hung up, though, is in thinking that it's a good thing to "skip" the earlier stages. If (let's say) you've got a sales forward event later in your pipeline plan that involves folks coming to a seminar you host…that's great. In my suggested plan, that could go either at Stage 3 (Know your name and what you do), or even at Stage 4 (Will take your call about specific matters).

"So," Mr. John J. Generic, Esq. thinks, "If I can get people who have never heard of me to come to a seminar, then I've jumped them over Stages one and two, and can skip those things entirely. I'll just start with Stage 3."

Wrong. Wrong and bad. Wrong and bad and expensive and ineffective.

Why? Because while potential clients might hear of you anyway, randomly, then planning to skip stages like this ignores one of the most salient facts about advertising: it's cheaper and better than face-to-face meetings for initial contact.


Your best foot...kept out of your mouth

Here's why it can be better if potential clients hear about you through advertising first:

• First impression -- You have a chance to really, really think about what you want people to see and remember about you. While you may think you have this kind of control during face-to-face meetings, you don't. You’re reacting to people, trying to impress, thinking, answering questions, checking your tie, wondering what's for dinner... all kinds of stuff. And these are all things that will happen anyway when you finally do meet someone, live, at a sales forward event. But if they've already got a positive thought in their head from a well designed and placed ad…you're ahead of the game.
  
• Key differentiators -- A good ad can help you and your firm stand out from competitors. But many of the things that it's OK to say in an ad will simply never come up during a conversation. That's OK…conversations are later stages and for more subtle sales cues. But if your firm represents X number of Fortune 500 companies, or if you devote X-hundred hours to pro bono work, or if you have weekend hours to make it easier for working folks to come in... well, these are not things that pop up during a chat. They are things that go well in an ad, however.
  
• Positive associations -- People will see your ad while they're doing something (hopefully) that's interesting or pleasurable for them; maybe reading a magazine or a section of the paper they enjoy or listening to the radio. People say they "hate advertising," but that's just not true. People hate badvertising. If people hated advertising then infommercials and the shopping channels would never have been so successful. Daniel Boorstin, the great historian and author, says, "We read advertisements to discover and enlarge our desires. We are always ready - even eager - to discover, from the announcement of a new product, what we have all along wanted without really knowing it." The great ad man, Leo Burnett, also said, "Good advertising does not just circulate information. It penetrates the public mind with desires and belief." When good advertising is placed in an appropriate setting, it borrows some of the "shine" from the situation in which it occurs.
  
• Avoiding non-starters -- Advertising is a great place to make your basic service proposition known. If you are a defense attorney who works solely with HR departments on harassment cases, it is much better to let potential clients know that up front than it is to get them to come to a seminar…only to find out that they aren't your target audience. You'd think this wouldn't be much of a problem, but it is. I've been at many events where the folks in the audience clearly had no idea that they were never, ever going to be able to use the services of the folks on the stage. They were interested in the subject – which is OK – but from a sales forward perspective, they can't be counted as anything but "N/A."
  
• It's cheaper. Way cheaper -- Lawyers don't believe this. Because they speak with people for a living, it's a medium they're comfortable with. And so they can pretty easily monetize the time they might spend talking at a seminar (to use the same example). So, let's say you talk for an hour to a group of 30 potential clients. Maybe it took you 2 hours to prepare, plus another hour for travel and an hour for schmoozing afterward. That's five hours. Let's assume you bill out at around $200 an hour (makes my math easier). So that's $1,000 worth of your time in order to reach 30 potential clients, for a cost of around $33 per contact. In general, for a full page ad in a trade magazine, you can expect to pay around $5,000 to reach an audience in the 50,000 range. That's 10-cents per contact. See? Much cheaper.

"But wait!" I hear John Generic cry. "The time you spend with a potential client at a seminar is much more valuable than just what you get from a print advertising!"

In some cases, yes. It is. But the time you get at the seminar is much more valuable if it is predicated on an earlier communication, such as an ad or direct mail piece. Why?

First off, you've got those other reasons up there in that nifty bullet list – first impression, differentiators, positive associations. If folks come to an event later, they will bring those with them. Second, it will be much, much easier to get 30 people to that seminar if you don't have to educate them about who you are and about the seminar at the same time. Advertising, in this case, is like tilling the soil; it makes future seeds grow more quickly. Lastly, people don't usually buy into anything until they've had multiple contacts. In retail advertising it is an accepted truism that people don't even really see your ad until they've watched it three times. It will be increasingly hard to move people through your pipeline if you purposefully skip steps.

"Reminding them never hurts."

So, to summarize. Advertising is really one of the best, cheapest ways to get an initial sales forward event. We'll talk more specifically in the future about what makes for good ads, but you first have to get over your (probably) lawyer bias against advertising. Done well, and as part of an overall marketing strategy, it works. This is not an opinion, but a fact that has been shown time and time again in every other industry on earth, up to and including presidential politics.

I'll leave you with one more thought. I was going over an ad design and media plan with the marketing partner at a large, corporate firm. He commented that, "The ad seems fine – but everyone who reads this publication already knows who we are. We don't have to advertise to get our name out there."

I paused, then said, "You're married, I know. Tell me... do you love your wife?"

A bit taken aback, he assured me that he did.

I asked, "Does she know you love her?"

"Of course!" he insisted, clearly a bit peeved at the direction this was taking.

"Well, then" I finally asked, "Do you still send her a birthday, Valentine, or anniversary card?"

Understanding came upon him. He smiled and nodded and said, "Reminding them never hurts, does it?"

Advertising is a reminder to potential clients that you are there, that you're interested in their world, and that you have something to say. Alone, it's not going to bring you much business. But as part of a well managed sales pipeline, it's your best bet for your first impression, and for ongoing reminders.

© 2008 PBDI/SAGE PDI. This article comes from the September 2008 Issue of ORIGINATE!, the online monthly newsletter (with ongoing support resources) dedicated to helping individual lawyers develop business successfully in order to build their careers. The contents of this anniversary issue are complimentary; otherwise articles are usually available to subscribers only. Find out more about subscribing at www.pbdi.org/originate.