-
Written and recorded by Mac Mackay, DAWLAW
Hello and welcome to you listening online to this data little program. How to make and keep a customer. My name is Mack Mukai on them de at D A. W. We provide business solutions to law firms. Training as well as consultancy on this program is exactly as it says on the tin. It's all about the client is all about getting new currents is all about maintaining the loyalty with those clients. So key thing to remember about the date a little program is you not only to get me going through a whole series of ideas, but there's also a workbook for your download to get hold off. Some like to get hold of some pages of that as we go through the recording, because you'd like to add your own thoughts and ideas to that. Because really, what we're trying to do on all these programs is to create behavior change back in the workplace. Things improved for you in your firm, and that's really what my business is all about. Now, as a brief introduction to me, my background is many and varied. I've been involved in marketing for many, many years of authored various bits and pieces about marketing, advertising and client care. I've even done a book guidance for receptionists, So that was quite an interesting experience. So they sort of front of shop. Is it worthy key dynamics of the interaction between clients on the firm is what this is all about. So I am one of these. It's a chanted marketer, so I have been very much involved in marketing. Give myself up to speed of what's going on within the world marketing on. Also, I happen to be a chanted manager. So what I'm doing here is to look at this program that any from probably what is marketing, but also from the point of view of the management or people who are in the front, off the office in reception, as well as in other functions where they're contacting clients over the phone. So in this program were quite a packed programme and quite a lot of areas to have a look at. So the menu, which you can have a look at this program when you want where you want at the rate on time you want will explore seven key areas on the first of these really is toe. Put your feet into the shoes off your buyer. If we understand what it feels like to engage a solicitor in some sort of help support on quite obviously debating what sort of work you do, you know, I always think of most fun. End of things we've recently been looking at buying. Selling a home on my goodness May Isn't that stressful? So very often, even when it's a great joy in life, you are having as a provider of legal services to help people at the stressful, more difficult ends of the things that the world throws at it. So looking, what it's like from a buyer of legal services, I think is a very important place to start. And then we have to think about what people call Mozz moments off truth. So it's no what happens when a client picks up the phone because they're gonna do something before they pick up further. Gonna find out who you are, where you are, find out something about you. A lot of people look online. People talk to some friend down at the coffee shop or something like that, you know, to get some references and so forth. So what? All those moments of truth that go through a kinds mind and I can tell you the price is not the most important thing because this decision making priorities in the market research that we've done we've researched kites off law firms for a number of years. We did, on behalf of firms, run client survey programs, both during matter surveys, is where his end of matter questionnaires focus groups on so on and so forth. Looking at what it is on, uh, could be drawing on the work of one study that involved 3.5 1000 solicitors off legal practice clients. So that's one of the areas we're gonna focus on quite a bit because then we can start to decide what is important to clients. And indeed, how well do you perform compared to the other choices that clients have to engage a professional? If it's not you, it's going to be somebody else. So what is important to a client? How do you perform compared to the rest of them? If you don't understand the importance performance matrix, then of course, you may be doing things very busy doing things that really don't matter so important areas to have a look at that. So your firm is established on it. It's got a good set of people there. Well, they're just the features off your phone. Where you're located is a feature, that is it that an advantage I happened based market town in Midland's. So if you happen to replace the live ball, what a lovely part of the world that is, but not very helpful. If I want to drop in to sign a form or see your discuss something, so features are one thing. But where is it an advantage on at the end? They they mean absolutely nothing, because the client is doing a cognitive excise to turn those issues. Those features about you and what makes you different from the competition into a benefit from then so the benefits have to be understood, and that's what we want to communicate. And that brings us then to look up something called the marketing mix. And I'm going to share with you a template that I've developed published, which helps you understand what's crucial appliance across the whole variety of things and demonstrate that you where the marketing hat in your firm. It is not someone else's responsibility. You may ever departments organizing marketing events, but you if, as a feeling that you as support stuff, somebody in the front off chop reception is actually doing the marketing. If we fully understand what marketing is of, that is a key element for this program on it, then finishes with looking at what it is that impacts on satisfaction and loyalty. Now, loyalty from a law firms point of view will be many and varied. I worked with legal aid agency firms, and criminal practitioners will tell me that they do get a loyal following from people who are in difficult circumstances and are committing crimes or being suspects a crime or what have you on. They therefore come back to the firm now. I don't suppose there are too many people who go through I don't know, matrimonial in succession every other year. You might have people who move home fairly frequently, so loyalty may mean different things for different people on That's going be a crucial aspect off this program. So pack program and I think we better get on on, get ourselves into that. Remember, get hold of the workbook. There may be some things in there you add to I'm not reading from it. You will be finding MAWR things there but hope you get onto it to make a practical use of that. So let's turn into the first area. One of things that's changing the way in which firms approached their market is to understand what the core believes are forgetting to your why you see so often. Mayor organizations, law firms, retail outlets, manufacturers of I T equipment, whatever it might be. Smartphones are always talking about what they do. We make great phones. We sell everything for a pound because his pound land or whatever it might be getting to the why is a change the way in which one thinks, Why does it do this? Because it gets into the mind off the consumer. People don't buy what you do. They do buy why you do it. So the notes I prepared for this program go into this in some detail. The Chap Court Simon cynic hey has produced interesting tech, which is get to your why toe understand what's going on on this may help revisit or rethink through your communications to your clients in the source. Things that you do. You see what conventional firms do. And I spent a lot of time working with data law with legal aid, eight agency firms and so forth. It's not just about what you do. My understanding from these folk who are on my programs when I talked to them is about why they do it. You see conventional firms and their straight like this and said, Well, okay, this is what we do read in prison Little we do this, How do you do that? Well employed people who got high rights or whatever, whatever the issue might be on so far. But when you chat, these people get closer down to the why you get a really understanding. Is that why they do the work they do? And it's not just to make a profit. You see, when I talk to people in other areas that are on, for example, management call stage one program took me there. And what is the purpose of your firm? I met those 80% of people would say to make a profit. That's why we're there. Economic entity. That's quite understandable, so yes to make some money? Uh, well, that's that is the bottom line is toe. That's not why clients engage. So it's worth exploring this from a slightly different point of view, because if every other firms self talk about what's they do, it's not helping to uncover why it is that clients buy from them. So if you want to know how to make a key, how to make a customer or indeed keeper customer, then talking about why is very strong. There are in the notes, as I mentioned before. Further information. If you like to explore that, and I take people through the Apple Computer Company, the company that makes lots of other things on if they just bang on about what they do, we make great computers because we look at the technology and try and push the boundaries. So you want to buy one? Well, okay, why don't go to another firm because they'll make great computers or I'm looking at a Samsung screen here. Logitech make the cameras and Hewlett Packard make the the laptops in the pieces where they will make great computers. But why is it that apple are actually more successful than all the others put together. Well, it's worth exploring. It's quite simple. It is quite a simple revisit to what it is you do on why you do it. Because when I talked to those people on the Legal Legal Aid Agency Supervisors program, which has some interactive elements, people watch the online program a bit like this. Look at the notes, do some assessments that then come together on have a live interactive webinar when we get people locked onto their devices and have a conversation with other people who are in a similar situation to explore their experiences off supervising people in a legal aid agency firm with others in the same situation. So it's quite an interesting Erin. When I talk to these folk, I understand the why they do what they do. It's not because they make a lot of money. It's not because off the lifestyle that they're going to get from doing legal aid work. And if you do great work, then I suspect you understand that all too well there's there's something more fundamental. So what we're doing here, use this administration is to is to revisit it from another point of view. You see, if you start with what you know, we do criminal defense. We employ some experience. People give us a call if you need help. Well, okay, that explains what's going on. But that's not really getting to the heart of the matter is really getting to the thing that will make me desire to call you as opposed to anybody else. So let's turn it around a little bit. Let's put this reverse the process. Not not good from the from the what through to the while. Let's start with why this is quite an interesting area. So don't forget to set before people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it. That really gets to the closeness between the client and you, the solution provider. So let's start then. From the point of view off. Why, if you take legal aid Agency on talked to folk there, they really do feel something like this. I'm looking NFC. Were you feel you have the right to justice? OK, that's the why on that's fundamental to the business and think about that from the client's point of view. So we employ people committed to doing just that. You want to give us a call that you see how different that is that I have really got down to the what? But that's ultimately there is. I've got all about the walk very much at all. I've said the why. And if you see that from the client's point of view, then we begin to change the dialogue on the approach that the firm might take. Okay, well, that's legal aid. Let's take its go back a little step. Let's take it from the point of view of residential conveyancing. So if you start with the why we know that property transactions can be really quite stressful. We understand. Which is why we employ people who can help you through that process as promptly and as stress free as possible. You want to give us a call? So here we're getting to the why people will engaging. They would engage you because of why you do it. Not just because of what you do. So what are the takeaways here? Well, okay. I'm, uh, known as Mac on, uh, I'm six foot four tall. So Big Mac, it often comes with the territory. What of my big takeaways from this. Well, I think the first thing you could do is to stand back from your business and try and understand why you do it. What is the boy behind your firm, and not just to make a profit? But why is the fundamental basis off the transactions that you engage with guides? Why you do it from the client's point of view on that could be an interesting conversation you to have with your colleagues back in the department. Then take that why and incorporate it into your communications. When I say marketing copy, I don't expect you to be writing read pages or brushes or what have you. But if you are emailing somebody, then you can put it into your communications. If you're talking to them over the phone, bring it into your communications with potential clients on, then people too much better to why you do what you're doing, which is why they would want to engage you on then your switch people from being customers. Two kinds in that subtle difference here is that customer thinks that he or she knows best and therefore wants to buy on price, whereas clients recognize that you know best and will buy solutions to problems. So, for example, and I'm sure if you're in conveyancing or familiar with people who do the ring round, they'll get three or four names off the Internet and phone if you up and see what the prices are on that may do. The price comparison sites have done that in researching this program on conveyancing. Well, if you're a customer of convincing than it clearly you know best, you know it could be done for the cheapest and therefore prices a strong determined or whether or not you engage somebody. But when you find that people are talking about convincing from a client point of view, they know that you know best and they will become a client that begins to refine the sort of people that you deal with. And I was talking to somebody who was in Well, I mentioned the town that case you have to come from the town and think differently, but it wasn't one of the most salubrious parts of the country on there was a lot of pressure on high street prices, and people had not a lot of spare cash floating around. Okay? Essentially, he found that a lot of people phoned him up, said, I want a house. It's a three bed terraced. It's up, you know, 200 whatever it might be £1000. Watch your price on, he said. Well, if you could give me 30 seconds, I'll explain why we do what we do and how we can make your life easier. And then I'll tell you the price. People buying time just for you gonna charge me? What's your rate for that sort of property? And he's a good time today and he would not be wishing to talk to somebody who might become a customer, some to think about. But for those people said Okay, what you gonna do for May? He would explain the why and also the how and then people would say, OK, I get that. Get that cheaper down the road. He's a fire. You could get the same services that solve your problems in a way that we solve your problems. Then absolutely kind. And he would find the people phone back rather sheepishly in half an hour or so and say, But I've thought about it. Spoke to my other part, my half on. We feel that you could probably do the best job for us on. He was charging probably your percent mawr than many others in the same sort of area. So again, quite an interesting outcome of using the why to drive the business. And if we can understand that, we can then begin to understand the next part of this program on that is the cognitive thinking process is that people go through when they are deciding to engage you, to solve their problems. That has now put ourselves in the position of somebody buying profession services like Body mentioned. It could be legal aid agency and therefore people are engaging you. There may not be exchanged money, but they are engaging use. They get through similar cognitive processes that people from commercial organizations responding to firms are pitching for their business. So we can look at this from a number of different points of view on what it's surprising, and I find this with buying generally is that whatever we are buying, whether it be professional services or tubes of toothpaste or a new car, a new car for family, the buying process is very, very similar. I'll take you through that process, but let's get ourselves under the skin and a bit of somebody that is engaging somebody else to help him with particular problem that they themselves can't solve on their own. So buying professional services. So why do people engage somebody else to solve the problem? You have many views about my general intelligence and competence, but I'm very certain that with a lot of effort on no small amount of effort on my part, I could probably do my own conveyancing out there. Please forgive me on this one. I'm unsure of those conveyances out there. Have got their head in the hands going, Oh my God, there's not another one of those I get is obviously a complex process. I've never tried it, but it must be something that somebody could learn to do, and I will struggle to learn clearly. But I may be able to do that. Yes, it will appear the way that the market is moving, that it is quite possible for individual clients to represent themselves in court, not suggesting that I would want to do that either. But what we're looking at here is that people are saying Okay, I want somebody else to solve my problem valve and go ahead and solve it myself. So whatever that is, it's a small to medium size enterprise wanting you to write articles, associations. They set up their new business or wants to deal with employment, defensible, some sort of litigation. Or they want to buy or sell a business or build a new distribution warehouse or something. Whatever that matter is however complex it might be if we analyze the process in particular what's going on behind the thoughts of mind off somebody engaging a professional. We do find some very, very similar sorts of things I'd like to explore that somebody that says, OK, I recognize I've got a problem. I need somebody to help solve it. So what are they going to feel? Well, the first thing I think is that people feel a bit insecure, is the owner which one of the people I'm going to engage is going to be any good. I'm not sure about that because I got got myself into situation that I'm not comfortable where they need somebody else to help me. I may feel a little bit frightened on, and I'm going to put myself at some personal risk I might spend money on. You won't do a good enough job. I would engage you to do defense. I'm personal risk, and it's not a problem I have I'm going to have in three months time. It's a problem I have got today, so I'm impatient. Therefore, I got myself into a situation where I am anxious that you're gonna be worried about that. Andi, I will have to tell you that I have done some things that or haven't done. Some things that I should have done therefore feel exposed. And I'm not sure that I could make decisions about employing the right people. So therefore, the buyer is going to feel skeptical. You will you deliver on your promises. For example, I'm very concerned, of course, that you may not take enough time to understand me because my situation is quite different from anybody else. It's a personal decision. Therefore, there's a lot of situations where people feel very suspicious. Are you going to use lots of legal jargon? Are you gonna run up high costs? Are you going to do things that sit yourself because you are running commercial business or are you going to do things that are actually putting me at the center of everything? Do you just look at the screen here. Look at those 10 or so emotions that are going behind the rational decisions that you hope your clients are able to take when making those decisions to engage you on, the more we explore that this is wrong. Page seven of the of the notes. You can explore those a little bit more detail. We recognize that the decision to engage you is going to be both emotional and also rational on because of those things going on in the buyers, Mind you, as the service provider must acknowledge both of the rational and the emotional side to the decision on be able to manage the interactions that you're perspective card is going to have with you. So that's really the first step would like to do now is to move it through to look at the way in which people buy things customers buying. As I mentioned a moment or two ago, the process of buying a a small grocery item to being a buying a house, one of the largest purchases you're probably going to make, or indeed by new vehicle to replace your other vehicle for yourself. Family. Probably the second highest capital investment expenditure that you like to make the processes between starting that process either to buy, I don't know, a cheaper toothpaste right there through to buy a new house is a very, very similar process. The thing that differs is the speed with which people go through the process on the amount of risk. Therefore, it's involved because of the risk it may be that mawr than one person is involved in the decision making process. So bear that in mind that the process is the same pretty much depending on what it is people by. The differences occur in terms off the capital expenditure that people are making that will benefit the speed and effect the number of people go through it. So without a little caveat in an introduction, let me take you through the process. Now your firm I don't know your firm. I don't know who you are. I know nothing about you. So we're gonna look at something here and now I've just chosen a vote here by shoes. And why would a man not by shoes? What process will this chap go through when he's buying services? So okay, when we're by, I do not know who you are. I do not know what you do. So we all start with a position of some ignorance. If I was buying from a new shoe shop and I didn't shoe shop existed, I'll be walking down the street gazing window. Okay, we are. It's a shoe shop. It wasn't one of the high street brands remain knows a specialist to provider that I would not know this until I passed store. For example, in the context of you with legal services, I do not know who you are and I do not know what you do. Don't forget I don't even know why you do it. So there's gonna be some sort of activity on behalf off the provider to move people from being unaware to be in the next stage aware So for example, buying shoes. And I didn't know that store in the high street was a shoe shop this display, but immediately tell May that it is a shoe shop. So I now become aware that this is a new store that's opened up in my high street. It's OK aware is the first step. So by legal services I don't know anything about you. What have I got to do to move from that stage of I didn't know anything about you two being aware. So what are those processes that go on to move your target groups? The new customers particularly You know nothing about you. What you do indeed. Why you do it? How do you move them to a stage when they become aware off what and why you do what you do on then? I think Well, okay. Is that of any interest to me? Well, if I'm not buying a house, the fact that you're you help people buy houses and conveyancing or sell houses is of no interest to me because they don't plan to move. If I wanted a new pair of shoes then short this you shop will be interesting to me if it waas not selling Children shoes or lady shoes and not therefore men shoes. I may not be that interested or if it was selling very cheap shoes. I might not be interesting if it was selling handmade very expensive use. I might not be interested. So again, we've got a filtering process. What you doing To help people become interested in what it is you're doing. So the why becomes, of course, an important element off that that then gets people closer to buy, not gonna buy from you. But they're sort of interested to hear a little bit more because they will only buy from you if they are convinced that you are going to be the best option to solve their problems. Remember all the emotions that are going through the buyers mind that we come in just a moment to do what you doing to help people recover their anxieties and deal with their emotions? Can you be plausible on then they think, Yes, I want to engage you. How did it So? The last point, of course, is the action. So the six stage process here, which I'll describe fairly quickly it is a very common process. So let's look at it to go through it a couple of times from different points of view as to what's going on now. I gave the simple example of walking faster High Street store of shoes, unaware that since you shot up from where I'm interested, his men shoes, it's within my price range. I'm convinced that's worth going in. Yes, I've walked through. I put my feet in a couple of shoes and walked up and down. I want to buy it. Go to the till now. That process may be repeating, not completed, as I go from store to store. But as I'm a bloke first pair of shoes that fit and feel comfortable, I'd probably buy them. So going through that process, it's fairly straightforward. If it was a tube of toothpaste, I mentioned that I am pushing my Charlie down through the supermarket and I'm unaware of to place called Arm and Hammer toothpaste. Now arm and hammer sounds to me like dental practice. I don't quite like the sound of that arm and hammer toothpaste. I'm not aware of that. I'm not aware of it. It is in the toothpaste aisle. That's interesting. Is it any good? Pick it up. I look at it and it's got the British Dental Association. Kate, Mark Opal. That sounds pretty good. So I want it through the bright blob. It goes into the basket to try. Now. How quickly does that process followed? Well, here, with something that's fairly modest is the expenditure on a couple pounds on the tube of toothpaste, Then it's a relatively no risk purchase, a couple pounds toothpaste. I just about managed that. Well, that's relatively no risk. If I was shopping on my own for me, then it's only mean the decision. If I was shopping on behalf of my foot firmly, Children on that something, then I would consider then, if I didn't like to paste, are constantly the Children's book on that it will eventually get used. So it's that sort of relatively low risk, relatively no capital expenditure. Single person's decision. Therefore, the processes ecstasy, in fact, extremely quick. Now, if it's buying legal services, it may be a distress purchase on. I may have to go through that process really pretty quick because I have an immediate problem and they need somebody who can solve it pretty quickly. But it's the same process now. If it was me buying that say conveyancing well, I would still not Noel the conveyancing firms in my local town. I might have to go and search for that, and I'd use a number of different ways of searching for them, and then I'll get a short list then I'm aware on. Then I'll have a look it on a phone. Them are poor. Look at the online searches, the directories and so on and so forth, and that would be interesting. Do I want to engage them while I could do something else to engage? I won't be booking you over. The Internet may look at your Web page, but I'm likely to phone somebody on talk to your receptionist. All talk to somebody else's firmament. Get put through to the caseworker and they don't have a conversation, and I might go away, think about it and so on and so forth. I get my shortness tonight, Come back to you on. I would then finally engage you by writing Thio, going to see whatever it was that was required to manage that process as you did your appropriate actions or me due diligence, NL, little hello bits and pieces you do to start off the process Now. That process I've described there is for May your higher cost the tube toothpaste quite clearly on the degree of risk of getting it wrong is also a lot higher, so I would take more time to go through it. Now. If that was me, my own single house or apartment, then I would only involve me. But as I married, then it may be something that my wife and I would go through together. That, of course, extends the period of time, but nonetheless the processes are exactly the same on then think about you buying a new vehicle. If you're a family man and woman in your going with your significant other half to buy a vehicle that you both may share and maybe the Children use, then the process is exactly the same. Accept. The risk is higher on the duration is longer, but modeling this process gives us some benefits. What are the benefits of modeling? The process is if you know what these processes are that your clients take to engage you. Then you could decide what things actions, activities, publicity, communications need to be taken on what is said that text people from one stage to the next stage to the next stage next age. So when you have modeled this process and this is a very simple model of God here, we understand the process. We can then understand how we take people through it, then understand the message is that we need to take to move people from one stage to the next stage to the next stage. That, of course, is quite important. So understanding how your customers come like what do enables you to get a lot smarter at putting the information together that helps you attract more people to become clients of your firm. So I hope you find that quite useful because what that thing allows us to do is to say each at each and every step in this process is a moment of truth on. That's what I'm gonna talk about now.
00:33:36
-
moments of truth is a concept that I'd like to share with you, which I hope will help you think through beyond the processes that we talked about in the last section. The notes that support this, our page nine off the workbook and it looks at trying to understand who wears the marketing hat in your firm. Well, in my experience of dealing with marketing and many different guises, working different industries and sectors, marketing is not the departmental function. It's far too important for that. Marketing is everybody's job, even if that's not part and parcel off their job description. And it's not just the senior partners responsibility to find work, because if it's about making from keeping a customer than everybody that interacts with a client in some guise or another should actually be wearing the marketing hat. So, yes, it does involve support stuff, which is why I hope that your firm thinking about getting support staff engaged in this program because it would be very useful for them, too. It's not just that the case works, not just the training is not just the partners, everybody's responsibility, and you only have to think when it's like yourself being out in the high street, interacting with a national, even international brand like a supermarket Jane, for example, or a high street store. Then you know what it feels like to be served by people at the front desk on all of those interactions that we have with an organization. Whatever media that might be through be over the phone, face to face by letter or email. That is a moment off truth. And it's something that Google has developed over time. And it's something that I've applied here to law firm interactions that have to do with making key keeping customers. Let me take you through four levels off moments of truth that, uh, I can see will be affecting you. Trying to make innkeeper customer So the first. This is a zero moment of truth now. Why zero? Well, they haven't interacted with you yet, so the first interaction is that phone call or the email that contact. But there's a lot those things that go on before anybody does that, and it may be in terms of search trying to search your out. Try to find you what's interesting, and the thesis is regulation authority did some studies on this in 2017 on, they were looking at the degree to which whip pages were the first step in a search for lawful. And it was their study that uncovered the fact that that was not the first means off contact or looking for a particular door. For. So for all of those who think that search engine optimization and that just means that companies guarantee or suggest that you could get your law firms Web page on the first page or two off a particular search engine Yahoo, Google being whatever it might be, then do be careful, because if you think that if you're not on the first page or two that you won't get found, then you must to see him that all those that are on pages 3 to 3 million or whatever the number of pages are. I'm not getting any work at all. Well, clearly, all those other firms are not gonna go bust tomorrow morning. They are going to be able to carry on doing their work. So why do you feel that being on the first page or two is the only way to get your business to survive you. C zero moment of truth is when people have recognized they have got a problem and they recognize that they're not able to solve it themselves. So in other words, they're gonna have to move from the sort of customer behavior. You know what I want? I know how much I'm going to charge through to I realize that I need a little bit mawr than just a simple quick fix. I do need something a little bit more substantive and they're going to become clients of yours. Recognizing your expertise is important. What brings them to think about contacting your firm by name? Well, that search may indeed be. I have a problem. I need to do a search engine search. But the chances are, and this is the sa racing. So the paper will look you out because of some other activity that has brought your firm's name to their attention. So you may not be in control of some of these things because you're in trouble. You're not actually in control because the kind of deal with today maybe saying something about you tomorrow to somebody like me who doesn't know your firm yet, but may need the services that my friend, colleague or associate something I know is already using. So that search for your name may in fact come for an existing customer of yours is this assistant client who is recommending you is passing on your name to somebody else because, you know, when I've been walking my Labrador in the evening I see ago in the village, haven't seen for a while we stopped having. That's because we have two dogs with us and then we start talking about something or other, and it may be that that's where the conversations come from. That leads people to say, Oh, that's interesting Blocks and coat I'll look them up. It may be that they're going through some other media, maybe some sort of social media that they using. It may be that they're using Pinterest or Snapchat or Facebook or something else, for example, to compare notes and ideas with people they know to say. Well, does anybody know about can anybody suggest now my village has a Facebook page on that Facebook page is used by probably no more than 100 families that being sized village, but it is surprising when Joe puts up there that says, I need some help with anybody. Recommend that names come up under recommended. Now they're not gonna put on Facebook. I've been done for speeding because every recommend recommended a lawyer, but I'm thinking about moving house. Does anybody recommend it's those sorts of conversations that occur in social media? So with those sorts of conversations going on in social media, what are you doing to ensure that your existing clients think sufficiently well of you that they are going to recommend? Well, it's stay tuned, folks, because that's what we're going to come onto a little bit nature on on this program. So the zero moment of truth is all about all those things that you know nothing about bringing people from that stage on other wear off you. I'm now aware off your name, all right and co. Or whatever the name of your firm might be. So that's a very important one. It's not immediately in your control, but it may be things that you can influence because you may be putting articles on local newspapers, magazines. We have a regional magazine. I think it's called six sh IRS or something like that has got a little short. 200 word articles written by people are looking at garden makeovers or they put there by wellness consultant. So they put their bike advances. Or they're put there by patrimony, a lawyers and so on. So forth, little snippets of local things going on. We have a magazine, which is called of the business. It's a Nash, a magazine for people in particular county on. There's lots of lots of articles there about people do office cleaning and people who do presentations and people that do sort of bits and pieces. So my experience, I think, that applying what I call the raspberry general that is to say, that doesn't taste too good if you spread it too thinly. Think about probably no more than five core activities that your firm could do to publicize your existence so that your name becomes aware. Andi, make sure that that zero truth is leading people to find out about you on today. Most people find out about you by going to find you rather than randomly searching you on the Internet. Absolutely. People going to look for information about your firm on the Internet very common facility today, and I don't know what the percentages are, but probably change. If I mentioned it was 90% it's 92% next week. It's a very high percentage of people will check you out from your Web page off which more in a moment. But we're called five. So it maybe you've got some sort of social media like your Facebook page and building up the conversation. Maybe if your business to business is through, linked in or maybe it through some other device, maybe through local press or local media or chapter or whatever it is that's going on a drop of bringing people to your door. Okay, so what? By your door? I mean, through search you out? Thats zero truth. So the first member truth is when they find something out about you on This, of course, will be wearing or Web Page comes in because the first contact I'll get off searchable blocks and curved in a local town press button, and up comes your company in the very high level within that search. Because I'm not so for solicitors. UK. I've searched for name, local to me or whatever it might be, and that will come up pretty high. And having found that, then I could go from there to find you directly on. Yet I know that there will be people who go up there and say conveyancing, compare prices and so forth. Well, that's fine. I've done that to research this. You do a search, you'll find four or five come up with a particular price on you go from there. But that's for customers were buying on Price, and I would look at the offer. Look at the pricing, and if I'm governed by price, then you need to be the most competitive. But that means there's only one that is the most competitive, and you could only be the most price if you are indeed the lowest cost, which means you've got the biggest part of the market. But that probably isn't the type of work you do, so people find you in. The first moment of truth is when they land on that webpage. The first moment of truth might be that they don't explore your Web page immediately, but they get a number on. They'll phone you on that first moment of truth is when they have found you and they have some sort of interaction with you at one guise or another. So that's a very, very important element. What's it like when the phone gets answers? Which is why I hope that support staff are here often the first point of contact that first moment of truth. So if your reputation is for client care and you put somebody on hold for two minutes, then maybe that first moment of truth doesn't quite live. Live up to the expectation off that zero moved Truth when making mine says I'll try. All right, coach. They were quite good for May iPhone, and I find that you don't live up to the expectations. That first moment of truth is that people find you now heres something interesting, but you may not appreciate it. The first moment of truth is about finding you how many firms have a very clear telephone number email something else on their first landing page? How much have I got to go through? If I am searching your Web page before I find the best way of contacting you, do I find it on click from the first page Do I scroll down to a go this way? That way. How much is it clear to me what you're about? On how we get engaged with you? That first moment of truth, of course, should be talking about No. Why? Why you do what you do not water. How But why Remember the example I gave being committed to client service? It was all about the wise because if I get through that moment of truth, I then might do the next thing that you want on that is that I engage you. So the second moment of truth that you have under control has to be with the engagement. The way in which you most likely to be the fee earner will be gave somebody to open up the case file. So zero truth is not one York control of its with searching is done. It's finding out about the first is to make first contact landing page, telephone, whatever it might be. It's then that engagement. Of course, this is what we cover on the PSC special skills course in terms of client care is that engagement? Things that you have to do should do except except to comply with any code of conduct indicated behaviors. The outcome focused regulation so far from these are very, very important elements off that second moment trip to in that two or free line plays of your Fiona on a call. If I wanted that, go back to your PSC notes. Go back to your code of conduct. Go back to what you are supposed to be doing in order to make sure that you're taking clients appropriately. I'm not gonna repeat all that. It will take quite a long time. The PSC Professional Skills course off client care on professional standards is the to day programme. Quite obviously, there's a lot involved there, but those are the sorts thinks that pinpoint whether or not you are delivering at that level Moment of truth. And that's absolutely fundamental to making sure that you get a client. So just a quick recap again. Zero is things you don't have a direct control over its Maybe whether get recommendations will find out about you through whatever being here it is before they land on your Web page. That's the first moment of truth. The phone call to you is about finding you, that's the 1st 1 The 2nd 1 is the engagement, and then the ultimate moment of truth is whether or not they are an ambassador. Two of you and your firm. Much of the work that I've done with corporate entities is about something called marketing advocacy. Marketing advocacy is the degree to which you and all your employees, whether they part time, wherever they might be, including your office cleaner, that sub contracted to whoever is whether or not they would be advocates off your firm, that they talk up the business, that they are the Africa. It's off your organization. However many employees you've got, you've got that many employees multiplied by their immediate family and close friends would be talking about you. That's the ultimate moment of truth is the degree to which these things are shared. So let me just give you a couple of anecdotes to illustrate the point. We were working with a firm in north London. They were looking to increase their property, their residential property business. It was buying, selling leasehold. It was people renting their house or being a rent red tea off somebody else's so landlord, tenant and sort matters. So what we did was to go within five miles of their front door to the 23 also state agencies, just to find out how much those estate agencies knew off the property department off this particular firm. Now, this firm, High Street firm had two main avenues one had to do with private client. Focused on the property transactions was just mentioned. Also, wills and probate. They didn't do patrimony. Okay, The other side of the business wants to do with first injury and litigation. Employment litigation. So So that's a sort of litigation side. And then the on contentious matters off property. And that's all they did. Okay, we thought going round the estate agents to find out what you would be interesting when we don't in the carbon on the junior partners went into one estate agent and he started talking to the principal at the estate agent. He said so he worked for blocks. And oh, do you know Mr Mr Jones? Yes. He's my colleagues. My partner doesn't work in preventing. No, he works in the litigation side. Isn't Oh, I didn't know you had convincing hanging about. How do you know that their neighbors who couldn't say, How come your neighbors? I don't know what you do. So where's the marketing advocacy? On another one? Just coming quickly for somebody said, Oh, you know my cousin. He works for you. I didn't know you did property. So there was two examples immediate people around who didn't know what you did. So there is the ultimate moment of truth. That's being a problem for this firm internal marketing. And that's what we did when we went back to the office. Everybody together, Two groups different times. Then is it OK? What's it about? His marketing embassy is being able to very simply let people know this is what you do, not because you want to find business from them just because when you say every employee multiplied by 20 people but how many off those communications air occurring throughout the year, where people are sharing the fact that oh, you won't talk to my cousin, he does conveyancing or you want to talk to my neighbor. He does conveyancing so that ultimate sharing is very, very important. That's one level making and keeping a customer. The other one, of course, is the marketing advocacy for every existing client is going to give for you. Their voice that supports your best initiatives is really what it's all about in terms of being recommendations. And again, that's where we'll get to by the end of this program. So there we are moments. Atriss, your job is on This goes full circle to make sure that the zero men's truth come from good recommendations. People, then find you and contact you through your Web page. If your webpage doesn't work big, long contact you. If you phone call doesn't work and put something hold for two minutes, they won't hang on. Exception, etcetera. That's the first moment drift engagement ties people in that makes a client and then, ultimately, the ultimate member traces again back to full circle, the degree to which people are sharing you have its staff to share. You've got clients to share staffs a small one, but extremely important. And then you've got all those hundreds and hundreds of clients that need to be sharing for you to go back for new people to that zero moment of truth. Some to think about well before going forward. Take a few notes because if you think it, you will think it so shoppers things down and then you'll be able to implement those things as the program goes on on the last page of the workbook is a cheat. It's described as your action. Now might be a good time to capture some thoughts. Then we'll go on from there to look at something else. Has to do very much with legal services, and that is pricing in this particular section. We're going to explore some of the other criteria that are so important when it comes to making a customer. The criteria that clients used to go through thought processes the stages of thinking when it comes to identifying who they're going to give the work to. Andi assignments off how you could manage price and I've called it the Seven Seas pricing. OK, well, let's have a look at this. When we did a study way, we're looking at asking over idea different people why they chose the particular firm in which they're working for. This was part of the Law Society's program called Fit for the Future on. We were involved in doing research through selected firms through to about 3.5 1000 clients. So why did you choose? The firm became quite an important matter to understand, and it was quite interesting what came from that again. And, as always, the components off this are in more detail if you want. Have a look at it. Page 10 of the notes and so forth have got some more information there. But essentially, the thing we discovered is that somebody had already known the firm that they were now using because of some previous in connection, either with a caseworker or particular firm. So in other words, they did some conveyancing, and later they came onto the matrimonial or not, because the elevating was so difficult that something that came up a few years later, it may have been that they use somebody or something like that. So 1/3 of people are choosing the firm because of the previous connection. So again, what I talked about in the last section when it came Teoh looking at moments of truth, that ultimate moment of truth is that sharing it's so important because the 30 business may come from that particular activity. Alongside with that, then there were other professionals who were recommending. So banks, building societies, estate agents exception, etcetera. Maybe where the direction came from. So you're engaging people. One thing I've got to know about something else on. When it came to looking lasting power of attorney for my file that when he was in a nursing home, it was the nursing home that recommended we contact the three firms. It's a short Mr Conversations exception. Um, then, uh, about one in eight clients were choosing the particular firm because they needed somebody with particular expertise. So we take the example of the conveyancing firm and north London. I talked about their clients who were using them because off leasehold enfranchisement, they were specialists in that particular area. I'm not a lawyer, so don't ask me what that means. But nonetheless, it came through some particular reputational expertise of an individual that was known somewhere so again, one of nature getting involved in people because they know of their expertise from some air Another, a relatively low number of people were switching from one firm to another because of dissatisfaction with existing lawyers, and I've got something that I come to a bit later on. That's quite interesting when you were looking at loyalty generally within the currents using law firms, and then the last group was when somebody moved to another area. They tend to take clients with them, so this is often a quite a a major criteria when people are recruiting solicitors that saying OK, what relationships particular corporate world do you bring with you sort of thing? So those criteria, they So what does that tell us? Well, of course, it's nothing. There's mentioned on price something else that's driving the decision to contact. So these moments of truth and I spoke about zero the first. The second is the engagement. These at the criteria that are driving the making off a customer quite important to get a handle on what's going on in these particular areas that driving up along those recommendations. So here we've got 2/3 of them are coming from some guys or another that isn't directly related to a random online search. So reinforces some of the arguments that the S. R. A were coming up in their study that there is something else going on before the Web page. So what are you going to focus on having a all bells and whistles, Web page, singing, dancing and all that sort of stuff. Or are you just going to focus very much on the matters that drive people to search those zero moments of truth? Okay, let's move it on. When we were asking people who had engaged a law firm what the qualities you look for, then what we're seeing here, this hierarchy are five different areas. 60% were saying, Do these people understand the problem? So I know that people very capable. But I think if I was going to get some conveyancing done, I wouldn't necessarily take a criminal defense. Lawyer was the best person to advise me equally. If I wanted to get some lasting power of attorney sorted out, then probably I wouldn't choose somebody who did something completely differently. So, understanding the problem of technical level, your expertise may be quite an obvious thing. But then 2/3 of people saying, Well, if you don't do what I need you to do, then I won't engage you. So that's fairly obvious. And then quite high up again is the record recommendation reputation. I'm walking my Labrador chatting to a neighbour neighbour says, Oh, I use blocks and co. Then that's good enough for me because I value his opinion. So that's pretty well, very nearly 2/3 of people in that sort of area. But then, of course, it's price that comes in as a criteria, but not price per se, but cost or value for money. Now you may do conveyancing for ah, lot less than I paid. But then I was using somebody that was local and presented particular value for money in terms of my ability to deal with them and accessibility and so on and so forth. Voting times is where is costing expertise exception, and then fourth is to Where are you located, or are you particularly accessible now? This is quite important to look at it from a number of points of view. If I'm dealing with something that's a local issue, like convincing, I might go to somebody that is local. If I'm going to be looking at somebody who is going to help me with criminal offence matters there, who's available and are they fairly local? So it's unlikely that I engage somebody who is from Northumberland. If I was based in Exeter, Sort to think so. Location is very important there. It comes to more national firms. Accessibility is very crucial by that. Of course, you made me road traffic accidents, person injury or something that is less committed to face to face contact on, therefore accessibility, contact online, speed of response, and so on and so forth. Then the Conte's look for here come down there to something called the chemistry Communication. Everyone's empathy. Does this person really understand me, understand my situation? Could I relate to them? So there is the order off priority that people are using to define what they're doing. So quite interesting. Me if you think about it from a process point. Yeah, okay, I'm going to find out all those I'm aware off remember, off sales process. But from that from that moment on my then moving through to interest conviction, then it's these sort of sequences. Are they foot process of cognitive processes. The clients, using in order to come to the next stage, is now on to briefly what is quite interesting before leaving. This is that when we ask people who had engaged a solicitor for something or other in this study. Andi, ask them. Had they before they got an outcome upon which to judge their sinister. But have they recommended anybody to somebody else? Okay. From the 300,000 people that we were researching, it was whittling it down. Too far fewer of these people who were going through the process off convincing matrimonial except etcetera through to no completion yet. So I can't judge by virtue of the outcome. But judging only from the point of service, what were the criteria that people were using to recommend? So here you've got five. We'll give you the opportunity to think about this one in five to work out. What is the Buddhism? One that drives recommendations? No, it's not your technical competence. No, it's not, uh, whether or not you have been recommended. It's not actually about value for money either, because I'm no paid disbursements or something up front, But I haven't paid for the rest of it, and I still don't know the outcome yet. Well, my accessibility and responsiveness are issues, but actually, the one that drove recommendations is the bottom of the the chemistry, communication, the empathy. You see, if I work with a particular solicitor on. Then I think about my work colleague and I said, okay, might work. Colleague. When I get on with my work colleague, I suspect my sister will also get on if they get on with me or looking on with him. So I recommend him to the solicitor was circle is completed. So these are the qualities on screen which tides go through as a sort of process in order to brief then s if I got a shortness three conveyances, I'm going through these processes to decide which one I finally brief on chemistry. Empathy is the one that drives the briefing, but the recommending it's the reverse is the reverse process that actually drives recommendations. So getting on with people empathizing, understanding, listening, being accessible to them are the criteria that more often will drive further recommendations because people may not have paid the full amount yet in order to judge you on value for money. And that tends to come much, much more towards the end of the matter, of course. So there's some thoughts on ideas about the engagement of clients the thinking processes on. What are you doing to manage those thought processes. What are you doing to put those ideas across on? What are you doing To make sure that you and your colleagues are working on the things that actually matter to clients that want to make the decision to give you their problem for you to solve, which then brings us on to the nice little area off pricing. So as we saw, when it comes to the criteria to brief people on my training programs, sisters think that price is very high on the list of criteria. But actually, it is third on Mr Criteria. After have you have got the expertise Now, you any good that we're gonna be able to solve my problem? What about the pricing? I've got these different ways of looking at it, and I hope this is gonna be useful for you to reevaluate your pricing strategies. Now, this may not be something that everybody listening to this program is going to be involved with because you may not be the one setting the price services, but something that you can share within the firm, Of course, to look at the way in which pricing is done. So one of these seven seas where the 1st 1 of these is to look at the sea competition. What are they charging? Adams. They're saying the notes. There's more of these informational 12 pages. 12 13 Looking these more detail a convincing client to drop the price to try to make for him and found that, in fact, putting the price up. I meant that hey was making a lot more money out of the volume. Was getting was getting more briefs because he was able to differentiate himself on price from the competition on not always go to the lowest cost producer the most common denominator. So competition is obviously an important place to start thinking about. How do you price your services? Then I have to think about those individuals that you're trying to attract anyway. So it's private clients or commercial clients, obviously not legal aid. Then you may be looking at pricing from the point of view of what customers are willing to pay for those who are making discretionary decisions about who to brief on how to brief, they look for value, so customers that for value of the ones you want to try and attract so having the right sort of approach to that will be quite important to be the firm that's adding a lot more value, rather just driving the price down. Then, of course, one has to look at your own costs. That's another way of your pricing. You gotta say, What are my costs of doing this exercise? Then what am I going to charge now? Cost Plus pricing has its limits and as you see the numbers during the maths in the example given, if you know what your fixed costs are in any given month, your salary cost your overhead cost your things that are fixed for that year rentals and rates, and so on, so forth to cover your fixed costs every month. Then you look at the variable costs of actually doing the work, consuming things like postage and stationery and telephone calls, and so on so forth. Then you must obviously look at pricing to design what volumes you'll need in order to cover those costs On. This is where competition pricing and customer pricing is linked to this, because you can have a higher price for your services but actually need to do less volume in order to remain in profitability that it Woz to drop your price on, then start to have to stump up the volume to try and deal with the lower income and therefore great difficulty of covering your costs. Very important thing to Dio. We do run programs on financing. Data law will help you look at those things if it's not something you're particularly familiar with, so costs is obviously going to be one of those elements within the seven seas. Price it. But that's it to the context about what's going on. The context off. The work that you are doing on context could be making quite a bit, because if you're dealing with a business owner of the context of his or her expenditure on your services is quite different in the context of an employee who is engaging you to do a particular piece of work. So return on capital employed Return on investment is very important from the business owners point of view, but do they as an employee are they seem to be buying well, obviously becomes very, very important and some services that individuals buying for themselves the contact is personal. It's one person so I don't know a mattress Boniol. You'll get one side off. The relationship is engaging you for his or her purposes, whereas if you're looking at the context of another individual not going through a Patrimonio book buying for the family. So for context of buying, if I buy lasting power of attorney for myself and my wife, compared with buying on behalf of my parents for their situation is quite different. Context changes each time that determines what one would actually spend on a particular service, because that really has an effect. So if you're not too familiar with context, that would be quite a difference to go into a restaurant by a meal for yourself because you're traveling and needing a quick meal on your own. Marone. Compared with trying to entertain a significant data, half the context is quite different. Therefore, menu that you choose the item from that, then you may differ. The context changes, so understand in the context of the person decision will be important from the point of view of what you're charging. The next see has to deal with the confidence. Confidence is a very important issue from the client point of view the confidence that they're going to get a good job, the confidence that you're going to be able to do it well enough for that price again. I use the everyday example that's were pretty well, only engaged sisters in advancing. I didn't didn't gave somebody on Price. That was very low price. He didn't do a very good job. I didn't know till I came to sell the house. So you know it's cheap. It may be too cheap to do it properly. So the confidence in pricing is obviously very important. All their hidden extras. You know, if it may cost me this much Hey, you didn't tell me about this a little bit further down the line, then. Obviously, there is concerned there from the point of view of confidence. The other dimension of confidence is course is the degree to which you are confident that you can charge more than the competition because you're confident that you can provide added value that other firms may struggle to do so A different angle on the view of confidence. Then, of course, what are those conditions? Does it include all dispersants? Does it not? What are the conditions that you're sitting on. You may have one level pricing and you'll have a different level of prices. So when we work in house for different orphans and somebody says, Well, I want you to do for this price of that price of the enterprise that will determine the degree to which they are concerned with some of the other administrative issues that do with having the job doing the job well, to what degree are they expecting us to provide the workbooks, or are they gonna print them and circulate themselves? To what degree are they going to promote their internal program, or what They like us to do that. So if they bottom line is going to pitch up with a standard program and deliver it well, you can have that at a very modest price because the effort required is pretty bodies. From my point of view, if you want something that's gonna meet the learning needs of your organization and expect us to make sure that people are engaged before they arrive engaged on the day and that it's followed up later on, then those traditions have changed and therefore you get what you pay for, and traditions are always going to be very important. So what's the last see? Will the cachet, cachet, your being reliably expensive? I've seen firms that have been able to change the way in which they present himself market on change that cachet quite a bit. So it's the degree to which you're able to charge in a way that demonstrates you're able to offer value for money. It's not the still Hartwell lager, the reassuring, expensive sort of situation. But it is the degree to which your address and your offices and your pricing demonstrated. You have that extra dimension to your organization, and they're perfectly good firms out there who's, uh, decided they are not going to have any particular cachet. They will be able to provide services at a given price. On, therefore, are looking for volume sort of business, So cachet comes with employment. Cachet comes with this quality of people. You've got qualifications they've got except etcetera, and you can charge more for having greater expertise. So a lot to think about their I'm not being prescriptive. I'm not telling you what the right solution is because that's your job is to understand the seven seas of pricing from your firm's view ethos off your firm, the location off your firm, the type of work that your firm is doing type of clients that you have within your local geography. If location's important, then managing the figures that you present to your clients with ALS these things in mind. I hope you found that a little bit better than the wet finger near guessing it. A particular number lost to think about. But as a I said before, stop film, take a few thoughts know tonight is and use it in order to make improvements in the way in which you present what you do through to your target audiences. So I hope there's a lot there to be looking at. Let's move it forward on Look at the next section, which is to understand what market is
00:42:05
-
when I ask people what is marketing they've ever come up with something like the word selling or publicity or something like that on day. I think the problem that we all will have read marketing is that we all know something about it. We can easily have an opinion on it because we're are the recipients off many companies marketing Every time you look at your device, you are the third the recipient off some marking communications from your device. It'll come from Apple. It will come from Samsung Legal, come from your search engine, come from all sorts of places on, even if it's only just to find a good restaurant, or what time films are on tonight, a local cinema. Whatever we're doing on our mobile devices, you will be the recipient off somebody's communications to you. Therefore, as a recipient of the things we all think, we are clearly going to be able to make sound judgments on, therefore because we think we make sound judgments when it comes to other people's communications to us. We therefore make me think that we must be pretty good at making three opposite. We must recruited marketing ourselves. We're in the recipients of smart people. Therefore, we're able to deal with marketing in that way. Well, that's just blown several decades off my career, talking about what is marketing on whether we have to be particularly well versed in experience and education so forth and be good at it Well, after marketing is not just any of those things about selling or published e. So this is where the concept off the marketing mix is concerned. The little necks and my ex is so important. It is the mix of things that you do that is part and parcel off your marketing. So marketing contains a lot of things on. I will get onto talking about the seven seas of marketing. We talked about the seven seas of pricing, but the seven seas marketing a zoo, a simple way off looking at it. So let's start with a definition. What is the definition of market? Well, this comes from the Chartered Institute of it on. You'd expect Chart Institute to know something about it, and it described marketing in the way in which you can see on screen. In other words, it's marking. Is the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably. It's a question that is one of the most important words up there for you. Well, marking must be about making money. Marketing is anything. It must be about making money. Well, it is. Although I've worked in a lot of not for profit sectors county councils, city councils and so forth that are not marketing themselves for profit. I've done a lot of work with natural England champions of the natural world, outside of the offices and so forth Green spaces. The areas around natural England are not a profit making organization. So what do they have to do with marketing? Well, the answer is quite a lot. Marketing is a lot more than that profit equation. I thought a lot of charity work working for different organizations. I did a master's in digital marketing that was focused on the charity sector On Day two. I'm not so concerned with making a profit. They actually concerned with making a lot of income, so marketing isn't just about profit. Well, okay, come on. We've talked so far on at length about marketing to do with customers so satisfying customers is obviously an important element, and you're right. It is important. Without a satisfied customer, you don't have a business model, so your job is dissatisfied customers. But that isn't the most important Mahar, While it must be, you may think anticipating, knowing what people might want the things that they may need. They brief you on one thing, and through discussion and interview and so forth. You find out about small things and you can help them so particular problem. They've got moment or identified problems they might have in the future and explain how to limit the risks associated with a particular course of action. That is your job. So anticipating identifying is obviously an important part off the future off your business. Anticipating who might be a customer and what they might want or identify who you should talk to that is not yet aware of your existence as business. Well, all of those air absolutely fundamental to marketing. But the most important words in front of you on the screen is management process. Those are two words that are absolutely fundamental, and for me, the most important I waas in marketing. I studied marketing, did a master's in marketing, but all of that means diddly squat. If it doesn't mean that there is an appropriate management process in order to make Alvaro rest of things happen. So marketing is a management process, and heads muddle qualifications and interest in helping firms like yours market business as well as managed the processes internally not from being a lawyer point of view, but for being a manager of people. So if the marketing mix are things that we should look at then for me the management of the marketing mix that seem to be absolutely fundamental to any business that aims to create a customer or indeed retain a customer. So what are the processes that we need to manage the mix of things? Of course, selling your services is one off. Promoting your services is one off spirit. Marketing is actually mawr than what are the managing that the management processes that we need to address on. That's where the marketing mix comes in now. When I was in short trousers and doing my first job in getting there was something very traditional back in the written before I started the world worker to say in sixties chap called Qatar Cotler was writing about the marketing mix back in those days. Post post war, when the A lot of effort was inbuilt rebuilding our infrastructure, rebuilding our factories on therefore production was all but then realizing that once we produce things we need to sell them, then therefore sales was keen. And then people said, Well, okay, sales is one thing, but knowing the customer is a neck, So by the time he got to the sixties, they were talking about the marketing mix. What are the mix of things on? Cutler's original peas of marketing is very traditional. Next heads the role peculiar looking device sitting there on the Is that medieval torture device trying to whisk up your big toe. Alaska with one of those is quite tortures on your wrists. Marketing is about the product. So have you got a conveyancing? But you got a matrimonial product. You have a will product. Do you have you keep you out of jail product? Do you have a product to do with prison law? What is your product on? That's all well and good. So marketing must be about identifying what product is. But then we decide how much we get a chance before this. How did they get access to this? And how do we get the money income in order to, uh, sell those plaques? Life was good in looking at those two areas. Well, having got our products and our price sort out must decide where we're going to put it. But where will our office be? Will it be by the courts? Will it be on the high Street? Will it be in a low cost former industrials units that Scott lower cost per square meter to put people in front of computers and telephones? Where we're going to do that? Do we put our business on the Internet? Do we put our business in the in England or Wales, or do we put our business in the city? Centre Place is very, very important. Of course. Then, of course, the final p of cottons Original four piece of marketing was about how are we going to tell people that were here? How are we gonna tell people how much they charged on how we're gonna tell people what we are offering? What is laying out our stool and life was very straightforward with the four piece marketing Kotler identified. Of course, no product alone can be offered to the market without something else involved in that is people to put it in the back of a van on delivered to your door or to serve you by turning over the burger on the griddle on putting it into a sesame seed bun and serve you that product, that hamburger product. So it needed people to deliver products on with people? Of course they thought Well, okay, it's all well and good. We've got some intangible things here on. If we have an intangible thing like a service, how can we make this come a little bit more meaningful of concrete? We need to create some physical evidence because we need to wrap our burger in something that creates set that physical evidence, the packaging off it. So although we are selling a scent in this in the store way, need to be able to package that sent into something that looks attractive on the shelf off physical evidence. Physical evidence, of course, in professional services is what your offices look like. And, if they are crept, sorted damp places that run down with windows broken in front. You're not gonna get a lot of people wanting to come through that particular door and engage you. So the physical evidence, maybe the office is the physical evidence may be how you present package those things together. So if I was doing a face to face training cause the physical evidence becomes the workbook, if you like. We used to support programs and life was good. And then, of course, we realized that we must engage people. The more we engage, we need to run them through a process. So we have administration processes, case management processes, processes of booking appointments, processes for driving it off, offend you processes of sitting in the waiting room, wait until you're called, and then somebody will take you down to interview room number four or whatever that is some administration and then how they build how being paid. There are some procedures to that. So that's your marketing makes the full seven p is a marketing that brought you screaming into the 21st century to understand the full mix of marketing. So far, so good. So what does that mean for you as a sports car for Fiona looking at making or keeping a customer is the mix of things that you need to be able to get right in order to complete the deal for the client to complete the sale, if you will get through to the end of the case matter on received money for doing that effort Now when I looked at us with a business colleague, John Will test is the W or D. A. W my business way. We're looking for something. You will hang on a minute. Even Cotler realizes that there's a problem with this. It's actually the company looking at itself and gazing at the naval Teoh look, A fluff in your navel will not be particularly boarding, and we need to look at this from a slightly different point of view. On Where do we put the customer? Is one problem that John and I recognized this and the other one, which is important from a manager process? Part of you is who is managing this process? You see, the product may be defined by Thean vivid Jewel that delivers that product a a conveyancing product. They get you out of jail card product or whatever it might be on. Then the finance officer will decide Pricing should be facilities management will decide where the offices will be on somebody in a marketing development practice management role will be doing the Web pages in the publicity's the HR function in practice manager. Maybe recruiting people. Human resources to recruit people. The physical evidence may be quite important. So who's gonna decorate the front? Perception has decided Furniture on. Then who's gonna buy the I. T systems that have processes off telephone data on DSO fourth case management of all the seven areas in the marketing mix and seven piece What we saw we see this time and time again isn't that we don't get joined up thinking. We don't get people who are looking at it holistically. So two things happen with the seven p's and that is, the customer is not central to the marketing mix, and secondly, it can be difficult to coordinate all these initiatives internally within the firm. So what are we gonna do about it? Well, Cotler decided that it will be important to look at this thing from the managers. That's all from the client's point of view, so that the management of it could be improved. So he turned the his original four piece of marketing into foresees on John, and I took it one step further. So let's look at a better mix. This'd is a get your mind mixer. It's, ah, more expensive than the risk that I showed you earlier. But the key thing about it is not necessary price. But the fact that it is a lot more modern on a new marketing mix for today's markets looks a little bit different. Let me take you through it. And then let's look at it from those two perspectives from a customer's perspective, a new or existing customer. And secondly, let's have a look at it from the management point of view. So first up, people do not buy products. What they buy are things that they value. This goes right the way back to where we were beginning your why I want to get some services from people who are passionate about making the sale of my home to be is a risk on stress free as possible. That's what I value. Yes, of course. I want to get the thing sold, but I want done properly. I want it down, not by some case worker attached to a telephone who has no experience like a counselor. License convincer would be or solicitor would be. A I want to be doing absolute properly, and I want something manages the stress that I might have. That's what I value. So I'm not buying. Products are buying things I value things I value are inherently linked to the cost off ownership that cost off engagement. I could always buy something cheaper, but if I do, I must keep something back in reserve for when it goes wrong. I bought a particular car. I ran it for So distance 85 90,000 miles on. I really had to sell it because it was wearing a bit thin, slightly different brand that cost me a lot more, but it's much more robust. I've now put 100 60,000 miles on the clock and ask you what the car is that I've now put 160,000 miles on the clock. But I could tell you it wasn't when I bought it for half price. So cost of ownership, cost of engagement, the cost off doing work with you is what it's about in the context of professional services. As a pal of mine had a road traffic accident, he had what was described him as free legal from his insurance to deal with the claim on two or three years later, he still hasn't got satisfaction. He got his car reimbursed, but he certainly has got anything for being put in Hospitals result his accident because the cost of ownership such that he's had to chase had to chase had to chase on the legal ombudsman are sorting him out now. So cost of ownership there's customer value. Cost of ownership cost isn't just price. Cost is difficulty of returning a difficulty of dealing with other people. The cost of having to deal with three or four different caseworkers in three months because he's being hand from pillar to post its that sort of thing that becomes so important. These are intimately linked from the customer point of view. I don't care where you are located. I want to know that you are convenient to work with. So for May, for example, I used this before advancing. It was convenient for me to go in outside of usual business hours because that's when Sylvia was available for me to talk with her about my particular matter. It was more convenient to do that. It may be more convenient to do it over the Internet or by phone or by some other way. So convenience on we do find, particularly with some sectors of the community who are not, uh, as connected over the Internet, finding that using is not convenient to use banks, that then send your attacks that you need to have that same time is your online and so on so forth. If you live in a remote part of the country, that doesn't have a very good signal on, there are still situations where signals particular freiji not robust, so convenience. Are you a convenient firm to deal with? Do you work hard to suit the needs of your customer, or do you make your customer work hard to suit your needs? Very important thing to answer on. I don't know about you. I hate to be publicized. I hate to pick to promote to me I hate people to promote, but I don't mind having a dialogue or communication with my service provider that is linked to convenience. Please stop interrupting me when I'm watching film toe advertise something I do not like to be advertised to. I do not like to be interrupted when I'm reading in the Sunday newspapers and did not like to be interrupted when I'm listening to classical music program. So communication is suggesting there's something more than published E or promotion. Those published in promotion are one way, but with clients that is a two way dialogue. I want my professional service providers to have two eyes, two ears and one mouth and use them in the same proportion. I want them to ask me, tells you, searching questions. Listen to my answer and respond accordingly. There is the fundamentals of marketing from a customer perspective. What is I value? Are you going to be expensive over time in terms of my time, as well as in terms of my hard earned cash? Are you a convenient supplier on? Do you listen to me when I communicate with you? So that is the four C's off marking copper devised. But what about these intangible services? What about these things to do with people with physical evidence and so well for may, I think from the customer's point of view, it's not people but competency now. But that is, I don't mind. You've got who you are, what you do. I want to know that you are competent of things that matter to me now is that technical competence? But of course it is. But there are other competencies that go over the public. And if you look at the S. R. A's competency framework, one of a good thing to come out of it is it makes service, provide, stop and think that it's more than technical competence. There are a lot Maura's 91 competences overall, but there are many more competences that people have to be good at managing their own workload, managing their relationships with people, managing their relationship with by its negotiating with clients, having good integrity, good decision making on we have a data law provided many mawr programmes to meet the demands off qualified solicitors that are over and above technical competence because competency is more than that, and I think from a customer's point of view, that is a good thing. So physical evidence, where does that fit in? Well, if I value a smart office, then that clearly is customer value. I think what's more important from a customer's point is the way that you managed relationship with me over time. Now, if I'm doing panting with you, then maybe that relationship is over. A number of weeks that it takes my house having been calendar offer briefed you right the way through to completion on once it's completed is completed. And if I was going through a matrimonial that depending on the camp degree to which that was contentious with main, my relationship may change with you time. But when it comes to my business adviser on using a law firm to help me with employment contracts to help partnership contract, to help you with setting up a limited company and having answered association, my customer relationship management will be over 1/4 of a century because that's when I started 25 years ago. My business so customer relationship is actually what it's about and your particular urine criminal defense that your customer relationship management will persist as an individual is using your services a number of times so that main maintaining that relationship over time is what's important customer that I think is far more important than physical evidence because physical evidence, if it were important, would therefore be in the customer value equation. But customer relationship management is something that's central to customers and your relationship with them, and then the final see is one off the context that you're dealing with. It's not processes. Processes mean that you are convenient. Processes are things that people processes affected by cost the difficulty of getting the right ulcer because your processes are coughing out the right answers. I'm not getting their communications that I need. So those things that processes are inherent within those other areas context is actually what it's important because the context off the relationship will very I am a business owner. I am a father, a husband. And if I'm engaging and I'm also when my dad was still around, I was the son of him. So my context of dealing with legal services in all of those situations are gonna vary between being soulless person, between being business person, between being context of a co director, the context off husband, father or son in terms of what I'm doing for context is very important The context in business to business is very important difference between business owners that you may deal with or employees off businesses. Those are different contexts. Dealing with context is also very important. So there we go. I've explained the seven seas off marketing from our perspective on a much more modern way of doing it. But now look at this holistically. Look at it from your customer point of view. By putting the customer central to the marketing mix, you can now look at things to recognize what it is the customers value on. The cost is not just the price they pay, but the effort required to maintain the dialogue with you, whether or not your arm or convenient to deal with this way or that way, your communications are to the competencies of listening in the competencies off providing solutions. The relationship managed over time on the context off the working relationship between you as a business and then as the client are much mawr put into the focus from the customer's point of view. So when you start focusing on the marketing mix from a customer point of view, you automatically put them central to the variety of things that you are doing. So that's the first thing improves over the seven p's of marketing to the seventh seed is that we have on screen here. But the other thing that's, I think, quite important, is to look at the marketing mix from the caseworker from your point of view, because before all those seven Pisa marketing were different responsibilities and different facilities to pricing Teoh communications to all those sorts things to publicity and systems. But here, what we have is joined up Thinking is new as a fee earner, as a caseworker are able to provide things that customers value. You become a a key element in what is the cost off doing work with you? Because you are using your support stuff on your own communications to proactively contacted type before they chase you, for example, So the cost of engagement with you being proactive to keep ahead of the curve rather than having to chase you all the time makes you I'm a better person to deal with. Therefore, you become more convenient, and you will be able to manage the clients expectation. But demonstrating how working view takes the stress out of a particular situation because you do visit the nursing home. If you're doing lasting power returns, you do attend the police station, but unsociable hours, you are more convenient. You are able to use communications that are appropriate in a way in which that helps people you become competent of more than just technical competence. You are able to manage those relationships over time, and you do understand the context off the situation. They're in the context to prepare, prepared to a single person compared to, uh, whatever. So that means that not only do we put the client central to everything we do, but you are able to manage those issues. Now the thing that I'm focusing on this program is practical application of this. So, uh, it's quite handy. If you didn't print anything out, print out page 16 of the notes because it's a grid invites you to define your customer individual or group. Patrimonio Corporate client. Contentious P I whatever it is you do on, then, underneath that under these headings, these seven headings I want me to write down what you think the client is expecting under those headings on what this will do is give you opportunity to really explore the marketing mix in a practical way to define what you think that customer or customer group expects from you. So that's a useful exercise for you to do. So pause the film and have a go that. But before you do that, why not get your department together? And look at this from a departmental point of view as then People department? But look at this. And if you have support staff around you, what interest do they have on the marketing mix? What does the customer expect from support stuff and so forth? So it could be a team approach you and other people to deliver to those particular things that customers hold being important. So that is something further you can do. And the third thing you do after doing it on your own or doing with a group of people used to go to a customer you know, well said, Talk to me about the things that you value from us. Talk to whether there's any cost, not price, but cost on dealing with us. Do we make life difficult for you? What can we do to make your life easier for you. Why are we could be? How can I be more convenient to deal with etcetera? In other words, there's a template for the dialogue. So pause the film. Look at it from your own point of view, team, point of view. Or thirdly, get clients to talk about it and see what it is that you can uncover. That will make working a few a lot better than working with competition that will help you get to know your customers. But that's really what we're going to do in our next section when we get to know our customers. We can then develop on appropriate plan from business in order to capture the hearts and minds off more clients. So this section here looks at things in a slightly more holistic method. We have looked at some of the buying processes. We've looked at what goes on in the minds of the bio. We've looked at what criteria are driving to your door. I would like to do here is to explore how we could make sure that not only are we in the market for your client services, but to actually win it. It's not just enough and to be a conveyancing to get convincing businesses not just enough to be a criminal defense lawyer to wind criminal work. So what we need to do here is to explore your customers, view off your business in a slightly different way. In my experience of dealing with various firms, what I do notice is that they have one problem, and I would accept that's not common one, that is, that firms will develop there, approach to the market but don't get the right people in place. Resident trained, appropriately trained properly for that or in TV and get the case management systems appropriate all the telephone systems appropriate to develop the required capabilities to capture the hearts and minds. So, for example, if your people are not trained as well as you are by attending this sort of program, looking at how you market yourselves and what the marketing mix might be and how you have control on that and manage people through the process, have never heard of you right the way through to being a loyal customer. Then, of course, the HR strategy is not in place, and secondly, we've talked a lot about convenience and accessibility. But if you don't have the information technology systems, which means telephone systems as much as case management systems in place, then how can you have the required capabilities? So if you're having to answer the phone directly, then while you're busy with one client, you can't answer the phone to a perspective client. But if you're support, staff are trained up to handle those calls appropriate, of course. Then again, there's a problem there. So there's the first problem. The second problem, which I think I can put my hand up and say I'm probably a little bit guilty of this, is that many firms made a mistake of allowing their marketing communication initiatives to be driven by the requirements off senior managers and not necessarily by the client on my example here. My failing many years ago before the bride wreck was around that I was bribing clients, you understand. But we used to run corporate hospitality heads to go off to the rugby at the fasting, matching, tricking Now. That's because I have been a very keen rugby player, qualified referee and always enjoyed that and that's where we brought Both clients now want public clients, business to business situations to an event down there. You know, that suited me because I was the individual with checkbook, if you like by the lunches, but didn't necessarily always suit the interests of A with the client. So what one has to do is to say, well, always faltering a shirt on a local football team. Is that really helping us? Is it helping are plants? What are we doing? It's really helping. So let's make sure that the communication initiatives that we have the marketing mix initiatives are driven by our client's needs, not by the individual needs. So I might let a lot of support staff go because that took me to make more profits when I'm compromising Fiona's who are having to do a lot more their own admin, for example. So these two problems have to be addressed food for thought. You may not be in a position to address these two, but the firm needs to do that. So where does that take us? Well, it takes us to a situation said, Well, okay, what is our approach to the market? What is our top level strategy on your business model? is a balance between two things outside macro environment on the inside micro environment. So the external macro environment is going to be the political, economic, social technological change that's going on. Pest is the acronym people use for that legal framework. The ethical framework issues that you have to address in order to make sure you meet the demands of that sector and then internally stakeholders, the various employees. You've got places that you rent from the culture of your organization, your your client centric philosophy, and so on and so forth. Those things are kept in balance. The balance between the external market that your clients livin on the internal market in which your firm operates. That leads to a number of things. Your sense of purpose, your why your firm's values, your approach to the market in terms of how you approach the client groups. From there, we can work out what our financial outcomes could be from running a business running forward. Now, those financial targets then lead to think about the marketing strategy for the business, and that means that we may do something short term. We may do things in the medium term on we may look at things further ahead in the long term that gets us into the market. So called order qualifies. So what are your car of services in the count? Things you do the people that you've got doing, what you do on the markets that you can't deal with. Short term in your world, maybe a number of months ahead, perhaps up to 12. It maybe you're looking your client group. I think what we can do new services so we could get more people trained up in, High writes. We could bring in some part time people who could provide those services to be developed the department. It may be that we recognize there's an opportunity to expand our remit. Geographically, we can acquire other businesses, weaken, move ourselves in a particular direction. That may be over the next 12 to 36 months if you want to put a timeline on it. But there are going to be advances. You know how, as well as changes in the market itself. So the particular pressure on the public purse for legal aid I can't see improving any time soon. Then, of course, we get technological advances, paperless offices. Remote working exception exception. Now all of those things have to be looked at as a sequence over time, and we have from there to say, What have we got to do to keep in the market? The order qualifies. So, for example, if you are a criminal defense lawyer, you are probably very good at what you do. But your kind isn't going to engage you to do some convincing alive ice versa. So just getting in the market is going to mean you're going to win it. So what we have to do is to look not just at what we need to do to get into the market for those clients work, but also what we now need to do to put ourselves ahead of the competition to win the business. What are the things that will with the order when the work from there, which will be able to write a cohesive marketing plan to take ourselves forward a plan for the business that will win the hearts and minds of clients to make as well as keep customers? So let's have a look at these and have a bit more detail. If you think about the markets that you serve on the left hand side existing markets. It may be a geography you're based in. I don't know what happened, and that's your existing territory, and life is good. But then you could look to developed business into Birmingham or God, the M 60 stoical. What have you Those sorts of things may be a way of developing new geography, but equally across the top. You have your existing products that you services you deliver, or you could alternatively develop some new products or services. So from this particular model here, from ants off this simple matrix, we can look at four different approaches and decide which one we're going to follow now. As you know, if you're a business owner, when you decide to put your money where your mouth is, it's exactly that it's your money on the line. So any business initiative, any development you have is all about managing the risk off the money you spend not being successful. So which of these four boxes is the least risky box to operating? Well, probably could say this that your existing products to your existing type of customers is going to be the least risky because you know your product. You know your market on that's called market penetration. The market penetration, maybe. Okay, how many matters that go through the local courts? Crown Court, Whatever it might be are the ones that you handle. Market penetrations winning mawr off that work. How much local prison law work do you do? How much goes somewhere else and market penetrations a share of that market. How many conveyancing transactions go through the land registry on what number of those go through your firm or matrimonial is handled through the local courts down which ones of those do you handle is all about market penetration. You get recommendations from six off the state agents in the town and there are 20. So how you going to grow that penetrate the market for recommendations is obviously going to be the least risky inasmuch as you know, products and you know, your markets market penetration. So that's the first thing you should think about doing in order to to win more off your customers. But then you could say, Well, okay, how do I develop the business beyond? If I've done what I've done, how can I make my business more successful on grow in an appropriate fashion? Well, you've got two options. You could wait three. Really? You could go to one of the other three boxes. So which one for you is going to be the next level of risk? The risk of investing on getting a return on that investment? Well, I don't know your firm, but if I did, I would tell you that one of the other off the top, right or bottom left is going to be the least next risky area to move into. So it may be that you say Well, we currently provide convincing people that buy or sell houses ought to have a will discover a lot of don't we bring in a locum to do a real white writing service for us and that will help us to grow a reputation wills and in wills in probate and wills and lasting power of attorney etcetera, etcetera. There is your existing communities, your existing householders. And if you contact everybody and it's gonna transaction through you in conveyancing and talk to them about a will writing service, you would very quickly grow your book and that would be a service development. Now that's all when a good might suit your firm and that you might say, Well, we don't do that. We want to take what we know. Find some new types of customers for it on that. Maybe that you want to extend the market may be your in residential conveyancing on. Want to get some developers or builders? Get a portfolio off the developers around you and start to extend your market. In that way, maybe you're doing property services, and there's lots of biter Lets out there. And you might think while I get into that landlord work and help are people that report buy to let properties, and then we can offer to new types of work in that particular area. So market penetration is where you start, and then you decide whether you're going to one or the other. Now, I don't want to be prescriptive, and I don't think you can be from an outsider just looking in without knowing what's going on was which one of those will be most appropriate. Well, that's all well and good. Come back to the appropriate ones and how you could decide But just to complete the picture tell you about the new products and services to new types of clients will be diversification away from what you do. What I'm trying to dio when you concede on your screen is to shade in the bottom right hand side of this, you know, was it gets a little bit darker, bit more shading over there, and that's intended to illustrate that. That's the more most recently is to move out off property transaction and move. Moving to mortgage or independent financial applies at what have you? It's entirely new services, an entirely new markets you're aiming for. But what I think is worth exploring something called the Raspberry General. And that is very simple. Raspberry jam doesn't taste good if you spread yourself, Finley. And the danger many firms will have when looking at this is to decide what they would do. A bit of market penetration, a bit of service development, a bit market extension, and you spread yourself too thinly. So for me, what you need to do is to decide what you gonna do. Short term on medium term, and then long term toe. Look at this. Okay. The world doesn't fall into four Box is nice and easily like. This is that is to say, in the short term, we're going to market penetration. Then for us, we're going to either develop new services for that market, or we're going to look at taking our existing products services into new sectors into new areas. We're gonna do convincing opera private individuals, but for developers Okay, so it's still existing competiting in an existing geography. But you're going to move from private, too. Developer type clients, for example. So a bit of an aside, but very important in the context of what we're looking at here. So when we know how we're going to approach the market, we can then develop our operations strategy. So we're thinking about our financial targets. Were thinking about our approach to the market market penetration, service, development, market development. Then decide how are we going to enable us to win business in the future? We've got anything was to get into the market for that. We've got to do things to make sure once we're in the market, we win it or two qualifiers. All those things that get you qualified for the work on or winners off those things that will win you the work. That means either developing your people, recruiting new people, developing or case management systems, developing your communication systems, phones and so on and so forth to make things work for you from there. What we can do is to decide what we need to do to get better in order to make the business work force. Those improvement requirements means that you have to focus on two things, not just doing the things that your foot expected to do. You know what qualifies but to do things better than the competition, which will when you work from the competition. Because for every hamburger that Donald Cell, that is one that Burger King is not going to sell your markets are very much the same for everybody that goes somewhere else. To get a particular service means that they're not. They are not gonna get that service from you, so you need to look at improvement requirements to make sure that you're able to capitalize on the offer to the market to win new customers. And there's order winners doing things better than the competition. Things that really matter is what this is all about.
00:46:23
-
So with that in mind, let's now turn to look at what's happening with the difference between those things you need to do to get into the market or the qualifiers on those things that you need to do to win in that market. And this is where something called the importance performance metrics comes together. So I'll take you through how it's developed. Using a simple case study that were involved with on looking at how we can apply in your situation. What we do is to talk to customers and understand what it is that provides a Christian advantage. Why come to you as opposed to somebody else? What is the reason that we get three different levels off evaluation off that strength if you like? Is it a week strength, medium or strong strength? That means that people give me the work order winners. What are those things you do that they fully expected to do up to a profession standard close to the rest median or slightly better than the professional standards? So those will be the qualifies. But equally important, I think many firms struggled with this is what are you doing that is not particularly important to the client on what we see here are three different levels. So the way that we've done it, we've gone to the market. We've used different interventions two ways off. Talking to cast customers, clients of law firms understanding exactly what's going on to look at those order winners qualifiers on those things, less he bought. Excluded. When you've got a finite amount of money, time, effort to spend, where would you be putting your efforts? So what does this mean? Well, let me take you through an example. What we were doing was to work with a a company that was into intellectual property. They were patent attorneys. They were doing brand registrations, etcetera, trademarks and so on and so forth. They did a whole variety of different things, and they wanted to go and test what was going to be important to customers. So what we did would looked at eight different areas. We looked at their ability to provide good, meaningful solutions to the problems that the client group had. What activities fell under the heading of client care, what the documentation looked like when it appeared to and how easy it was to follow and so forth. They have case management system. They were they able to deliver what they said they would do? They sponsored various activities they had flexible services on. Do they charge their clients? Now, when I tell you that we were dealing with WAAS patent attorneys, they were based in West London, Andi. They were very, very proud of their technical competence. They only recruited people who had jewel qualifications not only in Smet science, technology, engineering, mathematics on they were dealing with 13 spin out companies from University College, London on Imperial College, London. So some of the top tier off the London based universities producing a lot of intellectual property in science, technology, environments, biotech and so forth on what they wanted to do was to find out what it waas that that the 13 key spin up companies that we're providing getting on to 80% of their work. Now when I tell you that these people were charging £650 per hour, that's an eye watering them out. Of course, if you're working in legal aid, but there were 13 individuals that were deciding who they would use and the problem this pact attorney had was that there was another group patent attorneys up in Cambridge on they were losing some work to those people in Cambridge on this group in west London, said, Well, that's just not right. We want to know why. Because we'd like to win a bit more off that work. Why would be used to those schmucks their terms up the M 11 in Cambridge and not to their work in West London, which was, after all, a little bit closer? So my job was to go on interview 13 individuals now this was quite easy to do. They're all London based, So it was easy to go to the Royal College in South Men's. It is easy to go into Camden. It was easy to visit some of these companies on talk to people who decided who they would use act attorneys for their quite remarkable intellectual property patent attorneys, where they would only recruit people from Oxford or Cambridge University's that had that policy on some surfing. They said domain that they only recruited from Oxbridge and I thought they said Oxbridge and I couldn't quite work out. What's so important about experts been to college that myself many, many years ago. Anyway, what I did was to have a conversation and looking at these things and got the people to evaluate the efforts of this West London patent attorney on this nine point scale. Now you remember that 123 waas Very, very important. 456 waas expected to be to a professional standard and 789 was not important. Very important. Maybe come. So So what we going to do is just 13 people toe effectively tick a box on the mean off. Those 13 conversations produced this result. Okay. Obviously technical competence was really important to them. Care was important Service flexibility on also the cost decline. Costing is not just the amount that they pay a price. We've been through that already, but the costal working with these people and so on so forth delivery, dependability. While they wanted that to be a good professional standard case management was what they expected. Documentation. Waas will documentations documentations documentation and sponsorship wasn't particularly important. Although possibly it may become so That was the average the mean of these 13 conversations when actually they sponsored a youth orchestra. It was quite interesting now. I presented this slide exactly as it stands here, and I pasted it into the data law stack. What reaction do you think the partners off the patent attorneys gave to this evaluation of importance? Well, what they focused on, of course, was technical solution. They realized that that was very important. They thought they were technically quite brilliant. And therefore life was good. They tended to ignore the rest of it. Well, OK, that's one dimension. But the second half of my conversation was to say, Okay, well, that's what's important to you thinking about the patent attorneys in West London. How do you judge their performance against those people in Cambridge or the other service providers? Years? I wasn't specific about Cambridge, but the other providers of I p work intellectual property work on. Were they better then competitors Considerably clearly or little bit better, sort of scale of better. Were they pretty much the same about the same, sometimes more, sometimes less about the same as the other people years? Or were they worse than the competition in any particular area? So I should see here. It's quite important parameter to look at when you're thinking about what you do on how relevant and important that is to the competition and now how it compares. And that's a very important thing if you're a me to win the hearts and minds of clients. So what we did was to take the same parameters the same areas on get the deciders. The decision makers in the spin out companies to evaluate on this is what we found on. Technically, they were really very, very good. The documentation was exceptional. Sponsorship was very good and so on and so forth. But their client care was very poor. That cost the client was also, um, that they charged a lot. One of the value statements that were coming were quite poor as well. So here we've got two very, very important parameters. I guess sitting there watching this on line, you're thinking yourself. Well, I can see what I would do to put this right, because you can see the balance of these two things. So this matrix looks a bit like this across the bottom. We've got what's important to customers. Over on the right hand side of those things, you get these right, give you work in the middle for five sixes. While we expect this to be a good standard on, then the the 789 is gonna be less important. Then over on the left hand side, the why access. We've got me performance against competition at the top of better than the competition the middle, same as seven at night. Worse than now, Quite clearly, there is a line across the middle here, which is a boundary off acceptability, because if you are in any particular way below that line that clearly it would be sensible to improve your performance in those key areas on. If you're in the southeast corner down here on the bottom, right then there's urgent action because you are worse than the competition of things that need urgent action that will help you get in the market for work and actually win it a very important thing. Nothing to notice above. The night is all Wikipedia. You're above that. I'm well done. That's good. So keep that up. But looking over to the the northwest corner here, why would you be better than the competition that think that goat matter you're wasting your time, money, effort resources. So let's take the coordinates off these two halves of study the performance on then the importance on Have a look now, taking exactly the figures that you saw on. I'm starting this into this format on this is what I showed to the partnership on. What if you were a partner of this particular firm? Would your reaction be, well, the technical solution with brilliance expecting the competitions are lovely on life was good. Documentation was better than it needed to be, but they were quite happy that they wanted to print on 1 60 GSN twice. A stick with a piece of paper you're probably looking at on your desk is that nominee and 80 GSM papers. That's twice a stick. Is that like card? Almost. But as you can see down in the southeast corner, the client care was important to these spin out companies. But the patent attorneys in West London performed very badly. They also were not performing very well it all on their cost. A client which wasn't just the fact that they joined £650 an hour, but there was other things they were a difficult group to deal with. on looking at that, it's fairly obvious. I think, what you would think about this as to what you would do. You clearly need to work on your client care. Clearly, we need to deal with your cost, a quiet which are related. Of course, the cost of doing business with somebody is differently of engagement, the differently of seeing the difficulty of getting to inform and so on, so forth. The other thing you'll notice is on the north west side of this, the top left hand side sponsorship. They are better than the competition and sponsorship, but something that isn't particularly important on that is because they sponsored youth orchestra. But these were spin out companies from University College, London on Imperial College and, of course, the top tier of the science technology in the southeast of England, therefore, probably widened well. They were sponsoring a youth orchestra. Why? Because the niece off one of the partners played the drum bow in school Brass band on they firm. It's faulted the tournament in the wilderness. They just outside the knocked down in Paris one year that provide the coach and so forth. So what were they doing here? they were spending money on something that didn't really matter. Remember what we said earlier on in this section about various marketing initiatives being driven by the interests of a small number of people? So the relatively simple concept is to evaluate the importance to customers on, then evaluate your performance against the competition. From that simple evaluation, you could begin to get a map off where you need to put your effort where you need to improve in. This firm needed to drop the amount of money spending on sponsorship and start spending. Some investment in better client care activities on make themselves a little bit easier to deal with because their technical solution was so strong on that was better than the competition. They thought that was good enough that then the client would form an orderly, a orderly queue across west London and come to see them as and when they were damn already. Of course, from that's it a very difficult concept put across in this environment when the pick up in Cambridge were very keen to hop on the train on, come down and visit on see them, so there were a lot easier to deal with seems very simple, hair of quite obvious, but unfortunately, this firm thanked me very much of my hand. War may reinforce their technical competence, and they thought that was marvelous. But unfortunately, firm is no longer there has been most with Nella on. Things have had to change. So I hope that's been useful for you on if you'd like to explore that a bit further than obviously get in touch. So having sorted out the importance performance matrix, you're beginning an idea for where to put the focus of effort. Where to do those things that are more liking to get for Andy Keep customers. What I'd like to move on to now is to have a look at something called the benefit Analysis. What is always about, well, benefits, as the definition on screen suggests something that eventual rewards from doing something. So what other benefits that your clients get from engaging you from that particular offer? A proposal that come from you because your firm has features remember people employed sits location. It's experiences, expertise is reputation, etcetera etcetera, but your clients, by benefits it was struck May. We're looking here at computers and online Every time I go into Theo, the PC world or something like that, I see cards there. Tell May that computers have got so many gigabytes or terabytes of this on the super V G A car. They are listed as features, features, features, features, features. Well, they don't tell me is what it does for me, and I know I'm a particular age and therefore not contesting, but it wouldn't matter. I just want to know whether the computer was big enough to do what I want fast enough to do what I want. Andi has the sort of things that I need to do, because when I buy a computer, I'm not buying technical spend specifications. I'm buying what you do for me. It's a bit like cars. I mean, all those years ago, I'd be happy to strip the issue color Beretta, replace the needle on, adjusted accordingly and set up a bank of four cooperators across the motorcycle. That's what. Well, good, but I don't want to know the features off anything. I want to know what it will do for me, and your clients are no different. So what I want to do is to take you through a very straightforward process that helps you analyze what it is you do and put it in terms that clients want to hear. And that's really what benefit analysis is all about. So benefit analysis recognizes that you and I are both in the problem solving business. You solve legal problems on behalf of your clients. I saw training problems on behalf of data law. And indeed, I hope you feel that by watching this program that some of the training ideas and solutions that I provide to you are actually helping you solve business problems about how to keep a win and keep kind. So recognizing that clients have various levels of needs, wants desires means that we can adapt our story conversations are presentation our proposals two kinds in such a way that means something to them, needs wants and desires. Of course, they're not the same thing this evening. You probably will need some food. You might want chicken and you desire chicken korma, so it's varying levels of what we need to do in to understand what it is. The parents looking for is to make sure that we satisfied those desires so What we don't need to do is to say OK, let's look at ourselves and define what features we have. What advantage does that give the client over and above going to competition on Ultimate Express that in terms of benefits so features advantages? Benefits can be cast in tablets of stone, but really, what you need to talk about are the benefits. So what I've done created this in the workbook is to provide you with resource that you can use this beyond this program to analyze what's going on and you'll see this on Page 21 will be able to explain what's going on on Die, then give you some 10 plates, which are landscape former bassist 22 23 24 25. OK, page is there to help you through that? Let me show you what I mean. What we're trying to do is to think about a particular client. What are the things that are a particular appeal to somebody? Then we'll have looking. What features off your firm products or services will illustrate these particular issues. What is it about? And with that picture, we can apply the very simple phrase which means that and turn those features into advantages. So these features, which means that what does those features provide? What is it that client gets on? One of those tangible benefits can be expressed, give maximum appeal? And then we could back that up. It's proof to support the claim that we're making. So let's look at this five step process, which again? You've got that on Page 22 toe. Have a kill yourself, and I've been inviting you to do that in a moment. Let's think about a given. Clark doesn't matter what it is that's trying to panic. Broad brush. It could be P. I could be some legal aid work. It could be commercial client, but it may be that the client is concerned that things them correctly, attention to detail will be important and also done promptly. So there are delays. Well, that's probably very common. So okay, that's what it's off particular appeal. So that's the first column to think through. What is it in particular? That this type of client is actually gonna be looking? So when we look at our own firm, Well, what have we got that will suggest that we can give attention detail what? Clearly, having qualified solicitors who have that sort of thing attention to legal detail is obviously going to be an important feature on how do we know what we done on time? Well, we have invested in the latest case management software that will track what's going on, flag up key dates and so on and so forth. So that's the future. That's what it is. So qualified solicitors. Watts The volume teach. What does that provide the client open above some other entity that may do the work from Will's writing service or claims handlers or whatever it might be So qualified solicitors. They provide technical expertise, cholera, points, listers, which means that they provide technical expertise. And that's the process that we're looking at. Which means that the key words the latest management software well, when the client here is that what they're doing subconsciously, is to use that phrase, Which means what? Which means that from a document tracking ladies can case managers off Elektronik document tracking over That's gonna be good. So obviously that means something. So what is technical expertise mean? That means what that means. The job gets done to the highest standards. Uh, and I think that the professional sector, the professional sectors of Lord look on accounts and veterinary medicine zone so forth very, very important from the point of view off delivering some of the highest standards off the profession. And qualified solicitors with their technical expertise, do provide the job to the highest possible standards. Elektronik Document tracking. What does that mean? Well, one of the things it might mean this illustrates the point made me more than one benefit. But one particular benefit means they're less stress from lost documents and delays. So we're taking features. And if you keep talking to clients about features that haven't to go through this mental process, what does that mean? What advantage does this firm give the man a firm wouldn't. And what's the ultimate benefit for me? So what we have to look at here is to identify what is a particular appeal. What particular features of your organization make you stand out? What advantage does that give? Which is why client should come to you rather than somebody else down the street on what is the ultimate benefit they get because what people buy is the ultimate benefit on sometimes it's fairly straightforward what a future means in terms off the benefits. But if people don't understand the features, they won't work out what the benefits are. So, for example, I have absolutely no idea what a super VJ card is, But I'm I assume that it's a good thing to have. I have no idea. I suppose that a super V G A card is better than an ordinary V G A card in a laptop, but I don't know quite what advantage it gives me over an ordinary deejay car. I don't even know P G. Stansell. Police don't write it. Tell me so I can't make sense of that because it doesn't tell me what my benefits are. But if it told me that because this laptop has got these features, which means that it has this advantage, which means that so I understood what it all meant. I'm not actually sees benefits tentacles. Life will be good. But because technology companies and all sorts of science, technology, engineering, math type businesses, techie businesses really love their technical story, they're going to tell you a technical story. I spent a lot of my formative marketing years in pharmaceuticals on, there were plenty of features of new entities new products that came out. But when we interviewed those who would describe it by June peas are hospital doctors or what have you The features didn't mean very what advantage do this product give over existing product on Ultimate? What is the benefit couched in terms off patient benefits? So it was so important for the company's not to talk about the technical aspect of their product, but the benefit in terms of patient compliance or or a poly pharmacy where more than one drug is being taken. So so for that is what the GP wanted to hear because he or she I was focus very much on the ultimate benefit for patient care are not particularly interested in the technical features. So bang on about the technical features of what you do. But think about it in terms of what this means for the client as to why to come to you not go somewhere else, and ultimately what benefit you provide, couched in both practical logical reasons as well as emotional reasons. Which apartment? Parcel off the buying process when you've done that analysis, then the final step is to say, Well, okay, how? Dwight Back that up. So what about qualified solicitors? What proof got? Well, the qualification Accreditation High writes audience. Insects, etcetera. On those are the things that demonstrate that the job will be done to the highest standards. How do I know that I can demonstrate there's gonna be less stress from delay is, well, client feedback says Thanks for doing this. So probably thank you for lightning by concerns are anxiety about my particular matter because that is the key thing. It's the benefits proof elements that one is communicating both in your publicity's e and your online work. Your written on audio communications deployments. They're talking about benefits, proof and also at an individual level for people like you on your own on the phone, dealing with clients when they make first contact. That is the thing that is taking them through the buying process. What am I getting? The benefits? That's interesting. The proof is conviction. I want it desire. Action. Where do I start? Where do I sign? Send me a contract. Let me come and see you, whatever. Whatever it is that starts the case management off So features advantages benefits a very, very fundamental car off work to do, because when those are thought through carefully, it then means that welcome. Start to build that into a structured, sensible plan for yourself, your department, your firm to approach its particular market. So this final element off the construct here is to give you the opportunity of putting together a very clear plan of how you approach the market to get a customer or, indeed, to keep customer. In my experience of writing marketing plans, I think learning from my own failure that we can over complicate the process produced document that really impressive if you were submitting it for a diploma in marketing. But not actually if it was going to be for a modest entity, a firmer department that's going to be looking at expanding his business. I think that plans that are over complicated over analytical will look good on the shelf, but I don't want them to stay on the shelf. I'd like to cover all come out, be used in practice. So what I'm gonna do is to demonstrate how you can write a marketing plan for yourself for the way that you're going to increase business or indeed, for your department, how it is going to increase business or indeed, firm. Overall, I think it really starts with knowing the right questions to ask. As much as finding else's questions, I think find the answers is relatively straightforward. If you only knew the questions to ask the beginning. So the fundamental outline is where I will start, then give you a very straightforward and structure to your analysis. And I will demonstrate how you could get a comprehensive marketing plan, all two sides of a four, plus an attachment that explains who does want my way, but essentially all the reasons behind what you're doing. So the people can regularly look at it, act on it, review it adapted and so forth. And there's such a lot of things going on in marketing planning. I think one of the best things out without a plan, you can't change it. In other words, people got a starting point with a clear idea of what what you want to do and how you might go about doing it. The practice of implementing and reviewing means that you're able to come back on modify as a result of that review. Is it still? Are we still on track? Are we heading where we're going? Should we be a little bit more ambitious? A little bit less ambitious should be used. More resources, less resources? Because when we looked at things like the answer matrix, it was all about managing risk on If you're the manager or owner of a business, then it is your money that you are risking. So being able to put these things together in a way that makes no sense and makes things easy to follow for May makes good business practice. So what are some of those questions that we should be asking? I hope you feel that by this stage within the program, you've got a fair idea of the sorts of questions that you should be asking about the market, how it operates, and, indeed, how it makes decisions to come brief you with new work. But while the fundamental questions starts with what are you trying to achieve? If we understand what you're, why is then where what are you trying to achieve for your organization now? What's quite interesting anywhere else people. What's your plan? Generally, your overview going forward, I asked how many firms trying to grow? Most people, when I ask, put a hand up, said, Yeah, we're trying to grow. Well, okay, that's fine. There's two ways of growing course. Either the market itself is growing, in which case you just need to keep your share of it and then you grow. Or the only other way to grow cake is to take a larger slice off that cake from the competition. So if you are going to grow, is that in line with the way in which the market is growing? Or are you going to grow by taking from competition on? I think that that needs to be thought through fairly carefully. What is the objective off the organization? When we were a partnership off three myself, John Pat will test. We had three partners on a number of employees, but after their retirement, on certain situations going on in my own position, I have to take a very Kate decision. Was I going to replace those partners with two others where we're going to maintain business, grow it in the way in which were the type of work doing. Or were we going to re evaluate the way our business model and so on, so forth on that took a lot off fought through on that produced for us a number of years ago? The turn of the century, a plan which we call 22 divisions of a 20 year plan? Well, that's one type of plan you might have that's very substantial, but equally you may have a relatively shorter plan, so each period 1 may have a particular planning cycle that always links to the taxation periods. We pay corporation tax. We have annual tax to return were limited company companies house except etcetera must will be sorted out by the accountants. But we may look at our organization and say, What is the objective on? Can we quantify that give some sort of time line to it. So when we're looking at objectives, I'll take you through a little acronym that we can use to make sure that we're running quite a smart business. But we need to be very clear about what that is, and also whether or no the market will allow us to do that, we might have great ambition. But how are we going to do that? Well, the competition allow us to do it, or is the market growing there? Some of you, of course, working in very sectors, will know that the sector may be declining, while others may be growing, but needs to understand. Remember what the importance performance matrix is all about is understanding the difference between what's happening in a macro environment outside on the in term environment inside, When those two come together, you then have defined objective. That is a balance between macro economics on the outside as well as interior microbe events occurring in your phone. But that should help qualify on clarify the objective of the organization. There's a fundamental question, then the next one is, Well, why declines like us? This is the Seven Seas marketing we looked at. One of the what's the value that they are getting from us understanding that will be important to using the seven C analysis. Getting conversation reports to test it work it out will be very, very important. Then we can decide what's our overall approach to the market strategy. So do we want to be the lowest cost producer, which means that we've got the highest volume in the sector on there are some people out there doing slips and trips. Person injury, actually actively promote for slips and trips on. They have a high volume of work, and they have people sitting in a former warehouse. I kid you not 50 people attached to PCs on earphones, telephones and so on on. They have very, very easy cost leadership have once the stern 50 caseworkers and they do have that constantly ship. But this anyone could get costly issue in a sector. So you may say what we want to be different from the competition with the seven seas will help guide you on what is a competitive differential. It may be that you have something that is unique. A unique selling proposition. It may be that with a combination of things, you identify what it is that makes you better or different from the other people on the high street. And then you may say, Well, OK, are we going to be a generalised or a specialist on? Uh uh, That's so the degree to which one would get focused in a particular sector or particular client group, for example. So that gives you a few pointers to say, Okay, one is our overall approach to the market built on the experience we have thus far. Then we can decide. Well, how do we break that that up? How do we segment our business? So we may be looking at petty crime. We may be looking at white collar crime. We may be looking at fraud. We may be looking There is segments of the off the criminal offence market. We may segment business in other different ways. So depending on what business you're in, you may go for high net worth individuals, or you may go for different sectors. You may look out landlords with X number of properties or tenant work, that sort of thing. So slicing it up segment, it achieves focus because in trying to be all things to all people dilutes your message. And remember, the raspberry general doesn't taste too good to be spreading to Philly. Statement the various bits and pieces and approach the appropriate parts of it. So from there, one can get a simple one line statement of what is the competitive advantage. What makes you the sort of firm the client speed a path to your door if all of that must come down being able to do that quite hard, but very powerful because anybody then reading plan says this is what we're about and it becomes part off the culture of the firm that flossing the firm. The brand competitive advantage should become the brand on Do remember that just being a sinister on the high street with brass back outside your front door is not a competitive advantages. Competitive Teoh claims companies or will writers of various sorts and so on and so forth? But it doesn't distinguish you from others who also have a brass plate outside their front door. So that then says, Let's define our pirate tights where they're going to be property values probably locations that sort of thing. Value off clients meet firms that are dealing with high net worth individuals where their personal household balance sheet is a Teesta 1,000,000 with the property value on pension values and so on and so forth. But that's the sort of client they're going for. Then they may identify the potential client again by some segment or other. This is a little very important to do because it gets that focus on applying the rounds for general, of course, very important. Then we need to write some good objectives, and Smart is the acronym. I'll take you through what that means. In a moment we'll be very clear about what they are because from there we could then identify what's the best way of reaching clients in that sector if its property developers, we can write too many. If it's the House Sellers House buyers, we may advertise in the local online sites, so we may go for free sheets of these papers and so on and so forth or whatever, all through some social media or what have you remember? My suggestion is that looting yourself to more than five key strategies to get clients beating a path your whip page with dilute your efforts quite a bit, serving very clear about what they should be our commercial sectors, seminars or something like that. Then we can decide what you need to spend to achieve above. Now that sounds are very simple and wants to take that a throwaway line. But what you'll see here is that the last question. All the sheet ask you to say, What is the budget you see so often? Businesses look at their last year's turnover. Last year's expenditure on marketing have a bit of a wet finger in the air. What are we gonna do next year? Well, if we do about the same or plus a few percent for inflation, that we should be up there, which means that we can afford to spend X tens of thousands on marketing 5 10 53 wherever sized businesses on go away and work out how we're going to spend it now that is putting the cart before the horse. Because if you have a budget to spend, do let me know, because I I'm very good at spending somebody else's money, and I could get you awards for the marketing. I've done that quite a bit, but that's not the way to do it. If you're running your own business, if you're going to try and win customers keep customers, then you need to answer those fundamental questions. And as you can see, there's eight smart questions to answer. Then we can decide what the budget should be, because if you are going to fund your growth organically. You may want to start with budget, but I think answering those questions is very, very important to decide whether your budget actually needs to be fully allocated or not, or whether or not you can allocate it through some other device, whether or not you need to go for it from the bank. Because if your marketing was sorted out very well and you could organically afford to spend 10,000 on your marketing to win a certain amount of business, we have good business basis. Go to the bank, borrow 10 on produce twice as much, unpaid at 10. Maybe a good thing to do if you were ambitious to expand your business in a particular way. So for me, I like to get firms in conversation with me answering those questions because from there one could be begin to identify what sort of expenditure on what sorts tools may be appropriate, rather than actually starting with budget and then deciding how to spend it. So with all those things in mind and lots and lots of searching answers to those questions is not something one can do in five minutes. Of course, as you probably already gathered by. Listening to me now is it should bring it then into a good plan rather than it being written on the back off folk packet. As the illustration might suggest. Let's see if we can put it into some sort of document would be a lot clearer now that in order to illustrate this on Page 26 27 off the workbook, you'll have a plan that's come from a firm we worked with on the South Coast was looking at building their probate business. Okay, on these were the key headings on the example Within the notes. We'll show you what to say. So what's the aim or objective? Starting with off the overall intention off the business or its department to be clarified in 12 lines, Then to identify what the key client benefits are, you remember Features Advantage, benefit analysis. We talked through amount to go, then be able to identify what it is that that clients are going to getting, particularly your kites, to be able to define that quite clearly, and you'll see it's old book. There's a couple of benefits from their recon then decide Well, okay, How will we approach the market? How do we communicate those benefits? What's the best way of doing that? And that could be put together in a line. The clarity of thinking says, Well, this will. This is what makes us better different from the other people who also provide what were aimed divide. We can recognize that we are a little bit better different on that Maybe importance performance analysis that you've done that will begin to point those things out again. That's a line or two. Then one starts to say, Well, OK, where are those clients going to be coming from? Is it market penetration? ISAT the same sort of sector provided how the service is. So he is a new service or is it going to be? Some services were taking to new areas. Client profile becomes important from there, and this is the rest of the plan. Is who's going to do what? What are the activities that done? Whose task is it to complete those activities and when, as it got to be done by on the bottom of that, we can then say OK, how much we're spending on each of the activities on who by name, is responsible for actually delivering those sorts of things for us and that you give us a very clear picture of what the plan looks like. And as you'll see, it's written on two pages with the actions and budget over on another couple pages. So three pages in all page and 1/2 for the plan on a page and 1/2 for the activity. So with something as concise is that everybody in the firm can be aware of what's being achieved, what we are trying to do and also never forget what we're not trying to do. And I sometimes think it's is important to clarify staff what we're going to do, but also what we are not going to do so that they know where the firm's going. What the focus is on can achieve that the minds of therefore not scattergun approach to all sorts of weird and wonderful opportunities, diluting effort but focusing now in particular areas. Nothing more simple than to monitor those activities on responsibilities on the budget because reviews a particular periods, possibly monthly, certainly at least quarterly runs. Reviewing those activities by having a conversation with individuals who have been tasked with those responsibilities they bought into it. They've collaborated with you developing it, putting forward the ideas, and they've agreed to do these things. And that, of course, becomes a very important part off the overall business planning exercise in order to get and keep customers. I didn't mention this matrix them, but earlier This is just a quick reminder off it that you'll define short, medium, long term approaches to it. And this is just also reminder of General I mentioned on. I do use this little purple box, and I put it up here on the whiteboard behind me from time to time and talk people through what bearing to do on each of those areas will have a sort of time line to them on way have bullet points in each of those particular boxes that helps keep current. That helps it keep alive. And it helps draw on people's contribution to the activities that should there to improving smart objectives. Well, it's an acronym. You may have met it before. I didn't know that people have different ways of expressing particular A on the R stand for but this is my take on it. I think we must be very clear about what's must be achieved. So the objective must be not to grow the business, but to grow what part of the business to be very clear, but what list on. Make sure that its numerous in some way so that we know what's being done now. You may argue that not everything is measurable, but if it isn't, don't do it because they really know whether you've done it or not. Just doing our bit or not being done is indeed a measure the lights in the office today are on. If I take a switch, you'll know they're off off is a measure so measurable Objectives are often financial, but also some new ones in terms of client satisfaction or propensity to return or loyalty or recommendations, and so on. So forth. Now for may be a must be that it is agreed. It's a grade the rate by you, the manager, but also you, the employee, that you're going to achieve these things that you are up for it not being imposed upon, which makes the are realistic. Now, if a was achievable on ours realistic. I think it's a little bit of tautology that both means pretty much the same thing. I think that they some say results orientated well, that means it's specific because it's clear about what it is agreed means. That reminds you to make sure that you don't as a managed right. You do this but get the dialogue to make sure it's a mutual agreement on that. Things are challenging but achievable. Theo are, might be results orientated. It might be resourced. Well, fine. Keep those in mind because they won't be realistic if it's not resourced s. So that's a little bit of a thought about those. But I think those two words there agreed and realistic make for much better objectives. And finally, when must these things be achieved by the sort of time bound bits? So increasing turnover It is all very good. But is that £11 in 10 years, or is it a 1,000,000 in a month? It's got to be recognized as to what it is and whether it is achievable. So there, Well, that's my take on marketing planning, and I hope you'll written Recognize. The plan is a very easy thing to pull together can be pulled together almost as quickly as I've spoken about it in this section, provided you've done that first part of research, research and analysis and discussion and exploring and understanding clarifications down, then the plan itself can come together fairly quickly. That's the sort of approach we take helping firms to approve better business planning.
00:50:04
-
what I'd like to do now, having completed a section of marketing planning is looking a little bit more detail about how we can retain customers, retain clients on DE, depending on the client and depending on the sort of work you do may indicate whether or not you can develop to become a trusted adviser. What this means is that one goes through a series of stages, but I'll explain what those stages are on starts off in a transactional basis just to provide a solution to a problem. I have a problem. I want representation called. I want to move house. I want to get out of a marriage contract in whatever it is. Just do the job service based and that's it. And then onto the next case. And there's plenty of firms do very well with that. But then there may be situations when one is looking at what the individual is doing and looking at what they value and understanding the competitive differential that you provide on looking at the benefits that you are able to offer. The client that recognizes that while the services therefore conveyancing, the needs are exploring a little bit further than that. Make it beyond those particular needs to say. Well, okay, what about it Will so far the ones looking a little bit beyond that to identifying do. But then, as one gets closer to the client and understands their situation, domestic social business situation than the relationship grows between the service provider yourself and the client. One former relationship, then eventually on his total involvement. Commitment from the client to the services plural virtual firm provides, which is developing a trust based relationship. Now I'm not suggesting for a minute that one needs to do this with all kinds in all situations. It may be that the whole nature and purpose in the why off your firm is such that you are unable to develop those relationships further, to become a fully trusted adviser to the client just because the transactional basis, what we're doing in the volumes that you're dealing with on the turnover off clients is such that it doesn't keep you time. Rockridge Indian. Indeed, there may be no particular value doing it, but I think what we'll see is that as we go through this, there's opportunity to raise your game as it were with a particular time. Build a stronger relationship so that you are willing either MAWR business because they come back for more repeats of similar sorts of work, or that you're winning great ish portion of what they may spend on services that you can provide. So let's have a look at these in slightly more detail on as the picture suggests that one is moving away from just taking the order to do the job through to a trusted advisors. So if you are thinking about what you do for your client, then essentially you are in the service business and a bit like paracetamol or a proof in you will take the pain away. So I have an rt A. I'd like to make a claim you could take came on my behalf and thank you very much. You've taken the pain of going through that process myself. Otherwise, why engage you to do that particular job? But I gave example earlier about conveyancing. I know it's a complex area I know would take a tremendous amount of my effort to do it, and I probably do it right after Orcs don't know all the ramifications. I would trust you, Teoh. Take it on board for May. Just do that job. Indulge. Take the pain away doesn't say, but many occasions that's perhaps all you can do virtually nature of the work that you do. But as you know, when you are working with a client, you may see opportunities where your ability to analyse situations and think a little bit outside the box helps the client understand that there are alternatives on. This could happen with legal aid. It can happen with commercial clients at either end of a fee earning spectrum. If you like to see something and go a little bit beyond that, Andi quite obviously suggested that service for used available of everyday high street conveyancing moves through to the needs based off, saying working. There's a will and so forth, so that's thinking a little bit outside the box on there. You're talking about this, but you also could benefit from this other service that offer provides on developing. That, of course, is very important because that will bring you closer to the light and may give you the opportunity of being very much a contract colleague. In other words, are always on hand to help the client out. Now, obviously this sort of thing, that may apply to more commercial relationships with commercial entities. So a contract colleague is where you function as very much their employees off the organization as a close relationship between you and the client organisation. So I like to think that Data law View me is a contract comic. They would employ me to put together various programs in marketing, business development and management, and I will get close enough to them to work with their their staff. They have spring team people on. I will interact with different people in different ways. On sometimes I'm doing that sort of exchange of information and sharing and so forth very total communications with maybe 200 miles apart. So I don't drop in every five minutes. That is it really necessary with today's communication technology anyway. But that relationship is there to function in that way, and therefore that builds a closer relationship. But I like to think big Law will continue to engage me. The various programs. Of course you're listening to this may have on alternative opinion, but I hope you feel that developing the commercial relationship with a client allows you to. I understand a little bit more about what's going on. So you might be if you're a commercial lawyer, be looking to train up some of the clients style for money, internal workshops, seminars and so forth to help people at that commercial organization to understand what's going on on that, of course, is the three ideal nirvana for Utopia in terms of relationship. But they won't be on that. That is where you become the a trusted advisor. Truly trust based. But there's integration off that any your context, content expertise, because you're good at commercial or property laurel litigation with organizational and the interpersonal skills to do that. So, for example, I've worked with one individual over a number of years. I became very much a contract colleague with him and his organization of modest organization. He's subcontracted lots of things to me on When he moved from that firm to another firm, that and he retained me as the person who would lead some of the market research that he was doing. So this was in my pharmaceutical days, Onda. We had lots, lots of different work. We did this all over the place, not just in the UK but in Germany and Spain and so forth, and did some research in 10 reefer picking conference and so on so forth. So we were not only very much involved with helping him to do his job, but obviously way were able to help him market himself internally because when he was doing a presentation on the market research, we provide him with the PowerPoint stack week. We put these together quite frequently, so we're able to turn data into graphics than turn the graphics into the presentations and so forth. This very useful because we became the sort of closer relationship with him. The only problem, of course. This houses that once there's a change of personnel on either side. How does firm retain that continuity as it is thes He's moved on counter work abroad on When he comes back, we hope to pick up the threads, but we don't work in the jurisdiction, which he's working. So what I'm showing you here is there's different levels off relationship that you develop different levels, means different types of work, different sorts of thinking, different approaches to it. On the service bases is dealing with a matter by matter. Case the needs based will be thinking outside the box so you're looking managing cash flow for them or helping them understand other options that they could take the relationship to function in, which is a seamless contract colic with the client for and then trust based. You go one step beyond that to go beyond your content expertise, but also your into persons girls to help people in Clark organization Aziz best as you can. So that is the trusted advisor. Hope. Therefore, there's something useful within that for you. So let's put that into some graphic for you here. We've got an increasing depth of personal relationship going across to left to right on, then the increasing breath off business issues that you face with your commercial clients. Now, clearly, there's a limit to the degree to which you can do this with a private household time. But getting similar sort of thing applies where you're doing a particular transaction for them, that service base know the individual. To some degree you dealt dealing with an issue, and that's quite comfortable service base. But then, as you developed personal needs understanding that this private client it is looking not only this but also that other needs built on their on in person injury terms. There may be some issues that come over above just winning claim on their behalf a needs based relationship as the personal relationship grows, then that moves to a much more as a contract colleague, and you're providing no more help and support and so forth so they can pick the phone up. We'll have a chat with you, and you don't need a five minute conversation because there's other opportunities and your recommending people internally or cross selling other people as well. But then, of course, the trust relationship, I suppose, goes back to those situations generation or two ago, where the high street practice was a resource for the family, for all sorts of things that you remember on my father. God bless him, having the solicitor who would be hanging all sorts of matters, both commercial for my father's construction, engineering practice as well as domestic for residential matters and wills, and so on, so forth. So that's what encompassing a whole variety of things at that level. Okay, well, hope that's useful gifts and thoughts and ideas as to what you are doing currently on. You can have a look at page 30 within the notes because there's a table there that says OK, identify the client at each particular level, and if they are all service based, then you could then begin to identify how you would it actually take to maintain and retain that level of his transactions. That you're moving from client to client to client, not so need to bother. But looking at the loyalty of repeat, repeat, repeat can be quite useful, quite interesting from that service point of view at all. Those convinces out there don't forget that people do, particularly where there's less, not duty involved. People will move more frequently because they have the opportunity to move up the scale down the scale, depending on their needs. So they may come back to you for some convincing the next time around, which may only be four years away, 48 months or something like that. So you're keeping a track in a dialogue with people maintaining that service with that particular household, then recognizing if you've got that dialogue with former people that you've done conveyancing fourth, and you can look at the broadening the services to that seat and then develop needs based and all those it needs based. What are you going to do to maintain or grow that relationship from a needs based transaction basis to a more full relationship basis than mature, aiming to improve things and then finally onto the trust. So little template for you to think these things through because it's key reemphasizing. This has done a number of times. It's not saying here that's important. It's what you do with it to remember. If you think it, I think it and if you think it, you might do it. So that's a little template backed up in some of the notes for you to turn that into something practical on from there. We're going to look at how we can maintain some client loyalty, depending on your customer service levels. This home area off client satisfaction and loyalty is quite an interesting one. I'm gonna base the analysis that I've got here on market research that we did I mention this a while ago where we did something for the law society on future and We were looking at questionnaires from 3500 or so clients of law firms through a number nor firms Apart project, and we were involved in a few of the phone calls to some of the respondents. So what's interesting is when we get to the question of loyalty that not every client would necessarily become a a loyal client, because once they've had the transaction, they've had the transaction did mentioned a moment ago about convincing clients they move more frequently if they aren't caught in the sort of stamp duty figures. So so more modest properties below a certain level may transact more frequently because they don't have to pay tax on the purchase tax of a of a new property. So they may be loyalty. But that loyalty may be stretched over a number of years before they come back. There's not very many people that would go through serial divorces and so on and so forth, so loyalty means different things for different people. Of course, I do know working with legal aid firms that client loyalty and particularly from defense, maybe something that somebody keeps getting themselves into different situation and keeps therefore needing the services of a particular firm. But I think loyalty can be expressed in other ways, too, is that they are loyal as in there, giving recommendations that they are coming to your firm or they are recommending that others come to your firm. And that, of course, reflects very much on the individual. I personally am not very good at recommending other service providers to other people. I use an accounting firm, for example, and I've recommended my accounting firm to a few others. But there's a particular pay back for me for doing so. I just recognise they've done a good job for me, and then one or two people, particularly more modest, small to medium sized enterprises benefit from the way that Rob does things, and people are a bit like may find that he works well with them. But I do understand that loyalty is quite a important issue for many, many firms, so loyalty and client satisfaction do have quite an interesting relationship. So what we did was to survey plants and ask him about service parameters and so forth. I'll get a general view off client service, so the chance I've got here tries to represent the response that people get to. How happy are you? With the service received, the scale of happiness room be represented. Thus, as you can see, we've got a scale of smiling faces where somebody that the left hand side is very unhappy with tears in their eyes and so forth, right the way through to having they love you immensely, is the very happy clients at the other end of scare. When we get a scale, therefore off what I might call toughness. So are they not a tall chuffed, slightly unjust, neither one or the other fairly ambivalent in the middle, there are they content are very, very chuffed doing cart wheels across the car park, having just paid your bill. So what we've done is to represent this with some numerous evaluation. So from zero, you get no points of the client is very, very unhappy on get four points of the top of the scale. It would be wrong aside to put number 1 to 5 on this scale because you shouldn't get one point for doing a bad job. That also means that if it was converted into a percent teach so you give people say 20% for the bottom end of the scale of 100% of the top end of the scale. Well, that isn't a wise thing to do. It should be 0% from bottom in this girl and then 25 50 7500. In other words, it's much better unless biased, when that evaluations have made certain comparing one event with another. So what we did was to survey clients is mentioned. 3500 came through to ask me that was people putting lots of data on spreadsheets on. There were people who were very, very unhappy. And it's quite interesting if you look at this Andi think. OK, what was the average score on this one around free or 2/2 or something like that? Well, I can tell you 1.75 In other words, it waas less than happy with the service provided by the firms represented in this study. Now that made stuff strike being been old. But because for all those people who are absolutely delighted, there were a lot of people who were discontented on, it's very, very difficult to get a good feel for what the satisfaction levels are Reason for that is the happy people like to tell you on unhappy people. Well, I could tell the ombudsman or the S R A. Or in fact, they just may say, I couldn't public come back. So very often the responders to particularly online or email question A's. Maybe those who are content but those who are a fairly left lower Rendon's girl just couldn't bother to respond. So you serve 100 clients, you get 20 forms back as it were 20% and they all appear to be very happy. Well, that may be. One has to question whether or not it is nice in some way because only those that are happy off to tell you. You do say, If you have a problem, write us a letter in the cloud care pardonable sorted out well, because that's already biased it. Those who could be bothered to write a letter, for example, So let's not get hung up on the market research. Yorke's let's have a look at it from the point of view of the what respondents said about loyalty. No, I think it's extremely difficult to get a gauge of loyalty for any individual you could say to Serbia, you're gonna come back to this restaurant. I might go to a restaurant, but what I come back depends it If it's local, if I'm traveling and I travel a lot on business, I go to a restaurant. Would you come back? I said, Yes, I would the next time You know, im 200 miles from home and in the city at this time on that I may come here. Yes, it's quite easy to say that the loyalty, of course, is a difficult thing from a law firms point of view and out of the way I've assessed it here is flawed because it's a question about likely future behavior. Ondas you know, from reading any of the polls in any of the elections since the year dot because very difficult to evaluate what's going to happen because in polls of polls, you've still got a very, very small sample. There are 65 million people in the UK there are 40 million people, people who have the right to vote on bond. Maybe turnout is going to be probably somewhere around 25 to 30 million people on the palm of polls has actually just had a look. A 10,000 people because that's 10 polls of 1000 people. Now the problem that is that 10,000 is not a representative sample off 25 to 30 million people, so inherent within in particular study may be small sample biased. So again, biases come up. So we're looking at loyalty. The way I evaluated it is flawed, but it's equally flawed for each of the five groups represented in front of you on what we did was to ask people, how satisfied were you service something someone said zero and wanted to report. Okay on They had a tick box with these smiling faces represented here. So what we did was Teoh say, to people, This is an evaluation of loyalty Was to say okay to any particular group scored 12 or three. Any particular good interview them and said, OK, imagine that another firm waas exactly next door to the firm that you have recently used. So in that respect, there was no differently about transport getting there or parking or whatever is exactly the same services offered to you. It's just next door. Would you stay with the firm that you with or what you go next door? Now that is a perspective future view. It is slightly flawed in the way in which I've suggested it's very difficult to spot what future behavior is gonna be. Are you going to vote for a given president off the United States? The officers know when it actually comes down to vote. Then finally, enough people did vote in a way that surprised people. And that is inherent problem with the whole issue. Market research. So when you ask people, what are you going to do? There is a bias in that. But you ask the same group yours, different groups, the same thing, then the biases equal. So the comparator between one group of the next is giving you a feel for loyalty. So what we did when we had a sample people who schooled zero, I'm very unhappy with the service that I received on. Then we phone them up on would take. And then just that question. Imagine the firm opened up next door to one did use. Would you stay with one you've got? Would you go next door saying service. Same technical service. You went conveyancing. One. We cancel this all that all that. It's the same service that you've got. Would you stay with your existing provided what? You go next door prices the same locations and saying taking all those criteria out, What do you think happened when we asked a group of people who were very unhappy with the service provider how many set they would go next door? How many would remain while the loyalty off remain? Er's was This is that one in 20 people who had a really bad experience would stay with their original service provider and not go and try the one next door. Now that strikes me as being a big old You think that if everybody was unhappy than they would old try next door? Okay, I don't know whether, in fact, 1920 we actually going next door in practice. But that's what they said. Let's stick with. So it is very low and some remain well, what was interesting we sent to those 5% who would remain. Thank you for for that. Why do you say that? Well, no, it stay where we are, OK? Why would you do that? What they told us was one of two reasons. One is that the ones next door a property is bad, which is an interesting view of the profession. Generally, on the second reason why they would remain as well. They are bad, but they're consistently bad. You know what you're getting on? This whole thing in human nature is that the certainty of despair is sometimes here the despair of uncertainty. So if I know I'm going to get rubbish service, I'll stay where I am. But least I know what I'm going to get. But I have the risk about getting even worse next door. So one in 20 people were thinking that way. Okay, those were unhappy. And what we found here is that around one in eight people would remain so immediately as you see there, less unhappy than a great abortion would say they would remain in their four loyal. So the comparator here is quite interesting is we're getting 2.5 times the number people set. They would remain if they weren't quite as badly served as the group. Let's go zero. So these comparatives are quite interesting. Still one in eight people would remain, and pretty much for the same reasons, because the one next door could be worse. Or at least we know we're getting rubbish service on were surprised. What I found quite interesting in the real key message that one's putting across to audiences like yourselves is what happened when people said it was okay. They're not happy nor unhappy. It was okay. You know, it's a middle point on the on the scale we've got here of toughness, the loyalty Well, nearly four times more than it waas when they was likely unhappy. Well, that is showing is that the consistently okay firm that doesn't foul up in its client service is going to retain a lot more than if there is any reason for dissatisfaction. So the consistent okay firm is going to score a lot higher in the Comparator here of loyalty. So okay, this is quite a good message. Is that whatever one's doing with clients, just make sure that they are at least not unhappy to any degree, and loyalty will grow now. Quite obviously, I guess your firm, like many others, are not not happy with maintaining the status quo of not upsetting anybody but actually wanting to put a bit of a smile on the face. Now I do think to be fair to the profession that these are tend to be a great experiences in life, the threat of a custodial sentence. They are going through a matrimonial moving houses, stressful type of thing, having to complain to your landlord that the central heating hasn't been repaired in three weeks over the Christmas period, or whatever it is that you are using. Your firm four is clearly not the fun in life by large, therefore, that the degree to which people say they're happy may clearly be challenging. There are those that would be happy with what we found in our study, very super happy with this. Happy with what happened? The degree to which they said they would remain loyal is actually quite high, as you'd expect, 2/3 of people who were happy would remain. But we're still getting 1/3 but would move next, all on what? So I suppose. But interesting here is the happy cars on freeways. Loyal is that they would suggested intention. They were trying to go next door when we asked him the question. Why would you go next door? The answer was, well, we were happy where we were, but it could be better next door. We will give them a try now. If they weren't better, we may come back to the original, but if they were better, then of course we would go elsewhere. So loyalty is not something that one could rest on one's laurels and say, Well, okay, happy kinds. That's good enough. We've got to make them very happy. A very happy particular context of the outcomes that people find themselves having to face, particularly when there's a legal issue To be dealt with, of course, is naturally a difficult one. Yet we still hear from time to time, particularly criminal defense lawyers, that the outcome is not happy outcome out. It was a pleasure customer incentives, but they were very happy with the service from their sister advocate because he she was able to put their point across on argue there their defense in a very constructive, powerful way. They were happy with that. Accepting the outcome is being covered center. So even in that situation where ones facing a very different outcome. Contentment with the service provider could be really quite high, even if the outcome per se wasn't necessary. So where's the loyalty? Will probably think it's sort of 100% people really, really chuffed Button and lasted clients because even the really, really happy ones doing cart wheels across your car parkers, I said, having just paid a bill, for example, or what? Happy Still one in 10 would go elsewhere, and pretty much the same reasons. Why would you go elsewhere? Were delighted with this lot. 90% stay, but one intent thereabouts and say, Well, we try next door because we're optimistic that we may find better services, better value for money and so on, so forth, so hope. These figures are interesting and they drop them down that they're not repeated in the workbook particularly. But you may want to drop down to recognize key messages from this. That is that if you have unhappy cards, you may get some loyalty because they have a very low opinion, generally off profession. But if you at least don't make them unhappy, just keep him ambivalent. Somewhere in the middle you will get four times the amount off loyalty as and when it would appear and certainly will. Seeing that much mawr when one puts a smile on the face of in terms of service on again final message here is that even the very happiest ones that you don't really, really good job. You can't rest on your laurels. It's about keeping on maintaining that particular powerful message. So that's useful for you, because what I'd like to do is to move from there to look about what we can do to be obsessive about clients.
00:30:46
-
So what does it mean to be obsessive about plants? What I'm gonna do here for you is to outline a whole variety of different thoughts and tips and ideas that you could and to your own portfolio, all things that make the client the center of everything you do. So let's have a look at a few fortnight is so things will add to the notes that you've got. I haven't bullet pointed thes straight away. So if there is something that you think quite helpful, then remember the think it, think it, think it, you'll do it. So, uh, have a look and see what you think. I think the first thing we need to do is to recognize unless we listen, we find it very difficult to know what kinds really want what they value. I've illustrated throughout this program different ways in which you can listen to clients. So the seven seas marketing, for example, is a process for you to stop and think what it is the clients want. But then to use that as a template to have those conversations with key clients or representative of client groups to understand exactly what they value under each of those headings to see whether or not your assumptions are indeed correct. Obviously, your own end of matter questionnaires are always very useful, but don't forget that some transactions could take a very long time. So think about whether it's possible to have some device for listening to clients opinion while you could make a difference to it. You see, when I run on open program on were in a hotel. People do the happy sheets at the end of the day. Do you tell people, Please don't write it anything on there that I could do something about because it will only be useful to me for the next group of useful for you now, people still right on those forms. The room was a bit cold. Well, that's very interesting, but it's not very useful. So I do make sure that I do ask people as the day unfolds. House the room temperature. Is it okay, just a sort of temperature taking device. Ho. What you can do is to do exactly the same thing is to find the appropriate method to say to people during the process. What is it, what we're doing? That you like us doing? What is it you wish we do less off. What could we do that we're not doing it all? So just those three simple, simple statements and what we're doing, Well, what would you like is not to do quite so much off. In other words, what are we not doing so well? And then what things could we do that we aren't doing at the moment on those three questions during a stage review through a particular matter can be very, very powerful. So those devices, they may be paper based questionnaires that could be online questionnaires. Surveymonkey is a good example of some very straightforward, modest question is we put together work on those because the more you have clients engaging with you, then what we find is that satisfaction actually goes up. Thank you for asking. I feel better that you bothered to ask, particularly in a way that's not confrontational and indeed can be anonymous as well. Because the anonymity, I think, is quite important. How often have you been served a meal, the plates of variety in front of you, and then, a couple of minutes later, the waitress or waiter comes along and they say, How was your meal? Knowing that you're going to be served further courses through their, you know, kick up too much with us or do quickly must all that's absolutely fine. And then just think fish was a bit cold. But you didn't mention it because, well, we're terribly British and we don't like to do that. So make sure that what you've got is a good device for listening and if it's pertinent, to have it in a way that is confidential, not gonna track an individual. Unless, of course, the individual relationship was particular. Port you and then being able to have some interaction does ask the question independently, outside of ordinary matters that every communication isn't always about the matter. It's about service parameters. Then, of course, one does demonstrate you are obsessive about clients because you are bothered what they think, particularly in there's opportunity for you to do something about it rather than purely relying on the end of matter. Question it on our work with law, Firm says, shown some very, very good ways in which one did improve service parameters. So as a consequence of that, then if you are a senior person within the firm. They need to take action. You need to do something about it. You've got an idea. You may have thought about it. I think you think it that's not gonna make any difference at all if you have written it down. If you inked it, you can do it. I think is a particular word. So if you have actually written something down, then that's your agenda to look at ways in which you can rights of fashion obtained better feedback from clients at different phases where you could make a difference. So I think one of the big gripes I hear that clients have about is not hearing about what's going on about making phone calls and not getting a call back. For example, you know your own situation when you left a message with the service provider, a bank building society or whatever, then you may reflect quite badly on ones that wouldn't respond promptly enough, something we said help with a national immigration firm was to give a four working our response time. So if a cloud called firm and said what's going on constantly? Tell me wanted update Then then somebody who could see the case file. The progress on it would get back to the four working hours. Now you may say, Well, maybe a bit slow for some situations, But clearly in their world, they thought it was quite a good response on the when the client care questionnaires that came clattering into this office actually pointed out the respondent in four hours, and they thought that that was pretty good. Wished other service providers responded that promptly. Now, in terms of response, it didn't have to be people who knew what the legend framework. Waas What? Taking legal advice. It was just people part of the admin team. Who would say, Jane is a court. She's not gonna be back in until tomorrow. I thought I would call you to let you know what's going on. I had a look on the case file. We have chased the home office. We have signaled in 10 days time you're getting an update, unusual course of events, and so I thought I would let you know what that is. James back in on Thursday. So give her a call, then call us back unless is in in particular that you need. And I could get some other caseworkers to have a look at this matter for you if it was that. So in other words, that response wasn't actively advised. Response was to look at it. And then, of course, what they realized is that if the support staff could be that involved, they could give a proactive coal particular times just to make sure people were aware of what's going on on. And, as they found with new technology, response didn't always have to be live voice voice. It could be text SMS Teoh. The clients remember phone Obviously no confidential information used in that route. It's not always secure, but nonetheless, just to say we've received you call. We've looked fire. You're gonna get update in 10 days sort of thing as a personal message, which the case management system remember getting the I t and the human dimensions together make for the differences of importance performance as we talked about earlier, I have had to pick up some, but in this office about contemptuous language within the office. She was complaining about Client X that they were disorganized and left hand from right hand I think I might have had something a bit stronger than that. Sorry, I can't accept that. Our job is to be a contract colleagues. Our job is to solve their problems. If they are disorganized, good, because they can rely upon us to help sort them out. So that's a small thing, but very, very important that it is interesting how often when I'd be working inside law firms do from time to time. How occasionally look holding here about Mrs Jones while she's a real etcetera, etcetera. Now, if that's going on inside and that happens, it's very, very careful not to say that in some other part where another clients hearing about what's going on. I I think the thing that's really quite interesting and I don't Whether you do any of this is whether your client facing staff have had training on the word I use here is is a very important excessive training for clients facing staff to make sure that they are able to handle conflict appropriate that they are able to respond in the appropriate fashion, too. Phone calls and so on so forth are able to take a proactive stance. Exception, exception on data law do run programs for support staff. Teoh look a client fainting function. So have a look at that portfolio there. And I'm sure you'll find something useful that you can pass on to some of your colleagues because they do benefit from the training not because they are Muppets, but because they benefit from the fact that you, the employer, are taking an interest in them on their job. And they feel better about the fact that they have had that attention on so forth. So that training isn't just because. Do you think they pour the job, but because they get a lot of buzz out of it on I find, particularly when I've run training programmes for reception staff, that this has made quite a difference. In fact, I co authored a book on the reception on work for receptionists in one particular sector. No, unfortunately, the legal sector, but nonetheless something I have been involved with and run lots and lots of programs. And what I find is that the client facing function have a lot to give in terms of how to improve the client experience to the world of marketing. People aren't talking much more client care but about client experience because it focuses on the processes that go through in order to achieve a particular outcome. And support staff are key elements off that process. Any process, like a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Something to think about, uh, on. Then what about those people actually able to win new business? Find new clients, get people to recommend? And I do feel that there's an opportunity for all people in the client pacing function to be able to contribute to those order winners. There's business minutes we talked about. Those things make a difference. I remember the example I gave. But one firm's client care wasn't as could be. And that is very much a team, not an individual approach. Moving on to more obsession, a few things to think about here. Then the complaint response mechanisms should be faster than whatever you said it should be. I do hear from time to time how some people saying, Well, we will respond in so many weeks. I know the legal ombudsman do set up sort of parameters, and I think it's better to be better than the industry standard of a profession standard. If the in the legal, Amberson said, it's okay to have a three week response time, then I think you could do smarter than that. If it's a January on important problem, some people have signaled, even if it isn't most complaints, we know from working with the professional indemnity insurers that most complaints down to lack of communication. So improving your response mechanisms improves communication and starts to nip the problem in the bud. And if you are going to do something, then you I would suggest that you under promise over deliver. In other words, you do better than you said you would on. That is always a very important issue on. I think that the senior people within the firm's Canada activity to reflect the firm's client Focus Ralph pay. As I hear sometimes a bit of lip service is, Oh, somebody reception welcoming. You've got a tough job, would want to do your job and walk away from particular issues. I think that's not helpful for the organization's approach to having the obsession about clients on Therefore, service quality is not to be as good as the competition, but to be better than the competition on that would drive up as we saw loyalty quite well. So a number of thoughts and ideas there. But then, finally, what about the client's perception? Because their perception that your slow becomes their reality, that you are slow. And I know because I will talk with a lot of folks like yourself who do conveyancing, for example, how clients perception is it's the solicitor's firm slows everything down where, as it can be land registry or this or that or the other away, the state agent for the other side of slowing things down. But remember, perception and reality are very, very important. That something I cover quite a bit on the PSC for trainees. So they are well versed in that particular area. I just want to have a little bit of mention about support staff because I think they're very important because they are the brand they represent the phone on. I think that's a bit of a surprise to some because they don't necessarily give folks the in support the functions that they should will the contribution they make enough recognition. What I mean by recognition is, for example, how much they get trained and invested in. It's quite important, I think, the degree to which the individuals frontline no the phone by knowing the firm they know what the seven seas a marketing are. They know what contribution they make to those seven seas. They know the business plan. They know what actions being proposed. They know who's responsible for that. I mentioned a patient half business plan. Well, it's not giving away great trade secrets to make sure that supports Darfur on board, because you must make sure that allow the ducks noses. All staff are all pointing in the same direction, Ralph being in some sort of conflict or fuzzy picture. So they know firm Well, because when they do, you then have employees that a marketing applicants for on the front line staff particular receptionist do represent the firm. When somebody comes in off the street, comes in for an interview, comes in to see a case worker. It's a very, very important folk from my point of view, because I visit a lot of firms. I have to say that support staff are generally very good standing, but it was, I think, that support staff have a very important role when it comes to internal communications. Example I give is when I visited a large practice endless London on having appointment with the managing partner. So I arrived practice on just 10 minutes five minutes before two o'clock appointment. Onda uh, reception said, How can I help? You said, I've got an appointment with managing partner and she said, Oh, who may I say is calling before getting my name Thought thought myself. Well, why doesn't she know who is visiting the managing partner? He is obviously a very important person within the firm. Eso. Why doesn't she know who's coming in? I may have been very important that, you know, I was a supplier, suited, booted, and I could have been important for going to say, But she didn't know well, who might say is calling. I gave him my name like Take a seat, give McCall sat down. Life is good, Andi, Every five minutes past 10 minutes past and literally use paper perception in the kick drum. Make expressions to reception. Well, what's happening with seven times marching on, you know they were just after 10 past went up to reception, spoke this lady again and said, I know that Mr Armstrong has got a year, Three appointments, So I heard where he is. Oh, she said, Oh, I'm I'm sorry. I said she said I did phone him, you know. What did he say? You should write it. No, that's the voice mail. Now, have you got that voicemail? What was going on? Why did she think that somebody visiting most senior person firm will be satisfied with just a voicemail in the event? When he was a couple doors down the corridor, he was helping a colleague out matter waiting for me to arrive. I thought that the message might have gone to the secretary of Come find him That didn't happen. Came to his voicemail directly on she was where she was not back from lunch on. The whole thing fell apart. So internal communications, just a small thing. But that is a moment of truth. That is what is actually gonna happen when a client walks in. Maybe having hundreds of thousands of pounds with budget to allocate to to, uh, business services. But what's happening within the firm so small link in the chain. But that is only a chain is only as strong as its weakest link on this lady. Quite competent. Otherwise, obviously haven't quite got the idea on internal communications so that they managing partners diary, particularly visitors are concerned, could have been shared quite amicably in that way. So I thought of support stuff, more things to think about. Make sure that they're able to take decisions on behalf of clients. Those Aaron Firm will need particular help support taxis in tone and so forth to enable those sort of things happen. Make sure that they are trained to listen, to pick up on what's going on within a practice. I was waiting in a more modest firm elsewhere in the country on two women came out of a consulting room. I took him to be mother, daughter. The daughter was upset. She was saying something to create, absolutely didn't quite understand what was going on, she said to her mother about that they don't very dear to be right. Receptions heard this, shrugged her shoulders and went like this into May after they've gone on. But hang on a minute. You heard what was going on. You could have given a little note to the caseworker and said, I've just seen whoever leave practice Onda. Maybe there's an opportunity to give me a call just to clarify things, because there were things going on there. So, you know, support Start, have a very good role, and they should be trained up to be able to deal with that in the most professional manner on. I think that they support staff. Then whether that means collecting for firm there, phoning of clients from some point of view. The writing people, whatever it is that's going on and they do have some front off office sort of process they're involved with, that they are very capable of looking after it. So receptions, I think, natural enough for important group, and they should be well trained. And here's an example here these receptionist, they've got loads of things to do. The lady on the phone had nothing to do with with anybody in reception on. Therefore there. What's going on? To what degree are they actually helping people as the first point of contact with firm again booked in off the street on their We have those sort of things going on, by the way I was asked to take a photograph because I was involved in doing some mystery shopper studies, and that's quite interesting. Quite a few anecdotes could come from my experience function is a mystery shopper pretending to come into the street with an appointment to find out what reception was actually like so few things to think about under the heading off support stuff. And then, finally, I read an article in the God's Law Society journal a few years back that looking at client care programs and how to make the work client can't it works on the four cornerstones off foundations declined work is summarized here. There's a lot more in that article. You're more than welcome to circulate that in turn May. But I think the four cornerstones of First of all that clients and their business situation is being looked at on, explored on understood. So things like importance performance of things like the Seven Seas and things like features of anti benefits. They're the things we talked about on this program on those sorts of things that you can build on to fully understand. What are the hot buttons? Depress, if you will, that will make a move you from being in the order, qualifying to order winning situation on that starts at the top. Of course, the key cornerstone for this particular senior management actually committed to that. And it's not about whether you can save a few pounds here or there. It's about whether or not you can win the hearts and minds of clients that is so important. But I think we've been through an austerity. I know that pressures on their of salaries and inflation costs and allow that sort of thing. Or they ought to be some commitment to winning hearts and minds of clients as well. Third part that for May is that it isn't just somebody else's job. Is everyone's job marketing advocacy mentioned several times that consensus in action on the service ethic. So certainly the work that I've done care on the program. We ran four days large mentioned again. Sorry about that. But that's the sort of thing that helps people at all levels in the organization look at their their job from the point of view of serving a kind. And if they're not serving a card that should be serving someone that he's eternal support. Therefore, for those who are in client facing functions. Onda also despite case management systems despite operational procedures of Lex Island zone so forth, I think it's sensible to recognize that there are going to be needs to flex what you do in order for me. Diverse kind based on that's first of foremost within the S. R. A. Code of conduct that one does do that one deals with people who are from different situations in the best way that one can, therefore, that one size fits all. It is not the way forward. It's recognizing people have individual needs and so forth. It's not a factory shop, but we just churning wheels. So that's my Oscar. You're happy Teoh to share that. As you see fit on hope it sparks a few more faults and interests. Well, that's it for May for this particular program Today, I hope you found it illuminating and enjoyable. Just as a quick recap, you can recognize that most of getting and keeping a car is putting somebody in the position all being the buyer, so understanding what it feels like to be on the receiving end, that empathy and understanding is important. We looked at the moment of truth. What happens before a client picks the phone up? There's a couple steps there, and that's a member truth and how many people that you may have worked for don't get through to those higher levels of members of truth because of what's going on within the firm. Let's explore price from the point of view of cost and value for money. The cost of working with you is more important, client in the absolute price that they pay. We had a lookout refining that to importance performance matrix for particular types of clients, particular sectors of business. And you were need to work on those things that will be order winning on do them better than the competition in order to when you get a client in the first place. We also recognize that when we focus on what we are and what we do, that turning those features of business into things that are benefits for the client become fundamental to good client communications listening as well as the delivery on. We've been able to explore a 7.7 seas of marketing the whole marketing mix. Recognize that every single one of those is not some of the department's job, but is your job and everybody's job to have their contribution to the things that customers are concerned about managing those marketing communications across the whole of that marketing mix? Because when you get the client care right, as we've demonstrated the loyalty as we measured, it can increase on. That is the way bites will be keen to pass on those recommendations. So thank you very much for engaging with this. Do you remember that the lips of their to back up program do remember to before you go on, finish this program on race off to the next job that you've got to do with busy lives that we will need encourage you to stop for a moment? Think about what you've collected through the program. You think it think it Look at that list of things that you plan to do on putting smart, specific, measurable Andi. Think about when you're going to have um, actually achieve their agreed. They're going to be realistic objectives. Get a conversation going on, other people on board out. You'll find that there's other things within the data law portfolio that will help you improve your business space. So that's it from a all house make and keep a customer. Do let Data little know what you think off the program. We're always willing to listen, because listen to clients. As you might expect, I have been Mac Makai, and if you want to get in touch with me about any of the content, by all means do so, please get in touch with take the law through the usual fashions to explore their portfolio. So thanks very much again on look forward to talking with you on the next program so by phone out.
00:26:47
