Nurture and Astonish
Consider for a moment all the things you could do with a few extra marketing dollars. What
would be your criterion for choosing a new approach? It would have to be how effective it is,
and effectiveness in marketing is always reduced to a measurable profit or return on
investment (ROI).
A relatively small investment devoted to nurturing and encouraging referrals and
acknowledging, thanking, thrilling and rewarding your referrers will pay big dividends…
especially as compared to the ROI you realize through online or offline advertising.
Currently, a significant portion of your new business comes from referrals. But most or all of
your marketing dollars go to chasing down strangers. Do you see the disconnect?
It also bears mentioning that when you can multiply the number of referrals you receive from
your clients, there is no referral fee to pay to another law firm. In many cases this is a savings
of tens of thousands of dollars. Just a few such cases can pay for a lot of advertising and other
overhead expenses.
The following is an overview of two leading edge high leverage strategies. I usually refer to
them as "Client Nurture” or “Ambassador Program" and the "Astonishment Program" for your
top referrers.
1) Client Nurture:
When clients are well nurtured, the benefits are profound.
Currently, your best clients refer when they notice a good opportunity. How many of the
opportunities are they seeing? My experience suggests that even a deeply appreciative client
refers a fraction of what they could if they were properly stroked and stoked—and
programmed. As their personal Journey to Justice fades from their mind, despite how much
they appreciate you, referrals taper off and then stop completely.
By nurturing the relationship with all your Ambassadors (good appreciative clients who have
a proclivity to refer) you can significantly increase your referrals. Why? It has to do with how
the brain works.
When you buy a red sports car, you are soon amazed at how many red sports cars you
suddenly notice. When you learn a new word, suddenly you notice it all around. You wonder
how it was that you had not noticed it previously.
Similarly, a client who has been recognized and acknowledged and perhaps rewarded by you
has warm positive feelings for you. The category of “great lawyer I want to tell others about”
is red hot in their mind and anything but dormant. When you do nothing to stoke your client
list, even the ones that love you go dormant—eventually.
My discovery is that even good clients (top referrers), once nurtured and stoked tend to ramp
up to a higher level of referral than otherwise. It’s not that they try harder. It’s just that they
notice more opportunities and are more motivated to feel those good feelings of
acknowledgment, praise and reward. And to feel the feeling of contribution to others they get
through referring.
I would describe the "journey to justice" that each of your clients faces as follows:
i) Person gets hurt. They seek medical help.
ii) Their insurer gives them “The Runaround”
iii) They realize they need an attorney. They ask around or respond to an ad.
iv) They meet one or many attorneys and select one to represent them.
v) Their case is onging. They are either well served by the law firm or not. Notwithstanding
the level of skill or commitment of the law firm, the quality of their communication with their
lawyers is the key determinant of client perceptions during this phase.
vi) The case is resolved through settlement or verdict. The client is happy or unhappy or in
between.
vii) The client moves on. Many clients continue to identify with the period of their life in
which they were hurt and then denied and then helped. The depth of the bond with the law
firm and the length of their period of identification with their journey to justice will limit or
expand the number of cases they notice to refer.
The biggest implication for a capable plaintiff’s firm is that you are in a perfect position to
create a deep, positive bond with your clients. The contribution you make to their life is
profound.
This suggests two obvious marketing objectives. One is to deepen the bond and the other is to
lengthen the period in which a person will refer.
The principle we uncovered, quite by accident, is that extraordinary levels of client nurture
cause referral breakthroughs – ESPECIALLY from the people who are already your top
referrers!
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In order to deepen and extend your client’s appreciation for your firm so that they refer at a
higher level, there are a few actions to consider:
i) Regular powerful communications with clients. These can be in the form of phone calls,
letters, post cards, e-mails, invitations to events. They cannot be rote, computer-dictated
Christmas or birthday cards and nothing else. Neither of these actions produces strong
emotional response. And, they cannot be the most convenient for YOU. Simply blasting out emails and doing nothing else is convenient for you but does not fulfill the objective of creating
deep and positive emotions in your clients.
ii) Conduct regular in house events in which clients are invited to tell their stories, are
provided lunch, interviewed and recorded, acknowledged. (This produces amazing
breakthroughs in intakes in the ensuing weeks.) Restrict invitations to those who match a
profile and have referred. One profound side benefit of these events is that you will gather a
preponderance of proof of how much your clients love you and how wonderfully well you
take care of them. Imagine a website with 100 glowing video testimonials.
iii) Formal referral elicitation strategies, including acknowledgment and reward (not
bribes…modest gifts to be approved by bar association).
Mindset: The correct marketing mindset for this program is NOT: “How little can I get away
with?” or “How can I do this for the smallest dollar amount?” It’s far more effective to ask,
“How can we make this very powerful so that our clients are amazed?”
If you have any doubt of the wisdom of this, look once again at your cost to acquire a client.
Look at where your clients come from. Look at where your marketing dollars go.
2) Astonishment program.
The same principle governs this program but the audience is much more sophisticated. The
astonishment program is intended to nurture your relationship with individuals who have the
potential to deliver dozens or even hundreds of referrals over the lifetime of your relationship.
These individuals are probably already handsomely rewarded for their efforts—financially.
But, they too are referring at a fraction of their potential. Again, they are doing what they can
when they notice. How much they notice is a function of how they feel about you versus many
other people and concerns and opportunities that compete for their attention.
Put simply, if you were perceived as the most astonishingly thoughtful and kind and
appreciative person they ever met, you would occupy a permanent and privileged place in
their perceptions. The “Law of Reciprocity” would be invoked continually. The law of
“Commitment and Consistency” would also be continually stoked. (See Cialdini: Influence:
The Psychology of Persuasion.)
The astonishment program is based on a couple of simple premises.
1) People like to be acknowledged and stroked and will feel bound to reward you back—
they are “hard wired” to reciprocate.
2) A highly sophisticated audience like lawyers is discerning of “canned material”.
Something customized around them will astonish them and have deep and lasting
impact on their perception of you.
For example, one client was mentioning someone who sends a fruit basket every month. His
tonality in describing this bounty walked the line between tolerance and appreciation, a little
heavier on the tolerance side. Basically, the person sending the fruit is embodying everything
that’s wrong with The Golden Rule. He is sending what he would like to get. He is not sending
what the other would like to get.
With this particular client, a more suitable gift would be a good cigar or bottle of wine. For
another, it would be a book about sailing. In fact, for each person, there are several interests
that can be captured and strategically worked with to orchestrate astonishment. If you had
between 10 and 20 key referral sources walking around thinking and feeling AND TELLING
MANY OTHERS that you are the most incredibly thoughtful person they ever met, what
would it do for your referral rate?
To work correctly, the Astonish program must be irregular but frequent.
If something happens like clockwork, you know it is software driven. For instance, you receive
an email from a large company that says, “Dear Joe: How are you today?” You know full well
that nobody sat down and wrote you a letter. If it always comes on the first of the month, you
know it is canned. If you receive a birthday card every year from your insurance agent, you
appreciate it, but you also tolerate it. It does not astonish you. It is “thoughtful” for this person
to have set up a tickler system, but it is not amazing.
In the case of other lawyers with the capacity (partially tapped into) and the propensity to
refer, I suggest the following steps.
1) Select your targets. Who has referred you excellent cases in the past and has the
capacity to refer many more?
2) Build database of information around each target. Start with gathering everything in the
public domain about this person. Then apply a version of Harvey Mackay’s 66
questions, identifying personal information about what their passions are, what sports
teams do they idolize, what is their spouse obsessed about, what university are their
kids attending? Every time you talk to them you gather more information.
3) Use Google and other browsers as a “clipping service”. Notice every event in which
their name or reputation is enhanced. If you were the first and only person to send them
a large framed laminated copy of the news story that appeared about them, then you
become associated intimately with the moment of their personal triumph.
4) Regularly and sequentially (but not metronomically) send them gifts and articles and
books and acknowledgments personally signed by you. For each period (say 45-60
days) look at the most important triggering event – given their profile. Segment areas of
life to focus on. If they are a Raiders fan, every acknowledgment can’t be Raiders
related. Balance it out.
The bottom line is that even your top referrers—clients and other professionals—are
constantly bombarded by stimuli and information and other messages. Being top of mind and
representing great value for these key referral sources has to be a top priority. Especially when
you consider how much you are investing in areas of marketing with significantly less
potential than referrals.
By systematically orchestrating astonishment for your most important audiences, you will
ensure a significantly enhanced referral rate.
And nothing is more important than referrals.