What Is the Cost of Marketing Complacency?

I begin this article with an interesting question: Are lawyers' marketing behaviors self-actualized? Why do I ask? I was recently reading an article in which a study reported that once complacency sets in to a workplace, it functions much like an organizational cancer, slowly eating away at the core values of the firm. This prompted my thoughts on lawyers and their marketing behavior.

Regardless of the present economic conditions, your lawyers' practices (and by extension, your law firm) will grow and contract in relation to predictable economic cycles. What goes up must come down, and so forth. The point is that while your lawyers' workloads may be overwhelming today, if not properly attended to, you could find the client list growing shorter and shorter, until, eventually, it is nonexistent.

Often, lawyers live in that false place known as “predictable deniability”: “It won't happen to me,” and so forth. You don't think it could happen to you, Mr. or Ms. Attorney? I hope not for your sake, but experience tells us very differently.

The Sowing and Reaping Principle

I liken the process of being attentive to clients to growing a garden. As a young girl, I worked in my grandparents' very large vegetable garden for many summers. What a life-changing experience that was!

In the springtime, my grandfather would prepare the soil for planting. My grandmother and I would come behind him and hoe out the rows for sowing the seeds and young plantings ' green beans, cantaloupe, tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, watermelons, onions and so on. After this laborious task, we would lay down straw to deter weeds from growing in between the seeds and plantings. Then, through the next three or four months, my grandmother, cousins and I would monitor the rain gauge to ensure all the seeds were being properly watered to grow their harvest.

There were years when we did not receive enough rain (and, in fact, experienced droughts) and resorted to turning on the garden sprinklers to keep the plantings alive. We even had to “hoe between the rows” so that some weeds wouldn't strangle the young plants. As a girl of eight years old or so, I found these tasks to be boring and arduous.

In the end, however, we picked the “fruits of our labor” and enthusiastically enjoyed the harvest of fresh melons, hearty beans and robust tomatoes. I learned a valuable life lesson: To reap what you want, you must first sow the “right” things in the appropriate way. There is no room for complacency if your goal is to produce.

Complacency Root-Out

To relate this anecdote to marketing, one of the most important concepts that is a simple “go-to” for many lawyers is falling into a comfortable complacency. Work is flowing (most likely from other firm partners), lawyers are receiving their monthly direct deposits, life is good. As CMOs, it can be painful to render the “big stick” on educating, urging, and otherwise attempting to prompt behavior change when on the surface, things seem to be “working.” Despite that, however, we do not need to look far for plenty of examples of un-motivated, complacent, poor behavior bearing its ugly fruit of layoffs and even firm implosions. Unless lawyers have their own books of business, they are never immune to the economic and political cycles.

Beyond the Rollercoaster

To use another metaphor, building a prosperous client base is similar to the uphill climb of the roller coaster. It is hard work and can be a slow and sometimes bumpy ride. Client relationships are usually built the hard way, one client and one matter at a time. Many marketing tactics, like educational programming or building a healthy referral network, have a cumulative effect that may take years to produce measurable results. Eventually, though, the consistent and persistent efforts will begin to bear consistent results. As the roller coaster clears the peak, it builds speed with minimal effort as it descends. So, too, with marketing efforts. Momentum builds and eventually the growth takes on a life of its own with less and less effort on the attorneys' part.

Here is where the potential problem arises: Lawyers are lulled into a false sense of security, believing that clients are now retaining them with little or no “sowing” effort on their part. It is at this precise point that, without immediate realization, lawyers' practices are headed for decline (refer to the afore-mentioned predictable economic cycles).

The practice may move along swimmingly, lawyers are performing at peak levels, clients love them, which provides further affirmation to continue the same behavior. Then, it happens. One of the lawyer's largest clients makes a game-changing decision, which may take the form of buying another company, selling its company, declaring bankruptcy or some other major change that immediately places the attorney-relationship in jeopardy. We have all seen these scenarios play out, often with a less-than-favorable outcome.

As a result of one of these moves, the once stellar client base is looking a little shaky, and the lawyer is scratching her head about how to replace the work she may have lost or, at a minimum, seen reduced. Though some lawyers' practices may be somewhat different from the above description, this could be most lawyers in your firm.

Teaching Lawyers to Take Control

The main point here is that regardless of how healthy a lawyer's practice may seem today, there are absolutely no guarantees. In other words, if he or she does not focus on expanding his or her existing relationships, growing his or her network and courting his or her solid referral sources, the stream in the pipeline will not keep flowing. By the time the lawyer recognizes the decline, she may find herself once again in the position of the roller coaster chugging up the hill. It will take a lot of effort to regain the momentum. Only now that she has been away from the activity for a while, it appears even more difficult, which is even more problematic.

Double Down in the Fourth Quarter

As we roll through the last quarter of 2015, challenge your lawyers to keep themselves from floating into complacency and being lulled by a false sense of security. Urge your lawyers to take notice of the state of their client base, of the number of referrals they are receiving and giving, and how much effort is being earnestly invested into building upon the momentum of developing and growing a prosperous client base. Do not allow complacency to seep into all that the lawyers are and have been working for. Challenge them to end 2015 on a high note of prosperity and measurable growth.

Kimberly Alford Rice is Editor-in-Chief of this newsletter and Principal of KLA Marketing Associates (www.klamarketing.net). Reach her at 609-458-0415 or [email protected].

I begin this article with an interesting question: Are lawyers' marketing behaviors self-actualized? Why do I ask? I was recently reading an article in which a study reported that once complacency sets in to a workplace, it functions much like an organizational cancer, slowly eating away at the core values of the firm. This prompted my thoughts on lawyers and their marketing behavior.

Regardless of the present economic conditions, your lawyers' practices (and by extension, your law firm) will grow and contract in relation to predictable economic cycles. What goes up must come down, and so forth. The point is that while your lawyers' workloads may be overwhelming today, if not properly attended to, you could find the client list growing shorter and shorter, until, eventually, it is nonexistent.

Often, lawyers live in that false place known as “predictable deniability”: “It won't happen to me,” and so forth. You don't think it could happen to you, Mr. or Ms. Attorney? I hope not for your sake, but experience tells us very differently.

The Sowing and Reaping Principle

I liken the process of being attentive to clients to growing a garden. As a young girl, I worked in my grandparents' very large vegetable garden for many summers. What a life-changing experience that was!

In the springtime, my grandfather would prepare the soil for planting. My grandmother and I would come behind him and hoe out the rows for sowing the seeds and young plantings ' green beans, cantaloupe, tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, watermelons, onions and so on. After this laborious task, we would lay down straw to deter weeds from growing in between the seeds and plantings. Then, through the next three or four months, my grandmother, cousins and I would monitor the rain gauge to ensure all the seeds were being properly watered to grow their harvest.

There were years when we did not receive enough rain (and, in fact, experienced droughts) and resorted to turning on the garden sprinklers to keep the plantings alive. We even had to “hoe between the rows” so that some weeds wouldn't strangle the young plants. As a girl of eight years old or so, I found these tasks to be boring and arduous.

In the end, however, we picked the “fruits of our labor” and enthusiastically enjoyed the harvest of fresh melons, hearty beans and robust tomatoes. I learned a valuable life lesson: To reap what you want, you must first sow the “right” things in the appropriate way. There is no room for complacency if your goal is to produce.

Complacency Root-Out

To relate this anecdote to marketing, one of the most important concepts that is a simple “go-to” for many lawyers is falling into a comfortable complacency. Work is flowing (most likely from other firm partners), lawyers are receiving their monthly direct deposits, life is good. As CMOs, it can be painful to render the “big stick” on educating, urging, and otherwise attempting to prompt behavior change when on the surface, things seem to be “working.” Despite that, however, we do not need to look far for plenty of examples of un-motivated, complacent, poor behavior bearing its ugly fruit of layoffs and even firm implosions. Unless lawyers have their own books of business, they are never immune to the economic and political cycles.

Beyond the Rollercoaster

To use another metaphor, building a prosperous client base is similar to the uphill climb of the roller coaster. It is hard work and can be a slow and sometimes bumpy ride. Client relationships are usually built the hard way, one client and one matter at a time. Many marketing tactics, like educational programming or building a healthy referral network, have a cumulative effect that may take years to produce measurable results. Eventually, though, the consistent and persistent efforts will begin to bear consistent results. As the roller coaster clears the peak, it builds speed with minimal effort as it descends. So, too, with marketing efforts. Momentum builds and eventually the growth takes on a life of its own with less and less effort on the attorneys' part.

Here is where the potential problem arises: Lawyers are lulled into a false sense of security, believing that clients are now retaining them with little or no “sowing” effort on their part. It is at this precise point that, without immediate realization, lawyers' practices are headed for decline (refer to the afore-mentioned predictable economic cycles).

The practice may move along swimmingly, lawyers are performing at peak levels, clients love them, which provides further affirmation to continue the same behavior. Then, it happens. One of the lawyer's largest clients makes a game-changing decision, which may take the form of buying another company, selling its company, declaring bankruptcy or some other major change that immediately places the attorney-relationship in jeopardy. We have all seen these scenarios play out, often with a less-than-favorable outcome.

As a result of one of these moves, the once stellar client base is looking a little shaky, and the lawyer is scratching her head about how to replace the work she may have lost or, at a minimum, seen reduced. Though some lawyers' practices may be somewhat different from the above description, this could be most lawyers in your firm.

Teaching Lawyers to Take Control

The main point here is that regardless of how healthy a lawyer's practice may seem today, there are absolutely no guarantees. In other words, if he or she does not focus on expanding his or her existing relationships, growing his or her network and courting his or her solid referral sources, the stream in the pipeline will not keep flowing. By the time the lawyer recognizes the decline, she may find herself once again in the position of the roller coaster chugging up the hill. It will take a lot of effort to regain the momentum. Only now that she has been away from the activity for a while, it appears even more difficult, which is even more problematic.

Double Down in the Fourth Quarter

As we roll through the last quarter of 2015, challenge your lawyers to keep themselves from floating into complacency and being lulled by a false sense of security. Urge your lawyers to take notice of the state of their client base, of the number of referrals they are receiving and giving, and how much effort is being earnestly invested into building upon the momentum of developing and growing a prosperous client base. Do not allow complacency to seep into all that the lawyers are and have been working for. Challenge them to end 2015 on a high note of prosperity and measurable growth.

Kimberly Alford Rice is Editor-in-Chief of this newsletter and Principal of KLA Marketing Associates (www.klamarketing.net). Reach her at 609-458-0415 or [email protected].