Janet Ellen Raasch is an experienced writer and ghostwriter who works closely with professional services providers – especially lawyers, law firms and consultants to the legal industry. She helps these professionals enhance their online reputations and achieve new business through publication of keyword-rich content for the Internet as well as copy for traditional print media. Continue Reading
By Janet Ellen Raasch on Posted in Content,Ghostwriter,Proposals/beauty contests,Sales,Strategy
To set a law firm apart from the competition, a good proposal will look less like a legal document and more like a magazine or an annual report. “Design is the ‘suit’ that your proposal wears,” said Darling. “You dress appropriately to meet with a client. Your proposal should
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By Janet Ellen Raasch on Posted in Content,Ghostwriter,Proposals/beauty contests,Sales,Strategy
A proposal is client-centric when it clearly acknowledges and reflects the business strategy of the client that requested the proposal — how the client attempts to differentiate itself and successfully compete with its own rivals in the marketplace.
Uncovering a potential client’s business strategy requires research, but it
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By Janet Ellen Raasch on Posted in Content,Ghostwriter,Proposals/beauty contests,Sales,Strategy
A really good proposal has three key characteristics. It stands out and neither looks nor reads like the others. It has a focused point of view and takes control of the subject. Most importantly, it is client-centric. Good proposals are primarily about the client and not about your law
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By Janet Ellen Raasch on Posted in Content,Ghostwriter,Proposals/beauty contests,Sales,Strategy
If you decide to respond to an RFP with a proposal, do the job right. It should be client-centric, strategic, well-designed and well-written. It must include memorable “win themes.”
”Attorneys are talented when it comes to creating dry legal documents,” said Darling. “This is what they learned in
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By Janet Ellen Raasch on Posted in Content,Ghostwriter,Proposals/beauty contests,Sales,Strategy
“The RFP process is usually rigged,” said Peter Darling. “It may appear objective, but it’s not. Legal work is based on relationships and, often, the likely winner has been selected ahead of time. The RFP is sent out so that the client can claim to have considered 15 firms
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By Janet Ellen Raasch on Posted in Content,Ghostwriter,Proposals/beauty contests,Sales,Strategy
Not so long ago, the legal marketplace was much less competitive. Business clients with legal problems would routinely turn to “their” local lawyer or law firm to handle the matter. Case closed.
Today, business clients with legal problems (and tight budgets) are likely to send out a request-for-proposal
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By Janet Ellen Raasch on Posted in Legal,Legal personality,Sales
“Ideally, to keep a pipeline flowing, a third of these targeted contacts should be in the first few states, a third in the middle stages and a third in the final states,” said Brown.
“A lawyer with a lot of targets in the first stages is good
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By Janet Ellen Raasch on Posted in Legal,Legal personality,Sales
Once you have found the best match between a lawyer’s personality and business development activities, the challenge becomes time. The best way to overcome the obstacle of time is to develop solid habits that become part of a lawyer’s regular routine.
“The best tool to accomplish this
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By Janet Ellen Raasch on Posted in Legal,Legal personality,Sales
In addition, Brown shared a shorthand tool devised for quickly understanding and categorizing the personalities of prospects.
This tool charts each person on two characteristics – orientation and speed. A person’s orientation can be towards tasks or towards people, or somewhere in between. A person’s speed can be
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By Janet Ellen Raasch on Posted in Legal,Legal personality,Sales
“Business developers who work in roles that are consistent with their personality, values and interpersonal characteristics are more likely to outperform those who are less well-matched,” said Brown. “It is important to match lawyers with business development activities that fall within their comfort zones.”
To do this, Brown
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By Janet Ellen Raasch on Posted in Legal,Legal personality,Sales
The average lawyer who is asked to sell differs from the average sales professional in many important ways. In a well-known study, Dr. Larry Richards used the Caliper Profile to discover the personality traits common to various successful professionals – including lawyers.
Richards uncovered certain personality traits that
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By Janet Ellen Raasch on Posted in Legal,Legal personality,Sales
Lawyers are smart people. Most lawyers have attended presentations on how to develop new business and enhance their practices. As a result, most of them clearly understand the theory behind business development. Most of them sincerely want to get more work and better work.
So, why do most
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By Janet Ellen Raasch on Posted in Ghostwriter,Legal,Sales
An effective persuader will pay close attention to the body language of the person he or she is trying to persuade, and then mimic that body language. “People like and trust people whom they perceive to be similar to themselves,” said Brown. “The more you can be like the
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By Janet Ellen Raasch on Posted in Ghostwriter,Legal,Sales
Lawyers tend to be word people. As such, they put too much emphasis on what they are communicating. They will spend hours researching and writing a presentation, and then simply read it. They place far too little emphasis on how they are communicating. This can be a huge mistake.
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By Janet Ellen Raasch on Posted in Ghostwriter,Legal,Sales
In any law firm, there is a lot of persuasion going on. Persuasion and negotiation are, after all, essential skills in the practice of law. But they are also important in other tasks performed at law firms. In the human resources area, you must persuade someone to hire you,
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By Janet Ellen Raasch on Posted in Client satisfaction,Content,Ghostwriter,Relationships
Each of the 47 lawyers was given a list of five customized questions around which to structure the conversation. The conversation should be all about the client, and not all about the law firm.
After 60 days, more than 100 client conversations had been completed, generating useful qualitative
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By Janet Ellen Raasch on Posted in Client satisfaction,Content,Ghostwriter,Relationships
Leonard, Street and Deinard is among Minnesota’s largest law firms, with 200 attorneys. Wicker Park Group worked with them on a highly successful “client conversation” program to retain and expand quality business. They developed tools and trained the firm’s trainers.
Forty-seven of the firm’s attorneys accepted an invitation
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By Janet Ellen Raasch on Posted in Client satisfaction,Content,Ghostwriter,Relationships
Obviously, there are many ways in which a lawyer and law firm can address these concerns and make life easier for the CLOs with whom they work. The purpose of a client conversation is to uncover these concerns and come up with practical solutions that address them.
Communication
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By Janet Ellen Raasch on Posted in Client satisfaction,Content,Ghostwriter,Relationships
A client who has hired a lawyer as outside counsel assumes that the lawyer is qualified to do good legal work. Otherwise, the lawyer would not have made the cut in the first place. Quoting a client, Slavin said: “Smart is what gets you in the door. How you
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By Janet Ellen Raasch on Posted in Client satisfaction,Content,Ghostwriter,Relationships
Lawyers are always interested in getting more work and better work from their existing clients. If you ask a lawyer what his or her client really wants, the lawyer is likely to say “good legal work.” If you ask the client, you’ll get a far different answer.
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By Janet Ellen Raasch on Posted in Ghostwriter,Legal,Media/public relations,Strategy
Once a reporter has responded to a law firm’s pitch, the subject matter expert must understand his or her rights in the interview process.
Before an interview, ask about the context of the story. Ask if a list of questions can be reviewed ahead of time (sometimes a
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By Janet Ellen Raasch on Posted in Ghostwriter,Legal,Media/public relations,Strategy
Following development of a newsworthy story idea and selection of a qualified lawyer-expert, the third step in a successful media policy is to actually pitch the story idea.
Identify the best media outlets for a newsworthy story idea. These could be mainstream print, television or radio; “niche” trade
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By Janet Ellen Raasch on Posted in Ghostwriter,Legal,Media/public relations,Strategy
The second step in a successful media policy is preparing the experts within a law firm who will be the media sources to flesh out a particular story idea. After all, it does no good to promise a good story idea to the media and then fail to deliver
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