This month we are continuing our focus on the habits that set highly effective rainmakers apart. Developing and practicing these habits can dramatically increase your chances for achieving your goals.
Habit #2: Define Your Specialty Brand & Build an Individual Marketing Plan
World-class rainmakers are crystal clear about their specialty brand and have developed a written individual marketing plan with measurable goals that work for their own unique requirements. And, they make a habit of diligently working the plans they create. (My business development coaching clients meet with me monthly to examine how their plans are working and what they are doing to implement them.)
Your specialty brand is what you are known for
You will get more referrals if you make yourself known for a specialty area, even if you maintain a general practice. For example, general corporate work is one of the toughest things to market because people have a lot of choices. However, if you become well-known in the RICO area, the appellate area, or in another specific area, you can brand yourself as the go-to person for that area. Reputation yields referrals.
You may be reluctant to declare a specialty but that reluctance can seriously limit your business development opportunities. You may argue that the opposite is true—that declaring a specialty limits opportunity but, I can tell you that is not so. In my experience working with literally thousands of lawyers, CPAs and other professional service providers, a focused approach produces the best results. You simply cannot market to everyone. That is not to say you can’t or won’t accept matters that are outside your specialty if you have the expertise and inclination to do the work. What I am saying is, being known for a specialty helps you both focus on and attract the business you really want to do.
Next time, we’ll be talking about how to zero in on your target client. In the meantime, be thinking about the specialty brand you already are or would like to be.
What is your specialty brand?
- What are the areas of law, accounting or the service you provide where you excel?
- How much of your practice is devoted to that?
- What would happen if you focused more on that and let people know about it?
Some of you may know that I am doing a series of interviews with super rainmakers. The first of those interviews was with super rainmaker John Yates, Partner in Charge of the Technology Practice at Morris, Manning & Martin, LLP. The intervew was amazing and was filled with so much good advice about practice building that it was very difficult to edit it down to one short article. Instead, I have organized John's advice into a series of articles on specific topics. The third of those articles has just been published in the Daily Report. We've also got a video excerpt on my website that does a good job of summarizing John's main points on winning and losing business.
