Making It Rain

I thought I’d share with you the recently published  article in The National by Allison Wolf and Joan Paul.  The following is a reprint of the article that appeared in the Canadian Bar Association magazine in December, 2007. 

Making it rain

Women lawyers have unique talents that serve them and their firms well

in the increasingly competitive field of rainmaking.

By Joan Paul and Allison Wolf

Décembre 2007 www.cba.org 43

ROBERT JOHANNSEN

What’s New In…

Recent reports have made clear that women

lawyers still face many challenges in the

traditional law firm. But these lawyers are

also slowly changing how firms market

themselves to clients, coming together to

explore how to develop business in a manner that plays

to their special strengths and creates a different market

dynamic. Here are just some of the unique ways in which

women are revolutionizing lawyer marketing.

The art of conversation

One of women’s special strengths is conversation, a skill

that lawyers simply must possess in order to succeed.

“Marketing (and selling) begin to work,” law practice

management guru David Maister recently wrote, “when

a conversation moves away from being a role-to-role

exchange of capabilities, contracts, and costs, and

becomes a person-to-person interactive dialogue about

ideas, beliefs, and perspectives.”

Patricia McLaren, Regional Manager of Client

Development with Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP in

Calgary, remarks that the women in her firm known for

their rainmaking ability possess both standout professional

credentials and strong personal connections with

their clients and colleagues. They are gifted at using skillful

dialogue to connect with clients or team up with colleagues

in developing a practice.

“Women are great listeners,” adds Adam Pekarsky,

Director of Professional Development and Recruitment

at Fraser Milner Casgrain LLP in Edmonton. Women

can use their listening skills to find a common point of

interest with clients, he says, because they enjoy engaging

in a broad spectrum of topics and connecting personally,

whereas men tend to focus more on specific topics

that don’t easily provide common points of interest.

Emotionally intelligent

Jessica Green, counsel at Petro-Canada in Calgary, emphasizes

that while expertise and reputation are critical,

clients also value the emotional aspects of their relationships

with the firm. In Green’s experience, “the best rainmakers

I know have extremely high EQs [Emotional

Intelligence Quotients], are responsive, and don’t take

their clients for granted.”

Emotional intelligence is very much a buzz phrase

among psychologists and coaches. Lawyers with high

EQs can perceive and harness emotions for solving problems

and other tasks, as well as for understanding their

clients’ and their own emotions

accurately.

While not everyone has

high EQ, lawyers can

access coaches who specialize

in the area to improve

these skills. For example, a

lawyer might score high on

intrapersonal skills such as emotional self-awareness,

assertiveness and independence, while posting lower

scores in stress management or adaptability. Understanding

your own emotional resources helps you relate

more effectively with clients.

The big event

Female clients are growing, especially among the ranks

of corporate counsel, so it makes sense to develop marketing

events targeted specially to their needs and interests.

Marketing events can be about more than schmoozing

— they can enable the establishment of personal connections

and trust.

When planning events for women, it’s important to

remember the extreme time challenges under which many professional

women operate. Work-life balance might now be an

issue for both genders, but women are still the ones who wind

up with the bulk of child care.

In the September 2007 issue of Harvard Business Review,

authors Alice Heagly and Linda Carli shared the surprising

news that even with men helping more in the home, women

are putting in more parenting hours now than they were in

1965.With more on their plates than ever, events for busy professional

women must provide both an entertaining escape

from the work week and time-saving benefits.

Reeva Finkel, partner and chair of marketing at Blaney

McMurtry LLP in Toronto, came up with a way of achieving

both these objectives. Blaney’s launched an annual fashion

show event, which has been a huge hit with the firm’s female

clients. After being held each year in Blaney McMurtry’s main

reception area, the event grew so popular that it had to be

moved to a larger venue.

Combining fashion, shopping, and networking, Finkel

hit the target with Blaney’s fashion show event. While hockey

tickets and golf days still have their place, and perhaps

always will, a broader spectrum of marketing events is a

refreshing change for clients of both genders. One might

consider cooking classes or golf days combined with lessons

as alternatives.

Professional networks

Increasingly, women are taking active roles in organizations

such as the Professional Women’s Network in Vancouver and

the CBA’s Women Lawyers’ Forum to connect with other

women lawyers and professionals. These groups are becoming

a more important venue for women lawyers to build up referral

networks and make contact with potential clients.

Young associates like Melanie McDonald of Fraser

Milner Casgrain in Calgary welcome relationships with more

senior female partners, who can make a big difference in the

career of an up-and-coming lawyer. But not everyone works

in a firm with a large percentage of female partners like

Fraser Milner.

Regrettably, the small percentage of female partners isn’t

consistent with the growing number of women associates, and

this makes it difficult to learn business development from

female role models. When mentoring isn’t available to a young

lawyer, these professional associations can provide a valuable

alternative.

Keys to success

With the growing number of women lawyers, why aren’t

more known for their role in the rainmaking game? Lack of

time could be a culprit. All lawyers are busy, but women

lawyers who enter motherhood are often unable to involve

themselves in the social networks that are crucial to rainmaking

and advancing in their firms.

One way to overcome the time challenge is to become

more methodical and direct about marketing. Finkel, when a

mother with young children, adopted a strategy early: she

began taking a few minutes on Sunday afternoons to make a

to-do list of business development activities for the coming

week. Then, on Monday mornings, she worked quickly to

check them off her list, or scheduled them into her calendar for

later in the week.

Finkel has carried out this habit for the past ten years, and

has seen it contribute to her success as a rainmaker. While todo

lists alone won’t make the rainmaker, the discipline of planning

is a vital component to distinguishing oneself as a successful

marketer.

Another business development challenge is closing the

deal. Some lawyers report that because they develop such

strong relationships with clients, they find it difficult to ask

for their business. It’s important to keep in mind that clients

are also business-minded. They expect their lawyers to ask for

their business. If you don’t ask, you don’t get. It can be as

simple as that.

Rainmaking is the key to success in any business, and it

took great rainmakers to build today’s successful law firms.

The reality is that women are now, more than ever, positioned

to play a key role in this evolving world of the law firm, and

are in the process of making it rain. N

Joan Paul is a Certified Executive Coach and Owner of J. Paul Training Inc., in Calgary.

AllisonWolf is a Certified Executive Coach, author of “The Lawyer Coach” blog, and founder

of Shift Works Strategic Inc. a business coaching and consulting firm based in Vancouver.

Selling Skills for Contemporary Professionals

Matthew logs onto his laptop at 8 p.m. Sunday evening as he starts preparing for Week number three as a new sales representative at a well known high tech company.  He is preparing for a meeting with a large pharmaceutical client and wants to retrieve some of his previous notes in order to prepare himself.  Earlier the same day, Linda, a consultant in a small professional services firm, a solid relationship builder and rainmaker for years, logs onto the same program to try a new way of writing proposals.   This is how traditional sales training and for that matter, all learning and development is reinventing itself.  No longer three days in a classroom with the same old role plays, learning the same skills with the same people. 

Matthew and Linda now have the privilege of learning what and when they want to simply by logging on at any time of day, wherever they left off, to a content rich, interactive and contemporary sales training program.  Not only that, but they have immediate access to an online tutor who checks in with them regularly, looks at their assignments and dialogues with them at all times of the day.  This is just one of the many ways training and development is beginning to catch up to today’s business environment, where young, savvy professionals are coming onboard prepared to learn at their own pace.  Couple this unique online training with more exciting classroom learning as well as one on one coaching and watch out. 

Companies can now achieve and measure considerable results from training investments.  Imagine dusty binders asleep on employees’ bookshelves becoming laptops dancing on and off at their owners’ leisure, at work, at home or at the local coffee shop. To capture and sustain the attention of today’s professionals, speakers and facilitators are forced to notch up the excitement.  Generation Y, accustomed to immediate and fast paced applied learning, and those of us who aren’t so new but definitely weary of the same old seminars, are looking for ways to learn and be engaged every day and not just once a year on a two day leave from the job.  I’ve heard of motivational speakers who do magic tricks to get their point across, and facilitated workshops where actors play the role of clients. 

Last year I became intrigued by a sales management system developed in the United Kingdom that includes two board games, one on prospecting, lead generation and account planning, and another entirely focused on consultative selling skills.  What a great way to integrate teambuilding, and customized learning to immediate situations, not to mention taking the pressure off sales managers to excel as sales coaches.  It’s great to see what happens when participants get to compete in a game where they learn and have fun – a welcome change for the “regulars” and great insight into accommodating entrants into the workforce.   

If you are responsible for the development of others, or yourself for that matter, here’s what you can do to liven up the learning and distinguish yourself in a workforce competing for high quality talent. 

Ø      Introduce highly interactive, experiential learning into traditional workshops.  Provide real case studies, simulations and hands on problem solving activities where learning can be applied immediately on the job.   

Ø      Invite your clients to participate in the training or lead a Question and Answer session.  There is really no one better to tell you what you need to learn than your clients.  What a great way to demonstrate how much you value their opinions as well. 

Ø      Find innovative training games, like The Sales Activator® to make learning fun, ongoing and relevant.   

Ø      Utilize highly evolved online learning such as WinWin Selling® to either replace or supplement traditional training environments. 

Ø      For goodness sake, do ensure any type of training you invest in, is followed by professional coaching and other developmental activities.  Without coaching, what people learn in session drops significantly as soon as they leave the classroom.   

Ø      Above all, remember “innovation” is a word worth remembering.  I once worked for a Vice President of a very large company who said he came to work every day thinking , “If I was the new person replacing myself in this job, what might I do differently?”