Inside the Mind of a Business
Developer
Nancy Appleby is an
attorney with Bracewell & Giuliani LLP. She developed
her successful practice almost entirely
from scratch, so she knows a thing or two
about bringing in clients. In response to
my last newsletter, Nancy shared her
insights and her humor:
"Much of client development is a
combination of developing a strategy
and implementing it. Often lawyers are
not the best client developers because
generally lawyers are not very
imaginative or entrepreneurial and
because implementing a marketing
strategy often is drudgery. Most of all,
though, it is work. Hard, extra work.
Goes like this:
1.Identify the market you want to
reach. (I am imaginative!)
2.Develop the expertise and experience
to make yourself an attractive hire. (I'm
brilliant!)
3.Identify opportunities to make
yourself known. (What should I choose?
What if I make a poor choice? Whose lamebrained
idea was it to do this, anyway?)
4. Grab the opportunities. (I got invited!
Good for me!)
5. Work like a fiend to LOOK and
to BE GREAT during the
opportunities. Get published in a
magazine, newsletter, journal; give a
talk at a valuable venue - whatever
best identifies you as an attractive
hire. (I have no idea what I am talking
about. Everyone must know exactly what
I am going to say. My God, I'm not
brilliant - I'm a moron!)
6. Talk to a zillion people (all in a
meaningful way, of course) at every
opportunity. (So many people. Who
should I talk to? What should I say?)
7. Make sure that you don't come
home from an opportunity with
your own business cards burning a
hole in your pocket. I feel stupid
and tacky handing someone my
card when he/she has not asked for
it. Easy solution: exchange cards.
8. Make sure you have contact
information for the people with
whom you talk. Fill your pockets
(and I do mean pockets - there's
nothing worse than a woman
fumbling through her purse looking
for cards, etc.) with others' cards.
(Note to self: pockets -- good; hands in
pockets -- bad.)
9. Jot down on each new contact's
business card what you learned
about that person. Does he/she
want an extra copy of your
materials? What
kind of business does he/she do?
How might you develop a client
relationship with this person? (How
the heck can I write and listen at the same
time? What am I a magician?)
Now really the hard part . . .
10. FOLLOW UP. Write a letter.
Send an email. Call (or is that just
too old fashioned?). Do
SOMETHING to tell your contact
that it was a pleasure to meet
him/her, that you have common
interests/goals, that you
would like the opportunity to meet
or talk again, etc. Use the
information that you jotted on the
card to help you personalize your
message. (Oh, no. Not this part. Who
has time for this anyway? I'm already
behind because I grabbed that last darn
opportunity.)
11. Don't take it personally if your
communications go unanswered
- at least some of the time. (Another
note to self: toughen up. This isn't
REALLY rejection . . .)
What makes the follow up really,
really hard is that after working so
hard at the opportunity, follow up
feels anti-climatic, it takes time (a
lot of it if you've really talked to
the zillion people that are necessary
to result in business coming your
way) and you cannot have your
secretary do it.
This is tough work, from concept
to implementation - even for those
of us who enjoy (most of the time)
doing it. It takes time. It involves
lots of false starts. It often feels
unrewarded and unappreciated. It
is, however, as critical to each
professional as excellent work and
client retention."
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