So why is it that most law firms do so little to cash in on the natural connections that exist with their undergraduate and law schools? Having spent some time working with lawyers on this very subject, and recently having spoken with Brian Simons of Harris Internet Services, I’d like to suggest three major reasons why firms and attorneys don’t take advantage of this relatively simple method of business development:
- It seems tacky. Which is the excuse lawyers give for much of their reluctance to marketing. Calling up an old school chum (isn’t that the word for shark food?) to further your business interests isn’t comfortable. Too much like asking a buddy for a loan.
- It’s complicated. These people live all over the country and the world. They work at other firms and in dozens, if not hundreds, of companies and industries.
- It’s time-consuming. Staying in touch with all those people… it must take hours and hours every week. What a headache. Why bother?
Why bother? How about because the people who do so consistently are always going to be at the top of the business development game. Networks don’t just happen. They happen for reasons. And they start with the natural networks that occur because of where you started. That’s your family, your friends and your schools. And it’s only tacky, complicated and time consuming if done badly. How do you do it un-badly? Which in the marketing world we call "well." Let’s work backwards.
Technology takes the bite out of both the time consuming and complicated part of the equation. Brian Simons organization, for example, has been building directory solutions for university alumni programs for years. Everyone likes to stay in touch with their friends from college for personal reasons. Brian told me, "Our work with law firms has been a natural outgrowth of more than 40 years of work with major colleges and universities throughout the US and the world."
Harris is now putting together similar alumni database solutions for law firms that they’ve built for colleges and universities in the past.
"They function similarly to extranets," Brian says, "Allowing school and firm alumni to work within an area that is protected by an added level of security."
And this holds true for "alumni" of your firm, as well as alumni of colleges and law schools. Any of these folks can log onto your alumni page and input their contact info so that they can be advised of appropriate firm announcements, events and informational updates.
But what about that tacky thing? Isn’t it still a bit weird to be bugging people based on past connections?
It’s only tacky if it’s out of context. If you call up someone you haven’t seen or heard from in twenty years (or even two, for that matter) and say, "Hey. I’m really hurting for work, have no idea what you do for a living and would like you to throw $10,000 worth of business my way." Yeah. That’s real tacky.
But if you put an alumni database in place that tracks someone’s career movements and you "ping" them with appropriate information every six months to a year based on news, updates and invitations that are appropriate to what they actually do… that’s called staying in touch. And guess who people like to do business with? Right. People who stay in touch.
There’s an art to this process as well as a science, obviously. But the art is being invaded by the science. It used to be that the "guys that got it" were the ones who remembered to call Frank on his birthday, remembered that he liked sports-fishing, remembered that he went to Yale… etc. Now, with the aid of a good contact and alumni database system, everyone in your firm can be a "guy who gets it." All it takes is some planning and dedication to the system.
Stumble it!