Litigators Need Soft Sell ?? !!
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In an article I read recently by Todd R. Brown about
lawyers and lawyering, he wrote:
Courtroom theatrics make for reliable TV drama, and they might sway real juries pondering emotional cases. But the pyrotechnic rhetoric of a hard-charging litigator is a world apart from everyday client salesmanship.
Wow!!
Brown goes on to say:
Teaching effective soft skills that every businessperson should know to relate to customers, managers, colleagues and subordinates hasn’t always been a top priority in law, but it should be.
Double Wow and Holy Cow !!! A game-changing discovery!
CLIENTS ARE PEOPLE even clients looking for litigators.
And in the same article, Ely Anderson was quoted as saying:
There are brilliant attorneys who don’t enjoy selling. Not everyone enjoys the whole business development aspect,” she says. “If you’re going to be successful in your job, you really have to be focused on developing clients rather than just the marketing.
How about that? People skills are necessary for dealing with people!
Who’d'a’thunk it?
Emotional connection, sensitivity to client needs, listening — really listening, getting beyond narcissism, grasping the fact of interdependence, co-operation rather than one-way dictating, empathy, and consciousness are the heart and soul of the Soft Sell approach — Soft Sell connecting.
Given our adversarial judicial system, yes, you want your litigator to do his/her job in court. But to do that your litigator has to get to know you deeply, not just cognitively. It’s not just about gray matter. It’s also a matter of heart — which Brown and Anderson imply.
And why?
Because It’s all in the Connection,
Jim
Jim,
How great that soft-sell and focus on interpersonal skills is finally spreading to the bastions of traditional marketing. It is not easy to move some people from the hard-sell, clients-as-billables mindset. Thank goodness for “The Heart of Marketing” which is having a significant impact, and dragging some professionals, kicking and screamng, into the 21st Century. In a recent EzineArticle on “How You Perceive Prospects…” I too touched on these important issues. Changing your mindset and relating to prospects and clients as people with feelings about which you care can make all the difference in enhancing your practice growth.
Keep up the good work. We all need you!
Signe
Hi Signe,
Thanks for you comment.
We the People (not to sound too Constitutional) are the foundation of any economy, any economy that does not espouse indenture, slavery, an objectification of humanity. Bridging Heart and Marketing is necessary to move forward into conscious capitalism, intelligent capitalism, and/or relationship marketing, so that the person-to-person relationship is at the heart of marketing.
Jim