Dragons' Den
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Here's a reason to polish up your firm's "elevator pitch" :
Sainsbury's is a large UK supermarket chain selling a wide range of products from foodstuffs to white appliances to financial services. According to the BBC, they have just instituted a system based on the successful BBC TV programme Dragons' Den, to select their future suppliers.
In Dragons' Den, aspirant entrepreneurs appear before a panel of venture capitalists and have three minutes to persuade them (or not) to fund their business idea. Some of ideas that have been pitched are hilarious.
Now, everybody from suppliers of yoghurt to fresh fish to dishwashing liquid to .... legal services (!!!) .... are apparently being required to appear before the Sainburys' Dragons, to persuade them why they should be allowed to supply the corporation. The panel has already seen eleven firms, including City 'buebloods' Addleshaw Goddard, CMS Cameron McKenna, Denton Wilde Sapte, and Linklaters.
If you had to reduce what you say in pitching your firm to clients to three minutes (the time limit on Dragons' Den,) what is it that you would say? Foremost in the Dragons' minds would probably not be your firm's general credentials, history or the quality of your lawyers. They would not have invited you to pitch, were they not already confident in these. Judging by the results of recent client satisfaction surveys on both sides of the Atlantic, they would be looking and listening mostly for evidence that you:
1. understand their business better than the other pitchers
2. have a better value proposition for them (which is more than cheaper hourly rates)
3. will be more responsive and easier to work with than the others
Now .... these things are almost impossible to "fake" and they are routinely amongst those issues that come out at the top of the list of areas of unhappiness that corporate clients have with the law firms that serve them. So, if your overall strategy was focused on genuinely excelling in these three issues, in your selected areas of business, then what would you need to do differently? In what kinds of initiatives would you invest within your firm? How would you change the way that you measure performance (assuming that the old adage that people do as they are rewarded rather than as they are told is true.) How would your firm need to evolve? How would you interact with clients?
Edge International is on the Ground in India
0 Comments - Posted By Rob Millard In Mega-Trends , Strategic People Issues , Tools for Strategists , , , , , , , , , , , - Permalink -
Ms. Juhi Garg
Edge International is delighted to announce the addition of Ms. Juhi Garg. Juhi holds a Masters in Business Law from India's foremost law school, the National Law School of India in Bangalore and is also a graduate in media from Delhi University. With Juhi on our team, Edge International will offer our full traditional range of consulting services to Indian law firms. In addition, we will be focusing on assisting Indian law firms with their strategies to develop business in the western hemisphere and to assist western firms wishing to take advantage of the burgeoning Indian legal services market.
India is a legal services market that is attracting global attention, for good reason. It produces more law school graduates annually than any other country. Its impact with outsourced legal services in western markets has been significant and this is set to grow exponentially as western clients seek to cut legal costs in the face of the current economic recession. Also, upcoming legislation is expected to significantly relax restrictions on foreign firms and lawyers practicing in India. Several international firms have already entered into arrangements with Indian law firms in anticipation of this change.
See Juhi's biography by clicking here.
PUNCHLINE: If you are a firm based in Australia, New Zealand Canada the US or UK (or anywhere else) and are interested in exploring an arrangement with an Indian law firm and you would like counsel on the selection and vetting processes, please allow me, Juhi Garg or Gerry Riskin to explore helping you.
One Night Stands and Chinese Math
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Some while ago, I sat in on a presentation on another management consulting firm’s strategic plan. Perfectly legal – no Watergate tapes here. I was simply present in the room. Basically, the plan was as follows:
“We’ll create a series of presentations to show prospective clients how hopelessly they are managed and how pathetic their performance is relative to the top performers in their market, and then show these to them. Obviously, this will make them fall over themselves to hire us so that we can make them into Olympic athletes too!
That’s good because the size of the market we are targeting is enormous so if we can divert just a tiny, tiny fraction of 1% of its revenues to us to pay for our brilliance, then we’ll be gazillionnaires in no time!
Then, in a few years, we can persuade somebody to buy us for a truly stupendous figure, and we can all retire.”
The strange thing is just how common the strategy reflected by the second paragraph is. I bet you can think of several firms you know that, explicitly or not, follow it. (Hopefully, your own firm is not one of them!) The thinking even has a name: Chinese Math.
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Banks Use Star Rating to Force Law Firms to Compete
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The trend down the S-Curve towards wholesale commoditization of the legal services that external lawyers provide to banks just accelerated dramatically. That is: if the tough new strategy that has been instituted by ANZ (Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited) to select its external lawyers takes hold in the market.
According to an article titled Banks Force Firms to Fight for Work and Fees in the Australian Lawyers Weekly, the new system has a few marked similarities to the user rating system used by the on-line actioneers eBay:
Continue Reading30 Years Loyal Service, Then What?
3 Comments - Posted By Rob Millard In Strategy 101 , , - Permalink -
So you've had this important client (this VERY important client) for more than 30 years. You've been doing good work for them and your firm has grown steadily on the steady flow of fees. How secure is your position?
This is exactly what Bob Bernstein and Skip Rein, founders of Missouri-based ad agency Bernstein-Rein must be thinking right now. According to an article in Fast Company, Wal-Mart are putting their $578 million advertising account up for review for the first time in 30 years. Bernstein-Rein and Omnicom GSD&M have been sharing that revenue river for three decades, the former growing to 300 staff in the process.
Continue ReadingWhat Do "Bad" Clients Cost Your Firm?
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If you were able to ask just one question of a client, with the assurance that the answer would give you a good indication of their level of satisfaction with your firm's services, what would that question be? Fred Reichheld's article The Microeconomics of Customer Relationships (subscription or purchase for $6.50 required,) in the Winter 2006 edition of the MIT Sloan Management Review, has the answer. It is:
"One a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is 'not at all likely' and 10 is 'extremely likely,' how likely is it that you would recommend us to a friend or colleague?"
Depending on the answer, clients would be categorized as promoters (scores of 9 and 10,) passive (7 or 8) and detractors (6 or less.) Note that passives do not straddle the 50% or even the 60% mark. Anything less than 70% is viewed negatively.
General Electric, already the 9th largest company in the world by revenue, is using this model to try to drive its organic growth rate from 5% to 8% pa. According to Reichheld's data, a promoter has a net present value (NPV) to the firm of 1.5 and 2.5 times that of an "average" client (i.e. a passive.) On the other hand, a detractor frequently has a negative NPV. Sometimes, a surprisingly high negative NPV. The article explains how a firm can calculate these figures for themselves and also how to use them. A summary follows:
Continue Reading70% of Clients Dissatisfied With The Service They Get
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According to the latest BTI Consulting Survey, client satisfaction levels amongst Fortune 1000 clients, with the law firms that serve them, plummeted nearly 15% last year! An astounding 70% of clients are dissatisfied to a greater or lesser degree!
Client dissatisfaction is a very serious issue. The fact that the levels of dissatisfaction are increasing is especially so. Firms with even mildly dissatisfied clients face far greater pricing pressure than those whose clients fall into the 30% who are satisfied. Their clients also tend to defect to competitors with far greater ease. Of course, we all know this.
Marcie Borgal of BTI Consulting has posted an article on the survey results titled The Declining Client Satisfaction Antidote at Larry Bodine's The Law Marketing Portal. Want a lisence to print money? Take note of her main reasons for client dissatisfaction and then make sure that they do not apply to your firm. They are:
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