EQUAL OPPORTUNITY FOR RAINMAKERS
Selling And The Woman Lawyer
THE WOMAN LAWYER’S RAINMAKING GAME: How To Build A Successful Law Practice, by Silvia L. Coulter. Glasser Legal Works, Little Falls, NJ, 2004.
The difference between marketing and selling, as everybody surely knows by now, is that marketing is the process of building the context for selling. Marketing builds reputation and name recognition, informs the marketplace of skills and capabilities, and builds a favorable attitude toward the marketer. But marketing, in professional services, doesn’t sell. Nobody retains a lawyer or accountant from an ad or a brochure or a direct mail piece. Somebody, ultimately, has to sell. And while professional sales people are being used to some extent (and increasingly), it’s most often the lawyer or the accountant who has to close the deal and deliver the service.
Nobody knows that better than Silvia Coulter, herself a leading salesperson and marketer, and clearly, a pioneering and well-credentialed sales expert. She has not only herself sold legal services, but has trained a great many lawyers in selling skills.
Silvia Coulter also carries the additional vessel of the professional problems, and the selling problems, of the woman lawyer. That she does this so well makes her book so valuable. The Woman Lawyers Rainmaking Game satisfies on two levels – as a remarkably insightful and encyclopedic primer of the distinctive techniques of selling for lawyers, and of the particular selling problems of women in law.
Selling legal services as a professional practice of its own is a relatively new process that’s been developed and refined in only the past decade – well after the 1977 Bates decision that first made legal frank marketing by professionals. Prior to Bates, there was no selling tradition, as there was in product marketing. Selling was long considered beneath the dignity of professionals, and practice development relied on the instinctive skills of the charismatic few. “If my mother wanted me to be a salesman,” it was often said, “she would have sent me to selling school, not law school.” And then the concept of competition, heretofore a word spoken by professionals in hushed tones, entered the picture. Getting professionals to market was the battle hard fought by a few pioneers. Getting lawyers to sell -- and then teaching them how, was later fostered by pioneers, of which Silvia Coulter -- a trained salesperson for a major corporation -- and her associates took the early leadership.
As for woman lawyers, just being accepted by a profession that for generations saw women in law firms only as secretaries, and clerks and coffee servers, was a giant leap. Today, more than half the students in the nation’s law schools are women. Why? At least because competition in the professions created a vacuum for talents in all fields, and has often been noted in The Marcus Letter, the shortage of brains and talent is so acute that we can no longer concern ourselves with the gender, race, or age of sources of talent.
But if the skills of women as lawyers now match or exceed those of men, and if the prejudices of gender and color are beginning to erode, then so too must the selling skills of women lawyers be honed.
And that, in The Woman Lawyers Rainmaking Game, is precisely what Silvia coulter remarkably achieves.
In the early days, it was thought that the secret of sales training was to analyze what the successful rainmakers did, and then imitate them. A fallacy, as we’ve come to know. Even allowing for the differences in personality between individuals, there was a vast difference between the subtle skills of the natural sales person and the skills that could be taught to the inexperienced. Moreover, later serious practitioners of the selling art developed skills, techniques, and processes that went beyond the traditional skills of the silver-tongued rainmaker.
It is these skills and techniques that Silvia Coulter imparts in her excellent and comprehensive book. And beyond these meticulous skills, there is a wisdom that elevates this work beyond theory; She writes of nothing she hasn’t herself done and tested.
The Woman Lawyers Rainmaking Game addresses the qualities of the strong rainmaker, and how to develop them. The author speaks of the natural relationship building skills of women, and how to use them. She talks of the stereotypes about women lawyers and how to overcome them. The book is loaded with quotes and input from a great many women lawyers, and includes an appendix of case histories.
Her discussion of the opportunities for women lawyers is particularly insightful, as us her discussion of marketing action planning, and particularly her advice on building an individual marketing plan. Much thought and discussion go into the pre-action marketing plan and preparation for selling, which, she believes are the make-or-break structures that can cause marketing action to succeed or fail. Her chapter on the pre-selling approach preparation cover almost 30 specific steps, from determining ways to meet potential clients to the working tools of marketing and selling. Checklists, such as the step-by-step process for follow up on seminars, abound. In discussing qualifying and assessing prospective client needs, she notes the importance of the process as a foundation for the actual selling process, and again, supports the concept with many simplified – but not simplistic – check lists. Her chapter on closing the sale and asking for business is as comprehensive, and pays heed to the sensitivity of that final process.
But the author goes beyond the process to delineate ideas for client retention and client contact relationships. “Clients,” she says, “consider you their lawyer, even when they aren’t actively working with you.” She ends with a strong chapter on building sales confidence, recognizing that the book is meant for non-professional sales people.
No skill or technique goes unexplored, from the techniques of meeting and developing potential clients to the sales process to the closing. She covers client relations and client retention. The book is a veritable handbook of the full gamut of selling skills.
A hint. There is as much advice to offer the male lawyer as there is for the woman lawyer. An eminently successful and useful work.
As difficult as it may be to impart the artistry of sophisticated selling, Silvia Coulter accomplishes the task with wisdom and grace.