by Robin Dicks | Mar 8, 2018 | Robin's Blog
I’ve recently been looking at getting new car. So I make appointments for test drives etc. All good fun. At one car brand/dealer, once I’d made the appointment, I got an email reminder the day before, then on the morning, and subsequently I’ve had about 3 mails, apparently from the head of customer sales (though clearly automatically generated) advising me of the risk of letting the car I really want go by. All very fine, if a bit irritating and intrusive. But the real problem is that the salesperson didn’t turn up to the appointment I’d booked and I left after 30 minutes of wasted time. It turns out the receptionist didn’t pass the message on properly, the salesperson didn’t check. The closest I got to an apology was a voicemail saying ‘sorry I missed you’. I wonder how much effort has got into the automated message system and how much has gone into staff training and behaviour. The former has no impact on my purchase decision, the latter has quite a bit. I won’t be buying a car from...
by Robin Dicks | Sep 21, 2015 | Robin's Blog
We’re seeing signs that some firms, and in particular law firms, are moving away from thinking about differentiation as being “lets change our logo and the colours on our website”. A mystery shopping exercise we recently performed across a small set of firms showed that: Two firms had genuinely determined an “offer” which was distinctive and provided something materially different to competing firms One firm talked about undertaking work in a different way, but it appeared “skin deep” as lawyers could not articulate how they did this For one firm, there was a huge gap between what it said it was like, and the experience of a prospective client in dealing with them.There was a gulf between the “verbiage” in brochures and the website, and the reality. It was also a matter of chance as to whether the enquirer was put through to the right person. What do you think your firm would look like to a prospective client? Do you know how your proposition stacks up?...
by Robin Dicks | Jun 29, 2015 | Robin's Blog
Cross-selling, or as I prefer it to be terms, co-operative selling or successfully extending relationships with clients, requires a number of things to be in place. Fee earners need to be able to answer 5 questions with a “yes”. The link here to the Co-operative selling image shows you what these questions...
by Robin Dicks | Aug 22, 2014 | Uncategorized
For most professional services firms, successful growth remains driven by how well aligned marketing, business development and the activities of fee earners are – and, of course, how well they are executed. But it’s not a perfect world: what is there is a gap in the key activities you cover, or people duplicate effort, or the person responsible for the activity doesn’t have the skills (or desire) to do it? Effectiveness declines. Accountability, ability and appetite. Not all is lost if you don’t have all 3, and people can still drive results. But you do need to understand where people are at and how to maximise the impact of what you do. How can you optimise the effectiveness of all the people involved in the marketing and BD effort? Phil Gott, my colleague in the Winning Firm Alliance, and I have created a diagnostic which very inexpensively and quickly identifies how the whole firm, a practice/team, or an individual can really enhance the results from their activity. Contact me if you’d like more information on 44 (0)7940 886677 or at robin @ thrivingcompany.co.uk ...
