What affects client decision-making and buying behavior? The basics are essential, and some are not easy.  My colleague, Tea Hoffmann, has created a series of courses with the starter list:

  1. Your best bio
  2. Your attention-grabbing LinkedIn profile
  3. Your brand and how to convey it
  4. How to look the part
  5. The difference between hearing and active listening
  6. Using competitive intelligence

Tea’s courses can be found on lawstrategycoach.thinkific.com

While you are mastering and refining the basics, you also need to become knowledgeable and skillful at understanding what matters to your existing or prospective clients other than the quality of your legal work. That’s where my insight and experience with in-house counsel and corporate legal departments can give you an edge. Over the past 25 years I’ve focused on the needs of in-house counsel and legal operations professionals.

During that time, I’ve learned about a few things that can tip an existing or prospective client in your favor. For example, one needs to discover:

  1. What can you do to make a client “look good” to those that matter to them?
  2. What does it take for you to make a client’s job easier?
  3. How does legal work and its costs connect to your client’s corporate bottom line?
  4. How and why does a client care about the corporate budget?
  5. What performance and incentive systems motivate your client?

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