Should you sell during client satisfaction reviews?

When I talked to experts for my recent posts on client satisfaction reviews, I found differing views on many details. But one thing that everybody agreed on was the purpose of the interviews: as Gerry Riskin put it “to listen and learn, not to sell.” Michelle Golden said it more strongly: “When the marketing starts, it is quite clear that you're not just there out of sincere interest in the customer's feelings, you're also there to make more money. Never, ever, mix caring for the customer with something so self-serving.” Then Patrick Lamb wrote: “I could not agree more strongly with Michelle Golden that these encounters should not be for marketing. Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.“

Wait, did I say everybody agreed? Not Steve Bell, Director of Sales at Womble Carlyle, who recently emailed that “purists suggest that proactive ideas (aka selling) should not take place at a client service review. I say ‘humbug.’”

“At a client service review,” Steve continued, “the lawyer and his/her client are supposed to dig in and candidly discuss what's going on at the company. It’s a chance for the client to wax eloquent about problems and dreams… At least to this salesman, for a lawyer to uncover problems (or opportunities) and not to provide a solution (yes, even one that the lawyer himself can address for a fee), is the equivalent of a doctor knowing that you have heart palpitations and not doing anything about it….When a client talks about problems (or opportunities), he/she wants advice and suggestions from a lawyer every bit as much as a patient does from a doctor.”

Steve’s comments came during an exchange about Womble Carlyle’s recent Marketing Initiative of the Year Award from Thomson Elite for their “Stop the Clock Program” which has produced 300 client visits, 200 sales calls with prospective clients, and 30 new engagements to date.

Womble Carlyle’s nine offices first compiled lists of clients to be interviewed. The partner who managed the relationship was asked to interview each client for about an hour, emphasizing that it was non-billable. The percent of interviews completed by each office was tracked and reported on a password-protected extranet site. Offices with the highest percent of completed interviews won free dinners, bragging rights, and more.

As Steve explained: “The secret for any firm that wants to focus on client services is to motivate its partners to get involved, and there are few better motivators than friendly competition, with charts and bar graphs to show whether you are ahead of the other guy or gal.”

The client meetings were organized into four parts. In Part 1, clients were simply thanked for their business. Part 2 asked questions about how to improve service, such as: “Looking back over the past year or so, what could we have done better or differently in order to better serve you?” Part 3 focused on the future: “As you look ahead over the next 12 to 18 months, what are some of the key issues you see on the horizon that we should be talking and thinking about to ensure that Womble will be prepared to serve you well?”

But it was Part 4 that got my attention with its explicit cross-selling. Jonathan Groner, Senior Communications Counsel at Womble Carlyle, first compiled a list of 40 “products” by interviewing practice group leaders about the problems clients face and the solutions Womble Carlyle offers. Typical products included an ERISA review, an equal employment audit, and a review of directors and officers insurance. Then, during the client service interviews, each partner picked out a few items that they thought might help that client and asked questions like “Have you ever thought about ___” or “Has your organization ever discussed/ considered ___”

The rationale, in Steve Bell’s words: “Our clients don't need us to be clinical, third-party interviewers finding facts for facts' sake. They need us to transform facts into solutions. Without Part 4 of the review, we are not doing our entire client service job… At this firm, we borrow our best practices from other industries. Can you honestly imagine a discussion with your financial adviser, insurance broker or car salesman that did not end with him/her making a suggestion about what you should do next?”

I visited Jonathan Groner to get a second opinion, and asked how lawyers felt about participating in the program. “There will always be some resistance to selling,” he said, but the resistance is much lower at Womble Carlyle than at other firms because “lawyers know that this is part of what they have to do.” That made sense to me. When legal marketing experts talk about Womble Carlyle, they usually mention that it was the first major law firm to hire a Sales Director (Steve Bell, in 2001).

I think the “Stop the Clock” campaign is an extremely important piece of data in the discussion about client satisfaction reviews, because it shows that direct selling can be effective. Not by anecdote, but by an award winning campaign with hundreds of meetings and a proven impact on new business.

Note that I said selling CAN work, not that it WILL work. Whether it works for you will depend on your attitude, your culture, and your clients. But maybe you should think about it.

Comments

[Robert Millard]

As a general rule, I fully agree that client satisfaction reviews are not for selling and in most cases that topic is to be avoided like the plague. The reason is simple. One can only sell effectively to highly satisfied clients, and most lawyers typically overestimate (sometimes seriously) their client's real level of satisfaction. Nor is this something that can be measured in five minutes of "So, how's it going" before the conversation really swings to "what else can I sell you?" Once and only once it has been ascertained that the client is indeed deliriously happy with the level of service that she/he is receiving, or at least happier with it than with that being delivered by one's competitors, is it safe to raise the issue. And then, generally, only when the client raises it. If the meeting ends very cordially, one could always go straight afterwards on with "it seems that we could also discuss (1) ..... (2) ..... and (3) ..... Would it suit you to do so now, or should we schedule another time? The latter may be better anyway, if it involves/requires cross selling a colleague, researching in more detail what the client's exact need is, or if the "buyer" in the client organization is really somebody other than the person that you have been interviewing. It is all a matter of carefully and accurately guaging exactly where the client is "at." If the client is ambivalent or worse, unhappy, it would be more productive trying to sell desert sand in Saudi Arabia, than to try to expand your firm's business with that client, until the issues that she/he raises have been fixed to the degree that satisfaction levels are back where selling again is safe.