One of the most overlooked tasks when working for a law firm is pitching your firm to potential clients, but a good pitch is a gateway to securing the best clients and cases. As a major function of your job is using language to effectively persuade, pitching your services to a client gives them a chance to experience your skills in action. These are three important ways to make your pitch as effective as possible.
Avoid the Cookie Cutter Approach
Avoiding a cookie cutter approach to pitching your services doesn’t mean you have to go wild with novelty or innovation, but that you should treat each meeting with a new client as a unique experience. You may have had dozens or hundreds of these meetings before, but your prospective client likely has not. They want reassurance that you can offer individualized services to meet their specific needs, so make sure you’re focusing on what is uniquely important to each client.
Don’t Make Clients Pitch Themselves to You
As you develop a successful track record, it can be tempting to take the desirability of hiring your firm for granted and shift the responsibility of a pitch onto your potential clients instead. No matter how successful your firm might be currently, it requires new clients to maintain that level of success. The relationship between a client and a firm should always be mutually beneficial, and during a pitch, it’s your time to show a client how you can help them. Save the consideration of whether their case benefits your firm for another moment, and don’t make clients feel pressured to justify themselves before they decide if they want to work with you. Even if you don’t end up working with a particular client, politeness and respect will bolster your firm’s reputation.
Be Respectful of Your Client’s Time
A good pitch is efficient and takes only the amount of time required to give the necessary information, address client questions, and build a friendly rapport. Be succinct and think ahead about what is important to your client. New clients do not need a long history of your firm. Focus on the strategy you would employ for them, time and monetary costs involved, and familiarizing the client with key members of your team. A client can let you know if they still have questions or would like more of your time, but it is far more awkward for a client to try to interrupt you if you’ve been droning on about information that is irrelevant to them than it is to ask more questions. Some clients might need an hour to absorb information, while others need only fifteen minutes.
These tips may seem deceptively simple, but if you’re the only one applying them, your firm will definitely stand out to clients. Remember, pitching your services isn’t about drawing in the highest quantity of clients, but about finding the best people and cases that align with your firm’s mission and expertise.
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