Effective
Follow-up
With Networking
Clients
By Art Italo
Prerequisite: Read Meeting With Networking Contacts by Art Italo before reading this article.
Once you have had your first meeting with the contact, you have established the foundation upon which a relationship can be built. For most attorneys, this is where the process ends because they don't follow-up. If you learn only one concept in managing your practice, let it be this one:
!!!FOLLOW-UP IS THE KEY TO SUCCESS IN BUSINESS!!!
Most people don't follow up very well. Good follow-up, therefore, elevates you above 95% of your competitors. A timely follow-up letter will differentiate you as being highly professional. A call to a contact for no reason other than to see how he/she is doing reinforces the perception of a continuing relationship. Continued contact and meetings help that contact grow into a friend. With each step, the probability of getting business improves.
The Perception Of A Continuing Relationship
I emphasize this point frequently because it so important. It is the one element that turns the time you invest in networking into referrals. It is the fulcrum on which Leveraged Networking turns and the area that most attorneys neglect.
If you want to get referrals from your network you have to cultivate and maintain the perception of continuing relationships. This requires continual follow-up with leveraged contacts.
We live in a fast paced world where we are bombarded with solicitations daily. We meet so many people that our brains become overloaded with huge stores of names we will never need again. The way your brain protects you from this overload is to put new names in temporary storage or ignore them completely.
Have you ever been at a function where you were introduced to someone, only to realize you could not remember his/her name five seconds later? We've probably all had that experience more times than we care to admit.
If you haven't had contact with someone for a while, his/her name goes into deep long term storage, the equivalent of your mental attic. Though you might know this person very well, you cannot immediately remember his/her name. You have to dig it out of the attic. This can be somewhat embarrassing, especially if he/she remembers your name right away.
Perhaps you have had this experience. You go to an annual convention or a college reunion and see a person whom you know well but haven't seen in a few years. Immediately upon seeing him/her you realize you can't remember his/her name. After about a minute of catch-up conversation, to your great relief the name slams into your skull . When you leave, you can't believe you couldn't remember the name of someone you knew so well. This delayed reaction is common and is the result of deep storage in the mental attic.
We are inundated with so much information that our minds tend to prioritize the files they will keep active. That priority is primarily dependent on one thing . . . Recent Repetition.
Here are some rules of thumb on breaking through the noise level so people will remember you:
- It takes three to five repetitions for people to remember your name if they didn't ask to meet you.
- It often takes two to three repetitions for people to remember your name even if they initiated the meeting.
- It takes at least one transaction or personal event (e.g. lunch) to establish the perception of an existing relationship.
- It takes a minimum of one contact per month to maintain the perception of a close continuing relationship.
- It takes a minimum of one contact per quarter to maintain the perception of a peripheral continuing relationship.
Based on these rules, you should make sure your leveraged contacts get plenty
of repetition.
After the meeting you should call the contact periodically to touch base. I call these Howdie Doodie calls. If the contact has good potential, and you get along well, you should call no less than once a month. All others who represent good potential should be contacted at least quarterly. Each repetition reinforces the fact that you are a priority contact. This elevates you out of the noise zone and produces the perception of a continuing relationship.
The Hot Sheet
In the article, The Correct Way To Make A Referral, you learned that you should refer each prospect to three people. This means you will have to have at least three professionals in each category on your target contact list (see Attorney Marketing Strategies By Practice Area) as well as other professionals who are not on the target list, but to whom you frequently refer.
To aid your networking and referral efforts, you should create The Hot Sheet. This is a list of professionals, categorized by practice area, with names, addresses and telephone numbers. Each category should have a minimum of three names. You will use this sheet as your quick reference for making referrals. It will also be the primary tool that guides your networking.
You should start by creating the Hot Sheet template on your word processor. This includes the headings by type of professional, with at least three spaces in each category to add names of contacts. Don't put any names in yet.
To be anointed onto your Hot Sheet, a contact must satisfy each of the following conditions:
- You must have had a personal meeting (even if you know the contact well) subsequent to reading this article and the articles entitled Statements Of Excellence and Meeting With Network Contacts . This will insure you have given a good presentation and the contact is very clear about what type of business to send you.
- You must feel the contact is highly competent. You won't want to be referring to professionals that might reflect badly on you by their poor handling of the client.
- You must feel the contact has a high probability of referring business. The best indicator of this is if the contact has referred before. Other things to look for:
- High degree of contact with your target client.
- Successful practice or business
- Leadership
- Gregariousness
- You must like the contact personally and be open to taking the relationship to a higher level of friendship if the opportunity arises.
Your goal in networking is to fill your Hot Sheet. When you ask for the names
of new contacts, ask specifically for the types of professionals who match the
empty spaces on your Hot Sheet.
It will take about a year of steady networking before your Hot Sheet is filled with names. You will have to kiss a few frogs, but it will be worth it. What you will have is a list of names of people you really like, which are likely to send you business. If the list has 45 names (15 categories with 3 names each), and each person sends you one matter a year worth just $2000 in billings, you have $90,000 in new matters coming in on top of those sent by existing clients. For most lawyers, an increase of this magnitude is a significant improvement.
Making Your Hot Sheet Red Hot
As your Hot Sheet fills up, you will have the names of numerous competent professionals who are predisposed to making referrals. This list will need to be stoked frequently. You should make a Howdie Doodie call to Hot Sheet contacts at least twice a quarter. If you like them, you should be motivated to stay in touch. If they feel the same, they will be happy to receive your call.
Naturally, you will send referrals to these contacts every chance you get. Once a year you will evaluate the performance of your Hot Sheet contacts. If specific contacts have not been making an attempt at referring business, you drop them from the list.
My rule of thumb is that a Hot Sheet contact should make at least one attempt per year. A good contact will make three to five attempts per year. Anyone who doesn't make one attempt after receiving eight Howdie Doodie calls, either doesn't have the referrals to give, or is giving them to another lawyer. Replace that contact with someone with better potential.
The Friendship Hierarchy
By design, your Hot Sheet Contacts will be people you like, creating the potential for a friendship. Too often, the potential for a good friendship exists with a person who can help an attorney's business dramatically, but the attorney doesn't take time to cultivate the friendship. This is a mistake. Such a friendship can be the most fruitful investment you can make.
People have the misconception that to have a friendship two people need to spend a great deal of time together. This is clearly not the case. Outside their family and work, most people can count the people they speak to more than once a month on one hand. Yet most people consider themselves to have more than five friends.
After you get to a certain level of comfort and continuity, it is the quality of the time spent together, not the quantity that determines the perception of friendship. It is what you do together that matters, not how often you meet.
There are certain activities that are perceived as friendship activities. If you want to be perceived as a friend, you need to periodically engage in friendship activities. Friendship activities have different intensities and produce different perceptions of closeness. Below is a list of common friendship activities in order of increasing intensity.
- Lunch.
- Drinks after work
- Dinner
- Special event (Sporting Event, Theatre, Symphony, etc.)
- Shared passions (Golf, Tennis, Racquetball, Fishing, Workout, etc.
- Dinner including spouses
- Special event including spouses.
- Entertaining at either person's home.
- Weekend activity including families.
When a contact sends you a referral, you should escalate up the hierarchy.
Invite the contact out to dinner or a show. If he/she sent you a substantial
piece of business, you might want to go directly to dinner with the spouses.
Use each referral as an occasion to create a more personal and friendly
relationship. This will increase the probability that you will get future
referrals.
An added benefit of establishing close friendships is that the more the contact perceives you as a friend, the less necessary it is to maintain a quid pro quo referral arrangement. Friendship is the great exemption to the quid pro quo rule. When the contact starts thinking of you as a friend, he/she will send referrals because of your close relationship and the fact that you've done a great job for previous referrals.
The Key To Success
I started this article by saying that follow-up is the key to success. It is such an important concept that I must close the same way. Successful networking is not about how many people you can meet, but rather how many beneficial relationships you can establish. Naturally, you will have to kiss quite a few frogs to find your princes, so meeting new people is important throughout the process. Ultimately, however, the key to success is to establish long term relationships.
My most successful clients have established dozens of new friendships that have enriched their lives as well as their practices. In the beginning, these lawyers networked feverishly, meeting new people constantly. As the relationships were established, the emphasis in their networking shifted from meeting new people to staying in touch with friends. They tell me networking is the easiest thing in the world now, because the bulk of their marketing consists of picking up the phone and saying hello to friends who send them business.
Make follow-up a habit. Make it automatic. If you do, you are sure to see your practice grow.
Copyright © Art Italo, 1996. All Rights Reserved
Select
this link to see Art Italo’s Practice Profile
Art Italo is a consultant working exclusively with attorneys in the areas
of business development and strategic planning. He speaks internationally on
legal marketing and strategic planning.
He has developed and refined the concept of Leveraged Networking after
over 15,000 hours of individual consultations with attorneys. He has personally consulted with over 250
attorneys in
For on-line help with your marketing questions, e-mail Art Italo at
italco@mindspring.com or contact Art
Italo at:
Italo Consulting®
P.O. Box 680474
Marietta, GA 30068
(770) 859-0600
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