This week I am giving clues on how to ask friends and contacts for business and close the sale.
My second clue is put yourself in a position that you never need to ask for business or try to close the sale. You might be thinking:
“That’s great, but how do I do it?”
I tell lawyers I coach:
“Identify a problem, opportunity or change (before your potential clients know they have one), offer a solution and give it away.”
This is a two step process.
- Put yourself in the position to identify the problem.
- Create valuable content and give it away.
You can identify problems, opportunities and changes by having a keen sense of what is happening in your clients’ world.
You know better than me what the top legal issues are in 2019 and going forward. I see some as follows:
- Healthcare
- Privacy
- Antitrust
- Technology
- Green New Deal concepts and other environmental issues
- Immigration
- Workplace harassment and violence
- Guns
- Campaign finance
- Trade Secret Protection
I will leave you with a specific example of how I applied this concept.
Historically, by federal and state law highways and bridges were built by contracts awarded to the low bidder. In 1988, the Federal Highway Administration’s SEP-14 project began to evaluate Innovative contracting practices. Those practices included design-build contracting. Even though contractors protested this dramatic change, I knew the “evaluation” would ultimately lead to design-build contracts being used to construct most large projects.
I wrote a guide for contractors and began speaking at industry meetings all over the country. As a result of identifying this change and giving away a solution, contractors and state DOT’s sought me out to help them with design-build projects all over the country. I never had to ask for the business.
So, the second clue to asking for business/closing the sale is to put yourself in position to have potential clients seek your help so you never need to ask for business.