What rainmakers know about persistence

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By Stephen Seckler

Building professional relationships is critical in selling legal services, and one of the key ingredients in building professional relationships is persistence.

To illustrate that point, one recent study found that, on average, corporate counsel need to be asked up to seven times before they will agree to meet with an attorney who wants their business.

Interestingly, the same study showed that 90 percent of attorneys give up after one try.

In other words, if you want to build a practice, you need to be willing to face a lot of rejection.

In baseball, succeeding three out of 10 times means you’re a superstar. In selling your legal services in a competitive marketplace, think of yourself as a batter in a league with amazing pitching.

Good rainmakers understand that. They are building relationships all the time with clients, potential clients and referral sources. They know that generating work means taking chances and that only 20 percent of their activity will yield direct results.

In many ways, voice mail and email present some of the biggest obstacles for anyone trying to build a law practice.

Simply put, many people don’t respond to all their messages. Your message, as the vendor who is pursuing a potential client, goes to the bottom of the queue.

But here’s the bottom line: Radio silence is not rejection. Until a prospect tells you that he isn’t interested, you have no idea why he’s not responding.

Stephen Seckler is president of Boston-based Seckler Legal Coaching.

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