In Season 1 of the Agile Attorney Podcast, we are focusing on the Voice of the Client. I am bringing you the stories of real people in their own voice talking about the challenges and successes they have had dealing with lawyers.
This episode is a little bit different. I talk with Dennis, a financial planner in central California not about him hiring a lawyer as a client, but about what he thinks about the lawyers he refers people to as part of his professional network.
While he isn’t “hiring a lawyer” in the traditional sense, he is hiring his referral partners—who happen to be lawyers—do a job for him. In this case the job is to complete elements of a financial plan that Dennis can’t do on his own, while still maintaining the quality of service and the relationship that he so carefully builds with his clients.
This notion of “hiring a referral partner” comes from Jobs to be Done theory, a really interesting way at looking at the sometimes hidden roles that your products and services play in the lives of your customers.
There are two really good books on the topic, one by Anthony Ulwick that is called Jobs To Be Done, and the other one by Clayton Christensen called Competing Against Luck. You can check out a good (and funny) video of Christensen explaining the concept with the example of “hiring a milkshake”.
In my interview, Dennis has some great thoughts about what good client service looks like from the perspective of the person who got you that client to begin with.
He also talks about why it is important to pick a target market based on genuine interest and connection (and not just be chasing rich people). And he has a great line, taken from an unlikely source of marketing wisdom, about people’s ability to sniff out imposters.
Stay tuned through the end of the interview to learn how you can craft the ultimate law firm mission statement that will help you focus your practice on finding that perfect niche that solves the right kinds of problems for the people and communities you truly care about.
I’d love to hear what you think, so please listen to the episode and then drop me a line via email or on social media.
Be sure to like and subscribe in your favorite podcast app, including:
Or subscribe in your favorite app via my rss feed: https://agileattorney.libsyn.com/rss
You can even watch on YouTube, where it is easy to turn on subtitles to follow along.