113 - 5 Top Profit Drivers for Law Firms

My guest is Alistair Marshall who has helped thousands of lawyers in over 200 firms worldwide, to win more new profitable client work.

He is the founding director of Professional Services BD based in Sydney, Australia, but has worked with firms in Europe, North America and Asia.

Alistair recently published a book ‘ How to grow your Professional Services Practice - The Practical Guide to BD’ which went to Number One on the Amazon business book chart.

To get a copy of Alistair's book click here: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B0DDWK6B4N

About Dan:
Dan provides law firm owners with the skills and capital investment to increase their profits while reducing their workload. Over the last five years, Dan’s clients have grown their revenues from 20% to 392% in one year while more than halving their workload.

To find out about Dan's availability and programs, click here: https://www.danwarburton.com/

Proudly edited with finesse by Mike at Making Digital Real ✨

Transcript

Welcome to the Law Firm Owners Podcast. I'm your host, Dan Warburton and I'm delighted to be here with my guest, Alistair Marshall who's helped thousands of lawyers in over 200 firms worldwide to win more new profitable client work and as a modest way of putting it, he's made a lot of law firms a lot more money and he's the founding director of Professional Services BD based in Sydney, Australia but has worked with firms in Europe, North America and Asia. 

Alistair recently published a book, How to Grow Your Professional Services Practice and I've heard nothing but great things about it. It's The Practical Guide to BD which went to number one on Amazon's business book chart and today what we're going to be covering is the five top profit drivers for law firms. Alistair, it's brilliant to have you here.

Good to be here. It's a while since we spoke. It has.

And very good to go across the world and get over the time difference which is a little large. It's 8 o'clock in the evening here down under. Yes and it's 10am here in Spain so just shows that distance is not a barrier.

No longer. The best thing to come out of Covid. Probably the only good thing to come out of Covid.

So tell us. I'm excited about this conversation because I know I'm going to be learning so much from you. So what was it that brought you to writing the book? Well I've read a few books around how to grow a law practice and some of the old ones I think are quite good. 

The old Peter Drucker things from 30, 40 years ago. But I've also found some that are quite dry and dull and I'm the sort of guy who reads a book with a highlighting pen wanting to find some gems that I can input myself. And I found quite a few books were more like a thesis and were actually quite dull.

So I thought okay what I need to do is put a collection of things together like quick tips, hints, lists very practical things people can do tomorrow morning at nine o'clock. That'll help grow a practice because I didn't see anything that looked like that. So I've been writing articles for quite some time.

So I put them together in some sort of chronological order that makes sense. So we start with strategy because you've got to start there. So many people ring me up and go I need more clients and I need them now. 

And I go okay well you're asking for tactics but before tactics you need a strategy and then some managing partners may tell a half truth and tell me they have a strategy and then I ask some diagnostic questions and then it's very apparent that they probably don't have one. And then we go back in time and we go okay well how did we get to where we are today? What do we do well? What do we do not so well? And I have a heap of diagnostic questions there. If anybody wants to go through that exercise if you go to the homepage of the website you can do the diagnostic tool for yourself.

It only takes two or three minutes to fill them in. Yeah nice. I'll send me a link to that and I'll include it in the notes along with how to get a copy of your book.

It's literally at the bottom of the homepage Dan so it should be very easy to find. But some people want tactics so it depends on what type of clients you want to win and there's a big difference between business to consumer and business to business. And most business to business people are overly reliant on referrals and most business to consumer law businesses are overly reliant on adverts.

One's relatively free and converts very well but unfortunately you can only grow your practice at the rate that other people are prepared to talk about you and that's dangerous and then you haven't got your future in your own hands. Bain & Company did some research with 500 law firms where it's quite interesting 80% of the managing partners said yes our firm is worthy of a referral. We're very good at what we do and Bain & Company said we don't believe you give us a list of your top 20 clients we'll bring them up. 

So Bain brought up the top 20 clients of these 500 firms and only 16% of the clients actually agreed that the firm was worthy of a referral. So if you're going to rely on referrals to grow your practice you might be waiting a long time. The other thing if you'll allow me to pull the leg of some of the people listening is that when's the last time you actively asked for a referral? People don't.

They wait until they're given and that's also not good for the growth of the practice. Another challenge in many jurisdictions people are very poor at asking for client feedback and that's the best trigger moment they'll ever be to ask for a referral is when someone scored you 9 or 10 out of 10 on a net promoter score but if you don't ask you don't get and people miss. Anyway you kind of asked me about five profit drivers. 

So I should say that I have huge empathy with people because you don't get taught this stuff at law school. I just started lecturing last year here in Australia and I've been trying for 15 years to get my type of stuff on law school syllabus and it's took me 15 years to get there. Wow. 

I didn't realize it's quite important. So the five obvious ones and this might not be popular with some of the listeners because there's some things on here that law firms like doing so let me share where this comes from. So I asked 150 law firms how many hours and how many dollars they invested to win perfect new clients. 

I have a data set here or data set as they call it down here in Australia of about 124 pages right so this stuff doesn't lie people told me this and the top three things that don't work kind of are the three things that are profit and prevent you from making profit. So the first one is stock brand advertising right now people go that's mad advertising is really good. Now in certain instances it may be for certain personal injury law type things maybe but I always like giving an example so in the airport here in Sydney where I go a lot you go up the escalator to the lounges and there's all the law firm logo at the top of the escalator but it is only ever there for 12 months and then it changes now that wouldn't happen if it worked so what happens is when partners are flying between Sydney and Melbourne obviously tap each other on the shoulder and go oh we work for that firm isn't it great but it's expensive and they can't work out whether there's actually any work comes as a result of the brand advertising so unless it directs someone to a website with an action point where you can harness an email address or something to work with it's actually a really expensive way to go to market. 

Now I can't say brand awareness is ever bad I can't but in terms of does it provide good profits to law firms I'm going to say that looking at my research the answer was no so stop it second one and all law firms love a sponsorship alright so if it moves they sponsor it so there's two things here I want people to be aware of. The first one is sports teams there's not a jersey in Australia of any sporting code that doesn't involve having a law firm written across its top alright but again and state of origin is probably the most expensive game here to put a jersey on and again they have a two year contract and every two years it changes now why does it do that you would think if it really worked and it drove work into the firm they'd be absolutely killing themselves to make sure they could re-sign for another two years never happens changes check why maybe because it doesn't work which kind of the other sponsorship that you have to question is basically say I pick a firm and it's got 10 partners or 10 directors they all sponsor the kids under 12's football team right now it's not a lot and I understand there are times and places where you need to do commitments to the community right but if you've all got an under 10's and you give them 5 grand a year that's 50 grand a year and you're probably not winning any work so you've got to be careful because I could do a lot with 50 thousand's and again you have to measure it which is a whole new bag of things with a law firm because they're not very good at accurately measuring the source of the work and often in practice management systems you can gate it so you can't so you should have the discipline where no secretaries or EAs or any fee earner can open up a new client file without putting a source code into the practice management system so you can learn what works and what doesn't but lots of people miss that and that's bad. Meaning by a source code to actually mark up where that lead came from in some way. 

Yeah and if it was a referral who was it from was it from Alistair or was it from Dan? Yeah. You can't just put referral because you don't know where it comes from and lots of people scratch the surface so people someone will phone up phone call but it's because they've been to the website to check it was the right firm so it was really an online query so people need to get better in engagement big teams. And even ask and how did you find our website? HFL. 

Yeah. So third profit driver. Be wary of your hospitality expenditure. 

I mean these aren't these aren't profit drivers these are three things not to do. Yes because I'm going to tell you how to spend the money differently. Because the research in here Dan tells me that there are significant amounts of profit invested in these three activities but you don't see a return on their investment.

So most law firms here in Sydney love a box at the cricket ground and they're expensive and it's excellent for cementing existing relationships but according to my 150 law firms it's lousy when it comes to introducing new client work. Think about it if you got invited to a sports game the last thing you want is a lawyer sat next to you chipping on about how good the law firm is all the way through the second half. It's not why you went there.

So it's not always the correct environment. The other thing is and many people here will have a smile at this. 48 hours before the event you get a phone call or an email to say dreadfully sorry Dan but something's cropped up we would have loved to have joined you but we can't make it. 

So you invite Sally from accounts and her three children and everyone has a whale of a time but it's a really expensive way to entertain the staff. So lots of law firms invest lots of money advertising sponsorships hospitality stuff. So you need to reign it in or at least measure that you're getting a return on your investment. 

So think about how much is invested in training staff on either how to do lead generation at all. And if they do that how to actually deal with the conversion of the leads it creates. And my guess is in most instances it's zero. 

I would agree. Because they put it into the it's too difficult box or they put it into the Alistair it makes me feel salesy and desperate and cheesy and I refuse to do it. It's not why I went to law school. 

It's not why I've become a professional lawyer. So let me demystify it by saying business development is only client service multiplied by relationship building. The end.

Nothing to fear here. Nothing to feel cheesy or desperate about. People have legal aches and pains and you are the triage nurse.

They have to source it from somewhere. It may as well be you. So you don't have to feel bad about it. 

But we live in a modern world that I call Deb. So the modern world of Deb's digitally empowered buyer and Deb won't buy anything over $500 without googling it first. And that includes legal services.

So you have to get the digital footprint right. So one of the things on what you would save your money on or you should invest in is making sure the website is good. And there's a big difference between an online brochure and a lead generating website.

Now I don't build websites so I'm not promoting my own here. But people do have some very ordinary websites and it tends to be a list. Well the first page, landing page is often a history page.

So it's got this firm started in 1920 with my granddad in his shed at the bottom of the garden and now we've got four offices in three counties and 12 partners and great but that's not why I'm going to buy it. So no one buys a law firm based on longevity. But it's often the first thing you see on a homepage of a law firm.

We've been around for 70 years, 80 years. So think about it. I meet fantastic lawyers. 

Oh sorry I meet ordinary lawyers who are my age at 58. I meet fantastic lawyers who are 20 years younger than me at 38. So I'm not going to hire a lawyer based on how old they are, how many grey hairs they've got. 

It's just not happening. What I'm going to do, I'm going to hire them based on what they've done in that time. So people have to be better at telling stories and using numbers to tell stories.

So let me think of an example. I did one this week. So I've been to Hobart in Tasmania earlier this week. 

And these people were like, oh we've been around for 40 years. And I said, well there must be something more exciting than that. I said, well you know so I picked up one of the directors. 

I said, what do you do? She said, conveyancing. I said, how many houses do you do conveyancing? She said, about 40 a week. So I said, okay, average house price here? $800,000.

Okay, so that's 40 times 80 times 50. Turned out that during the time of this firm, they'd spent, oh sorry, they'd done $1.2 billion of residential conveyancing in the local Tasmanian market. Now, if you go to a firm and it says we've done over a billion dollars in retail sales in the local market, you'd think these people must know what they're doing.

But the length of time they've been doing it, completely immaterial. Yeah. But people miss out on that. 

So training people what to say is a big deal. And also most websites when your ideal prospect lands on it, it takes them on this merry-go-round where they can click on all sorts of things, get all sorts of information, but very rarely do they get asked to set up a call or send a message or get help. Well, worse than that, Dan, is that a lot of people's legal challenges don't fall between nine and five.

If I'm a divorce lawyer, I've probably just had a row with the wife on a Friday night when I've come back from the public house. So I need something now. So when I land on your thing at 10 o'clock at night on a Friday because I'm concerned that I'm about to go through a relationship break-up, there needs to be something there that says, look, we can't speak to you now, but fill this in and someone will phone you at 9 o'clock on Monday morning.

In the meantime, please read this. Yeah. The way people buy now, I talked about that digitally empowered buyer, they do the research first. 

So what I encourage all law firms to do is put more of your IP in the public domain where people can access it prior to a financial transaction taking place. So the bad news is, for all the law firms listening, is that if you walk on the main road where your firm is, 97% of the people officially don't need a law firm today. Only 3% of the population are going to need a lawyer on any given day.

So the 3% that are ready to buy, they're the expensive ones to chase. That's where AdWords comes in. So, you know, I've had an injury, I'm getting divorced, I need to do this. 

AdWords. To the rest of you, what I strongly encourage you to do is to become on the forefront of their mind on the day in future when the legal opportunity arises. So that takes thought leadership.

That has to be how you become the expert in somebody's mind before that happens. And believe me, if you are the person at the forefront of their mind, they're very very less likely to give a hoot about the price. So, law firms might be surprised by this, but again, the research says that only 9% of legal services are bought on price.

Fascinating. Isn't it? Most people are like, ooh, we don't put it up above that, and we don't put it up above that. And I go, it really doesn't matter.

And if you went to the managing partners of the 200 plus firms I've been in and said, what was the one key takeaway? It would be that he gave us the confidence and the know-how on how to scientifically put our price up and defend it and get the difference. And profit's not a bad word in a law firm because it allows you to reinvest it in systems and technology which provides better experiences both for staff and clients, and you can afford to reinvest it in better human capital. It's one of the biggest challenges out there still for managing partners is winning the war for talent because it's real.

And, you know, there's a number of things you can do, and people are more likely to come to your firm if you have a good website and you have up-to-date tools and technologies that make their job easier. So, coming back to these drivers, we've got a good idea now of where, you know, a lot of law firms waste money. So where do you see are effective places to start investing money in solving business development challenges? Apart from contacting you.

Well, the very good news is that the things that work according to my research documents don't cost cash. So there you go, people can safely sit down in their chairs again now. There are things that cost cash.

Websites don't come free. And private dinners don't come free. Now, you can't say, Alistair, you just told me not to do hospitality, but you want me to have private dinners. 

Private dinners, if you're in the business-to-business sphere, are still the best way, in my view, to surgically get decision-makers in C suites of businesses to give you quality time because that's everyone's time, but CEOs or directors of businesses, you know, think about the people listening to this, right? They run law firms, they're busy in six to ten minute intervals and they're on the mouse wheel. So if I reach out to them and say, do you want to come for a coffee with me in the middle of the day, they're very likely to say no, Alistair, because you're just going to try and sell me some legal marketing ideas and I'm not coming because I'm too busy. If I suggested to them I'll host you for dinner in Cafe Sydney opposite the Opera House on Thursday night and it's a themed dinner aimed at managing partners of law firms and we'll have Chatham House rules where you all talk and share but you don't go outside the room.

People actually love that. And if I go for a coffee with you in a coffee shop, A, I don't want to tell you the ins and outs of my law firm because people can hear me while I'm in a public space. And secondly, it doesn't make me feel that good. 

So I have a big thing about the word feel. It's my favorite four-letter word beginning with F. Feel, right? How you make people feel in life is massively important and it's the same for a lawyer or a law firm. So people won't always remember what you say, they won't always remember what you did, but they'll always remember how it made them feel.

Yeah, I've heard that from that author. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

So if you make people feel important by inviting them to a themed industry dinner that's just for people in their industry in a restaurant staring at the opera house on a Thursday night, and instead of buying you a coffee which lasts 40 minutes, I'm going to buy you a steak and a bottle of red wine which takes three hours. The chances are we're going to build more rapport. So this isn't new. 

The old adage is no like, trust. I'm not going to hire a lawyer I don't know. I'm not going to hire a lawyer I don't really like or I don't want to, but I'll probably not hire one until I trust them.

So the longer you're spending in someone's company the better chance you have of making that happen. So you're suggesting to actually go and create these evening events and invite these ideal clients to them, or are you just saying invite one to an event that's already like that and set up? No, I'm suggesting where I've done this with lots of legal firms is where you have a themed dinner and you invite 20 or 30 or you secure a dining room for 20 or 30 people. Let's pick 20 as a figure because I did one last week which was 20 in this venue I've just talked about. 

Now in there you haven't got, not everybody's a prospect. So you bring a few clients and you sit them round so they can talk to the prospects or the referrers. And there's no sales picture presentation goes on here. 

So there'll be some people on here who've gone to a B&I meeting. So the best thing about a B&I meeting is it does teach you that it gives gain, and I kind of agree with that. But if I went to a B&I meeting, there's only one law firm in the room probably so it's not for me.

But if I do a themed one, I'll give you the best example. So the first one I ever did here with the law firm, they did outsourced employment law work for associations. So associations have members and as part of your membership fee they outsource, you had a telephone call where you could do employment law stuff. 

And their biggest client was the Australian Retailers Association who had 5,000 members. So 5,000 retailers in Australia first sort of call is phoning this number up and if it goes litigious or anything, the firm makes lots of money. So on this particular night, I pegged the bill and it was just under $9,000 for 30 people. 

It was 297 ahead or something it worked out. So everybody had a great time. All you're doing is buying access to have a follow-up meeting.

So on this instance, out of the 30 places, 13 were guests. That's all. But of those 13 guests, everyone said, yes, you can come and meet us.

Thanks for entertaining us. We've had a great evening. Everybody went and got seen and three of them became clients. 

One of them was the Pharmacy Guild of Australia who spent a million dollars in fees in year one. And that event cost $9,000. But it has to be spectacularly well done. 

You have to have an A-list and a B-list because not everyone on the A-list will come. It has to have proper envelopes sent. It has to be the right destination, the right time, all that kind of thing. 

It has to be well done. People have, but C-suite people have egos. You've got to appeal to it and having a coffee that doesn't really appeal to them.

So if you're in London, you could maybe take them out to the Ritz, which is one of my favourite places in London. Well, maybe. I can't definitively say what would fit the budget and I'm trying to be sensible.

And usually it's not usually the food that's expensive, it's the wine. So if you book the wine in advance so people aren't buying Mouton de Rothschild or something, then you're probably doing okay. Yeah, I mean, you can eat very, very well there for £200 on the food and £100 with the alcohol. 

So that's £300 per person. And if it's going to be a client that ends up having a massive lifetime value, you'd only need one client for an event like that at that price. No further questions, your honour.

But people don't think like that. They go, wow, £9,000, that's expensive. And I go, yeah, but it might just change your life.

I talk to people But it also doesn't need to be that many people, right? You could do this for six, couldn't you? And all just sit around and play more. You probably need ten, I reckon to do it well. You probably want a speaker or not so much a speaker, but a host who at least thanks the guest for coming and says a few words between main course and dessert.

And usually it's an existing client who the other guests will either recognise or respect. Or you get a judge or a barrister or somebody who they recognise and that goes on the invite and it gives it gravitas. Nice.

I'm loving this. It's not rocket science, Dan, because it's just relationship building. That's all it is.

And it's creating the right place to create and build that relationship. Yes. And I'm still old school in that even when I'm doing my consulting, rather than doing a full day, nine to five, I much rather do an afternoon, have dinner in the evening and then the following day in the morning, because it allows us to break bread together. 

It's a very human thing to build rapport. It gives my voice a break. It gives them a break from my voice.

But we sit and break bread together and drink wine and each day and it builds rapport and trust. So basically, at first moment, I might be talking about strategy, but usually on the morning of day two, I'm asking them to do lead generation, which takes them out of their comfort zone. So I'm trying to win their hearts and minds at dinner because I need a change in the behaviour.

And I'm much more likely to get that if I've had a meal with them and we've listened and talked about experiences and they understand that I'm actually on their side because I've got empathy and I've done this lots of times before and people say, oh, crikey, I'm 60, I can't learn now. And I go, no, you can. You absolutely can.

And, you know, usually it's about being seen as the expert is about a mixture of speaking, using the written word, and networking online. And round figures, there's half a dozen disciplines in each of those areas that if you do well, you can make a really good practice. And the world's not fair. 

So people go, well, how do you know that, Alastair? You're just saying that. And I go, well, I meet really good lawyers who struggle financially to make the practice give them what they probably deserve. But conversely, everybody knows a lawyer who drives a Ferrari, and it's not fair because they're not very good. 

So what's working here? There's a marketing role in play here where they can attract clients on a regular basis, like a machine or an engine that just produces. Now, one of the things people, Alastair, have no time. I'm on the tools all the time.

So I've got to be honest and say, in my experience of doing this for 15 years with law firms, it's very hard to grow a law practice with less than two-hour-a-week commitment. You need 100 hours a year minimum. And then you get there, well, when am I supposed to do it? And I go, well, do it on Mondays and Fridays because Monday is a reactionary day for a lawyer because stuff happens to clients over the weekend, and then they reach out on a Monday, so you're chasing your tail.

And Friday, well, good luck trying to find anyone in Australia on a Friday afternoon. But also, I just think it's probably not the best time to reach out to people on a Friday. They've got one eye on other things, which leaves you Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

So I kind of, when I'm working one-on-one with people, I have them do a two-hour window. Let's pick a day. We'll pick Wednesday. 

Two-hour window on a Wednesday between 12 and 2. And I get them on what I call a 5-5-5 list, which is five clients that if we spent more time with them, we could win more work and we can get case studies and testimonials and all that stuff. And five prospects who match the ideal client profile, so we actually have a list. And it's names, right? It's not generalist stuff.

Does anybody know anybody who needs any legal work? The answer will always be no. And five referring sources, which is another thing where most law firms miss a trick because they want to be everything to everyone. They all want to be a full-service firm.

Try to sell a full-service firm, Talbot. So you've got two brands. You've got the umbrella brand of the firm, so Warburton and Marshall.

But then there's got the individual brands of Dan and Alice. And people still buy individual lawyers, not just law firms. So both areas of the brand have to be looked after.

And people in the digital world, they can have a tax lawyer in London and an employment lawyer in Leeds and a family lawyer in Timbuktu if they wanted to. You can find them pretty easy, so they won't all necessarily be in your firm. But there's so many different things you can do to put your IP out there for people. 

But in this two-hour window, one of the things, 70% of the activities were done behind a desk, so it was like writing emails or doing social media. But it was very apparent that when you actually converted, there was a one-on-one interaction through the eyes. So we were either doing what we're doing now in the modern world over Zoom or Teams, or we were actually meeting in person.

So I have to encourage people to get out from behind the desk at least once a week because that's where the magic happens. So marketing is often one to many, but conversions usually one to one or one to a few. So you have to put time, time allowance in your week to make that happen. 

But I get people on this 5-5-5, and I get them on to at least a two hours a week of commitment. They achieve more in three months than they have done in the last three years because they tell the EAs and the secretaries, don't put anything in the diary in that two-hour window. So they've got time to go to bed on a Tuesday night, they've got two Alastair's to-do list the next day. 

And people often say to me, they go, I only did that yesterday because I knew you were going to be talking to me today. And I go, well, it doesn't matter, but you've done it, whereas you wouldn't have done it before. Because it's action.

I see some great stuff written down, here's a plan to grow by 10%. And then they blow the dust off it. Everything you're saying resonates with me.

Firstly, if it's not scheduled, it's not happening. So you actually have to schedule it and you have to fight for it and be totally committed to do what you say you're going to do in those two hours. I love this 5-5-5.

You're only focused on, for instance, five people that can give you referrals, aim to build a relationship with them, take them out for lunch or dinner, spend time with them and even send them referrals. Be the one that triggers them to send referrals back to you by being the one that sends them referrals first. That's what I've found has worked really well.

And through all of this, you're basically putting all your energies in your niche as well. You're not offering all of your services. Look at which is maybe your most profitable or the one that you notice is the fastest entrance for a client to come into your business that then leads on to them receiving the rest of your services.

Lead with that one and ask for referrals for that one and do this in this really structured manner. Yeah, love it. Absolutely love it.

The one that most lawyers and law firms underplay is the value of their own network. So I'm going to give my age away. I think I am already.

But in 1983, when I started working in a bank in Manchester, the bank manager and the law firm and the accountant basically ran the roost in every village and town in the UK. And they were looked up to as on a pedestal in the business community, and they referred between each other. And all I do now is exactly the same. 

So I go, okay, what else does a law firm need when I'm in the boardroom talking about strategy and things they need? This week, I've even recommended to a managing partner a telephone system provider because I know of a telephone system provider who does it specifically for law firms. He won't let me down. It'll only do my brand club.

So let me wave something at you. This is something that I ran last year. And I'm doing it again now. 

So I have a situation where on the last Thursday of every month, I have lunch and a pie in a pint with the head of professional services at one of the big banks over here who banks 561 law firms. The head of audit at one of the big auditors who audits all their law firms and the head of professional services for one of the big insurance brokers. Now, between us, we know hundreds and hundreds of firms. 

We don't compete, and we've all got our noses in the same trough. So we just open doors for each other. So when I ran that last year, I just invited about 25 suppliers of different things that law firms need and asked them to bring a managing partner with them and pay their catering for the day.

Yeah, nice. So we sat in a room, 60 of us, and talked to all things about what was concerning law firms. And I did a CEO panel Q&A where I asked the people, you know, getting people back to work and into the office.

We talked about cyber security, AI. Over here in Australia, we've got tranche 2, anti-money laundering stuff coming, right? So we just get it all out in the open. And it just brings people together. 

And people learn and build a network. So if I ever get asked, you know, anybody who does this, I can go, yeah, actually, I do. And it adds value.

But then people look, all those other people in the room who don't do what I do are also in firms who go, I can't afford to buy a telephone system because we're not doing very well at the moment. They go, oh, do you need more work? Yeah, we do. Oh, well, go and speak to Alistair because he might help you.

So all of a sudden, I've got a sales force of all these people going around talking about me. Yeah, brilliant. So it's a really good thing, but you can only do that if you know exactly who your target client is.

And there'll be people listening now who think, Alistair, we do business to consumers, so we can't model that. But you can't. I've got a lady here in Western Sydney who only divorces trades people.

And she's got an army of blokes in high-vis jackets queuing up to use her. Right? Because she's got a flag in the sand. That's what I do.

I've got guys who do estate plans for sports people. Yeah, yeah. Very specific. 

Nice. And if you're a sports person, you're going to want to go to somebody that specialises in that. Yeah. 

So, you know, the usual joke is around, you know, I go, what's your ideal client? And they go, high net worth. And I go, great, what do we do? Do we just drive around Knightsbridge until we knock a few over? Like, you know, what do we do? Right? So you have to go, okay, it's medical practitioners is the one I often get back. Medical practitioners or, you know, dentists or, you know, in this country, vets.

Well, every vet in Australia drives a Porsche. I don't know how that works. I'm in the wrong joke.

Anyway, but I'll say that, well, you need to understand how that kind of thing works. Because if you want to be a dentist, one of your biggest commitments is actually an x-ray machine. So you need to build a relationship with the people who sell x-ray machines because they'll know every dentist in the state.

Yeah. And if you want agriculture businesses, find out who is the John Deere tractor salesman because he'll know every farmer in New South Wales. Yeah, brilliant. 

Right? So you've got to start thinking outside the box. And when you start doing this, instead of having thousands of competitors, you've got a handful of competitors. Yeah. 

And people have already made the mind up they want to use you because you're the specialist and then you're not into price negotiation. Absolutely. I resonate with everything you're saying, which is why six years ago when I did an advanced marketing course, my mentor for a short time said, you can't work with anyone.

You know, I was mentoring and coaching business owners as such. And he said, write a list of all the people who got the best results and see which ones they were. And sure enough, it was law firm owners.

And ever since then, I've had people say to me, oh, you should speak to my lawyer. Or, oh, I know this lawyer. And it's like because I'm speaking about a law firm owner, instantly it comes to their mind who it is that they could refer me to. 

I never had that happen before. I never had somebody say, oh, I know a business owner you could speak to. It just didn't happen because it's not niched.

So, this is brilliant. Yeah. And of course... Also... Go on.

No, no, please. You're in full flow, Dan, and I stopped you. No, it's alright. 

No, I was just going to say that then when you're niched and you're clear with your marketing, you're clear with your messaging, you're clear with how and who to initiate the conversation with and that's the icebreaker. That's the key point. Because then once you start building that relationship, then you can start ending up offering them all the other services that you do, right? Well, if you're... First of all, my opinion is that no one wants to hire a generalist in 2025.

Everybody wants to hire an expert. And God forbid any of us were ill and you had a serious illness, you'd want a specialist. You wouldn't go to your GP to fix it. 

And if you go to a surgeon or a specialist surgeon, you're not really bothered what it costs. You just need him to do the right job. The law's no different.

Lawyers vastly undersell themselves. They do the most valuable work in really stressful situations. There's three most successful stressful situations in life.

Birth and death of a human. Birth and death of a business. Moving house.

Three of the most stressful things in life that lawyers get involved in. They really save people heaps of stress. And yet they massively undersell it. 

What do you do? I'm a lawyer. What do you do? I'm a tax lawyer. It's just... Come on, guys. 

You do fantastic things for people. Tell them. Tell people what you do. 

Don't make it difficult, right? So don't give me a history lesson. Tell me what you do, who you do it for, and most importantly, what's the result of what you do? Because people don't buy legal services. They buy the result.

They buy the result. They don't buy the drill. They buy the hole in the wall.

They don't buy a divorce lawyer. They buy keeping the dog, right? So it has to be on point. Anyway, I'm waffling and I've looked at the time. 

You probably want rid of me because you'll have a timescale on here. Well, yeah. Yes and no, but yes.

I could just keep on talking to you forever. I don't know if you know, but I'm in the process of finding and buying my first law firm and you know, throughout the years that I've been working law firm owners, I've got to know a lot of suppliers of all sorts of services and when it comes to business development, you're like right up there in what you do and it's simply because you've put yourself out there as the specialist that solves this one challenge for professional services, you know, including law firms and it's like because your message is so clear and so constant and out there, you've stayed at the top of my mind through the way that you post on LinkedIn consistently and you don't even post like always insightful content. It's just like, hey, I'm now dining here with this you know, business connection and here they are holding my book and now I'm doing this and you know, and it just has you constantly stay on top of mind. 

So it's like it's not rocket science. It's just about getting clear as to what is it that you want to become known for offering and how are you then going to stay on people's minds consistently and then how are you going to engineer those ideal meetings that then creates that relationship that then leads to business and this is everything that you do. Yeah, it's brilliant.

Systems, tools, processes all provide value to lawyers because most of it is still time based and it saves you time. In lots of cases, I'm saving people wasting resources because what I can help them do is get to know quicker, right? Because I'll go look, I've been in 200 firms, I wouldn't do that. No, it won't work.

Don't try it, right? People stop wasting the resources of time and cash and invest it in the right things and as I've already said, the majority of things I advise people do don't cost cash but it costs time, which I guess is, you know, in some way like money, but it's opportunity costs rather than hard dollars. It's not a cost, is it? It's an investment. It's an investment.

I'm loving your thinking, Dan, but not everybody thinks that. It's not a cost, it's an investment of time. People are like the same. 

Clients come to me because they're burnt out and exhausted. I work the opposite end. My clients have too much work coming in and they can't service it all and their team members don't help out and they're having to do it all themselves.

They come to me because I've done this with so many different law firms, I know, right? Just cut all of this out, clear one-on-ones, make clear requests, agree on, you know, targets and consistent support ends up enabling you to delegate all your workload to your team, you know? I mean, simplified version there, but absolutely and it's only through having worked in so many firms that we get these insights that you can't when you're only in your one firm. And they're very common issues and, you know, people shouldn't be listening to this beating themselves up black and blue because it's very common. Yeah, yeah. 

Brilliant. So I'm guessing a lot of this is covered in your book, right? Yes, a lot of it is covered in the book. The book was cut down.

I had about 100 extra pages and I thought, no, that's too much. So I cut it down. It's about a two-hour commitment but it's all short, you know, one, two, three-page chapters.

It's almost like a reference book. So you can have it set on your desk and you go, I don't know what to do about that. What's Alastair's advice? And you can go through and see what I say about it or how you might do it differently.

Yeah, brilliant. And, you know, it's gone gangbusters so I guess some people are enjoying it. Yeah, no, I've seen and I've had people speaking very highly of it. 

I've really got to get myself a copy. Alright, well, please do. And in fact, I'm not saying that lightly.

I am going to because I've noticed there are certain points of time in the evenings when the kids are watching some silly thing on TV and I'm sat there and I don't want to be on my mobile phone because it's just not good for relationship building. But I could have your book sat there and whenever I get those moments, I can just be picking it up and reading a few pages. So there's a tip for the rest of you that have kids as to how to use that time.

It kind of takes you through a timeline. So it starts with strategic thoughts. Then it goes into lead generation. 

Then it goes into conversion. Nice. Which I'm not allowed to call that because everyone hates it. 

Even business development isn't probably right. So I call it how to convert coffee meetings into dollars. Love it. 

That's the end of sales. And then there are a number of miscellaneous thoughts at the end of the book. But there's a lot of content there that can help people grow a practice for the story. 

Brilliant. Well, look Alistair, I've absolutely loved having you on the show today. And it's just been a great opportunity for me to catch up with you as well.

And yeah, I look forward to staying in touch. And at some point, we've got to collaborate on an event, me and you. We really have.

Yeah. Well, when you're passing, you can drop in. It's a bit of a way. 

I'm going back to the UK in August. I'm definitely there in August. I was there for a month. 

I was in Europe for a month over Christmas and New Year. Vaccine family and stuff. I'll probably be in Malaysia with my family's wife in August. 

But yeah, we've got to engineer something. Alistair, it's great to have had you here. And yeah, let's speak again soon. 

Cheers. Look forward to it. Cheers, Dan. 

Bye now.