www.tenandahalf.co.uk

How barristers can win

more work just by

listening to their clients

6 questions you may want to ask in Chambers…

1. What do the law firms you work with consider to be an acceptable level of service? And are you providing that level of service? 2. Everyone wants more for less, what added value do you offer your clients? And do your clients think your fees represent real value for money? 3. When was the last time you sat down with a solicitor and asked how you could improve the service they offered their clients? And how can you use that understanding to help the other firms you work with? 4. What do your clients really think about your services compared to other sets? And how can you use that knowledge to become more competitive? 5. How do you know you have the right answers to these questions? And are those answers based on out of date assumptions or current feedback? 6. The last question is the easiest one to answer. Is the easiest way to answer all of these question not just to ask your clients?

Why should you invest in client research? You’ve got enough on your plate already and client research sounds like something only law firms should be doing, right? Wrong! Investing in a client research programme pays back dividends. And it pays those dividends back almost immediately Here are 10½ reasons that will (or at least start to) explain the commercial benefits of taking the time to find out what the law firms you work with really think about you.

The immediate benefits

1. Save weak or potentially damaged client relationships How well do you really know your clients? How do you gauge whether even the longest-standing relationships are under threat? How do you learn to put things right again? You ask your clients! It sounds simple but how many barristers take their clients for granted, not realising small irritations are building into irreparable problems that only other sets (who are all chasing your clients by the way) will end up benefiting from?

2. Uncover additional fee earning opportunities The Head Clerk of our clients (a specialist set in Nottingham) told me “one of the easiest ways to win work is to visit and talk to our clients”. That’s right; no direct mail, no sponsorship, no social events, seminars or networking – just direct client contact! Your clerks and your barristers need to spend time talking to your clients, finding out what they have on their desks and what’s on the horizon.

The strategic benefits 3. Confidence Knowing what your clients want and how they want to receive it will give everyone involved with Chambers more confidence. They can use their insight when they are with their clients, when they’re presenting, when they meet new solicitors for the first time and when they’re out networking - safe in the knowledge the points they’re making will resonate with their audience and be well received.

4. Focus All of your marketing – whether it’s online, in print or in person – will be built around the right messages which will make it more effective and more powerful. There is no easier way of making people take notice than telling them what they want to hear! 5. Action Having new things to say gives every member the reason you need to get out there and work your patch. No longer will the excuse “I’ve got nothing to say” be valid! You will have something to say, it’s what your clients have told you to say, it’s what other firms want you to say …. so take action; get out and say it!

The commercial benefits 6. Establish Chambers’ real points of differentiation Even by spending many hours sitting in stifling rooms over pots of cold coffee it’s doubtful you’ll ever find a true point of differentiation.

You can make all of the assumptions you want as to why your set is viewed differently to your competitors’ but without at least road testing your ideas with your clients, you could be well wide of the mark. Worse still you could then spend a load of money packaging, printing and promoting the wrong message which will have a negative effect and could possibly damage your new image before it’s fully formed. 7. Get external guidance to help you build your brand What is your brand? What are the promises your name makes? What do people think when they see/hear/say your Chambers’ name? The only people who know what your brand really stands for are your clients so ask them. In the same way, the only people who know what your brand should be are your clients so ask them and give yourself brand targets that are a) realistic and b) of commercial benefit.

8. Gain insight that will help you create more effective marketing messages To attract people’s attention you have to say something that means something to them. What do they want to buy? How do they want it delivered? How do they want the fees to be structured? Marketing is about more than telling people what you have; it’s about packaging and pricing it in line with market expectations and it’s about promoting it in the way that will mean most to the solicitors you are targeting. The custodians of all of that information are your clients. 9. Learn how to develop your offering so that it meets a solicitor's real requirements Again it’s easy to assume. You may think you know exactly what a solicitor needs and how they want it delivered but, even if it’s just to double-check, please take the time to ask them. You may be surprised and need to make some changes; you may be given new briefs; you may even find something new, something unique that you can introduce as standard and start to build into a real point of differentiation.

Once upon a time alternative fee structures , alternative dispute resolution and direct access didn’t exist – I’m willing to bet those ideas came from the client rather than a barrister or one of their clerks! 10. Highlight potential weaknesses in your service delivery Getting the means of delivery right doesn’t guarantee you’ll hold onto a client for life but it’ll get you as close as you can get. Find out exactly how a client wants to work with you; how they want to be billed, how or how often they like to be contacted, how they like to receive information and who they like to deal with and you’ll minimise the types of irritations that start small but end up costing you clients. 10½. Increase the financial return you generate from your marketing activities This new insight will allow you to cut out the marketing and the activities that don’t work saving you time and money. It’ll make sure you’re projecting the right messages which will win you more new clients and more work from your current clients without spending any marketing budget. It’ll make sure the marketing you do send out is pitched correctly and built around the right messages which means it creates more interest, more high quality meetings and – at the end of the chain – more fees.

What should you find out from your clients? Hopefully we now have your attention and you can see just how much valuable information your clients hold. Even more importantly, we trust you can see how you can use that valuable information to generate new work from your existing clients and new work from new clients. The important thing to do now is work out exactly what information you need to gather from your clients. 1. How strong is your current relationship? 2. What do you need to do to make it even stronger? 3. What do your clients think about the quality of the work you do? Does it really represent value for money? 4. What is your clients’ impression of Chambers? What is their network’s impression of you? What have they heard said about the set? 5. Which other solicitors in each of the firm s you work with could be your clients?

6. Who are those solicitors currently using? How happy are they with those barristers? 7. What are other Chambers doing that you currently aren’t? How could those things be adopted to improve your current service offering? 8. What do clients like about working with you, your colleagues and your set? 9. What don’t clients like about working with you, your colleagues and your set?! 10. What do you need to introduce to remain attractive, competitive and in charge of your client relationships? 10½. What are your clients’ plans for the next 12-24 months? And how do you fit into those plans? Take time out to think about how you and your clients could work more closely together.

Why does using a third party to conduct your client research deliver better results?

Somewhat understandably many Chambers still feel uncomfortable having someone other than their senior clerk (if anyone) talking to their clients. The truth of the matter is that having an experienced external interviewer conduct the research actually brings in a higher level of insight than a clerk or another member would. And yes, you’d expect us to say that but it’s proven! Why? Because … 1. Save time Too many Chambers recognise the need for launching a client survey programme but never get round to it because there never seems to be the time. If the plan is to get your CEO, clerks or Head of Chambers to conduct the interviews, they may be the ones that don’t have the required time.

With the pressures of bringing in work - not to mention doing that work - never far away this is totally understandable. Having someone external allows you to hurdle that obstacle in one go and make sure you can finally get the programme underway and bring in all of the commercially valuable information you already know you need. 2. Resource It’s an extension of the time point really - if the key people don’t have the time to do the interviews which other resources can you call in to play? Is it a job you’d trust just anyone in Chambers to do? If the resource (or lack of) in question is budget - from our experience research is always a self-funding piece of work as spending meaningful time with clients tends to uncover new briefs and new opportunities and, therefore, fees you weren’t expecting.

3. There always a reason not to Well there is isn’t there? A pressing piece of advice here, a crucial review there. A previous argument about fees you’d rather the solicitor forgot before you contact them again. It’s all nonsense of course but it’s just enough to keep any meaningful client research on the ‘to do’ pile! 4. Fear What will the interviews turn up? Will it highlight previous failings? Will it lose us clients? What happens if the client suddenly decides they don’t like the barristers they’ve used? What happens if they decide they don’t like Chambers at all and jump ship? The truth is the reverse. Your clients will welcome the opportunity to tell you why they work with you and why they want to keep working with you. At the same time they’ll appreciate the opportunity to bring up any small things you can put right to cement your relationship. To the best of our knowledge no one has ever lost a client because of a client satisfaction interview. They’ve kept clients, even upsold clients but they’ve never lost one.

5. An inherent unwillingness to press Terribly un-English but will clients think you’re rude if you ask direct questions? Will they feel interrogated and pressed to disclose details they’re not comfortable to disclose? "No" is the simple answer. In the same way as you don’t feel insulted when you’re asked for advice or asked to recommend experts able to provide specific professional services, your clients won’t be offended that you are interested in adding value and genuinely want to improve their client experience. 6. Honesty Clients open up to a third party in a way they just won’t feel comfortable in doing with a member of Chambers. An external facilitator is able to garner more open and more honest feedback which in turn makes the whole exercise much more valuable for you because you get what you wanted: the intelligence that will help you improve current client relationships and refine your brand and marketing messages so they win you more work.

7. Relevant points of reference Conversation flows better when there is a genuine understanding of the subject but if a meaningful dialogue is going to be created, the interviewer must also know what it is that clients - irrespective of geography, sector or history - require and need from a barrister. An easy way to illustrate this understanding is to use anecdotes and examples garnered from a variety of people just like them. An internal interviewer will rarely have this level of insight or be able to call on the depth of experience of different sets’ working practices and different clients’ purchasing experience. This invariably makes the conversation and therefore the feedback a little 2-dimensional. 8. It’s good PR I’ll be willing to bet that somewhere in your brochures or on your website it says you are client-focused , that you are led by your clients and that your clients are the most important thing in your working life. Well, client service reviews will underline these aren’t just words but a commitment.

Having a third party come in and spend time with your clients and inviting a warts and all appraisal of your performance shows your clients you care, that you want to improve and that you place real value on maintaining your working relationship. It also places you head and shoulders above the competition, all of whom make the same promises of ‘clientcentricity’ but none of whom have actually made any definite strides to prove it. 9. Objectivity When you are speaking to clients and asking them for honest feedback, you can’t afford to take anything personally or allow what could include personal – or at least close colleague - criticism to blur the required outcome or drag the conversation into blind corners. Having someone one step removed from Chambers means they will approach every interview objectively. This objectivity ensures the interviews generate results that are fair, balanced and commercially valuable.

10. Comfort It may sound a bit woolly and bit touchy-feely but clients are often more comfortable talking to a third party and someone they don’t have a history with. Arguably the fact they’ll never see them again also helps! Likewise, an experienced interviewer will also be totally comfortable which will create the right balance between comfort, trust and rapport; the environment you need to create to generate the response you need to make sure you get maximum value from the exercise. 10½. Adding value with the right feedback An external interviewer with a proven success record in delivering client satisfaction interviews for every branch of the professional services will be able to take the answers and not only show you what action is required to strengthen each relationship, but also distil the interviews down so you can see how to strengthen your entire service offering. This will highlight the common themes you need to feed into your commercial strategy so you can start to improve the returns you generate from future marketing and business development activities. It is this ‘across the board’ reading that will allow you to derive real commercial value and a tangible financial return from the exercise.

Why you shouldn’t worry about implementing a client research programme

For some reason some Chambers are worried about undertaking a client research programme. They think all sorts of bad news may be released into the public domain and they will lose clients as a result. Nothing could be further from the truth. A typical interview will break down like this:

65% is about how good you are and why they like

working with you (a fact they’ll usually qualify that with the fact they continue to give you work)

30% is about how you could improve, suggestions as

to how your delivery could be better and how you can add more value. This is the most valuable part

5% is about one thing that happened a while ago

that they want to get out in the open – this will not threaten your relationship

The Tenandahalf process We always use a very straightforward 5 step process.

1. You identify the solicitors you wish to be involved in the programme. Once identified you contact them to gain their agreement to participate 2. Tenandahalf will schedule the interview appointments with these clients. In order to be prepared and gain more insight we talk to the barristers who have worked most often with each client before we meet them

3. Once the interviews have been completed we will provide you with a file memo for each interview 4. Through a feedback workshop we will provide you with the insight and themes from all the interviews. Our practical solutions will allow you to implement changes which we guarantee will protect, build and strengthen these relationships 5. 3 months after the workshop we will meet with you to check the progress on implementing the recommended changes

What are the next steps?

If you can recognise how a client service review programme will benefit your set, please choose 1 of the following 3 options …

call Steven on 0115 969 9817 to arrange your

free 45 minute consultancy

email douglas@tenandahalf.co.uk to

find out more about exactly how we run a client research

programme

Phone Bernard on 07771 897772 to discuss which of

your clients would provide the best subjects for your programme

“Our experience with Size 10½ Boots has been a breath of fresh air and, speaking as someone who would have laughed heartily at the idea of BD training for barristers 3 years ago, I am a convert and looking forward to what we can achieve with our new found direction and approach.” Scott Baldwin, Head Clerk, St Mary's Chambers

“By casting a clear, dispassionate, outsider's eye over the organisation's public face Tenandahalf provided the evidence enabling me to implement necessary change. Their constructive, practical and easy-to-implement marketing advice was invaluable; their observations on long-term structural adaptation to meet changing demands pulled no punches.” Graham Sinclair, Head of Chambers, East Anglian Chambers