There Is No Such Thing As One And Done In Networking

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Allison Williams: [00:00:05] Hi, everybody. It’s Allison Williams here, your host of The Crushing Chaos with Law Firm Mentor podcast. Law Firm Mentor is a business coaching service for solo and small law firm attorneys. We help you to grow your revenues, crush chaos in business and make more money.

Allison Williams: [00:00:32] Today we’re going to talk about Never One and Done. So. This is a concept that I have talked about many times in different ways on the podcast and elsewhere, but I wanted to really drive the point home by something that recently happened, and it’s something that I think you all can relate to.

Allison Williams: [00:00:57] So I have the occasion of appearing on a wonderful podcast called Everything Except the Law. Shout out to Nick Werker over there at Answering Legal. This podcast is phenomenal, so you guys should really check it out when you get a chance. But I’ll tell you this I appeared on this podcast and something happened that really highlighted for me a concept that I’ve been living, but that I don’t really talk about that much anymore, which is this concept of never one and done right. It is so much a part of the way that I do business now that it’s not something that I really spend a whole lot of time even thinking about anymore. But it definitely is a principle that has helped me to exponentially grow my business is over the course of a relatively short period of time.

Allison Williams: [00:01:36] So when I appeared on Nick’s podcast, you know, just like most podcast guests, if you’ve ever appeared on a podcast or maybe you even have your own, you know, there’s kind of a period at the very beginning when you’re just chatting with the guests, kind of warming them up, making sure you’re going to have a great conversation, reminding them of what you’re going to talk about. And Nick and I were chatting. We’re having a great conversation, and he told me something that kind of landed for me, like as an Aha. He told me that he had actually heard me speak the December before when I spoke for Bill Hauser in Andy Stickle on an event that they had some type of program where they were having a host of a series of guests on and I was one of the guests and he told me he was impressed by my presentation, which was always nice to hear. Thank you again for that compliment, Nick. But what he also shared with me was that that opportunity is what ultimately precipitated this opportunity. So when my agents reached out to him and said, Hey, we’d like to have Allison on your podcast, is that something you’re interested in? He was like, Oh my God, yeah, I remember her. She spoke for this other company and I had the occasion to be there to soak up the information there. I got a lot of value out of it, so I’d love to have her on my show. 

Allison Williams: [00:02:50] So carrying it forward, something else happened. So after I had the occasion to be on Nick’s show, we’ve stayed in touch and he recently invited me to speak for an event he is hosting this summer. And of course, I was very flattered by that opportunity and I started contemplating the fact that I might have an opportunity to get in front of some people that I haven’t yet had the occasion to get in front of. Right. So it’s another opportunity to promote my businesses. So I want you to think about that trajectory, right? So I speak somewhere, a person in the audience hears me, and then when the opportunity presents for me to speak on their platform, they say yes based on what they previously saw and based on what we had in that platform. On their platform, when we’re speaking together, they invited me to the next opportunity. Right? So no opportunity has been wasted.

Allison Williams: [00:03:43] Now, what I mean by that is every time that we go out and we are a representative of our business, we have an opportunity to grow our business. And a lot of times as lawyers, we tend to think about opportunities really in the immediacy, right? So if I’m talking to someone and they let me know they have a legal problem in that moment and I have the solution, I offer the service that they’re looking for in that moment. I can tell them that I can help them. I can schedule a consultation and I can ultimately close a client. But I want you to think about all the different ways that the tributaries of your value go out into the river of potential referral sources and potential clients that we don’t often think about and that we don’t often pay attention to. Right. So every time you’re speaking on a stage, you might or might not be in front of your ideal client, and you might or might not be in front of your ideal referral, referral source. But many times you will be, right? You will be that one person who’s connected to the next person who ultimately refers you a case. If you don’t think about it that way, then what tends to happen is you make the opportunity a one-time opportunity, right? I got on John’s stage, I gave a presentation to John’s audience. There either was or was not someone. If there was someone, great, if there wasn’t someone I’ll treated as practice for the next speaking engagement. And when you do that, you cut off the supply of future opportunities.

Allison Williams: [00:05:16] Now going back to the example I gave you at the top of the show, it wasn’t exactly that I was seeking an opportunity from Nick when I was speaking on Bill’s stage, right? So I’m speaking on Bill Stage and whoever is in the audience is an opportunity for me. It could be people who might be appropriate coaching clients. It could be people who might be appropriate legal clients. It could be people who could refer me clients to either of my businesses. It could be any number of different opportunities. It could be somebody who has another stage that they want to invite me to speak on, like what happened with Nick. But here’s the thing. If I had seen that as a one and done, then the next time an opportunity presented itself, I wouldn’t have seen the connection between someone who previously had the opportunity to hear me speak right. I wouldn’t have seen it as a nurturing sequence. Now, here’s the thing. There are a whole lot of people in the legal space. There are a lot of other providers of legal services to my ideal clients. And if I miss the opportunity to connect with those people who are in front of my ideal clients, I miss opportunities to connect with those potential ideal clients. And every time you do that, you’re cutting off the source of your supply.

Allison Williams: [00:06:30] So the first thing that you have to do in order to make sure that every opportunity, every speaking engagement, every networking event, every referral partnership is one that can produce and produce and produce that you can have a snowball effect of opportunity is you have to adopt the framework that I’m going to share with you in this episode. Three things that you have to do in order to ensure that your activity, your marketing events are never a one and done. All right.

Allison Williams: [00:06:59] The first thing that you have to do is get your mindset right. We always talk about how things start with our thoughts and how our thoughts ultimately lead to our feelings. They trigger our feelings. And from those feelings, we either take action or fail to take action, and that leads to our results. So just think about that little thought loop as we go through talking about this. But when you are thinking about how you’re going to approach things, your mindset has to be that every opportunity produces multiple opportunities. So that means you should never, never, never, never go to a marketing event, marketing event of any sort with the idea that it is going to be done when it’s done, it’s not done until you have the next one scheduled. So again, never one and done. You always have to be thinking when I’m leaving this event, what is my next opportunity? Who is the next person that I’m going to speak to? Who is the next potential client I’m going to have a connection with? Who is the next stage I am going to visit? Right. Where am I going to find my next opportunity? Marketing should be snowballing.

Allison Williams: [00:08:02] Every time you have one opportunity. It should lead to the next and the next and the next. And if that’s not evident from your conversations, it should then become something that you are pursuing. Be intentional about the pursuit, and then it can start to get to a point of passivity where every time you speak somewhere, you get another opportunity for the future.

Allison Williams: [00:08:24] All right. Number two, this is really critical if you’re going to have the outcome of never one and done, you have to perfect your follow-up. Follow-up is one of those areas that lawyers notoriously neglect. I am definitely guilty of this. Right after I’ve done something, I’m on to the next thing, and the next thing, and the next thing, and the next thing. I don’t always have time to stop and reengage with someone with whom I previously engaged. So if your follow-up game is not strong, and that means if you’re like most lawyers, then you want to bring someone else into this, right? You want to have either a staff member you can even outsource to a virtual assistant, right? It doesn’t have to be someone who is full-time employed in your business, but you need to get someone whose job it is to follow up on all these opportunities. If you went to a networking event, who’s going to be the person that’s going to call all the business cards for the people on all the business cards that you collected. If you spoke at an event, who’s going to be the people that ensure that the lead magnet that you offered ultimately had downloads? And who’s going to follow up with all those people who downloaded your event? Sometimes the follow-up can actually be automated, right? You could create an email drip sequence that attaches to your lead magnet. So when people are getting information about your service, they then get a series of communications afterward about how to work with you, about further information that you’re going to provide. Maybe you nurture them with additional information. It could be webinars that you’re going to teach or booklets that you’re going to provide them something that continues that relationship until that person is ready to buy. How are you going to do that? But even if you have an automated sequence, even if you have your email drip sequence built out, you still want to have a human to connect with the human that ultimately sought out information from your law firm. So when you have that person that’s responsible for reaching out, what are they going to say? Right. Part of the follow-up is making sure they have a tight script. Right. How are they going to connect with that person to remind them that they are calling on your behalf because they had a powerful experience of you in the past and now you want to remind them of that powerful experience as they move forward to the future. Whether that future event is to stay in touch until they need you or that future event is to connect with you in person again, maybe for a lunch or a breakfast or a zoom meeting so that they can learn more about you and ultimately refer your business. Or maybe that follow-up is that they’re going to actually schedule an appointment and come in and become your client. Right. You never know where it’s going to happen, but you have to make sure that the follow-up nurtures you so that that never one and done concept is built into everything that you’re doing following the marketing event.

Allison Williams: [00:11:15] All right. Third and final is that you have to learn how to cross-market. That means every time that you speak somewhere, whether it’s a speaking engagement or you’re speaking to people at a networking event or you’re going to a trade show or even you have video on your website, you have to be thinking about who are the people that are consuming your message and who is their audience. Your goal is to promote not only to your audience but to the audience of your contacts, right? So you want to have your message proliferate by virtue of having your message available to other websites, your message available to other potential clients, your message available to other potential referral sources. So how do you get there?

Allison Williams: [00:12:00] Well, you have to be clear on who are the people that are in front of your people. Right. And by your people. I don’t mean people who are already in your audience. I mean your ideal clients. So think about it this way. Many of you know that I’m a family law attorney, so my people are basically anyone who has a family who could have a need in that area. That could be people who are divorcing, people who have child custody disputes, people who are in relationships that could be fraught with domestic violence, people who are accused of committing child abuse and neglect, people who need to modify child support, and so forth. Right. A lot of people. Well, who are the humans that are most often in front of those audiences? Well, it could be mental health professionals, could be financial professionals, could be substance abuse counselors. Right. Could be any number of different types of people. But if I know that I have an audience and I know you have a similar audience, there’s a great likelihood that people who are already in your audience are not yet in my audience. Well, how do I get people from your audience over to my audience? Well, I communicate with you, and then eventually I communicate with your people, right? Your audience becomes my audience by intentionality, right? I have to market myself to people outside of my immediate reach in order to expand my reach.

Allison Williams: [00:13:22] So when you are thinking about how you’re going to approach marketing, I want you to seriously consider adopting a prospect, a mindset that says it’s never one and done because when you expand beyond your immediate reach and you start to say, Everything I do has a preceding event and a subsequent event, what starts to happen is all of your marketing is going all of the time, right? That’s how you get to a place where your marketing is happening in your sleep. Your marketing is happening when you’re not looking. Your marketing is happening through other people, and your marketing is not requiring more investment of time and money. Right. That’s how you ultimately get to a law firm that runs without you.

Allison Williams: [00:14:02] All right, everyone, I’m Allison Williams, your Law Firm Mentor. You’ve been watching the question Chaos with Law Firm Mentor podcast, and I’ll see you on our next episode.

Allison Williams: [00:14:21] Thank you for tuning in to the Crushing Chaos with Law Firm Mentor podcast. To learn more about today’s show and take advantage of the resources mentioned, check out our show notes. And if you enjoy today’s episode, take a moment to follow the podcast wherever you get your podcast and leave us a rating and review. This helps us to reach even more law firm owners from around the country who want to crush chaos in business and make more money. I’m Allison Williams, your Law Firm Mentor everyone. Have a great day.