Friday, January 20, 2006

What Customers Want from Your Lawyers

This will make your brain pop at the seams. The quote, "People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!" is just a hint at thinking beyond normal. The idea put forward by the authors Clayton M. Christensen, Scott Cook, and Taddy Hall writing for Harvard Business School "Working Knowledge" is that marketers are too focused on cornering demographic segments and not enough time on figuring out what a customer really wants.

So what is the application of this thinking for a law firm?

Let's mess with the quote a bit. "Clients don't want a merger agreement. They want to generate/renew/sustain success." Or, "Clients don't want make a class action matter settle. They want to not live with shame."

So how can we market to that desire? What if we stop filling attorney biographies with "product specifications" detailing degrees and articles published and started telling "what happened when." Maybe we need to describe the accomplishments of our clients instead of detailing professional hallmarks achieved by our attorneys.

Tonight I am going to ponder this great article at HBS Working Knowledge. There is something in there that is the key to creating something incredibly appealing for marketing professional services.

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