Marketing vs. Selling to Grow Your Business
Salesmanship is not what most lawyers consider to be their best asset, and it is not what most lawyers enjoy. But most lawyers do consider marketing to be in their realm of skills, and marketing is mostly just another way of saying selling.
So, what exactly is the difference between marketing and selling? The bottom line is that marketing is something that is informational. It is merely putting something out in the public arena about what we do. It's passive. Selling is more assertive, more active. It is where we are trying to persuade people to move from one position to another. The end result is that they will hire us to perform services on their behalf. It's an attempt to move somebody forward.
When I coach a lawyer, my first obligation is to find what is within their comfort zone; thus, we start with marketing. And what I mean by that is that we either write or speak or do something using a tactic with which the lawyer is going to feel comfortable.
The whole point of these marketing tactics that put the information out there is to cause somebody to say, "Aha, that's a subject that resonates with me. I'm facing this challenge, and this lawyer is addressing that particular challenge. I need to give him a call." The whole point is to get somebody to pick up the phone and call you.
In other words, if you think in terms of marketing instead of selling, the whole process becomes less onerous and perhaps less offensive to you. Think about being a giver of information and not a taker of the sale. And when you think in those terms, you will be better off and will likely have more sales, the net result.
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