Direct Marketing Sales and Promotion Tips

Use this method and watch your sales explode to new heights.

One of my clients sells research aids for law firms. In large law firms a managing partner acts like a CEO of the company. He has an executive committee that helps manage the firm and makes decisions. Next in line are the senior partners of each specialty—intellectual property, litigation, bankruptcy, etc. Then you come to the lawyers, then the paralegals, librarians, information systems and so on.

Since my client was selling research products, they were dealing with the librarians because that’s who manages research tools. If you’ve got a revolutionary product, you can probably get an appointment with a librarian and you will probably impress that librarian. Some librarians in firms have great influence with partners, but many do not. You can spend an hour selling that librarian and the librarian might get five or ten minutes to try and explain your product or service to the lawyers you want to reach.

So the challenge with this client was to build a program that would skip the librarian and go straight to the management committee. We designed a core story educational seminar on the “Five Most Dangerous Trends Facing Law Firms.” We called the managing directors of the top 50 law firms to offer the free education. Here’s the script: “I’m sure you’re aware of our company. We’ve been helping law firms be more successful in their research efforts for over fifty years now. We recently commissioned a study on what’s going on in the legal market and we’ve learned there are some pretty serious challenges facing lawyers in the new millennium. Since our survival depends on your success, we wanted to make sure that you saw this information and had every opportunity to be ahead of the problems. We put this information into a very succinct executive committee orientation and we’re now showing this to all the top law firms. In fact, we’re in touch with [name several other top law firms] and are in the process of arranging to show this in one of their management meetings. We’d love to arrange to make sure you also see this important information.”

There are several factors that made this approach very successful. First, note how we used fear as a motivator. It’s far easier to get in to see top executives if there are “dangerous trends” facing them than if you offer some currently unrealized benefit. Also, the term “social proof” was heavily at play here. That means: “When others are doing it, it’s okay for me to do it, too.” Let me give you a great example of how “social proof” shapes society. For those of you too young to remember there was a time when it was a “shame” in society to live with someone without being married to them. And surely, you would never have a child out of wedlock. Today, other than very religious families, everyone I know lived with their significant other before they married them. Hollywood stars were the first to break this taboo, paving the way for the rest of society to follow suit.

Or to put that in context to business: “When best buyers buy, other best buyers buy faster.” In the script above, note the language: “We’re now showing this to all the top law firms. In fact, we’re in touch with [name several other top law firms] and arranging to show this in one of their management meetings. We’d love to arrange to make sure you also see this important information.” Note that we didn’t say: “We have shown this to so-and-so.” We said: “we’re in touch with” and “arranging to show this to…” This was the truth.

I have a rule about selling: Never lie. Make sure you’re telling the truth. By wording this a little more carefully, we were telling the truth, but the impression we gave was that it was already happening. By mentioning names of other top firms, we got interest from their competitors pretty darn fast. We also made sure that it was the truth. We were in touch with all the large firms. In fact, we called all of them on the same day. If someone checked, another firm might say: “Well, yes, we’ve heard from them, but we haven’t set anything yet”—or whatever—but the point is that we were, in fact, “in touch” with all the large firms all at once.

Where they once could not get in to see even a single partner, we were now presenting to the entire management committee of law firms with astonishing results. For example, I accompanied the salesperson to present for the executive committee of the largest law firm in a major city. At the end of the presentation, that firm bought almost everything that rep had to sell.