In the area of marketing, the first thing to talk about is how to get clients, so these first series of tips deal with being a “rainmaker.” This week we will continue to talk about getting clients and how you can utilize the days of the week and things you normally do on those days as business-getting opportunities. Let’s start with a story I think will exemplify exactly what I am talking about with regard to utilizing your normal activities as business-getting opportunities.

The story involves one of my former partners who was the son of a very prominent lawyer in my hometown, and who, through his father’s and his own visibility, probably knew more people than I would ever meet in the entire metropolitan area in my entire life. My partner had held political office and was very active in various political clubs and had been appointed to sit on various boards that were connected to our city government. One day I remember he came into my office to talk about marketing and being a “rainmaker.” He asked me, “Jim, how do you get so much business? Why are you so lucky?” I said, “Let’s go to lunch and we can talk about it.” Little did he know that I had just utilized one of the techniques for getting business I was going to talk to him about at our lunch.

When we went to lunch I proceeded to explain that the seven days during any given week were golden opportunities to fill your professional and personal life with time slots that would make getting business a lot easier and successful. I explained to him that in the five days during the week, Monday through Friday, were five time slots each day that you could possibly fill that would allow you to do some activity that would turn into a business-getting opportunity. Each day there was a business-getting opportunity at breakfast, one in the morning, one at lunch, one in the afternoon and one at dinner. I actually could have suggested an evening activity as well and taken the number of opportunities up to six, but I really didn’t want to overwhelm him. I told him if you take each of these five opportunities a day during the week, multiply that by five days, you come up with 25 opportunities during the week to partake in business- getting opportunities. On the weekends I suggested that there were three times each day that would be natural times to set up opportunities to get business. On each weekend day there is breakfast, lunch and dinner opportunities. I did not add the morning, afternoon or evening because I was trying to make a point that you need to keep plenty of time available for personal and family time. When you add up the 25 opportunities during the weekdays and the six opportunities on the weekend, the total number of business-getting opportunities on a weekly basis becomes 31. I told my partner that the secret to being a business-getter and successful “rainmaker,” was to fill at least 50 percent of those opportunities every week with activities and people that would lead to getting legal business.

Fifteen to 16 business-getting opportunities a week seems like an awful lot of work being put into generating legal business on a weekly basis until you realize that by simply having breakfast, lunch and dinner everyday you have 21 opportunities a week already built in.

Well, I thought I had done a pretty good job of giving this marketing information to my partner, until he said “Jim, you’re absolutely right, I’m going to schedule at least one lunch a month with somebody who would be a potential source of legal business.” Ouch! Either I was a very poor communicator, or my partner just didn’t get it! How did he translate my 31 business-getting opportunities a week into a desire on his part to set up only one lunch a month? With all the people my partner knew, he could have done what I had suggested regarding getting business “in his sleep” with very little effort. He wasn’t willing to pay the price of taking the time!

So, you are probably wondering how to take that story and translate it into tips that deal with law office marketing, management or economics. Well here’s the tip: score yourself five points for each one of the following things that you are doing in your practice on a routine basis:

   1.Having one breakfast a month with a potential client;

   2.Having one lunch a week with a potential client; and/or

   3.Having one dinner a month with a potential client.

Let’s discuss each one of these marketing business-getting ideas and give you some thoughts about setting up these kinds of activities and about who might be a potential client for your practice.

One of the things I have continually repeated to people over the years is “you’re probably going to eat three meals a day, why not share those meals with fascinating people, and in particular, with people who may be a potential client or be able to refer potential legal business to you.”

Breakfast clubs, service organization lunches and other such activities that may have periodic dinners certainly would qualify in terms of giving you these opportunities for meeting potential clients, and if you are doing that routinely, score five points as previously indicated.

If you are not a member of a breakfast club you need to figure out a way to set up at least one breakfast a month with a potential client. If you are not a member of a service organization, find a way to set up a lunch a week with a potential client, and if you don’t participate in any activities that periodically have monthly dinners, set up a monthly dinner with this person who is a potential client.

Let’s talk about who is a potential client. I have often stated every person I meet who is not already a client, is a potential client. For some reason, every type of person I have come in contact with on a daily basis seems to eventually become a client or refer me a piece of legal business. I am sure all of these people know tons of other lawyers, but for some reason eventually they all seem to either become my client or refer me a piece of legal business instead of going to some other lawyer. I have either represented or gotten legal business from my barber, my tailor, parking lot attendants, doormen, cleaning people, service station attendants, the repair people at my local garage, my church, schools, Rugby and on and on. In fact, I think it is a fair statement to say I have generated some legal business from just about every activity I have ever been involved in.

It was never my intention to try to generate legal business from such day-to-day activity, but maybe that is exactly why it happened anyway. What I’ve always tried to do is to be sincere in caring about the people I deal with on a day-to-day basis. I’ve tried to take the time to learn about them as individuals, inquire as to their well-being and to always say to them, “let me know if I can ever be of help.” Often times just taking the time to engage another human being in a sincere conversation seems to be a lot more than most other people do. In particular, with service people, on a day-to-day basis, taking the time to talk “with them” not “at them” can make a huge difference. Call it insatiable curiosity, if you will, but I always seem to be trying to find out information about what somebody is doing, why he or she is doing it and how they feel about what they do. Taking an extra minute to stop and talk to someone, and to be sincerely interested in them, seems to make a big difference in that person’s perception of you as both a human being and a lawyer. Because of that perception, when that person or someone they know needs an attorney, often times they will think about you as the person to handle that piece of legal business because you will hopefully handle the legal business with the same care that you take in just ordinary day-to-day conversation with them.

People who own their own businesses are always potential clients with regard to various items that may need to be done for their day-to-day business. People who control the legal work at companies, even though they may not be an owner are also good individuals to take to breakfast, lunch or dinner. People who come in contact with lots of other people, whether it is for a not-for-profit or for-profit business, are also good sources of legal business. Just like the phrase, “he never met a stranger,” when it comes to trying to find legal business, we could coin the phrase, “he never met a person who wasn’t a potential client.” Hopefully it is becoming obvious that your mindset and your way of approaching both life and the people you encounter in it have a tremendous amount to do with whether or not you are positioning yourself in such a way to be a “rainmaker.”

The key to the tips in this article is to look at the things that you do normally on a day-to-day basis and figure out a way to have those activities serve a dual purpose. If you reorient yourself regarding how you look at the way you practice law, and realize that instead of setting up a dichotomy between your business activities and your personal and family activities, and instead set up an integrated way of going about your life that allows you to both market for legal business and at the same time spend personal time and time with your family, you will not only be more successful in getting business, but I think that you will ultimately be happier. This concept for you computer types could be called “dual processing.” Why fight it, if it’s only natural? Being a lawyer is being a public person. Set yourself up so that people will want to hire you to help them with their legal matters because they have spent time with you before they needed you as a lawyer.

Next week we are going to talk about an idea that has been very successful for me over the years with regard to having deeper personal relationships than just the occasional breakfast, lunch or dinner. We are going to talk about “shadow days,” days where you invite people who are interested in a legal career to your office to spend all day with you and to see what it is like to be a practicing attorney. I think that you will find some of the concepts and the results that have come from these “shadow days” are very interesting.

Talk with you next week!

Jim Wirken is a civil trial attorney and the Chairman of the Board of The Wirken Law Group in Kansas City.