Georges & Co. Solicitors - 16 July 2021 - Comments

Lawyers, You Might Be Surprised How Clients Choose You

When we analyze why clients and potential clients make a decision to hire you or to hire someone else, it’s easy to assume they’re being logical in their decision-making process, so you operate accordingly. You give them information that appeals to that logical side of their brain. Let’s discuss that because there’s another side to this discussion you need to be aware of. Welcome to Legal Marketing Minutes, where I share short bursts of current marketing news and advice. I’m your host, Nancy Myrland. If we haven’t met, I’m a Marketing and Business Development Advisor, specializing in content, social and digital media marketing for lawyers and their legal marketers. Your time is valuable, so let’s get started, okay? Just The Facts It’s easy for us to assume that buying decisions, whether they’re ours or someone else’s, are done in a very logical state. We know that if we just present facts, if we just write enough blog posts that contain step-by-step instructions and bulleted lists of the most important and logical steps that something should consider, eventually we are going to appeal to that person because clients and potential clients are very logical people who make very smart decisions. Logic or Emotion? Quite a while ago, I wrote down a quote from my friends, Andrew and Pete, that said that buying decisions are 80% emotional and 20% logical. Whether those percentages differ for different markets or not, the percentages are still important to think of because even though we all fancy ourselves as people who make very logical, fact-based decisions, what’s really happening under the surface is that your clients and potential clients are asking themselves questions under the surface. “I’m really worried. I don’t want to make the wrong decision. I don’t want to hire the wrong lawyer. What am I supposed to do because this is my career on the line.?” “I’m really frustrated because I wish we didn’t have this problem in the first place. I wish I didn’t have to spend money even thinking about it, and it’s taking my time away from other things that I should be doing. So I’m frustrated about this. I’m scared.” “I’m really scared about this because if we don’t get control of this, then this is not good for the company and this is not good for my position within the company. This is not good for anyone at my company. So I’m really worried about this.” And also: “I’m not very confident about making this decision. I know that I have so many choices and I’m not quite sure who the right person is, and I’m just not confident because I haven’t gone through this process enough. These lawyers seem very much alike, and I have no idea what to do or who to choose.” The Emotional Side of Buying My point here is that people say these things to themselves. That is the emotional side of buying. What happens when they do have a logical side that is on a fact-based mission to try to figure out if you are the right person to hire, and then they have all these thoughts and feelings and voices that are operating in the background, whether they realize it or not? If you just stop for a minute and think about some of your own decisions, don’t you have some of those same thoughts when you’re making decisions? You and I make decisions very much based on emotion. We may have fact-finding in the middle of all that, but our emotions control the day.