Scott Simmons: Mastering Legal Business Development and the Art of Client-Centric Lawyering

November 28, 2024

In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Scott Simmons discuss:

Effective time management in the legal profession
Developing habits and accountability for consistent business development
Building a client-focused business model in law
Overcoming personal and systemic barriers to success in legal business development

Key Takeaways:

Allocating just 30 minutes weekly to business development can compound into significant progress over time, enabling lawyers to take control of their career trajectory.
Transitioning from billable hours to value-based or subscription pricing models requires not just a pricing shift but a comprehensive business model overhaul.
Lawyers must use tools like LinkedIn and existing client relationships to secure referrals effectively; over 90% of clients are willing to refer, yet only 8% of lawyers ask for them.
Small, incremental habit changes, such as reading a chapter a week or posting on LinkedIn weekly, are more sustainable and impactful than attempting major shifts all at once.

“What business development does is give you options, leverage, and control over your career choices. We’re not taught this, and…..it’s not something covered in law school.” — Scott Simmons

Got a challenge growing your law practice? Email me at steve@fretzin.com with your toughest question, and I’ll answer it live on the show—anonymously, just using your first name!

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Episode References:

Atomic Habits by James Clear

Outbound Squad Podcast

About Scott Simmons: Scott Simmons, Co-Founder & Director of Legal Balance, is a toolbox for turning lawyers into rainmakers. After a successful law career, he discovered a passion for coaching and has spent 12 years helping lawyers build careers and senior executives excel. He offers bespoke training, coaching, and leadership courses globally and created The BD Breakthrough Blueprint, a digital course for aspiring rainmakers. Scott writes and speaks on legal business development, value-based pricing, and subscription models. A husband, father, and film lover, he often includes movie analogies like Jaws or When Harry Met Sally in his sessions.

Connect with Scott Simmons:

Website: https://www.legalbalanceinstitute.com/

Email: scott.simmons@legalbalance.co.uk

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottsimmonsbdm/

Connect with Steve Fretzin:

LinkedIn: Steve Fretzin

Twitter: @stevefretzin

Instagram: @fretzinsteve

Facebook: Fretzin, Inc.

Website: Fretzin.com

Email: Steve@Fretzin.com

Book: Legal Business Development Isn’t Rocket Science and more!

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Call Steve directly at 847-602-6911

Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You’re the expert. Your podcast will prove it.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Steve Fretzin: Hey there, we’re heading into a new year and I’d like to change up how I open the show. Each episode I’ll be sharing a quick question and answer on your greatest challenges in growing a successful law practice. Additionally, I’d like to hear what you’re struggling with and answer your questions directly on the show.

[00:00:15] Steve Fretzin: Please email me at steve at Fretzin. com with something you’ve been struggling with and I’ll answer it directly on the show only using your first name. Let’s try this out and see how it goes. Thanks and enjoy the show. Hey everybody. Before we get to the show, I wanted to share a question from Teresa in Toronto.

[00:00:32] Steve Fretzin: She’s asking, I’m always networking, but it’s not converting to new business. How do I get new business or more business from the time invested? Wow, there’s a lot of answers I could provide here and probably spend a few hours with you on this. The short version is many people are attending networking events.

[00:00:48] Steve Fretzin: where their targets are not there. So meaning the prospective clients you want to work with and the potential strategic partners who could refer you business aren’t there. So I would say tip number one is always qualify, talk to the person running the events to find out that in fact you have those targets lined up and you know that they’re going to be there and then even try to use the host to try to make some inroads to you to those targets.

[00:01:14] Steve Fretzin: And really think about how you’re going to meet them ask them questions, learn about them to qualify, whether you want to continue the conversation or not. These kinds of basic level qualifications of attending meeting Qualifying people that are there and then deciding who you want to invest more time in Those are really the keys to success in networking and converting to business.

[00:01:36] Steve Fretzin: So hopefully that helps. All right, everybody That’s my tip of the day. Enjoy the show

[00:01:45] Narrator: You’re listening to be that lawyer life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice Each episode your host author and lawyer coach steve Fretzin Will take a deeper dive helping you grow your law practice in less time with greater results Now here’s your host steve Fretzin

[00:02:06] Steve Fretzin: Hey everybody, welcome.

[00:02:08] Steve Fretzin: It’s steve Fretzin. And this is the be that lawyer with Fretzin podcast. You are You Hopefully you’ve been listening a while. We’ve we’re up at 450 plus shows, Scott. I mean, that’s no joke, right?

[00:02:18] Scott Simmons: No. Congratulations, my friend. Really, really

[00:02:21] Steve Fretzin: special. Yeah. I’m just looking for praise and you know, you can go to the right as much as I can get.

[00:02:27] Steve Fretzin: You’ve come to the right, the right guest on the show this morning. You’re looking better than ever. Look handsome. Keep going. And. Funny. And that’s our show, everybody. Thanks for joining us today on the be that, do that lower show, man, Scott, I’m just so happy. We got to meet last week in person. You were in Chicago and I was just so happy to share, you know, a table with you and break bread and get to know you better and share our love for the hot spurs and just talk about, you know, life and business and kids and life and everything.

[00:02:59] Steve Fretzin: It was just a lot of fun. Well, I’ve

[00:03:01] Scott Simmons: got to tell you, what was amazing about it was that you and I met through LinkedIn, through Rob Hanna again, we mentioned. Wonderful Rob, man. Everybody, we’ve, you know, we did the first podcast together, but we’ve kept in touch. And when I came out to Chicago, you and I had said that we should get together and And it was just one, it was just lovely because it just flowed so easy.

[00:03:25] Scott Simmons: It was like we’d known each other for, there wasn’t anything. And the fact is, is that, you know, the fact is that you love UK soccer, which helps a lot. And because you are unbiased by, so that makes it a lot easier that we don’t have to have a falling out about it. Yeah,

[00:03:42] Steve Fretzin: I mean, I know Rob, you know, Rob has an affinity for Liverpool and I’ve got another, you know, our other friend down under, you know, he’s all about the hammers and West Ham.

[00:03:51] Steve Fretzin: So it’s like everybody’s got their angle and I’m just like, I just want to watch great Premier League soccer. I just want to watch it all my, I’m like starstruck by a lot of these players. And it’s just so much fun to watch, just to watch any team play. Yeah. Yeah. Good stuff. So

[00:04:05] Scott Simmons: it was lovely, it was nice.

[00:04:06] Scott Simmons: It was just nice and easy and conversation flowed, and I was so pleased that we did it.

[00:04:11] Steve Fretzin: Well, I’m thrilled that you’re back on the show. We’re gonna have a lot of fun today. We’re gonna really talk a lot of biz dev for you guys so that you’re get walking away with 4, 5, 6 great tips, actionable tips you can use to grow your book of business today.

[00:04:23] Steve Fretzin: And Scott, we start with a quote of the show, and you’ve got one that I have a feeling is gonna be off the beaten path. So why don’t you share that with us? Okay. So yes.

[00:04:32] Scott Simmons: Yeah. So when you asked me about this one, eventually popped into my head because as I said, I love watching Gilmore Girls. So I’m, I think I must be on like my fifth or sixth run.

[00:04:44] Scott Simmons: Oh my God.

[00:04:45] Steve Fretzin: Wow. Seven

[00:04:46] Scott Simmons: seasons plus the limited number of shows. But in there, there’s this great moment where they are, where Lorelei and Suki, her best friend, who’s also the chef at the inn, are talking about wanting to open up their own place. Yeah. And one of their colleagues, who’s also being the show, comes along and he starts sort of saying to them it’ll never work, it’ll never happen.

[00:05:05] Scott Simmons: And then Suki says, Those who have no dreams reign on those who do. And that is such a wonderful quote because I think that goes to the very heart of so much of what you and I do, which is sort of, you know, helping lawyers build themselves up so that they can put themselves in a position where they can grow their own businesses.

[00:05:28] Scott Simmons: And what tends to happen when you want to go out on your own is that people often can’t help. through their own sort of limiting beliefs, tell you that these things can’t be done. Why would you open up your own law firm? Why would you go when you’ve got the security of a wage salary, why would you risk it all for hype dreaming?

[00:05:46] Scott Simmons: And that quote, I think sums it up beautifully, which is. You know, people have got those dreams and they’re prepared, you know, dreams aren’t enough. Everyone knows that. If you’re prepared to put the work into it and you do that work, have the right, having the right people around you who are going to encourage you to get there.

[00:06:04] Scott Simmons: Those are the people you need around you.

[00:06:06] Steve Fretzin: Well, and the other hot take I’ll give on this is, you know, are you building your career or someone else’s? You know, you’re at a firm and you’re doing everyone else’s work. There’s a guy I met yesterday who is at a really high end, like, personal injury firm, and it has a, like, I’m not gonna say who it is, I’m not gonna say anything about it, but It’s like, it’s the guy at the top that has the name and he has the, you know, he’s on the billboard and he’s, you know, and everything’s about this guy.

[00:06:33] Steve Fretzin: Meanwhile, the person that’s actually making him look good and making that name real is underneath him doing all the work and all the heavy lifting and he’s getting all the credit. Again, I just think, you know, we all have to have our own dreams and our own goals and we’ve got to realize them because you get one shot at this thing, right?

[00:06:49] Steve Fretzin: So. You know, don’t, I’m not saying that, that working under someone is the wrong answer. It’s for some people, that’s exactly where they should be. But I think if you have any ambition about either growing out on your own or building your own book under the umbrella of someone else, so you at least you’re portable and you can make decisions or influence kind of business developments, the jam.

[00:07:10] Scott Simmons: And that’s it, isn’t it? Is that what business development does is it gives you options. It gives you, it gives you options. It gives you leverage. It gives you control over. Your choices in your career. And we’re not taught that. And again, you and I’ve talked about this and, and I’m sure we will in this episode as well.

[00:07:29] Scott Simmons: You know, we’re not taught this in law school. No one teaches us about the business of law. No one teaches us about doing anything beyond. Doing the work that’s put in front of us and, and, you know, people will say it’s deliberate.

[00:07:40] Steve Fretzin: I don’t know if it’s deliberate or it’s just a I think in some ways it is, in some ways it’s not, but it’s gonna change.

[00:07:45] Steve Fretzin: It can’t remain, you know, the way that it is forever because lawyers are just ill equipped. But I think they’re learning. They’re starting to understand that there’s a business side of this. They’re not totally blind like I think they were maybe 10 or 20 years ago to the business side of it. But Hey, Scott, we got to cook on here because we have a lot to cover.

[00:08:04] Steve Fretzin: I want to get your real quick reader’s digest of your background for everybody as a lawyer, transitioning into a coach.

[00:08:11] Scott Simmons: So very quickly this time, cause last time I remember I really went into it, but I used to practice law. I started off in you know, real estate. I moved into corporate support. I then went into trust and company management and I finished off in corporate and I suffered burnout.

[00:08:26] Scott Simmons: That was why I left the legal practice. My strong suit was always in winning the work. That’s why I love that. Love getting to know people. I loved asking questions. I loved talking to them and finding out what their goals were, what was holding them back, what they wanted to achieve. And then I was kind of able, I was just really very good at connecting the dots and helping them find their goals.

[00:08:47] Scott Simmons: You know, it’s like a great phrase of, you know, that cognitive load, I’m bearing that cognitive load from them and giving them a way, helping them find a way forward. I love that. And so when I stopped practicing law, I got lots of offers to just the business development and I ran with it. And over time, what I did was I realized that we’re in knowledge services and we’ll talk about that.

[00:09:09] Scott Simmons: We’re in knowledge services. So lawyers have got to get involved in the sales process, whether they like it or not. But it was about understanding that lawyers had these limiting beliefs that they had this idea that their job was just to do the work that’s put in front of them. And that, and by doing something about that and helping lawyers overcome that, and then teaching them the skills can really transform their careers.

[00:09:30] Scott Simmons: And that’s what we do now.

[00:09:33] Steve Fretzin: Really great stuff. And. I want to kind of walk through sort of like the life cycle of what lawyers need to learn to be successful in business development, and I thought you and I could go back and forth on. For five subjects where we can each give a thought a reasoning and a thought or suggestion or approach to it and one of the ones that i want to start off with is time management because it that in the u.

[00:09:58] Steve Fretzin: s. right now maybe different than other parts of the country although i think in the u. k. Pretty busy is there just overloaded with work there and they’re not following any kind of method for time management it’s like just a fire hose in the face. I want to give a tip but i want to hear your tip first of what you think.

[00:10:16] Steve Fretzin: Is something that lawyers could or should do to get their time under control.

[00:10:21] Scott Simmons: Right. Okay. So the answer I want to give to everybody is get rid of the bill of allow.

[00:10:27] Steve Fretzin: Okay. Well, that’s not going to happen. All right. Thanks for that. It’s going to happen. Maybe what? 5%, 10 percent at this point, or maybe doing flat fee or doing subscription model.

[00:10:39] Steve Fretzin: But, you know, But I get what you’re saying, like that’s a big problem with why there’s so many hours. It’s a huge problem because

[00:10:47] Scott Simmons: it trains us to be inefficient with our time. It really does. It trains us to understand that the longer something takes us to do, the more we’re going to get paid. And so doing it more quickly, more efficiently, more effectively using technology to give us more time doesn’t get us paid more.

[00:11:01] Scott Simmons: So the, but it’s also, it also goes against what the clients want, which is speed of service. And so. You know, for me, I teach lawyers that I work with how to move away from the billable out and onto things like value based pricing and subscription models I love as well. So I’m teaching a number of lawyers to get into that.

[00:11:21] Scott Simmons: So yeah, there’s that. But let’s actually be realistic about the fact that. You want to make that move. It’s not just the pricing model change. It’s a business model change. And so it does take time. Now, obviously if you are a, you know, if you’re a small startup law firm, it’s not as big a change as if you are a bigger law firm, but the one tip I would always say to people, and you and I will get into the sort of specifics of what do you do with that is.

[00:11:44] Scott Simmons: No matter how busy you are, you’ve got 30 minutes in a week that you can put into your diary to do business development. It doesn’t matter how busy you say you are, 30 minutes once a week in your diary is going to help you achieve an awful lot more. Now you’ve got to know what to do with it, and we’ll talk about that.

[00:12:04] Scott Simmons: 30 minutes in your diary once a week is between two and two and a half hours a month, between four and five in two months, and you just keep doing that. You know, before you know it, you’ve got eight to 10 hours, eight, nine, 10 hours that you didn’t previously have. And all you’ve got to do is say, no matter what, unless it’s an emergency, every single week, 30 minutes in my diarrhea, and then I’ll go from there.

[00:12:28] Steve Fretzin: I love it and it’s, it is difficult and we’re going to talk about how to develop behaviors and positive habits as kind of our next segue. So we’ll get into that in a moment. I just want to share, you know, you know, I’m not trying to sell this guy’s book and make him billions. He’s already doing fine, but getting things done.

[00:12:44] Steve Fretzin: I continue to send that to my clients. I continue to share its teachings because When you have a firehose in the mouth, right, and you don’t have a way of turning that valve off, you need to be able to manage the water coming at you. So, the idea that there’s an actual process or flowchart that you can follow that says, alright, this email just came into my brain, or came into my inbox, or both, what do I do with it?

[00:13:11] Steve Fretzin: And you’re going to interrupt your day, all day, just dealing with email, what I call email jail. You can’t get out of it. You got 400 emails to deal with and you have no system for how you’re dealing with them. So it’s just dealing with them as they come in. So having a system, whether it’s foldering, whether it’s triage, whether it’s having an assistant, multiple email addresses so that you get client emails, but not others.

[00:13:33] Steve Fretzin: I mean, there’s all kinds of ways to skin that cat and, and to, to make good decisions, but to not read a book that’s going to change your life and help you actually manage the one thing you are getting paid on. My time is literally money and you’re not good with time. Explain that

[00:13:51] Scott Simmons: you can’t. You’ll say, right.

[00:13:54] Scott Simmons: And emails are just emails are just the bang of every life. Come on. Yeah. They’re on any social media platform on any social media platform. I’ve got like a thousand emails today and there’s a lot that you can do with it. And you can, you know, you can use products and apps to help you. You know, to help you manage it better, but it’s very, it can be as basic as, and this is what I did years and years and years ago was I actually just set times.

[00:14:20] Scott Simmons: For when I would review emails and

[00:14:22] Steve Fretzin: unless But that’s the time management process we’re talking about. You’re not letting the day have you. You’re having the day. You’re deciding how the day’s gonna go. And you’re filling it in with, alright, emails are gonna be returned by this time, this time, and this time.

[00:14:34] Steve Fretzin: Not Throughout the day where you’re interrupting your day, because the thing that David Allen talks about and getting things done is every time you interrupt yourself when you’re doing important work, you lose what, 15 to 30 minutes of productivity and people just, they don’t even like think about that, but it’s happening.

[00:14:51] Steve Fretzin: Right, and

[00:14:52] Scott Simmons: people, and this is something I get my clients to think about is thinking about how long it takes you to get into the flow of doing work where you’re really just so into it. And then if you look up and you happen to notice there’s an email there, getting back, you know, you deal with that email, but getting back into that space where it can take 15, 20, 30 minutes to get back to where you were.

[00:15:15] Scott Simmons: So you are losing huge amounts of time. It’s kind of like, I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, you know, when you’re driving a car and it says, and you’ve got your sand on and it tells you that it’s going to take you, you know, five hours to get somewhere. And you stop a gas station and you think, well, I’ve only been here for two minutes, but you look and actually you’ve lost about 10 minutes of time.

[00:15:35] Scott Simmons: Because between slowing down to get to the place to stop, to get out of the car, you don’t realize the time actually around all of that that’s being lost. You’re going, but hold on a second. I was only in there for two minutes. It’s a great analogy. All that time around it that you have actually lost to set you back an awful lot more than the time you think you gave up to.

[00:15:54] Scott Simmons: Yeah. It’s so brilliant because all of these things. They start with personal, personal management, you know, sorting out yourself before you sort out your business is a great starting point. To what you can achieve in a wider scale, but it’s a great

[00:16:10] Steve Fretzin: one just like start with time management is a learn skill and people aren’t taking the time to do it, which is sort of interesting, but then you also have the 30 minutes a week that you said, or 30 minutes a day, 30 minutes a week on BD.

[00:16:24] Steve Fretzin: Whatever it is that, you know, becoming a student of BD, learning a new practice area, whatever it is that you want to do, you need to have good habits, right? And discipline, and that’s any athlete or any musician, he should top chef. It’s going to be about habits and discipline. So how do lawyers develop better habits for, let’s say, business development?

[00:16:45] Steve Fretzin: Right. So,

[00:16:47] Scott Simmons: Phenomenal book, Atomic Habits. Atomic Habits, sure. I mean, just phenomenal, you know, one of these, one of these books that, that changed my life because what it teaches you is that what we try to do normally is we try to go to really big in changing habits. And so much is necessary to make those changes that we fall over really quite quickly.

[00:17:11] Scott Simmons: We don’t, you know, so they don’t see the change that we’re looking for straight away. And so we break that habit very quickly. What this teaches you is tiny habit changes, one percent. And if you can make it simple, make it effective. Really something that you’re going to want to see the change in and reward yourself for.

[00:17:34] Scott Simmons: You’re much more likely to stick at it and the more you see those tiny habit changes having an impact, the more tiny habit changes you’ll start to

[00:17:44] Steve Fretzin: have. Right. Absolutely. But an example of that would be, I’m talking about reading Atomic, you’re talking about Atomic Habits, I’m talking about Getting Things Done, maybe it’s not about reading the book, the book is, you know, three, four hundred pages, maybe it’s about reading a chapter a week or two chapters a week, right, it’s that baby step of just getting going with something.

[00:18:03] Steve Fretzin: Don’t post every day on LinkedIn, post once a week, for a month. And now you have four posts over a period of time. And so I think what you’re saying is small chunk, take baby steps and build the habit small and slow over time. Okay.

[00:18:19] Scott Simmons: So what you just said there is perfection. If there is such a thing, because people think, Oh, I really would love to read that book.

[00:18:28] Scott Simmons: I’d love to read getting things done, but it’s three, 400 pages when I’m going to have the time to read two, three, 400 pages, right? The thing that I say to anybody everywhere, it’s not about reading the book. Reading a chapter. Do you know how long it takes you to read a chapter? A chapter might take you 15 minutes.

[00:18:46] Scott Simmons: A chapter might take you 20 minutes. If you’re saying to yourself, once a week I’m going to do that 30 minutes, and you want to use it to read a chapter of a book, do that. 15 minutes before you go to sleep at night, read that chapter. That is the difference because you can do, you know, 10 15 minutes to read a chapter is easy.

[00:19:06] Scott Simmons: Three, four hundred page book, a bit overwhelming.

[00:19:08] Steve Fretzin: Just break it down. But it’s a great example of the wider issue, which is, I need to lose 40 pounds, or I need to stop smoking and you go cold turkey on. Like all these, that can happen, there are people that can do that, okay? The majority of people can’t and won’t.

[00:19:27] Steve Fretzin: So it’s, can I go, you know, can I? Maybe I should just stop eating at night. I’m not going to stop, you know, I’m not going to diet, right? That doesn’t work, but I’m going to stop eating it. You know, after 7 PM, can I just do that for a month and see what that does for me? Cause that ice cream and the popcorn or whatever I used to eat.

[00:19:42] Steve Fretzin: Right. So I think that’s it. Small steps. With proven SEO and digital marketing strategies that drive actual clients to your firm rankings. io prides itself on proof, not promises mentality. The best firms hire rankings. io when they want rankings, traffic, and cases, Other law firm marketing agencies can’t deliver.

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[00:20:38] Steve Fretzin: com and apply for membership today. The other thing I would say, and this has been big for the last number of years with my clients, has been accountability buddies. Like I, if I had to do workouts at home, like an exercise thing in the basement, it has cobwebs all over it, like it’s never been used. But the same exercise equipment is at, at a gym that I go to three times a week, consistently, because I’m paying for it.

[00:21:03] Steve Fretzin: They’re expecting me. And you know, I don’t want to miss it. So I think with business development, find someone that has a like mind that you have wants to do more, and you guys can meet for 30 minutes a week. Say what you’re going to do on a Zoom, hit mute, go do it, come back 25 minutes later, say what you’ve done, and do that every single week with a buddy that you’re accountable to, because it’s easy to break agreements with ourselves, much more challenging when you screw someone else over.

[00:21:35] Steve Fretzin: So

[00:21:35] Scott Simmons: I don’t know. I mean, you will have seen this with the coaching and the training that you do, but a big part of what I do in my coaching is the accountability. Yeah. So much of it, you know, you can sit there in these coaching sessions and talk all you want about what, you know, what you should be doing.

[00:21:53] Scott Simmons: But the magic happens between the sessions. The real magic, the real progress doesn’t happen in the coaching sessions or training sessions. It happens between them. So what often, what often happens is you become their accountability buddy. So they show up to the session, the next session, Oh, I haven’t done anything.

[00:22:11] Scott Simmons: And they’ve, and you go, okay, fine. That’s okay. But let’s explore why you didn’t get anything done. And I’m quite, I’m really. I can be quite brutal with my clients. I don’t mind if you show up once and you haven’t anything, but if you start showing up more than once and you haven’t done anything, that’s a real problem because you’re not committed to this process of real change that you say you want, right?

[00:22:33] Scott Simmons: So I’m very, I’m really, like I say, brutal with clients, but I say I’m really demanding. But you will have both seen it because that’s what this is. That’s what this is about. So much of what we do is about holding them to account and making sure that they’re making that consistent progress. Yeah.

[00:22:50] Steve Fretzin: Really critical.

[00:22:51] Steve Fretzin: I have them tracking all their activity on a journal and emailing to me every Friday, so I can see their activity, who they met with and how they’re converting. And that’s maybe a transition into, you know, process, right? It’s one thing to go and have a lot of activity. That’s great. Like you have all this activity, but activity that’s unmeasurable and you don’t know what’s working, what’s not, right?

[00:23:18] Steve Fretzin: Like I have someone sent out 25 emails to get meetings and he had one meeting, right? And I was like, so let me see your email. And the email was trash. I was like, this isn’t the email. We had talked about and it was just too weak and it was like, you know, like, you know, happy to meet if you want, like whatever.

[00:23:35] Steve Fretzin: And everybody just kind of blew them off. So what are you teaching? Give one good example of what you’re teaching lawyers to help improve how they get meetings or close meetings, close deals.

[00:23:49] Scott Simmons: So we start actually bringing it back just quickly. We start with our process. I’m going to start out the early days of the, of the coaching, we start with no process whatsoever.

[00:24:01] Scott Simmons: Okay. And the reason that is, is that I want to instilling them the habits, the habits of selling a business development, right? Okay. And because you can teach all the process you want to teach all the sys battle the system you want. You don’t have somebody who’s actually going to execute it. You got nothing.

[00:24:17] Scott Simmons: You just got great.

[00:24:18] Steve Fretzin: I’m going to push. I’m going to push back a little bit and here’s why. So part of the reason that I find lawyers struggle with developing good habits, Is because of fear of not knowing what to do and not knowing what to say. So I 100 percent with you that we need to have habits, but I think when they start to realize that they don’t have to wing it, that there’s actually something they can follow that helps with the habits because now they’re like, I’m not afraid to go on that networking meeting, or I’m not afraid to.

[00:24:45] Steve Fretzin: Right. To ask better questions instead of just get soaked for information and rates or whatever that normally had happened to them. A hundred percent. Right. Okay.

[00:24:54] Scott Simmons: So then once we started to work through just building the habits around it, then we start to build in the system that’s going to improve how they get it done.

[00:25:02] Scott Simmons: Cause Hey, listen, you and I both know that. Not just lawyers, human beings love a process. Anything that we can follow over and over and over again, we’re going to do much more effectively than, as you just pointed out, we’re just kind of out on a limb doing anything. So that’s kind of where we develop what we call precision selling, which is our nine step process for selling.

[00:25:25] Scott Simmons: And it’s something that you can follow over and over and over again. And every lawyer that we work with that does this, You can instantly say where they are in that process. So we start off by doing an exercise around your elevator pitch. Okay, building your elevator pitch, understanding who your ideal client type is, what their problems are, what their goals are, the services that you provide, the stories that you can tell to back all of this up.

[00:25:49] Scott Simmons: You create an elevator pitch out of it, 30, 45 seconds, but that’s not the real point to it. The real point is, is that you’re learning about the value that you bring to clients. When you go through this exercise. You learn about the real value that you bring to clients and you learn to articulate that because there are keywords that go into it over and over again.

[00:26:11] Scott Simmons: So once you’ve got that, you then start to learn, okay, well, if I know now what my ideal client type can look like, I now know that I can do the research on them. So I’ve discovered what that is. And now I’m going to do the research. And once I’ve done the research, I’m go and you know, these are the places that you can do the research.

[00:26:29] Scott Simmons: And what do you think? A lot of this is about empowering their genius, you know, enabling their genius. We all know a lot of this stuff inside. We just don’t articulate it. We don’t know where to start with it. So a lot of this is about empowering their genius. Once we know where to do the research, we go and do the research.

[00:26:48] Scott Simmons: And the research takes a lot of time. But then we go through, okay, well, once you’ve done the research, how are you going to go out and find them? And then we talk about inbound and outbound, existing clients, referrers, networking events,

[00:27:01] Steve Fretzin: trade shows. But maybe what’s the best of all the options, what are the best three, right?

[00:27:07] Steve Fretzin: Okay,

[00:27:07] Scott Simmons: yeah. And that’s what we’ll look at. And you have to bear in mind that, you know, country by country, practice area by practice, it might be slightly different, but I don’t know what you found of kind of like the sort of really effective ones. But for us, a combination of, well, nowadays, social media is very big.

[00:27:26] Scott Simmons: Right, and, but that can be very slow. So we often supplement it, you know, with networking events and shows, but outbound, so in the UK you, you know, to a limited extent can you know, . Yeah, yeah. That’s not happening

[00:27:40] Steve Fretzin: in the US and it’s really limited in the US, isn’t it? Yeah. No, it’s not. You can’t directly go out and start cold calling, you know, companies and stuff like, but I think, look, I know that there’s a way through doing that.

[00:27:54] Steve Fretzin: I guess my take would be. You know, if you have the ability to leverage your friends, your past, you know, people you worked with, if you’re able to leverage your clients to get introductions, right. If you’re able to cross market and say, Hey, look, you know, we, I help you with this. I’m going to ask you some questions, identify that you’ve got three or four of the things that you have risk at your company.

[00:28:18] Steve Fretzin: And I’ve got the people in the team to help you with that and bring that in. Right. Like there’s all this, what I call low hanging fruit. That is going to be better than, you know, stranger danger going out and just talking to strangers and targeting. The other thing is with LinkedIn. That’s the keys to the kingdom, Scott, right?

[00:28:34] Steve Fretzin: So like, if I want to get into a company, I can pull up all the employees on LinkedIn. I can pull up who the GCs are, the CEOs are, whatever those companies and who knows them that I know and try to use that as an inside connection, right? So I like the idea that we could, well, we can in the U S like cold solicit, but aren’t, I mean, there are what I would consider again, easier ways.

[00:28:57] Steve Fretzin: Well, think of it this way, referrers will

[00:28:59] Scott Simmons: always, referrals will always be your lowest pay. Right. Because just take it from clients, something I remember a recent statistic, over 90 percent of clients would be absolutely happy to make a referral. And yet only 8 percent of us, only 8 percent of us will ask.

[00:29:17] Scott Simmons: That’s mad. Right. Then as you say, you’ve got first connections on LinkedIn that will be connected to the people that you want to reach out to, and they would be happy to at least make that connection. But we won’t all of the, and you can go from there that the people that you know who would make referrals, not necessarily to specific people, but you know, you know, people who are in that space that you want to be in.

[00:29:42] Scott Simmons: And you don’t ask for it. Or when you ask for referrals, you’re so vague about who it is that you want to talk to. But, but

[00:29:47] Steve Fretzin: just, we’ve got 30 seconds and then we got to wrap up, but I want to hear how, what you’re teaching your clients and how to ask for referrals. Cause I think that’s the missing piece.

[00:29:56] Steve Fretzin: Like they want to, they just don’t feel comfortable doing it because they don’t have a process or language. Is there a key line that you give that you’d say, this is the way to do it. So it’s not salesy.

[00:30:08] Scott Simmons: So firstly, just, okay. So really quickly. You don’t have to follow a template because it’s personal to you.

[00:30:15] Scott Simmons: It has to feel comfortable to you. Best time to do it is firstly, at the end of a transaction that’s gone well, if it’s a client, sure. End of the transaction that’s gone well, hey, really pleased that you’re happy with how things have gone. Listen, if you know anybody who can, you know, who needs our help the way that you did or that we can help get better results, we’d love it if you would, if you would just let them know that we’re here to help.

[00:30:36] Scott Simmons: Something like that. Same with preferred, same with, you know, intermediaries. If you’re having those conversations, say to them, listen, would love it if you would, if you know people in these spaces, if you could just let them know that we’re helping businesses like them, we’ve got to overcome, it’s all in our heads.

[00:30:52] Scott Simmons: We’ve got to overcome that. And then actually the process of asking really simple.

[00:30:57] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. Give her that head trash a good way to think about it and just think about that there’s language that you can craft that’s very straightforward and simple that’ll allow you to get them to say yeah i can’t believe you have waited this long to ask me or absolutely what can who you thinking about what would you like to meet.

[00:31:15] Steve Fretzin: And coach them through those introductions and who you would like to meet other GC’s they know people that used to work under them that went off to be head GC’s at other companies there’s all kinds of things that you can do but we have to wrap up on that Scott always such a pleasure let’s wrap up with our game changing podcast this is yours it’s called outbound squad and I’m assuming this is about outbound marketing business development.

[00:31:37] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. So it’s

[00:31:38] Scott Simmons: outbound, outbound sales. So, but I love it because it gives you ideas for emails to send and phone calls to make. You don’t have to think about it in terms of, oh, it’s cold calling. It gives you great ideas about things you can say to the people that you already know.

[00:31:53] Steve Fretzin: Awesome. Well, check that out, everybody.

[00:31:55] Steve Fretzin: And as we wrap up, I want to thank our sponsors, of course, LawHer, which is a phenomenal podcast Shining a light on the bright and boldest women in the legal industry, on Rankings. io, top marketing company in the U. S., working with law firms on their marketing business websites, SEO, pay per click, you name it, they do it.

[00:32:13] Steve Fretzin: And of course, if you are a managing partner or work for a managing partner that would like to be in a peer advisory group of other successful Rainmakers and managing partners, Check out my Rainmaker round table on Fretzin. com. And Scott, if people want to get in touch with you, they want to learn more.

[00:32:30] Steve Fretzin: They want to, you know, stay involved with you. What’s the best digits.

[00:32:34] Scott Simmons: Right. So you can contact me online. Scott. Simmons at legal balance. co. uk. You will always find me all day, every single day, seven days a week, much to my wife’s annoyance. On LinkedIn, so always by Monday you can always send me a DM. If you want to learn a good process for how to get on that journey to becoming a rainmaker.

[00:32:52] Scott Simmons: We’ve got our digital education course, the BG Breakthrough Blueprint. You can find that@atwww.legal balance institute.com. But please reach out to me. Always love to have a chat.

[00:33:05] Steve Fretzin: Yeah. And that’s going to all be on in the show notes, everybody. So you can check that out and Scott, listen, man, there’s a lot of people I have on the show and I’m big fan of all of them, but you and I have definitely connected at another level.

[00:33:18] Steve Fretzin: And I just appreciate you, you know, that you’re, you know, we got to visit in Chicago and I’m hoping that you’ll come back on the show in 2025 and guest again, we’ve got more BD to cover. 30 minutes is not even close to what we could be sharing. If we get another 30 minutes and a few months or 2025, okay.

[00:33:35] Steve Fretzin: Whenever you want me, I’m

[00:33:36] Scott Simmons: there.

[00:33:36] Steve Fretzin: All right, my friend. Thank you. And thank you everybody for spending some time on the Be That Lawyer podcast with Fretzin and again, helping you to be that lawyer, confident, organized, and a skilled rainmaker. Take care, everybody. Be safe. Be well. Talk again soon.

[00:33:54] Narrator: Thanks for listening to Be That Lawyer, life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Visit Steve’s website, Fretzin. com, for additional information and to stay up to date on the latest legal business developments. Development and marketing trends for more information and important links about today’s episode check out today’s show notes