Increase your business through inspiration

Inspire your clients with insights and ideas and make you, instead of your legal services, the value they seek. This is today’s formula for success.

It is so rare for me to read something and think, “This sums up my lifelong experience and view on a subject.” But it happened to me the other day when I stumbled on the concept of “Insight Selling.”

Despite the ton of marketing/business jargon, it is worth scanning some of the blogs and executive summaries from RAIN Group, Insight Demand, and the founders of this concept, CEB, which called it “Challenger Selling methodology.”

CEB is still proving that this way of engaging with clients produces much more business than the traditional “I have a solution for you” method.

Insight Selling overview

Lawyers hate the word “selling.” What is interesting is that the core concept of Insight Selling is to work with clients so the whole process seems less like selling and more like collaborating.

Insight Selling helps you uncover ideas based on your unique legal and business insights to help your clients redefine their traditional views and drive distinctive and profitable change. They end up putting a higher value on you and your firm and less on your products and services. This is important because legal products and services change and other firms can copy them. It is much more difficult to copy and steal a valued relationship.

Interacting this way with clients and prospects is also enriching for all parties. You will know more about your client’s business and industry, which will help you develop preventive legal strategies aligned to your client’s business objectives and feed you more future business.

Is providing solutions out? Hey, I’m the expert!!?

Our firm’s tagline used to be, “Our practice is your solution.” There are many lawyers out there who still think they retain and increase their business by always being the person with the right answer. Client research will tell you the opposite is true.

When it comes to developing long-term, profitable relationships with your clients, you cannot position yourself as the know-it-all for your client’s industry and business. Success is about being part of their executive team, listening and providing insights based on your unique position, and then collaborating with them and inspiring them to generate distinctive ideas that will generate profit.

I like to say that we help our client’s clients. If our client’s clients are profitable purchasers, our clients will be happy and we will also enjoy success. If there is clarity and collaboration, the best ideas will surface, be debated, and implemented and you can be part of that team.

By collaborating with our clients, leadership, and vendors and providing my business development insight, our firm’s new tagline evolved into “Because Clarity Matters?” to constantly remind ourselves and our clients that we are in it, with them, for the long term.

How do I implement Insight Selling?

The RAIN Group boils the winning behaviours down to three levels of relationship building: connecting, convincing, and collaborating.

Connecting with clients and convincing them that you are their best option is the price of entry. Collaboration is the future of client relationships. Developing specific actions that have you collaborating with prospects and clients depends on the client and area(s) of practice at stake.

The RAIN Group has also examined the key attributes of a successful Insight Seller comprised of seven personal drivers and five qualities. If you are a legal recruiter, you might want to take note of what a successful lawyer of the future needs to look like in addition to the legal expertise part.

This version of the article has clarified the name of CEB and its products.