Strategic Relationships LLC

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Stewart Hirsch Blog

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Asking for Fees and Root Canals

When my coaching client Craig returned from the dentist following his unexpected root canal, he didn’t complain about the pain. It was the sign in the reception area that got him: “Payment Expected at the Time Services are Provided.”

“I was wondering why the dentist doesn’t have any trouble insisting I pay him now,” he told me. What he didn’t understand is why some lawyers and consultants, including him, feel they have to tip-toe around the issue of discussing and collecting fees.

There are plenty of other professionals who don’t have trouble asking for fees. Think about those in medicine, and people like the snow plower, your car mechanic, real estate broker, plumber and your electrician.

What’s So Hard About Asking?

Why is it that lawyers, consultants and others often have so much difficulty talking about fees? Why is it that with us, we act like we’d rather get a root canal than discuss fees? Clients expect us to be assertive when helping them – so why do we dance around when it comes to talking about fees?

How To Make it Easier

Here are three tips that just might help you ask for and collect client fees:

  • Believe in yourself. Acknowledge that you are good at what you do, and that your fees reflect the value of your work in the marketplace in which you are working. If they are not, you’ll find out soon enough. And if you want some ideas on pricing your services, here’s a great compendium of short articles, thanks to Rain Today via Michael McLaughlin.
  • Deal with the topic sooner rather than later. Transparency helps. Don’t hesitate early on in the conversation to discuss your fees with a prospective client. Waiting too long may appear as if you’re hiding something, and certainly makes it more awkward. Try saying something like: “I’m delighted to talk more about this. Let me give you an idea of costs so we’re on the same page.”
  • Get personal. When you send a bill, don’t hide behind your firm’s invoicing systems. If the bill seems higher than expected, let the client know in a separate note or call – that reduces surprises and increases your reliability. If it’s lower than expected, that’s worth a call as well. Good news is appreciated. And, the personal touch will go a long way toward growing trust in the relationship.

Meanwhile, Back in the Dentist’s Chair

We all need to take our cue from those who don’t mind asking for fees. As for Craig, he’ll get another lesson when his dentist, without hesitation, tells him the cost for the cap to cover that root canal.

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Gossip and Rumors in the Workplace: Three Things You Can Do To Stop Them

One of my sons regularly takes our dog to the local dog park. Recently, while breaking up some overly rough play between ours and another dog, my son was bitten and needed medical attention. Word spread quickly about the bite. To ward off rumors and gossip, and because the bite wasn’t the result of a vicious act, my son refused to say which dog bit him.

His strategy didn’t work. Within a day or two, the (inaccurate) rumor was out that he was bitten by a pit bull.

Gossip in the Workplace is Insidious

Let’s move the issue out of the park and into the workplace. Just because something happens or somebody says something, doesn’t mean we should talk about it. In offices, gossip is viewed as annoying and unwelcome behavior based on a survey mentioned in the 2009 article How to Handle Workplace Gossip, yet it still happens. That same article describes what we all know to be true–that careers can be harmed and even killed by gossip.

Gossip Destroys Trust

In the article, Banish Gossip, Build Trust, psychologist Rhoberta Shaler notes, “Trust is destroyed by gossip–and, so are people.” The harm to trust to obvious. Pick any of the four factors of the Trust Equation (Credibility, Reliability, Intimacy and Self-orientation), and imagine a rumor started about someone you know who is currently trustworthy.

What would happen if the rumor said that she missed an important deadline and people talked about it? Would you be concerned about partnering with her on the next project with tight time frames? It’s certainly safer to work with someone else, isn’t it?

It may seem odd, but truth isn’t the issue. What if the rumor is true but the full context was missing. Suppose there were extenuating circumstances, like a death in the family. Trust is the victim, along with your co-worker.

What Can You Do?

Here are three easy rules you can follow:

  1. Don’t encourage gossip and rumors. If someone starts to spread gossip, true or not, don’t waste your valuable time listening. Be honest about it–say something like “this is not something I want to hear or talk about,” or, “let’s not talk this way–it doesn’t help matters.”
  2. Don’t simply believe what you hear. Just because someone said it doesn’t make it so. Work hard not to believe the gossip and rumors that you do hear. If it’s important to your business, you may feel the need to verify, but be careful not to act on rumors.
  3. Don’t spread it further. We each have the opportunity to use discretion. The less we say about others, the better off we are. In fact, refusing to participate in spreading gossip and rumors increases our Intimacy factor in the Trust Equation. Think about it; who would you feel more likely to share personal information with, someone known to gossip or someone known to be discrete?

Meanwhile, Back at the Dog Park

It was easy for my son to put an end to talk of his incident in the dog park. He spoke with those he thought might be sharing the rumor, and told them it wasn’t the pit bull that had bitten him. And, he didn’t tell anyone which dog did bite him. That was between him and the owner of that dog. Following his example of saying little, and by refusing to participate by listening and spreading talk, you may be able to reduce gossip and rumors, even in the workplace.

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Reduce Stress: Stop Selling. Start Helping.

A lawyer I was coaching recently felt his sales performance was weak. He had a few prospective clients asking him about his services and “kicking tires” but not retaining him. After discussing the specifics of one such prospective client, I asked him: “what was your goal with this person?”

He responded: “To make him a client.” He told me that trying to convert the person from contact to client was uncomfortable for him. Worse still: it wasn’t working.

Is Turning a Contact Into a Client the Right Goal?

I frequently find lawyers, consultants and financial planners wanting to mine their relationships and turn the many contacts they have into clients. They are focused on business development and want to build relationships so they can get more business. That may sound like a good goal–but it’s the wrong one.

The goal should be to build relationships and help the other person. The more one tries to sell, the more the prospective client gets turned off. Just think of the times when you needed services or products. You probably just wanted to be guided and helped, not to be sold something.

This isn’t a new concept. There are many articles and blogs that give all the reasons to stop trying to sell. Just do a search on “stop selling.” You’ll be inundated with articles and blogs. Charlie Green published an article on this topic in 2006 called “Stop Trying to Close the Sale”.

Let Go of the Goal and Start Helping

The more you try to sell, the less the other person wants to buy. It’s one of the paradoxes of selling. So—don’t do that. Instead, really do let go of that goal. Of course you need more clients or customers–but that’s your problem, not your prospective client’s problem.

Trying too hard just doesn’t work. And, as my lawyer client said – it’s stressful. Let go of your goal along with the stress it engenders and try something else – like helping, in the context of building real relationships. Interestingly, the more you try to help, the more success you’ll have in selling. (As long as you don’t let short-term, gosh-I-hope-I-can-sell-this-one thinking reverse the means and the ends).

Helping means finding ways to assist the other person to identify, analyze and resolve his or her problem. If that process results in a need for your services, that outcome will emerge. If helping includes referring the person to someone else, perhaps even a competitor, so be it.

Helping rather than selling fits well into the Trust Principles. Helping is:

It also reflects low self-orientation, and enhances credibility, both components of the Trust Equation.

How Helping Reduces Stress

Most Professionals with whom I work rarely got their JD, CPA or MBA because they wanted to sell. What they wanted to do was to practice their chosen profession and to help people. They create stress for themselves by feeling they have to sell when they don’t want to, a feeling that is compounded by then having to deal with rejection on top of it.

This is an unnecessary, even painful, vicious circle. Change your mindset towards helping others. It will reduce your stress. And it may actually result in more business sold.

Stop selling and start helping.

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A New Cybercrime…Spying On Your Spouse?

In his introduction to the Trusted Advisor Mastery Program launched in November, 2010, Charlie Green talks about the skills for being a trusted advisor including “doing the right thing, in the moment, as it’s called for.”

What does this have to do with cybercrime and spouses? According to an article posted by the Detroit Free Press, and a follow up article posted a few weeks later, a husband is currently being prosecuted under a state statute designed for trade secret theft. His alleged crime? Reading his wife’s emails; he used her password and found out she was having an affair. Of course, there’s more to the story in the articles. They’re divorced now.

As a former practicing lawyer, I find the legal issues interesting – see Peter Vogel’s technology law column in the e-Commerce Times. More intriguing to me as a business development and executive coach are the boundaries of privacy in relationships and what doing “the right thing” really means. After all, not everything we do in life can, or should be, regulated by law.

In a family, talking about boundaries help clarify expectations and behaviors. Respecting boundaries can engender trust; violating boundaries destroys it. In my home, my wife expects me to open her snail mail relating to financial or family matters, even if they are addressed solely to her. However, I don’t open her personal mail. For emails, Social Media communicating (including texts and Facebook), unless they ask, I don’t look at my wife’s or kids’ computers or cell phones. When I’m in front of their computers or cell phones for a reason, I may glance at the screen, but even that feels intrusive. It’s just the wrong thing to do in my family because of how we’ve chosen to respect each other’s privacy.

So while the criminal court determines in the Detroit case whether a statute has been violated, the rest of us need to pay attention to “doing the right thing in the moment, as it’s called for.” And when that involves boundaries in relationships, as I often ask my coaching clients, “What’s the best way to find out how other people feel, believe, or think?” about these types of issues. There’s only one right answer: ask them.

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What Costs More Than a $1,000 Per Hour Lawyer?

Beginning just three years ago, some large firm legal fees reached that amount – about $17/minute – providing fodder for legal bloggers, and Internet articles on a variety of topics, including new marketing opportunities and excessive fees for bankruptcy matters to name just a couple. Only senior lawyers in the largest firms actually charge that much, and that’s to large companies on non-commoditized work. What about the rest of us? What makes a service worth that much to us? On my daily walks with Sam, we have a lot of epiphanies. Here’s one we came up with just before a Nor’Easter looming on the horizon. And no, this isn’t a rant about lawyers and their fees.

This is about snowplowing. I can only talk about the Boston area. Here, snowplowing costs anywhere between $35-50 per 3 inches of snow per driveway (the rest of you can fill in your own numbers). The average time per driveway – 3-5 minutes.

Here’s what’s interesting to me. Why is a homeowner willing to pay about $10/minute to anyone with a snowplow, yet would complain about that rate for most other services. I applied the Trust Equation to this question.?

  • Credibility: We’d prefer they not wreck the lawn or dig up the driveway, but if they do, well, things happen. We do want them to actually clean up the snow though.
  • Reliability: Jackpot. We’re paying for them to show up. Fast, and often if needed. If they show up relatively on time, they’re worth it. If they don’t, they’re not. Simple as that.
  • Intimacy: No need to empathize with us or share. Just do what is a straightforward job.
  • Self-orientation: If they want to tell us how great they are, it’s fine–just do the job.

This is a transaction, so Intimacy and low Self-orientation just don’t matter. However, Reliability is so important that we’re willing to pay more per minute than just about any other service we get. Credibility is important only in that the job be done reasonably well.

This made us think–where else is Reliability and Credibility so important that we’re willing to pay extraordinarily high rates so we can get it? Here’s our very short list:

a. Ambulance services. This is way out of line on a per minute basis. We’re paying for the competency to be available when we need it. Imagine if the costs were less, and they were only available at certain times. We have to pay more so they’re ready when we need them.

b. Travel–last minute. When you have to get home fast, you’ll pay multiples of the regular cost. I was in Dallas, and was required to stay 4 hours later than my flight. My round trip was about $350. My return flight 8 hours later on the same day was $1800. I wasn’t happy but I was willing to pay it. While air travel is not incredibly reliable, it’s more reliable than alternatives to travel long distances. I knew I’d get home.

Conclusion? Time sensitive needs merit higher rates, particularly where there are limited resources (like snowplows during a storm, planes to a specific destination, ambulance services), knowing you can use the service and it’s reliable is worth whatever it costs up to a point. What that point is depends on our need at the time.

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When Should Your Clients Take a Back Seat?

I was coaching Bob, a busy lawyer.  One of his key goals was business development – obtaining new clients. He told me that he just didn’t have time to work on business development –too busy.  So I asked him a question (that’s what coaches do).

What are your priorities?

“Who is your most important client?” Bob responded with the typical answer. He started naming some large companies. “And what’s on your “to do” list?”,   Bob started listing specific tasks including depositions, client meetings, briefs … well, you know the rest.

“What’s not on your list?”  He struggled to answer for a bit. Finally, he got it. His business development tasks were nowhere on the list. He didn’t mention himself as an important client, and didn’t think of those tasks – the ones where he was investing in his own future – as being enough of a priority to even make it to his list.  So, I asked the obvious question. “How will you accomplish your own marketing tasks if they don’t get on the list?”   Of course, he said: “I can’t”.

One of my own long-time coaching clients, Peter Vogel, a prominent Dallas attorney, shared the wisdom of the “who is your most important client” with me several years ago. He got it from his father, a well-respected Dallas accountant.  We are our most important client. Once we get that clear, we can create the right balance between our work, our clients and our lives.

Put yourself on the list

Some of us have a fear that if we put ourselves on the list, we’re no longer client focused, that it’s wrong to address our own needs if there’s a client need to be attended to. But that simply is not true. If we don’t take care of ourselves, we’re not as valuable to our clients.

Examples we can all relate to: exercise, eating right, getting enough sleep. If we don’t do these things for ourselves, we won’t be able to function well eventually.

Examples we don’t like to relate to: taking a vacation, spending time with family, reading. These help us function at a higher level. Doing these activities clears our head, gives us valuable input, and can be emotionally stabilizing.

Examples professional services providers often fail to acknowledge: networking, social media activities, writing, speaking, building relationships – are all part of the job. Most of us have to do these and other activities so that we can obtain paid work.

Is it self-orientation to care about yourself?

Yes, of course it is. So what? There is nothing wrong with having things you have to do for yourself on your list. The type of self-orientation we talk about in Trusted Advisor Associates, reducing our Trust Quotient, is notabout taking care of you. It’s about being self-absorbed, and unable to get out of your own way. When you take care of yourself, you are better equipped to focus on others.

Professionals who truly care about their clients often forget that they need to address their own needs as well. This includes the exercise and family time I noted above. It also includes taking steps to develop business in the future. Just because you have work on your desk today, doesn’t always mean that the work must trump a networking or business development activity.

Treat yourself as if you are a client

Imagine that you are one of your clients. When there is a conflict between an activity you need to do for you, and one you need to do for another client, analyze the conflict and priorities the same way you would if you had two clients competing for your time. You decide which client has the more immediate priority, and you let the other client know when you will address that client’s needs. When you use this process, sometimes your needs will trump the client work. So if you have a referral-source lunch and work that needs to be done by 5, and you believe you can get it done when you get back, don’t blow off the lunch. Take care of yourself, and then take care of the client. The work will still be on your desk when you get back, and you’ll get it done in time.

So – what will you do?

Are you ready to put yourself first sometimes? Here are three easy rules to follow:

  1. When you create your work task list, put your marketing, and personal tasks on the same list.
  2. When you prioritize your task list, include all your tasks, not just your work tasks.
  3. When there is a conflict with your time, don’t exclude your needswhen you make your decision on set priorities. You may have to take a back seat some of the time, but not all of the time.

Putting yourself first isn’t easy, and sometimes may feel selfish. Just remember that we do respect people who take care of themselves along with caring about others.

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Trust on the Toll Road

A good friend of mine, Bob, recently lost his mother.  Following the funeral, disheveled and still in mourning he took to the road to return to Boston.  Approaching the tolls at the New York Thruway, he tried to slow down and discovered he had no brakes.

In the split second Bob had to choose what to do, he examined his options.  Hit the cement barrier and risk getting hit from behind or go through the toll and hope the car in front of him was moving away thereby minimizing the risk of injuring someone.  He decided to put the car in park–which only slowed the car a little–and go through the toll.

Unfortunately the car in front didn’t move away.  Luckily no one was hurt.

When the police officer showed up, he too had a choice.  He had to determine whether it was, in fact, an accident and that Bob was telling the truth about his brakes failing, or if he was simply telling a tale to get out of a ticket by swaying responsibility.

The officer chose a third option–he assumed Bob was trying to avoid the $1.25 toll.  What made this officer ignore the more likely choices and go for dishonesty of the third kind?  Was it Bob’s disheveled look?  Did he sound drunk?

I can understand if the officer thought Bob was lying to avoid a ticket. He’s probably seen many people run through tolls.  What baffles me is why he would think Bob would run a toll when there was a car at the toll booth.   What made him select the most improbable scenario?

The implications for trust are profound.   We can influence our own trustworthiness by reducing our self-orientation, and increasing our credibility, reliability and intimacy.

Yet those factors don’t operate in a rational vacuum when we consider whether to trust others.   Our upbringing, general experience, specific experiences, psychological makeup and even job responsibilities go into the mix.

Put yourself in the shoes of the police officer.  Perhaps something similar happened in the past.  Maybe he’s heard so many excuses, that everything sounds like a variation on the theme.  Maybe he was just having a difficult day.

Maybe he trusted someone’s story that turned out to be a lie once too often.  We want to be trusted, and we would like ourselves and others to be trusting.  We have to recognize when our own issues get in the way of trusting others.  And hope that our own hard work to be trustworthy will be enough for others to trust us.

What happened to Bob?  The tow truck driver confirmed that the brakes failed.

And the officer made my friend pay the toll, just in case.

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How to Soft Sell a Hard Drive

I love my computer tech guy. He’s smart, savvy and responsive. Never lets me down. And even though I’ve got a small business, without servers and multiple users or even using his enterprise server, he treats me the same as he does his larger clients.

While he was logged in fixing my computer problem, he told me a story about a new client. He got a call from a local company looking for a replacement drive for a server. He’s not in the parts business, and could have simply told them that. But that’s not David Winter of Winter Solutions. Instead, he asked them about their problem and its impact because he was concerned and wanted to help. He learned that the hard drive crashed, and business was at a standstill. He asked who was helping them through this crisis, and learned they were dealing with it themselves. They were going to order a new hard drive, and anticipated they would have to re-enter a year of data over several weeks. They found David on line in their search for a hard drive.

David just happened to have a drive on hand that would fit their server, and offered to get it to them that day, and install it.  If they just bought the hard drive, there wasn’t a lot of money in this for David, and maybe not even a new client. But that wasn’t the point. By genuinely caring and trying to help them, they decided to have David assist, and in 48 hours, he recovered the original hard drive data, got the business back up and may have landed a significant client.

Makes me want to recommend him to everyone I know.

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Making a Referral By Transferring Trust

I provide a lot of referrals to clients and colleagues and have built my own business development and executive coaching business through referrals from others to me. What makes those referrals so powerful?

Here’s an example of a referral I made. A few years ago, in my in-house legal role, I had a working relationship with a lawyer I liked and trusted. I introduced that lawyer to a colleague in another company who I thought could benefit from working with this lawyer as well. As a result of my introduction, the colleague retained the lawyer, and that relationship is still going strong after several years.

The Trust Transfer Process

Referring someone we know to another person we know happens all the time. On the personal side, think blind dates or babysitters or doctors. It’s part of the networking process. What makes it work? Something I call “Transferred Trust.” The Trust Equation gives us the formula to enhance our own trustworthiness. But what happens when we make or receive a referral? How do we transfer that trust to another, and if we’re on the receiving end, for what do we look or listen?

Here are the steps from my example, simplified:

  1. I trust a lawyer.
  2. I have a colleague who trusts me.
  3. My colleague needs a lawyer.
  4. I describe the lawyer I trust to my colleague, and shared why I trusted him and made the referral.
  5. My colleague trusts the lawyer I trust, enough to engage him based on my introduction.

Trust Transfer and the Trust Equation

Let’s dissect this referral in terms of the Trust Equation (from The Trusted Advisor by Charles H. Green, David H. Maister, and Robert M. Galford, Free Press, 2000):

T = Trustworthiness
C = Credibility
R = Reliability
I = Intimacy
S = Self-Orientation

The quality and degree of trust transferred will directly depend on:

  • The depth of the referrer’s trustworthiness
  • The trustworthiness factors shared with the person receiving the referral

If I shared that the lawyer always got back to me quickly, I transferred reliability. If I gave an example of how the lawyer showed that he cared more about doing the right thing for me as his client than getting more work for himself, I transferred that he had low self orientation. If I described something the lawyer did that helped my company save money and time, I transferred credibility.

And while it’s up to the referrer to transfer trustworthiness, it’s up to the person referred to retain that trustworthiness through his/her own interactions.

How Transparency Works with Referrals

Be careful. You put your own trustworthiness on the line when you transfer trust. How often do we get referrals with transferred trust and are disappointed? If you think there is a good match, but you don’t know much about the person you are referring, be sure to be transparent. It’s ok to say “I know this person to be honest and forthright, and she’s really smart but I’ve never worked with her, so you’ll probably want to talk to her yourself.”

This models transparency, together with low self-orientation, while transferring some intimacy (safety) and some general credibility.

Try this out yourself in a business or social setting. Think of how you refer doctors or contractors, business colleagues and professionals. Pay attention to both referrals shared with you, and to those you give. And practice transferring trust.

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Keep Young and Work the Virtual Room

Remember this question when we were kids: If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?

Here’s a modern version: If you don’t have a strong web presence, including blogging, Linked in and Twitter, do you still exist?

I’ve been thinking a lot about social media lately and even more so after reading Trust Agents, a new book by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith, and attending the Trust Summit in New York last week.   I’m still dipping my foot into using social media, yet like many, I’ve been reluctant to jump in all the way.  That is changing, albeit slowly. Here’s why I think it’s important to take the plunge:

Age Loses a Degree of Relevancy

I remember the days when simply reaching a certain age, one was seen as old. I think Web 2.0 changed that.  My theory is that in the world of social media, people aren’t judged by simply by chronological age, but rather by adaptability to and use of, technology. It may be true that the older one gets the less likely a person is to use new tools. But age does not prohibit one from jumping in. Chris and Julien capture this concept in Trust Agents,by describing a person who is seen as connected as “One of Us.”  Age doesn’t seem to a factor by itself anymore. If my theory is right, then by using Web 2.0 channels of communication we can connect and be connected, without regard to age. And that opens new doors in business for everyone.

The Virtual Room is Real

It’s more than just about adapting to technology.  It’s also about being part of a community – one that creates trust.  I’ve watched my son play a virtual game on line and build relationships with a community of avatars representing people.  Trust is created based on how long people are there, and how people talk with, trade with and treat each other, even when they never can meet in the real world.

That’s not to say real world connecting isn’t important. I teach a workshop called How to Work a Room and Still Feel Good About Yourself™  This workshop is about the typical ways to network in person – conferences, luncheons and charity dinners, even in line waiting to board a plane, and addresses how to build relationships – NOT sell – in that environment.  It is still relevant to network this way in business.

However, there are a lot of people that never get to the same physical rooms we are in.  But they are in virtual rooms.  And those virtual rooms are growing in size and number.  Those rooms include blog conversations, Twitter, Facebook connections and groups, and of course, LinkedIn.  If we’re not in those rooms, we’ll never meet the people who are, and will miss the opportunity to build relationships with new connections that “meet” there.

And just like a connection at an event can lead to follow up, so can a virtual room connection. For example, recently, I connected with a contact I met when she commented on one of my blogs on TrustedAdvisor.com. We talked by email and then by phone.  And we’re building a relationship just as we would have had we met at a conference.

Resistance is Futile

Many will now have to operate in both the real and Web 2.0 worlds. Of course we still exist if we’re not blogging and tweeting. While the Web 2.0 world doesn’t discriminate based on age or any factor other than whether we enter the room and appropriately create relationships, only we can decide if we need to be there. But if we’re not in the room – whether virtual or physical, we’ll never even know what we’re missing. This is a benefit of social media, and why we can’t ignore it, whether we’re 20 or 65.