I specialise in establishing relationships with potential clients by making direct contact by telephone. If they are cold targets, I write to them first. The letter and call can seek to arrange a meeting with a senior member of your firm.
My preferred, softer, approach is to create a programme of seminars and invite targets to these. This brings potential clients into your offices to meet your firm's people. I attend these events and facilitate conversations.
Making a seminar successful requires diligent telephone follow up. Simply sending multiple emails will not work. If your firm already has an events programme, I can significantly improve the attendance rate and the return on the work you put into it.
I can do the research to locate target organisations that match your firm's criteria for new clients and then identify decision-makers within them.
I've applied these approaches successfully for the last ten years with a number of law firms. The process is gradual and cumulative and brings in new clients. I work with firms for one or two days a week. I'm currently retained by a specialist pensions law firm. I have availability to work with a full-service law firm or in a different sector, such as accountancy, management consultancy or financial services.
I’m also a BACP-qualified counsellor and work with individuals on personal relationship issues and other fundamental themes in their lives. My experience in professional services means I have a good understanding of this world and the tensions it can create between business success and personal needs. My counselling website says more: dermotcox.com.
I've spent many years carrying out research among clients in professional services markets. I created a specialist research company, CSS (Customer Satisfaction Surveys) that carried out the first comprehensive studies into the image and performance of accountancy, legal and management consultancy firms in the UK and Europe.
I then focused on the legal market through my own business, Cox Consulting, carrying out face-to-face client research and larger market studies.
I've studied the relationship between law firms and financial institutions in depth through major reports 'Banks on Law Firms', based on interviews with in-house counsel and business people in banks.
More recently, I've applied my knowledge of clients' views on marketing by professional services firms to work on behalf of firms to win business. I've worked for the last ten years with mid-size law firms to build relationships and bring in new clients.
I've seen how professionals and marketing people approach business development and learnt how clients react.
Most professionals have a deep aversion to making contact with people they don't know and seeking business. Most marketing people are the same. The result is firms use indirect communications techniques such as newsletters, social media and sponsorship to 'build profile'. They are more comfortable talking to fellow professionals and will do some networking.
But the number of actual target clients for most firms is small - the low thousands in most cases. These targets are easy to identify and contact. And a significant proportion will respond positively to direct approaches from firms they don't know who may have something to offer.
As professionals are never going to make these approaches themselves, firms either miss out on these opportunities or they bring in someone who knows how to do it.
If you'd like to discuss how I might work with your organisation or arrange a meeting, please ring, text or email.
I'm based just outside London, in Buckinghamshire.
07831 572050
