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CLE Leadership & Management
Ideas, Resources, and Techniques for
CLE Professionals
A periodic e-newsletter
By Chuck Bingaman - chuck@chuckbingaman.com
#18 November
2004
Leadership  Daimler-Chrysler’s new 300C sedan
is a smash hit with American buyers of
all kinds. What has differentiated it
from its competitors? Not its function,
not its price, not its quality, not its advertising. While it’s been effective in all of those areas, so have its
competitors. What has grabbed buyers’ hearts
and minds is its DESIGN. Great design can propel a product to stand out from
a crowd of high quality competitors, even in CLE. Can we not design CLE courses and publications
in new ways that capture the attention, the hearts and minds, of our CLE customers,
re-ignite their interest in learning, and re-attract their registrations and
publication buys in volumes comparable to past levels? We can if we break out of the traditional
molds and force ourselves to design new, different, amazing approaches that will
get enthusiastic results. Marc Ecko, 31-year-old founder
of $400 million per year clothing line
Marc Ecko Collection, says in the November 2004 Business 2.0
that “opinion leaders have to stay as close to the pulse as possible, and it’s
really not that hard. It means hanging
out in social spaces, just talking to people. The
Friday night that a new movie comes out in a suburban mall, I have to
be there. The minute you pay someone
else to do that and report back is the minute you lose touch.” For CLE leaders, those suburban malls are
the legislative hallways, courthouses and, without fail, CLE and bar association
meetings.
Management
Have
you planned or opened your first “pop-up” CLE store yet? You’ve
probably done book displays at the back of the room for courses and maybe even
set them up at bar meetings. But the
idea of a small, colorful, nearly full service store selling your
publications—even course registrations and online products—set up in a temporary
location where there may be lots of lawyer traffic might be a valuable experiment
for CLE organizations. Dell has tried
several at O’Hare Field in Chicago. Cutting edge retailer Vacant is setting them
up for a month or so in Marshall Field’s stores. CLE groups could set them up in large courthouse lobbies or in
the lobbies of large office buildings housing hundreds or thousands of
lawyers. Maybe in retail outlets such
as Borders or Barnes & Nobles stores near legal districts. The idea is to build “buzz” for a new product
or service. Responding
to last month’s CLE L&M piece advocating non-cash early bird
incentives, Annette Black, Director of Education for
the New Zealand Law Society, reported that New Zealand lawyers respond consistently
to 6.7% early bird cash discounts, that they enable her to predict final registration
very closely in advance, and that the vast majority of her registrants sign up
within a week of the cutoff. She says that NZ lawyers have told her that they would not be attracted
by non-cash rewards for early registration. Further, she sets the early bird rate at her REAL target tuition
rate anyway so she meets budget even if ALL attendees register early. If it works,
it works, but I still wonder if it might be worth a 50-50 test or two. In any case, I have reversed my long held
bias against early bird discounts because I see now how important it is to get
course registration commitments on people’s calendars as early as possible.
Resources The
Direct Marketing Association offers many resources for those of
us who are heavily dependent on direct marketing, whether it be snail
mail or online. You can start
your investigation of the DMA through their web site at www.the-dma.org. While DMA membership may be useful for your CLE organization, the
DMA web site has many useful items for non-DMA members, including a
large
archive of White Papers on direct marketing topics. In
1960 a plastic
surgeon named Maxwell Maltz published a book called PsychoCybernetics that
said our unconscious mind is a terrific goal-seeking mechanism. It went on to be one of the best selling self-help
books of all time. Now there
is PsychoCybernetics 2000 by Dr. Bobbe Sommer (Prentice-Hall, Englewood
Cliffs, NJ 2000) that updates Maltz’s original with psychological research and
therapy experience of the past 40 years. It
shows how to form and develop a positive self-image and how that positive self-image
can be a powerful factor in goal achievement. Very good! Want
to create, update or tweak your corporate blog, wiki or RSS
feed? There’s a New Communication Forum January 26-27 in Silicon Valley
that you can attend on the way to ACLEA. See www.newcommforum.com.
Alternatively,
you can attend the program in Paris on February
7-8!
On
Thursday, November 25, those of us in the USA will celebrate Thanksgiving,
the national holiday
proclaimed by Abraham Lincoln in 1863. In
fact, everyone who receives this letter has much to be thankful for, and we Americans
invite all of our friends around the world to join us in
counting our blessings.
I
welcome your feedback! Please keep in touch! CCB
Following 20 years as Executive Director of a major CLE organization in
the USA, Chuck now consults on strategic planning, marketing and management
challenges with CLE and other legal organizations, law firms, law schools and
others. He is currently advising
on new strategic directions with a national CLE provider and a national legal
membership organization and advising on marketing strategy for an investment
company. He welcomes your inquiries
on projects designed to enhance your organization’s
effectiveness. You can contact him
at chuck@chuckbingaman.com,
at 603-756-9268, or at P.O. Box 390, Walpole, NH 03068. Past issues of this newsletter are archived
at http://www.chuckbingaman.com/.
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