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CLE Leadership & Management
Ideas, Resources, and Techniques for
CLE Professionals
A periodic e-newsletter
By Chuck Bingaman - chuck@chuckbingaman.com
#19 January
2005
Leadership  At a customer satisfaction conference
sponsored by J.D. Power & Associates that I recently attended,
the theme was that, while we all know that business success is based on satisfied
customers, Power research shows
that very satisfied customers
yield businesses disproportionately greater rewards, starting with word of mouth
advertising. Peter Drucker once said
that the sole purpose of any business is to create satisfied
customers. Clearly our goal should be
to create very satisfied
customers. How does an
enterprise create those VERY satisfied customers? One good path is for business leaders to spend time on a regular
basis DOING the direct work with and for customers to learn exactly what they
want and what obstacles may be in the way of their being very satisfied. Southwest
Airlines, Men’s Wearhouse, Honda Motors and others expect every top officer
to occasionally handle bags, wait on customers, and deal with the face-to-face
work where customer satisfaction is created or deflated. CLE leaders can follow their examples. Another
path toward VERY satisfied customers is to restructure
compensation systems so they are based in part on levels of customer
satisfaction.
Management
Are
you REALLY marketing your CLE
organization and its products and services? If you think real CLE marketing ends with brochures, web sites
and occasional letters, you’re only part way home! Take a few minutes to answer these YES/NO questions: 1. Is your
CLE organization known for a specific, relevant and important trait by lawyers
in your markets, a trait that you and all of your employees and board members
can name? If yes, what is it? 2. Have
you identified a limited number of CLE areas for research, investment and growth,
and can everyone on your board and staff identify them? What are they? 3. Do you have an ongoing—and
successful—strategy for cross-selling products and services to your
customers? 4. While I assume that you
regularly survey customers to determine their wants, needs and levels of satisfaction
with your offerings, do you also survey or otherwise solicit views of non-customer
lawyers to learn why they do not rely on your services as
well? 5. Do you understand the unique personality characteristics of lawyers
in different practice fields, age ranges and other groupings and how best to
use that knowledge in selling to them? 6. Has
your position relative to your competitors in terms of reputation and economics
improved in the last year
or two, and can you prove it? 7. Do you have a marketing professional in your
organization (or outside if necessary) whose mission is clearly understood and
valued? 8. Do ALL of your employees—and board members—have clearly defined
marketing roles that they understand? 9. Do
you have a written organization marketing plan that is less than 10 pages long,
that is revised annually, and that has been communicated to your board and all
staff members? How do you rate in terms
of REALLY marketing? Give yourself 2 points for each Yes and subtract
one point for each NO. If you scored
16-18 points, you’re a marketing whiz. Raise tuition rates
immediately! If you scored 12-15 points,
you may be on the road to success but there’s more work to do. If you scored under 12 points, your competition
is going to pass you by unless you get serious NOW! (Thanks to Biff Maddock of Altman
Weil Inc. for the concept of this section. Biff’s
one of the real pros in law practice marketing.) On the slightly broader
subject of enterprise strategic planning, our old
friend Ward Bower, in a recent issue of Altman Weil’s Report to Legal
Management, quotes Dr. Albert Shapero of The Ohio State University
Graduate School of Business as observing in 1977 that, “Companies that plan never
follow their plans, but they always make more money than companies that
don’t plan.”
Resources I recently
starting using a NEW Internet browser called Firefox offered as
a free download by a not-for-profit foundation called Mozilla. Firefox is an open source program
created—and honed—by volunteers something like the Linux model. It claims to load twice as fast as MS’s Internet
Explorer and avoids nasty stuff like pop-ups, viruses and
spyware. Interesting tie-ins with Google
are already appearing. I’m pretty pleased
with it so far. You can check it out
at www.Mozilla.com. Malcolm
Gladwell is a hot phenomenon in business consulting. His fascinating articles in New Yorker magazine
and other publications are archived at www.Gladwell.com. Many of you have raved about his Tipping Point book that
has been out for a few years. Gladwell’s new book, just out, is called Blink,
and in it he argues that we should analyze less and trust our snap judgments
in many areas because they are often more reliable than considered analysis.
Full
details on both books are also on his web site. Get
ready! January 12 is National Clean Off Your Desk Day!
I welcome your feedback! I
hope to see you at the ACLEA Mid-Year meeting in San Diego. 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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