I am so mad at Barnes and Noble’s NOOK that I am writing a blog post about it.

I have a 1st Edition WiFi NOOK. I spent $189 or so on it about 20 months ago. I love it.

Well, loved it.

Even though I have my iPad I still love my NOOK. I use it out by the pool and on the beach. It’s lighter than my iPad, so makes for easier reading in bed.

In fact, I’ve been so loyal that I have since bought each kid a NOOK (NOOK Simple Touch and NOOK Color), and I just got my dad a NOOK Color for his 75th birthday.

I urged my nephew to get a NOOK so we can share our passion for history. I pushed my sister-in-law to get a NOOK over the Kindle so we can share our passion for Sookie Stackhouse.

No doubt about it, we’re a NOOK family.

It’s been great. Up until last night.

My daughter just lent me Book 3 in The Hunger Games series. I went to download it and was notified of an update. Took a few minutes for the update and then I was asked to register it. And then …

NOTHING

As in error code c7850.

As in my NOOK is now a paper weight.

As in for $35 I can purchase another NOOK 1st edition since they have a few lying around the warehouse.

Hey, if I dropped my NOOK in the pool, or spilled my coffee on it, or stepped on it, I’d have no problems buying a new one. I just paid $8o to replace the glass on my iPhone (don’t ask).

But I didn’t do anything to my NOOK other than turn on my device and accept the update.

And then I spent 1.5 hours with technical support tonight trying to find out what was wrong.

I’ll tell you one thing, what IS wrong is that Barnes and Noble HAD an extremely LOYAL customer, and now has an extremely dissatisfied one.

In the “olden” days a dissatisfied customer would share with about 10 people. Well, in the age of social media, I’ve already shared with my 2812 Twitter follwers, my nearly 1000 fans and friends on Facebook, and now here as well.

So what does this have to do with legal marketing? Not much. But it’s my blog.

What this really has to do with is the danger of poor (okay, shitty) customer service in the age of social media.

When you have a customer go from loyal to POd in a matter of minutes, you need to get in there and solve that problem ASAP.

While I was on the phone with George I*******, Digital Manager, I was already posting on the NOOK Facebook page and Twitter feeds about my experience. I was Googling to see if I was alone (hmmmmm, according to this, looks like the same thing happened with the last big update).

You HAVE to have a process in place that allows for a decision maker to make a decision when things are going south.

When you have a customer letting you know that she’s flaming up your Twitter and Facebook pages, it’s time to send her over to the “do what you have to do to make her happy” team.

If Barnes and Noble had chosen to eat $35 dollars tonight, I promise you, you’d have a completely different blog post, and they’d have a continued loyal customer.

But they didn’t.

Edited to add – looks like this post got picked up by White Whine, with no link to the resolution post. Here’s my follow up on how Barnes & Noble resolved the issue: Okay. I’m Satisfied.

Everybody needs a birthday hat!
I’m back from a short vacation and, looking at some online blogging I’m being looped in on, I missed a few things. And, guess what? I don’t care. I checked out of legal marketing and checked into being a mom and a wife, and, well, a me. I celebrated. I enjoyed. I didn’t think about you. We went to Disneyland for my birthday, the movies (Mirror Mirror), a play (Mamma Mia!), dinner and a show (Jeff Dunham) with Nat Slavin and Cheryl Bame, and drag-queen bingo. We made hot breakfasts, were on the go-go-go, and even stayed home in our PJs one day. Sure I checked e-mails, and responded to a couple, but the out of office message said it all.

I’ll take care of all non-urgent matters upon my return to the office on April 4th.

It took me all day yesterday to go through my in box and handle the urgent matters. I’m starting to work on my non urgent items. And, at some point, I’ll flip through my reader and see what I missed. It’s good to check out of work and your professional world, and check into your personal existence now and again, even if only for a few days. In fact, it’s a definite necessity in life. I enjoyed it so much, I might do it again this weekend.

I rarely miss a general counsel panel at any conference, but I did miss it last week at the Legal Marketing Association‘s annual conference.

Not to worry, the LMA Tweeters were tweeting away, and Lindsay Griffiths put together an incredible two-part recap.

Change or Die? A General Counsel Program

Part 1

Part 2

Sounds like an incredible program, and, while sorry I wasn’t in the audience, Lindsay did such  a great job in her recaps that I don’t feel as if I missed out on anything.

There were ominous warnings:

There will be new business models that come into place. We’ll build them if you won’t. We don’t need YOU to survive. We need the [legal] industry to survive.” – Jeff Carr of FMC Technologies

Key insights:

… her (Janet Dhillon of JC Penney) job is about balancing her clients’ business objectives with their legal requirements.”

Great stories:

Janet illustrated this idea of staying focused on client intelligence with a story – the day after the Christmas holiday one year, a news story broke about her company, involving a plant in a foreign country. One of their firms emailed them to let them know that they had a partner vacationing in that very country, who was on the ground to assist them if needed. Although they didn’t require his assistance, it was invaluable that the firm had taken the time to stay updated on the issues affecting the company, reach out to them to offer their assistance, and did so even during the holiday season. That has stayed with her.”

Warnings:

The traditional law firm model is dying. Get over it and understand what the new world is going to be.  There will be new business models that come into place. We’ll build them if you won’t. We don’t need YOU to survive. We need the industry to survive.”

And truths:

Quality is not a differentiator; get over it. Quality is the price of admission.”

Go back and read both posts. They’re worth the price of admission.

Last week I was in Texas for the Legal Marketing Association‘s annual conference.

Like any conference, there were some knock-it-out-of-the-ballpark wins (keynote speaker James Kane) and there were some strike-outs.

In talking about one of the sessions that did not go as well as Jim’s, a colleague, who is a consultant to lawyers and law firms, shared:

It’s not okay to suck. Suck less.

That really resonated with me.

But, like most truths, it was followed up by a slap upside my head to make certain that I got the point:

If you, as an in-house person suck, whatever. But if I suck, my kids don’t eat.

It got me thinking. How many times have I, or one of my attorneys, rushed to get that presentation done? How many times have I waited to the last minute to do X or Y?

I’m an in-house marketing director. When I speak at a conference or event to attorneys, or fellow legal marketers, I am not there showing off my wares, balancing offering helpful information and hoping to land some work. I’m there for fun and for free. I’m there to lend a hand.

But that is not fair to the audience or the conference organizers. And it is doing NOTHING for my personal reputation.

I believe the reason that I am still fixated on Jim Kane’s presentation is that I can SEE the time and effort he put into it, and I am so impressed and appreciative of that effort.

Yeah, there were canned parts, which he delivered quite well, but at the end he 100% tailored the presentation to the audience. Not just legal marketers as a whole, but individuals in the audience including Laura Gutierrez, Mark Beese and others.

Jim got a hold of the attendee list and started Googling us. He included us in his closing slides. When he met and shook hands with us he remembered little factoids about who were were, whether or not we were in his closing slides.

Notice I keep saying “we.” Although Jim did not personally reference me, or my stellar job of selling Girl Scout cookies (thanks to everyone who bought some), I felt included because he included people I knew.

He took the time to get it right. And, as an extra “WOW,” please download the loyalty workbook he created for us.

So what to do WE do with this new truth?

Next time you are asked to speak, or meet with a potential new client, or are headed off to the beauty contest, don’t wait until the last minute.  Don’t just update your last presentation and materials. Don’t read the dossier in cab. Don’t wing it.

Do you research. Understand your audience. Take the time and effort that the people in the audience or in the meeting deserve.

Don’t just go through the motions.

Get it right. Knock it out of the ballpark. And, please, don’t suck.

John Byrne and Kristin Sudholz form Drinker Biddle & Reath have fully embraced the ACC Value Challenge into their firm.

  • First alternative fee was a discount. Lawyers still think discounted fees are alternative fees.
  • Clients are looking at many different ways for lawyers/law firms to create values. AFAs are a piece of the puzzle. ACC CLO 2011 Survey Results
  • With the betterment of the economy, lawyers think they can start raising their rates. Clients are not there yet.
  • Budget predictability is driving AFAs.
  • Legal project management is the hot trend in RFPs.
  • Clients and law firms are still weary about AFAs. Lawyers wonder if they can make money; clients wonder if this is a backdoor way into raising rates.

Critical to Success is defining the scope.

  • What is and isn’t included
    • Hours or time frame
    • Tasks or elemets
    • Staffing
    • Expenses
    • How are you going to communicate changes to scope
  • What are you going to do with items outside the defined scope

Risk Collars: A strategy to cover significant overages for the firm or cost savings for client if significantly under expected cost.

Fixed Fees: A flat fee to hande either an entire matter or a whole portfolio of work. Can be particularly useul with more routinized work, especially for a specific cient.

  • Can really work well if you have historic information for your pricing.

Capped Fees: Bill hourly with a hard stop.

Retainers: Seeing a comeback. Can provide budget predictability.

  • Clients are afraid to pick up the phone and call because the clock starts ticking. This can help build the relationship between attorney and client.

Milestone Formula: Fixed feed paid for specific stages of a matter. Have to have a safety net with a risk collar. This AFA pushes the communication. Attorney and client MUST communicate through all stages.

Task-Based Billing: Fixed fees are identified and charged for each specific task in a matter.

Blended Rates: Blend all rates to create an average hourly rate for which all work is charged. OR, blend rates within each category: one rate for partners, one rate for all associates.

Volume Discounts: Do you front end it? Assume you’ll get x-amount of fees, so you start discounting from day one, or you give a rebate and/or apply it towards future bills. Make sure clients can ACCEPT the rebates.

Secondments: Embedding lawyers at the client for a fixed period of time. 20 – 40 hours per week, on site. Can do it during specific periods of time – ie 2 weeks per quarter during reporting season.

Value Billing: Submit bill that shows the total cost ot the firm and ask the client to pay what it thought the matter was worth; trust is the key.

My take away: We over think and over analyze what an alternative fee arrangement is. And, like everything else, it’s about value to, and communication with, our clients.

Took some work, but I left my converesation with Jim Durham and Gina Rubel and have headed over to the Leveraging the Big 4 Consulting Best Practices to Bolster your Business Development Strategies session.

Panelists

Maria Abernethy
Marketing Director
Deloitte

Jill Hulse
Director of Marketing
Moore Van Allen

Mike Higgins
Market Sales & Market Leader
PricewaterhouseCoopers

Kristin Coda
Director of Marketing
Wilson Elser

Moderator
Jonathan Mattson
Chief Marketing & Business Development Officer
Tucker Ellis & West LLP

—

Kristin Coda

Law firms agrowre where accounting firms were 15+ years ago. Lawyers don’t want to be seen as sales people. They don’t know where to begin.

Q. How did the accountants figure this out before the lawyers?

A. They ran the numbers.

Set the goal – grow by 20% – and then go to marketing to back in the “how.”

Top 10 List of What to Do

  1. Business development training.
  2. Client service planning meetings.
    1. Research the client before you even set the meetings.
  3. Got more comfortable and creative in asking for the business.
  4. Teamed together and learned the power of 1.
    1. Working together started paying off. The slice of pie got bigger.
  5. Learned to promote and cross-sell INTERNALLY.
  6. Became out of the box thinkers to out do the competition.
  7. Learned to be problem solvers for clients.
  8. Starting small can produce big results.
  9. Shifted from a “me”-centered culture to a client-centered culture. Became business advisers.
    1. Want to get out in front of the client on what the issues are.
  10. People got really good at focusing. Before doing or supporting anything, had to ask:
    1. Does this advance or enhance the brand? Or,
    2. Does this create a business development opportunity?

Maria Abernethy

Becoming a forward-thinking practice.

Talk to clients. Engage business development team and partners. Give the partners ownership.

RESEARCH. RESEARCH. RESEARCH.

Q. How do you implement into law firms?

A. Start small. Be able to measure it – bring in revenue.

Q. How are they using social media?

A. Webcasting for 9 years. More than 2 million viewers. 1500-2500 attendees. Take a webcast and repurpose it: use it to promote other events; take polls during programs and send out press release after; invite ghost writer to recap; use it as a lead generator based on titles nd questions asked; get market research; and, data analytics.

Mike Higgins

Yes. Mike actually said that people buy from people they KNOW, LIKE and TRUST. Hmmmm.

People are more likely to buy from you if you are talking about them and not about you.

Much better return changing 6 partners than 60 junior associates.

Sales and marketing is the only profession where people don’t think they need to practice – I don’t need to practice the presentation. I shoot from the hip. I don’t need to prepare.

Next up at LMA Conference: Jonathan Michael Bowman, Esq., President and CEO, Clear Picture Leadership©.

Leaders = change agents.

But, really, what other kind of leadership is there?

To lead, you have to be willing to change, to improve it, to make it better. There are no status quo leaders.

It only takes one person to invoke change.

Qualities of Leaders

  • Leaders see things that others do not see.
  • Leaders have to have a vision.
  • Leaders see the extraordinary in ordinary.

Legal marketers are change agents in our firms. We need to go back and be bold.

Big Vision: Make sure that your vision is big enough to be inspirational. Big enough to be noticed.

You might not have all that you need, but you an use the tools you have to invoke that change.

You need the confidence to invoke that change.

Leaders don’t complain about the situation. They go to the problem and fix it. You have to freeze that negative thinking.

You have to create momentum – or recognize it – then grab hold of that momentum and use it to move forward towards the change we want to achieve.

Keynote speaker James Kane is here to talk about loyalty. Why do some people stay, and some people leave? But we’re loving his slide deck – it’s all about getting to know him. You can fan him here on Facebook.

Our brains were going crazy during his presentation because we were finding something similar to ourselves in him. We were finding something we liked in him.

Relationships fall into four categories:

  • Antagonistic – I HATE you. I will write, Tweet and share how much I hate you. We have such a need to be social and a part of, that when
  • Transactional – You do something for me, I pay you for it, we’re square. I don’t owe you anything. We think we should be getting love for what we do, but we’re just fulfilling a contract
  • Predisposed – I like you, but I don’t love you. I’m not expecting anything until the game changes and then I need to make a change.
  • Loyal – The strongest relationship. It’s about forgiveness when we make mistakes. It’s about advocacy.

Loyalty is not a brand. It’s not about rewards programs. You cannot bribe someone to love you.

Loyalty is not about stisfaction. Dogs are loyal. Cats are satisfied.

Relationships with our clients is satisfaction. They are transactional. We do something, they pay us, and they are satisfied. They owe us NOTHING.

Satisfaction is a mood.

Loyalty is a behavior.

Satisfaction is the past. What you did for me yesterday.

Loyalty is about the future. What I will do for you tomorrow.

Human beings live in social communities. We learn from one another.

If we’re going to live in communities, I need to know I can trust you.

The process that builds love within the brain, builds loyalty.

Stages of love:

  • Attraction– romantic, can be familiarity. Attraction is contextual – what we know or what we aspire to be. We desire the familiar.
    • In our world this is called marketing. Get them to notice our firm.
    • Our job is to define/figure out what “attractive” means for our clients
  • Passion – Once we make the choice, the two parties define their interests and are willing to overlook everything else the person does to get their end result. We made a choice and we need to defend it. This is the flower, candy and love notes stage.
  • Pair-bonding – This is when the passion might be waining, and wondering why the attraction is not what it used to be. This is where loyalty kicks in. Do you make my life easier? Do you make my life better?

The challenge for us all is: “Do we make their life better?”

Our clients have an abundance of choices. Are they choosing us because they’ve always chosen us? Are they forgetting about the value you have provided in the past? Are they looking for someone else, today, who can provide the value you once provided and still can?

People don’t want a lot of choice, they just want to have control over making that choice.

LOYALTY = TRUST – BELONGING – PURPOSE

TRUST

We walk into every relationship with the expectation of trust. You can then lose trust.

We think we should get great credit for meeting expectations.

Trust is about managing expectations.

PURPOSE

We want to feel a part of a bigger community. We want to feel that we have impact. We want to feel that we can change the world. We just don’t have the capacity.

When we can bring a sense of purpose to our firms, and thereby our clients, because we can do nothing without our clients. Don’t take credit for charitable activities. Give the credit to your clinets.

BELONGING

Recognition – Do you know who I am? Do I know the partners in my firm, or just their bios? Why should they feel a sense of loyalty to ME, as their marketer, if I don’t know who they are?

Do you know your clients? Are you taking notes about their needs and want? Use social media to get to know who these clients are? Receptionists should know who is walking in the door. Know something about them. Converse with them with that acknowledgement in mind.

Insight – Next challenge is to be insightful. You need to look beyond the obvious.

Most of us are not looking to save money, we’re looking to MAKE money.

You need to take a step into the back of the room and look around and figure out what is going on. Get that 10,000 ft view of what’s going on with your clients and their challenges.

Proactivity – Having insight takes practice. Being proactive is doing something before someone asks. Doing it when someone asks is just courtesy. Anticipate something I didn’t know I needed, and solve the problem before I knew I had it, and you become invaluable.

Inclusion – Solve my problem, but I need to be part of the process.

WWIC – Why Wasn’t I Consulted?

If you need to roll out a new marketing plan, you need to include others in the process. If not, it’s your plan and they can hate it. Hard to hate something that you helped prepare.

Identity – Do I feel that I know who you are? And do I recognize something in me in you?

You can do this by the things you place in your office, or on your website bio, or through your Facebook page or Twitter feed.

Definitely one of the best presentations I’ve ever seen. Guess I’ll have to go and buy the book.

LMA’s Annual Conference is off and running.

Our current President, Alycia Sutor, has asked “So what?” and then challenged us with “What if?”

So what we work for people who are the but of jokes?

But what if we could influence change?

What if we can make them better lawyers, and better people?

What if our center of influence in the legal field can influence that change?

What if we don’t settle on being the authority of legal marketing, but that we can be much more than our jobs and community?

What if we take our experience within our community and take it out into the world? Our experience loving the unloved, managing budgets, accomplishing the impossible with less than 24-hours notice has to be of importance to our communities?

To me, the answer to this and all questions is Tim Corcoran.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDuYXV3VRI8&feature=youtu.be]

PS – What if we all had a sense of humor?

Hey Coolerites. I’m at the LMA Annual conference and starting to tweet from the CMO Summit, one of the three pre-conference sessions.

The full conference begins tomorrow, but the pre-con sessions are hopping. You can follow the feeds over at #lma12 on Twitter (you do not need to be a registered user to follow). If it gets too loud, just click on a single person to follow their thread for that conference.

I’m in the ‘Marketing Technology Trends You Can’t Afford to Ignore.”