I had a pleasant Fall morning meeting today over a cup of coffee…and learned a thing or two.
Business is business and regardless of the product or service we all have to market and sell. Of course businesses vary but the fundamentals remain the same and I am always interested in how certain businesses are still lagging the rest of the world only because of convention. Step outside of the “box” and there is a whole world out there and many examples to apply.
We were discussing legal services. Law is a service and therefore needs to be packaged, marketed, and sold like any service. Why not? I don’t know all the details of providing legal services but I know a good bit about how to market and sell a service and we had an interesting conversation about leveraging all of the new sales 2.0 tools and social media tools…yes, can you believe that?
My dad was a MD and when I think about it in retrospect he had no clue about business although he was by definition an entrepreneur as a sole practice owner. Yet, he had no idea about how to package his services to grow his practice. What a shame, right? He could have done great work and prospered together…instead he just bumped along.
I think the new generation of doctors and lawyers are getting more business savvy but they still have a way to go.
There is no reason not to apply the best business practices regardless of the product.
“Brick”
Sales and Business Strategist
Bethesda, MD 20814
www.jebrickman.com
Brick,
Both law and medicine have run their businesses under the scarcity marketing model, that is, their services and information they provide are in short supply. Just as the only restaurant in town doesn’t have to have the best of anything, doctors and lawyers have long enjoyed the benefits of scarcity marketing.
Unfortunately, this “success” was mistaken for business savvy when indeed very, very few docs know anything about business (as a doc myself, I can attest).
The new era of Web 2.0 and social media now provides instant information about anything. Armed with alternative sources of information, the consumer no longer must depend upon the doctor or the lawyer for information. The scarcity model is slowly eroding and forcing both docs and lawyers (I am married to one)….to learn marketing, just like the rest of the business world.
Nice post.
Randy
Thanks Randy! You are not the example I was making reference to as you can teach me a thing or two about being business savvy. Cheers, jeb
Very interesting reading Jon.
Hi John, thank you sir.