We all need a little help sometimes.

Even those who have long been experts in their profession, can feel unprepared for the continuing demands of contact making, client acquisition, and personal marketing.

Building or growing a legal practice is fundamentally an individual effort. At SAGE, we recognize you may not always have the resources, mentoring and support you need — whether you are with a large firm or a small one.

That's why so many professionals come to us for personal coaching.

How Does It Work?

We work one on one with individuals for 10 hours of personal training and coaching to achieve breakthroughs in their personal marketing and professional selling performance.

• You meet, usually by phone conference, with one of our principals for five 1.5 hour coaching sessions that fit your schedule

• You do additional preparation and follow-up for each session, to include recording what we've decided and supplementary readings

Training is conducted by phone and encompasses the same training we conduct for industry-leading law firms.

What You Gain

1) Sharpen your selling/proposal skills

2) Apply our training to your service specialty, defining the types of work on which you will FOCUS for business development

3) Get counsel on specific client and prospect selling situations

4) Develop a personal marketing plan in detail — not a "thought piece," but the specific activities you (or others) will do, the resources you need, and the measureable results you can achieve.

5) Take corrective action with a detailed review of your marketing materials and sales presentations/proposals

6) Obtain personal sales coaching, clinics and brainstorming

You also receive a copy of our book on Building Your Personal Network - for Attorneys, the comprehensive guide to the methods of the Best Business Generators in the legal and other professions.

We work with you in a disciplined and encouraging way to develop your selling skills and create your own personalized marketing program. We guide you to the focus, decisions, and activity that will let you achieve your business building objectives...without anxiety and without wasted effort.

And we do it efficiently too. For we don't start from scratch...rather we build from your current strengths, your business assets, and your experience. And we follow the path of the best rainmakers in the legal profession...the methods we have found consistently work for the top in your field.

Call us to discuss your situation and how SAGE Personal Coaching might help you or someone you know.

Contact Barry Schneider by phone at 630-572-4798 or
by email at bschneider@sageprofessional.com.

Improving Your Sales or Closing Success

We work with both sole practitioners as well as professionals who work for larger firms — all of whom want to improve their ability to generate work.

Here's where we typically see ways for clients to dramatically improve their sales success:

1. Be clear headed and analytical about opportunities
   It is easy for emotions to get embedded in the selling process. Instead, use a disciplined, fact based and systematic scoring system to qualify every opportunity before you engage in a full scale pursuit. Keep qualifying it over and over throughout the selling cycle. For things change: trauma goes away, decision criteria shift and competing priorities arise. This approach keeps surprises to a minimum and your sanity intact. Rate and rank order each opportunity based on a) chemistry, b) degree and urgency of trauma, c) pace of the decision process and d) degree of commitment.
   
2. Recognize "low odds" opportunities and act accordingly
   Wasting time pursuing opportunities that you are not likely to win causes you to miss out on winnable business. You have 3 options in these circumstances: A) Walk away B) Try something dramatically different to win the business and shift the rules C) Invest the appropriate (small) level of energy, effort, emotion and expected value. Then move on.
   
3. No mind-reading or speculation
   There is something about the selling process that turns us into swamis. We guess at the prospects true motives, read great meaning into their statements and make assumptions about the selling process. Instead, ask the client to be precise and specific. Have them tell you how to sell them and win the business. This is why sharpening your interviewing skills is vital. Like a doctor, you need the prospect to be forthcoming about their trauma or you can't help them.
   
4. Let the prospect convince themselves
   Many attorneys believe that selling is convincing somebody to buy your services or products. Instead, find ways for the client to convince themselves. People buy for their own reasons, not ours. Spend most of your sales interview to get the prospect to tell you why they must buy.
   
5. Get a commitment for everything you do
   Many lawyers think of closing as asking for the business. Instead, you want to be closing for commitments from the client that move the sales process along ALL of the time. If they won't make the little commitments, it is likely that the sale is off track and they won't make the final BIG commitment.
   
6. Discuss fees and budget early in the selling process
   After exploring the depth and degree of the prospective client's trauma, discuss the budget. Get this out of the way early using ballpark estimates or fee ranges. Better to face the issue squarely and understand the prospect and client's point of view.