Law Marketing
Bibliography
Reviews of books on client development
for lawyers and law marketing professionals
Making Rain: The Secrets of
Building
Lifelong Client Loyalty
By Andrew Sobel
John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, NJ, 2003
Hardcover, 238 pages, $27.95
Reviewed by David M. Freedman
In
Making Rain, Andrew Sobel's follow-up to his first book Clients
for Life (Simon & Schuster), he identifies three keys to earning lifelong client loyalty:
(1) Give them great advice.
(2) Exceed their expectations.
(3) Build trust.
The first chapter of Making Rain is a confusing introduction to those three key ideas, with hazy, overlapping definitions. For example, one important element of the first key, giving great advice, is going "beyond the agreed-upon value" and adding "surprise value." This sounds very much like the second key, exceeding expectations.
Most of the book is an elaboration on the three keys to earning client loyalty. Sobel uses anecdotes from his consulting experience and from his varied knowledge of world history to try to illuminate his theme. Some of the anecdotes are right on point, some are far wide of the point; some are illuminating but most are superficial. In fact, Sobel wouldn't have been too far off if he had named his book 101 Superficial Anecdotes About Building Client Loyalty.
In general, there is not much here that is fresh, nothing at all that could be considered breakthrough. Still, some chapters are useful for reviewing fundamentals that you've already been exposed to in many other books, seminars, and training courses. Chapter 7, for example, sets forth "six major factors that influence whether and to what extent [a prospective client might like you] at a first meeting." They are: similarity, familiarity, positive association, praising what's good, openness, and rapport. Each of the six factors is supported by research and anecdotes.
Chapter 8, titled "The Myth of Meeting Client Expectations," offers four useful "principles that provide you with the broadest possible palette for adding value to your clients." The first principle goes like this:
Clients always have hidden or unarticulated expectations that have nothing to do with quantitative business objectives. [Great advisors] have the sensitivity to recognize them even when the client cannot or will not express them.
Chapter 15 is useful too: Titled "How to Identify Client Needs," it presents "seven strategies that can help you get in touch with your clients' needs." In a review of this book that was published in Business Law Today, reviewer Richard Perez points out:
Sobel places special emphasis on the need for the...adviser to re-cast the problems faced by its client. For example, one successful...adviser was able to establish a long-term and multi-million-dollar business relationship by re-casting a client's issue in broad terms (fundamental management failures) instead of focusing on the narrow issue that the client initially asked the adviser to address (compensation issues leading to attrition).*
* Business Law Today, January/February 2004, page 43, ABA (Chicago). Perez is of counsel at Akerman Senterfitt in Miami.
Sobel offers several methods of identifying clients' unarticulated needs, including these four:
- Conduct industry research.
- Invest extra time to get to know your client.
- Talk to your client's customers.
- Use comparative benchmarks.
Again, none of these strategies is seminal or ground-breaking, but they enunciate sound fundamentals.
Chapter 18 is one of the most valuable: "Five Ways to Grow Your Client Relationships." Most notable are the following three:
- Migrate to new issues where your expertise is valuable.
- Migrate to working for other executives in the same company.
- Help your client with implementation [after you give them great advice].
Because the book is loosely organized – disjointed, actually – you can jump around to chapters that pique your curiosity, maybe learn a few new tricks, and brush up on fundamentals.
What was
he thinking?
A not-so-minor quibble:
The book's title is emblematic of its disjointed nature. "Making rain" is not the same thing as
"building
lifetime client loyalty," as far as I know. Making rain is about
bringing in new clients or new business. Sobel himself says, "A rainmaker snags the big clients and closes the big deals." Building
loyalty, on the other hand, is about nurturing existing clients, growing
existing business. They're two different things. Why are they treated as
equivalent in the title? Maybe "making rain" is one of those buzz phrases
that is guaranteed to sell books these days.
The theme of the book is, however, building client loyalty.
About the
author
Andrew Sobel has spent 23 years as a business strategy consultant to
senior executives in over 30 countries. His clients range from large
public companies like Citigroup and Cox Communications to professional
service firms including Hewitt Associates and Fulbright & Jaworski.
Before starting his own consultancy, he spent 15 years at Gemini
Consulting (now Cap Gemini Ernst & Young). Many of Sobel's published
articles are posted on his website: www.andrewsobel.com.
About the reviewer
David M. Freedman (www.freedman-chicago.com) is a Chicago-based writer and
media relations consultant, specializing in the
fields of law and finance. He won a Your
Honor Award in 2001 from the Legal Marketing Association for excellence in
public relations.
NAVIGATION
Return to LMB
home page
About the author
About the reviewer
CONTACT INFORMATION
Law Marketing Info
390 Flora Place
Highland Park, Illinois 60035
Phone 847-204-6848
Contact Freedman by e-mail
Under Your Byline
How to get your bylined articles published—in the publications
that matter most
A handbook in PDF format. Available as a free download at www.byline7.com
© 2005-2011 David M. Freedman
Posted 2/3/05