Expert Skill: Make a Recommendation

Go ahead, show them the way.

TL:DR

One: Stop asking "What do you want to do?"

Two: Embrace calculated risk.

Three: Recognize the win.

Marketers, want to escape the order-taker trap and be seen as an expert in your firm?

Banish this phrase from your vocabulary: "What do you want to do?"

Missed Opportunities

Too often, in-house marketers act as if client service means showing lawyers options and then asking what they want. Yet that's what restaurant servers do, not trusted advisors.

Instead, make a recommendation. It's an expert skill that will transform your role in a firm.

Yes, it can be helpful to present options. That way lawyers know you've considered possibilities and recognize multiple paths forward, each with pros and cons.

Too many marketers, however, stop there and ask the lawyer to choose. That's a missed opportunity.

Embrace Calculated Risk

It's powerful to recommend a preferred course of action and share why you prefer it. That's what sets you apart as an expert. Doing so requires marketers to take a certain calculated risk.

While many marketers appear focused on the "risk," which is natural enough given our clientele, I encourage you to focus on what's "calculated." You know your lawyer, firm, audience, and circumstances. You understand what the goal or objective is. You have creative ideas about how to achieve it. And most of the time, you believe in the merits of one idea above all the others.

Sure, their questions may feel like a deposition; that confirms you have their attention.

Recognize the Win

Is there risk? Yep, a lawyer may push back. They may ask uncomfortable questions. They may poke holes in your idea. (It's not personal; it's what they've been trained to do!) They may not like it.

Recognize all that as a win.

Why? Because you're getting engagement. Sure, their questions may feel like a deposition; that confirms you have their attention.

Harness that attention to build on your idea and improve it or move to another, better idea for that particular lawyer, group, or instance. Either way, you win, because you gave your client something to react to, engage with, and adapt a version of that feels like their own.

Ultimately, we want to give lawyers the materials and platform to go engage with the world, connect with their target market(s), and build relationships that lead to new, satisfying work. The outcomes are out of our hands. But the process of getting there is very much in our hands. And it all begins with making an expert recommendation.