Bissett Bullet: You Only Call When You Need Me

Today’s Bissett Bullet: “Strategic partners and influencers are often easily forgotten unless you want something from them. If you need a referral or a brand lift, they’re your best friend, but be honest with yourself for a moment. Between such occasions, how often do you reach out to them?”

By Martin Bissett

They are human too. They may have families too and they’re not immune to struggle or the pressures of everyday life. Picking up the phone to check on them when you don’t need anything in return builds loyalty, strengthens relationships and ensures that they’re even more predisposed to offering you new opportunities and new referrals than they were previously.

Today’s To-Do:

Make this a regular to-do. Add checking in with strategic partners to your calendar at regular intervals.

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Three Ways to Evaluate Firm Culture

Hand drawing a rainbow-colored 3Consider this on your path toward partner.

By Martin Bissett
Passport to Partnership

This second C is a stormy and choppy one, often fraught with political icebergs but navigated diplomatically and with maturity, will lead you through.

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Case Study on Culture

Deborah had done well. She was bridging the firm’s culture gap and fulfilling its desire to be seen as an equal opportunities employer by becoming the practice’s standout rising star.

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Bissett Bullet: Are You Meeting The Right People?

Today’s Bissett Bullet: “If you’re not talking to the buyer, you’re talking to someone who will sell you (or not) to the buyer, but without your passion and expertise.”

By Martin Bissett

It is well known that kings talk with kings, or queens with queens, or heads of state with heads of state. If marketing is to create new opportunities for us, make sure it does so with the right people.

Today’s To-Do:

Look at the next three appointments in your diary for meeting with new prospective clients. Are you meeting with a board member, or founder or majority shareholder in each case?

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Five Tips for Strengthening Firm Culture

four colleagues chatting around a water cooler

Make it work for you.

By Martin Bissett
Passport to Partnership

Cultural issues are dynamic, very broad and unique in each firm. As such it is a challenge to summarize them accurately and comprehensively.

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From our research, however, the wise choice for anyone wishing to get their passport to partnership appears to be to study

  • their firm’s existing culture,
  • that of its senior individuals and
  • that of those who have the ear of those senior individuals

to understand not only the route to partnership, but the terrain that they need to cross too.
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Bissett Bullet: Three Little Words

Today’s Bissett Bullet: “Which three words would you use to describe your firm and the work you do for clients? If you struggle to give an immediate and instinctive answer, then this would suggest an onward problem in articulating it to clients.”

By Martin Bissett

Why not ask for this input from existing clients? Asking clients what it is you do for them in terms of outcomes will enable you to understand their perception of the firm and what they might say to a potential referral.

This also provides insight into what they value about the service you provide, which is a critical retention tool, especially if they are themselves what you would consider to be your ideal client. Their story and how you’ve helped them can then be leveraged within your marketing messaging to help you attract more Grade A clients.

Today’s To-Do:

Pick up the phone to a Grade A client. Ask them how they would describe you in three words to a fellow business owner and find out which they feel is the most valuable outcome you have achieved for them.

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