John Hellerman presented "Creating Thought Leaders: Influence GCs and Get Hired with Strategic Thought Leadership" at LMA's Southern California chapter on March 20, 2013.

1. Creating Thought Leaders:
Influence GCs and Get Hired with
Strategic Thought Leadership
John Hellerman
Hellerman Baretz Communications
LMA Southern California
March 20, 2013

2. State of the Union
Competition is intense. In 2008, Fortune 1000 companies used
an average of 55 law firms. In 2011, that number decreased to
46 – a 16% decline.
Average Law Firms Fortune 1000 Companies Are
Using
2008
55
2011
46
Source: The BTI Consulting Group, “The Attorney Hiring Zone,” 2009 and 2011

3. The 4 P’s of Product Marketing

4. The 4 C’s of Service Marketing

5. The Magic 3
Results
Finding
Market Access
Reputations
Knowing
Differentiation
Relationships
Choosing
Selection

6. The Branding Process
A professional firm becomes
branded by the reputation and
performance of its professionals
over time.
The more lawyers with credible reputations within your firm,
the better.

7. The Prism
Talent is the Product
A Professional Service Firm is a
Product Marketer
Help Your Firm Attract the Best Talent
& Help Your Talent Win New Business
(You’ll Generate More of Both)

8. The Purpose
Use uncontrolled, and therefore
credible, participatory channels to
create, influence and maintain
LUCRATIVE RELATIONSHIPS.
“To make my firm money”

9. The Approach
STOP: “Doing” Public Relations
vs.
START: “Using” Public Relations
This is not about creating clips for clips sake. Ask yourself:
How is what I’m doing going to help my firm create,
influence or maintain a lucrative relationship?
If it won’t help, tell your firm you’re going to save money by
spending its resources elsewhere.

10. What Do You Think?
Rank these activities on a scale of 1 to 10.
Activity
Speaking at a Prominent Event
In-Person Casual Meeting
Practicing at a Well-Regarded Firm
Featured Subject in an Article
Referral from a Peer
Advertising
Authoring an Article in the Trade Press
Quoted as an Expert by the Media
In-Person Scheduled Introductory Meeting
Speaking at a Small Education Seminar

11. Research Findings

12. The Attorney Hiring Zone
SALE
(1) Peer Referral: 7.5
(2) In-Person Scheduled Introductory Meeting: 6.1
Personal
Knowledge Activities
(3) Quoted as an Expert by the Media: 5.5
(4) Presenting at a Small Education Seminar: 5.4
(5) Practicing at a Well-Regarded Firm: 5.3
(6) Authoring an Article in the Trade Press: 5.1
Credentialing Activities
(7) Speaking at a Prominent Event: 4.8
(8) Feature Article: 4.1
(9) Advertising: 3.4
(10) In-Person Casual Meeting: 3.3
Awareness Activities

13. Personal Knowledge Activities
Peer Referrals Are Ranked
Highest at 7.5 Because of Trusted Third Parties;
In-Person Introductory Meetings Are Second at 6.1 Because
of Internal, Self-Screening
• Peer Referral: 57% of corporate counsel report they will consider
hiring an attorney based on a single peer referral.
• In-Person Introductory Meetings: Good, old-fashioned hustling.
• Discussion Point: BTI did not address how attorneys are getting inperson introductory meetings. How are you doing that? What tactics
are you using to get these meetings?

14. Credentialing Activities
Credentialing Activities Convey An Implicit Endorsement
From Sources in Positions of Trust
• Practicing at Top Firms ≠ Clear Path to Hire.
• Corporate Counsel is Watching
 Corporate Counsel
 The Wall Street Journal
• Speaking at a Seminar/Conferences Might be Good…
if You
Make it Good.
• Attorney Bylines and the “Pay-to-Play” Factor.
• Influence on Steroids: Spread the Word and the Peer Factor.
• Sharing is Caring: Marketing Value Remains.
• The Cumulative Effect: Third Time is a Charm.

15. Awareness Activities
Awareness Activities Can Raise General Awareness of a Law
Firm or Individual Attorney, But They Do Not Serve as
Credentials Because of the Lack of a Screening Function
by a Trusted Third Party
• Advertising Gets You Known, Not Hired.
• There is Nothing Casual About Business:
In-Person Meetings Count.
• “Me, Me, Me…”: Feature Articles.
Make

16. BTI/HBC Marketing Sales
Pyramid
1.
It typically takes 7 follow-up calls to get the GC to agree to a meeting
because GCs routinely reject requests for meetings to test for follow-up.
Astonishingly, 90 percent of attorneys fail to follow-up at all after the first
rejection!
2.
PR is a "credentialing activity" more so than an "awareness activity" and it
takes as little as 3 quotes in respected publications to equal the trusted
value of an actual referral by a peer, which is the number one activity for
receiving hiring consideration.
2.
To GCs, feature articles about an attorney or the firm are only slightly
more valuable then ads. This is due to the fact that they are not clear
about how subjects for features are chosen and a sense it has little to do
with actual merit (unlike being quoted as expert).

17. In Practice

18. Entering The Attorney
Hiring Zone
Maximizing Peer
Referrals & Scoring InPerson Meetings
Mastering the Touch:
Thought Leadership
Laying the Foundation:
Awareness Activities
•
How do you encourage
peers to refer business to
your firm?
•
Surveys
•
Advertising
•
Third-party commentary
•
Sponsorships
Stepped-up personalized
attention is key.
•
Byline articles
•
“Pay-for-play” media and
speaking opportunities
•
Press mentions
•
Key is creative, client- or
industry- centric
advertising.
•
•
Client service
•
•
LinkedIn and social media
connections
Client alerts
•
Awards and rankings

19. Current Marketing Best Practices
Involve “Appropriate Touching”
Social Networks
Professional Networks
Facebook created the “poke” button
to spur friendly connections on the
social network.
Fostering professional relationships,
which lead to hiring, requires the
professional equivalent of the “poke”
– appropriate touching.

20. The Market: What Advanced
Firms Are Doing
• Paradigm Shift at Most Sophisticated Law Firms.
• Business Development “Analysts” Being Employed.
• Proactive, Industry-Specific Campaigns.
• Comprehensive Business Intelligence.

21. Market & Business Intelligence
•
•
•
Example of comprehensive
market intelligence available for
law firms to target business
development campaigns to
specific industries.
Market intelligence memos from
ShiftCentral include daily news
articles, statistics of interest,
companies in the news, etc.
HBC also regularly prepares
litigation/corporate review and
analysis memos, and LinkedIn
analysis of key in-house counsel
and C-Suite executives, to
prepare clients for meetings with
prospects.

22. Creating Opportunities
Energy spent generating interviews leading to third-party quotes
should be shifted to generate speaking and publishing
opportunities.
Doing so will generate more of everything over time.

23. Think in Campaigns
• Focus on narrow, niche issues.
• Position your talent as “experts.”
• Create blogs, white papers, webinars
podcasts, etc. around an issue.
Benefits:
• Strategic
• Easy to Measure & Manage
• Relevant to Management
• Attracts Clients
• Material for Reprinting and Distributing (PRFueled Biz Dev)

24. Leverage Success
These aren’t just nice placements. They are excuses to
connect with people. Use them as valuable selling tools
that create, influence, and maintain lucrative relationships.
(Create only what is worth reprinting and sharing.)

25. Branded Content
Bringing expertise to the
market is made safer
when firms do it through
branded and strategic
content.
Talent can walk;
firm-owned,
branded content can’t.

26. For Immediate Release
• Make getting the info easy.
• Give reporters options.
• Don’t hold back information
they are going to get in time
anyway.
• Recognize the credentialing
power of your prospects’ social
networks; a reprint from an
unknown media outlet referred
by a “friend” can be more
powerful than one from the
Wall Street Journal he finds on
his own.

27. Social Media
The whole idea of social media is not so much to promote
yourself, per se, but to:
• PROMOTE THE IDEAS THAT ARE VALUABLE TO WHAT
YOU DO.
o Question, therefore, is: HOW to become part of OTHER social networker's
stories (i.e., the online dialog that swirls around news and events);
• Do that by identifying the people that are relevant to the people
you want to influence, and enabling them with content that is:
EASY TO SHARE.
o And relax, because that's fundamentally still all the things you're good at:
developing relationships by pitching really worthwhile and interesting stories
that are EASY TO TELL.

28. The Web
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Consider the Opportunity: The web has radically transformed the way we get our
news, and every day, more and more people are relying on alternate online sources
(websites, blogs, social networking sites, etc.) to obtain information.
Target Properly: If you're going to do social media, do it correctly and be strategic or you'll sell yourself short, so target the right bloggers, Twitters, and other outlets
that are relevant to your purpose.
Package it Up: Give bloggers and others a rich array of information by offering
other experts' to speak to; give links to other compelling websites, articles, and
related graphics, etc.
Pitch it: Contact your targets and share the credible, compelling, creative content
you've put together.
Push it: This is the key. Once the story appears, what do you do with it Share it
with other bloggers and other outlets. Get them to pull it apart and re-report it.
Circle Back: Make contact with the original outlet and let them know everything
you did to promote their work. By showing the value you added they'll want to work
with you again.

29. Compensation Survey

30. Compensation Survey

31. Case Study:
Madison Ave Insights
•
Launched a creative, strategic
blog on target industry issues.
•
Format brings in the industry
with weekly Q&A blog posts on
high-level industry issues.
•
Social media strategy.
•
Sending direct messages and
emails with blog posts of
interest, blog launch
announcement, etc.
•
Conducted industry survey to
coincide with the blog launch.
•
Coordinated blog launch around
leading industry event.

32. Evangelize SMART Leadership as
a Biz Dev Tool
Transform Your Firm’s Reluctance into Expectation. Make It See
Sharable, Measurable, and Relevant Thought Leadership as an
Opportunity Rather than an Obligation.

33. Questions & Answers

34. John Hellerman
Hellerman Baretz Communications LLC
202.274.4751
jhellerman@hellermanbaretz.com
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/johnhellerman