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Legal Marketers Bookshelf: Top Picks from Peers
Looking to bone up on your legal marketing wisdom? Need credentialed backup for your marketing plans? A quick survey of favorite law firm marketing books points to several authors you should consider for your law firm marketing library.
I recently conducted a quick-and-dirty e-mail survey* of a select group of law firm marketers and consultants to get a read on what they read. More specifically, I asked these thought leaders to name their favorite marketing/sales/strategy books that I could recommend to marketers out there in the trenches. What I got back was a long list as many different favorites emerged. Two author names, however, came up again and again.
Leading the list: Malcolm Gladwell for his popular business books The Tipping Point
At first I was surprised that Gladwell was appearing on the favorites list of so many legal marketers, but his books, after all, are best-selling business books and written in an entertaining story telling style. That legal marketers, who are often out in front at their firms in terms of business thinking, would enjoy and look to apply Gladwell’s observations to their own situations then is not so surprising after all. In fact, I found Blink, subtitled "The Power of Thinking without Thinking," to have a huge impact on my own approach to marketing, when learning how quickly and subconsciously we all make split-second decisions based on the tiniest of cues.
Maister may be less known in the pop business press, but has attained guru status as author, speaker, blogger, consultant on the topic of professional services management. The Trusted Advisor is viewed as the bible for any professional services provider. A good habit for law firms would be to give every new hire a copy to be used as a handbook for his/her client service career. That law firm marketers are reading both these authors is good news for their firms and the clients they serve.
Below is the summary of the survey results.
The Top Ten (multiple nominations)
Click on (or mouse over) any book title for more information.
1. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
2. The Trusted Advisor
3. The Woman Lawyer's Rainmaking Game: How to Build a Successful Law Practice
4. Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing
5. How to Win Friends & Influence People
6. Legal Business Development: A Step by Step Guide
7. SPIN Selling
8. Client at the Core: Marketing and Managing Today's Professional Services Firm
9. Move the Sale Forward: Position Yourself and Your Business to Make Things Happen (Taking Control)
10. The Law Firm Associate's Guide to Personal Marketing and Selling Skills--Trainer's Manual
Also Recommended (single nominations)
Change Your Questions, Change Your Life: 7 Powerful Tools for Life and Work
In Search of Excellence
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't
The rainmaking machine: Marketing, planning, strategies, and management for law firms
The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: Violate Them at Your Own Risk!
Influence Without Authority
Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In
Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators: From Idea to Execution
The End of Advertising as We Know It
Zag: The Number One Strategy of High-Performance Brands
Rainmaking Made Simple: What Every Professional Must Know
- Tom PetersMarketing the Law Firm: Business Development Techniques
Influence: Science and Practice (4th Edition)
Even Eagles Need a Push: Learning to Soar in a Changing World
Hope Is Not a Strategy: The 6 Keys to Winning the Complex Sale
Trust-Based Selling: Using Customer Focus and Collaboration to Build Long-Term Relationships
*Twenty out of 40 persons responded to this survey
June 2007.
