Marketing

I frequently mentor Certified Legal Nurse Consultants who are challenged by the demands that go with their having created successful CLNC^® businesses with lots of cases and lots of attorney-clients.

Many CLNC^® consultants try to do everything themselves because they feel no one can provide the CLNC^® services to their attorney-clients the way they do. That’s what I thought when I first started my legal nurse consulting business and, it’s true. However, I quickly learned that if I hire the right CLNC^® subcontractor, that person might do some things better. I wouldn’t be where I am today without the many CLNC^® consultants who bring their unique expertise to my legal nurse consulting business.

From the beginning, you want to build a network of CLNC^® subcontractors who will help you offer a wider range of expertise to your attorney-clients. This is the smart way to increase your client list, your caseload and your CLNC^® business revenue.

Subcontracting ensures that as you take on more cases in different specialties, and add more attorney-clients, that you will continue to bring accurate and cost-effective opinions to the table. As you continue to promote your business more aggressively, you will still have time for yourself, which is why you got into business for yourself in the first place.

According to the LA Daily Journal, “On average, a nurse working at a hospital makes $40,000 annually, according to the American Nursing Association, while legal nurse consultants can make $200,000 a year or more if they consult full time….$400,000 a year for an established legal nurse consulting firm is not unheard of.”

There is only one way you can possibly earn $400,000 a year for your legal nurse consulting business: by leveraging time through other CLNC^® consultants.

Leveraging is the principle of using other people’s time, energy, talents, money, knowledge and effort to achieve your desired goals faster than you could on your own. Time and brain power are your two major assets. You can’t control time and can only work so many hours a day no matter how energetic you are. You have to leverage time with CLNC^® subcontractors.

Billionaire oil tycoon J. Paul Getty once said, “I would rather earn one percent of 100 people’s efforts than 100 percent of my own.” That’s leveraging in a nutshell. Subcontracting is a way of leveraging your time, knowledge and efforts.

Larry Frace, RN, CLNC shared this with me about subcontracting.

“I cannot believe that I have been a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant for nine years and it took me eight of those years before I started using Certified Legal Nurse Consultant subcontractors. I must be a slow learner because I vividly remember Vickie saying in the CLNC^® Certification Program nine long years ago, that we all should consider utilizing CLNC^® subcontractors in our business. All I can say at this point is better late than never. I wanted to take my CLNC^® business to the next level and wanted to create my dream team by using CLNC^® subcontractors. Looking back now it was really quite simple to do.

I wanted my utilization of subcontractors to be something special and different. I wanted a dream team. Enter my PEA-POD Concept – I wanted all my CLNC^® subcontractors to feel that they were a part of a team, like Peas in a Pod. The POD would be my company acting as the Point Of Distribution of cases that I would obtain from marketing to attorneys; however, now my marketing focus would be showcasing the combined experience of ten CLNC^® consultants with well over 240 years of nursing experience!

My marketing package turned into a 25-page portfolio that I now send out along with Ghirardelli chocolates, educating attorneys how they will obtain ‘Sweet Results’ if they choose to use my company’s ‘Dream Team!’ I keep in contact with my CLNC^® subcontractors by group teleconferencing once a month and emailing them weekly at first and now as needed. You guessed it…the title of my emailing is PEA-POD PONDERINGS. What makes this concept dear to me however are the PEAS and how we connect with each other.

Professional and passionate CLNC^® consultants

Encouraging each other to take,

Action steps each day to achieve,

Success with spectacular results!

Avoid your fear of subcontracting. Get rid of your own stinking thinking! As I stated above, utilizing CLNC^® subcontractors is a simple way to expand your business by taking it to the next level. Once you decide to use CLNC^® subcontractors, plant that idea firmly in your mind and take action in order to cultivate your decision to grow your own PEA POD!”

This is the smart way to expand your CLNC^® business. Start building your network of CLNC^® subcontractors today.

Success Is Inside!

Like most women, I’m a sucker for a gift with purchase (GWP) at a makeup counter. I never met a GWP offer I could refuse, so I try to steer clear of the mall when I know they’re being offered. Tom’s been shopping with me so many times that if I forget to ask for my GWP, he’ll often pipe in before we close the transaction with “is there a gift with that?”

I have a great sales rep, Lisa, who I’ve known for a long time. Once, she tried to sell me a new product which I refused. To my surprise, when I got home that very product was in my bag! That’s right, the actual product, not the small sample of it. She’d even tucked in a note telling me she was sure I would love it. I had no choice but to experience it and now I’m a believer. That free gift turned out not to be free at all because I love this product so much I’ll probably be buying it for the rest of my life or its life.

This same marketing strategy works for your legal nurse consulting business too. You should be educating your attorney-clients about every one of the 32 CLNC^® services you offer. If they’re stuck on using the same 3-5 CLNC^® services, gift them, and I don’t just mean a small sample. Go ahead and do that whole set of requests for production, (not just 5 examples of what you are able to do). Remember not to bill them for it, but remember the small note that reminds them that this time it’s a gift. And this is a gift that should bring you a huge return. If you do it well, the attorney will be hooked and expecting it (for your regular fee of course) on the next case and every case thereafter.

I am certain that if Lisa had never given me the product, I would never have tried it. She is smart enough to know that sometimes even a sample is not good enough. I had to fully experience the product to fully appreciate it. One of those tiny two-use samples wouldn’t have converted me like having the full-blown experience.

If you believe strongly in what you have to offer, you’ll find a way to get a CLNC^® GWP into the hands of your attorney-clients. Create and deliver your CLNC^® GWP today. Warning – if your attorney-clients like it too much, you may not have time for your own shopping anymore.

Success Is Inside!

The other day Tom and I went to purchase a new mattress. We thought it was time for a change and that a rainy afternoon was a good time to start looking. We’d already done our homework so we knew what we wanted. The first store we went into, the sole salesperson reluctantly left his seat at the counter only after we struggled in from the rain, shook off and folded our umbrellas. It was still two hours before closing according to the sign on the door, so I wondered if he figured we weren’t serious shoppers, although who else would be out in a hard rain? He answered our questions, let us roam about the store unattended and didn’t really try to sell us anything.

We left and drove about three blocks to the next store. Even before we had the umbrellas wrapped up a young salesperson named Tiffany walked up and introduced herself. She asked what we were looking for and patiently heard us out. After helping us with the mattress set, she inquired about other products we might be interested in as well as any concerns we might have. She complimented us on our choice, told us why it was different from similar sets and spent a lot of time with us without exerting any pressure tactics.

She was so good that before we left the store, we’d not only laid on almost every mattress they had, we’d also tried out all their recliners and added one of those to our growing list. I had to draw the line when I heard her telling Tom that they made a matching cup and snack holder for the recliner. When we made our final purchase she checked the store’s inventory and told us that while the recliner could be delivered the next day it would be a week before she could arrange delivery of the mattress set. She offered to send over the floor model along with a complimentary set of sheets to let us sleep on it as a test until ours could be delivered. We walked out of the store the proud new owners of not only a mattress but also a new recliner, a reading lamp and some other accessories, a not inconsiderable sale for a rainy afternoon.

On our scheduled delivery date, Tiffany arrived at our house just after the delivery truck. She supervised the load-in and helped set up everything. After the delivery crew left Tiffany stayed to orient us to everything and to go over our invoice to show us what had been delivered and what was still outstanding. The next day she called to see how we’d slept and if we had any questions or needed any adjustments. She also updated us on the delivery date for our mattress.

I was struck not just by how good her service was, but by how far she went above what I would have considered normal or even great customer service. How often do you walk into a store and have to struggle to capture the attention of a salesperson or even pry them off their cell phone to work with you? Here was a woman who not only took charge of the sale from the minute we walked in the store, but did everything she could to make our experience a memorable one.

As a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant, do you do the same for your attorney-clients and prospects?

• Do you offer a seamless experience from the time you meet them, up to and after you deliver your work product?
• Do you offer additional CLNC^® services that will benefit the case?
• Do you assess whether you can provide something more (such as articles on the topic) to the attorney right away, and before you deliver your final work product?
• Have you followed up to see if the attorney-client has all the information that she needs and to answer any questions she has after reading your legal nurse consulting work product?

Next time you find yourself working with an attorney-client or -prospect, ask yourself whether or not you’re delivering “Tiffany-quality” service.

There’s a movie called Pirate Radio about the “offshore” radio stations that broadcast rock and roll and pop music into England. This movie has one of the best soundtracks I’ve heard in years and I asked Tom to put a copy in my Christmas stocking (I’m listening to it now). The movie is about the antics of one of the merry bands of radio pirates who floated on ships just outside of England’s territorial waters and blasted rock and roll music to the British public.

Believe it or not, in the ‘60s the BBC restricted the types of music the British could hear over the radio. In response, these rollicking and swinging bands of pirate entrepreneurs took it upon themselves to fill a gap in the radio market. The featured ship experienced smooth sailing until it hit a business “iceberg” and the ship sunk.

While the Pirate Radio ship did not sink from an iceberg, it did sink. This movie got Tom and me talking about the traveling Titanic artifact exhibition we have seen and the timeless and valuable business lessons Certified Legal Nurse Consultants can learn from the tragic events of the Titanic 90 years ago (besides the value of being onboard with Leonardo DiCaprio).

Your Business Is a Treasure

You enter the Titanic exhibit through a dimly lit room and walk past a large model of the ship as it sits today, broken and rusting on the bottom of the North Atlantic surrounded by treasures that have come to rest on the bed of the ocean. Here, on the museum floor, sit two rows of dishes half buried in sand – the wooden crate they were stored in long ago eaten away by the ocean. Over there is a crushed light fixture from the ceiling of a stateroom and here sits a ceramic sink, all recovered from the debris field surrounding the great ship. A hidden speaker system plays submarine sounds, adding to the chilling undersea effect and setting the mood for the exhibit to come.

Business Lesson #1 – One day you will retire. How will you remember your CLNC^® business – as a failure or as a success story? Will your mistakes become Titanic-size failures or will you learn from them and make corrections? Will something good come from the business treasures revealed by lessons learned? Amazing lessons lead to a new and higher levels of success for your legal nurse consulting business.

You Bear the Captain’s Burden of Trust

In the next exhibit room you see photographs of the passengers and crew. The black and white photos show stern looking men and women, sweet, well-dressed children, proud sailors and crew members. None had any idea of the tragedy ahead of them. They believed the ship was unsinkable and trusted in the White Star Line and their captain. In fact, the captain’s reputation was so strong that several of the passengers refused to sail with anyone else, booking passage only on ships under his command.

Business Lesson #2 – Your job is to steer your CLNC^® business ship wisely and to lead wisely. Outstanding leadership and knowledge will give you a ship full of loyal, trusting attorney-clients not to mention CLNC^® subcontractors and employees. Never betray their trust. One betrayal of trust can sink the business relationship. It may not be the Titanic, but when you consider that a single attorney-client can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to you, that’s a lot of gold left at the bottom of the ocean. Your subcontractors are needed to help keep your ship on course and making “all possible speed.”

Technology Doesn’t Guarantee Success

Next you see a large photo of the room where the Titanic was designed, along with shots of the ship under construction. It took 3½ years to build this engineering marvel, the largest ship of its day. Revolutionary advances in ship and engine design were developed to make the Titanic unsinkable.

Business Lesson #3 – You can create a modern, state-of-the-art business enterprise using every technology available, but as much as I love technology, it is only an aid. Attorneys need strong analysis to keep their cases from sinking. All the computers, software, smartphones, etc. are tools to be used, not substitutes for critical thinking and communication.

Glitz and Glamour Are Only Skin Deep

The exhibit recreates the level of comfort first-class passengers enjoyed:

1. Full-size staterooms, the largest, most comfortable rooms ever built on a ship, complete with running water and electric lights, a rarity in 1912.
2. A Parisian café, along with gourmet menus and manifests showing the diverse array of fresh and exotic foodstuffs stocked on board.
3. The grand wooden staircase with ballroom music playing in the background and a rescued cherub bearing witness to the ship’s former glory.

In today’s dollars, a first-class ticket would have cost as much as $78,000. The passengers truly sailed in luxury never before seen on a ship, yet, the Titanic was rushed into service and not all its systems and services had been tested. The opulence belied hidden problems.

Business Lesson #4 – The first impression is so powerful that you want every aspect of your legal nurse consulting business to look good. To an outsider your business may look solid and even glamorous. But as the captain of your ship, only you know where your weaknesses lie. For example, are your medical-related case reports filled with substance or just appear glitzy? As long as you can identify weaknesses and remedy them, you can still maintain the glitz and glamour. Ask for feedback from your clients and do some self-analysis of your work – nothing is perfect (just ask your spouse) and everything can be improved upon.

Stay on the Lookout for Icebergs

In the next starkly lit room, you step out onto the deck and feel the chill of the night air. A 30-foot-long mountain of ice dominates your view. You can press your hand into the side to feel the chill of the ice and start thinking about the coldness of the waters. The recovered ship’s bell hanging nearby rings suddenly, loud and clear, and you hear a lookout shout, “Iceberg!” You learn that in the rush to prepare the ship for sailing, neither lookout could find his binoculars, a fatal error.

Business Lesson #5 – No matter how many times you cruise the seas – even while tending to your attorney-clients’ every need – you must always be on the lookout. Don’t get lost in the details of running your CLNC^® business or creating the glitz and glitter. You can easily lose sight of what’s ahead and forget to watch where you are going or what icebergs may await you. To stay on alert you need to keep one eye on the future, one eye on the past and one on the present.

You Don’t Have to Hit the Iceberg Head-On

The Titanic’s collision with the iceberg wasn’t head-on. Instead the berg glanced along the side, tearing a gash no wider than three inches in six watertight compartments. The ship was designed to float with as many as four of these compartments flooded. But six flooded almost simultaneously, dooming the ship. With a harder collision, even a head-on blow, or a crash tearing one large hole across two compartments, the ship would have survived.

Business Lesson #6 – Don’t underestimate the small problems. Even a small amount of damage can have catastrophic effects. You may plan for a major catastrophe, but the cumulative effect of smaller injuries can sink your business as surely as a giant iceberg.

There Are Icebergs Everywhere

The Titanic sailed for only two days before striking the iceberg. After 3½ years in design and construction, it took less than 3½ hours for the ship to go down.

Business Lesson #7 – No matter how long you spend building your business, it is important to be alert at all times. Icebergs are plentiful.

Have Your Lifeboat Ready at All Times

Leaving the iceberg, you move to the next room and you are quickly sobered by the personalization of this tragedy with the lists of names, photographs and artifacts from the passengers. In the haste, some lifeboats were launched nearly empty. Some were over-full. There were far too few lifeboat seats for the number of passengers and crew. People who fell into the ocean lived less than 10 minutes due to the extreme cold. At least one lifeboat tipped over, saving only those lucky enough and strong enough to climb out of the freezing water and cling to the capsized boat.

Business Lesson #8 – You must always have enough lifeboats and be prepared with an alternative if you run out. Today’s lifeboats are self-righting – but you still need to be strong enough to climb out of the water. In business terms, this means you need not only a viable emergency or contingency plan that you can easily activate, but also the ability to survive for the duration of the emergency.

Rescue Your Best Attorney-Clients First

In most cases men chivalrously stood aside as women and children were put into the boats. The highest percentage of survivors were from the first-class section. Proportionately fewer second- and third-class passengers survived. Passenger class was determined by the cost of the ticket, and hence by the passenger’s wealth. (Incidentally, two rich passengers traveled in third class to hide their wealth, and both were lost.)

Business Lesson #9 – Take care of your best attorney-clients first, but don’t forget your occasional attorney-client. Your best clients are the ones you’ll need most and a show of loyalty here can take you far. But all attorneys, big and small add value to your company so make sure that your level and quality of service is constant across all your attorney-clients.

Icebergs Lead to Improvements

The sinking of the Titanic triggered a congressional inquiry (even back in 1912). A lot of fingers were pointed, and the rules of shipbuilding were changed forever. None of this helped those who went down with the ship although future passengers enjoyed a higher level of safety.

Business Lesson #10 – Rules can and will be changed after mistakes are made from hitting icebergs. If you’re not out there making mistakes, you’re not making any progress. Each mistake is a learning opportunity that will make your business better – if you take the time to learn from your mistakes and not just shrug them off as “experience.”

It’s Okay to Hit Icebergs

The last business lesson is the most dramatic of all. The Titanic wouldn’t have sunk if it hadn’t sailed. If you never leave the dock, you’ll never hit an iceberg – but you’ll also miss the thrills of the voyage.

Business Lesson #11 – You have to sail before you can fail. If you hit an iceberg while you’re working, at least you’ll have the chance to keep your business afloat. If you never leave the dock, you’ll never have a legal nurse consulting business to keep afloat.

Some businesses sink on the drafting board because they never get built. The owners spend more time getting ready than they spend on marketing. One CLNC^® consultant kept her business in the planning stages for four months because she wasn’t happy with the company name she had selected – and she finally went with the original name she had chosen. She might have missed a lot of icebergs in four months, but she also didn’t win any attorney-clients. As hockey legend Wayne Gretzky once said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

No business is unsinkable – but there are steps you can take to watch out for icebergs. Personally, I’d much rather try and fail than never try at all. I’ve made my share of mistakes and I’ve hit my own large iceberg. My business didn’t sink and I stayed afloat, thankfully I had the necessary lifeboats and contingency plans in place and acted quickly on them. The iceberg knocked me off course and led me on a journey that would change my business and the nursing profession forever. In fact, if I had missed the iceberg, I probably would have kept going in my original direction. Then you wouldn’t be reading this blog, and thousands of RNs who are now successful CLNC^® consultants would instead be battling healthcare facility icebergs daily.

Full steam ahead, lookouts to the crow’s nest!

Intuitive vision is about connecting with your imagination, paying attention, trusting, perhaps experimenting a little, and seeing where that takes you. You have the strength of intuitive vision. How often do you make a diagnosis even before the doctor does? You don’t need lab reports or X rays. How often have you not followed your “gut” and regretted it? You intuitively know what needs to be done. And you do it every day, day after day.

You have intuitive vision. But are you using that strength for yourself as well as for your patients? Are you using it to move your nursing career to where you want to be? Are you making the diagnosis and doing what needs to be done to create the future you desire? As nurses, we’re our own worst patients. Go ahead and laugh, but you know it. We always know what everybody else needs but are often in denial about what we need. It’s time to trust what our intuition tells us we need for ourselves.

In 1982, I created the nursing specialty of legal nurse consulting by trusting my intuition. My intuition told me attorneys needed nurses, even if those same attorneys didn’t know it yet themselves. When one of the first attorneys said “no,” that could have discouraged me if I let it. Then where would I be now? My intuitive vision told me not to stop and has led me to where I am today.

Don’t squelch your passion. For intuitive vision to work, you must not only trust it, but you must be tuned into it. How do you get in touch with your own intuitive vision? First, silence will arouse your vision. Clear some space, unclutter your mind. Purposefully eliminate one outside stimulus or one TV show. Then eliminate another and another until you can make time for silence. Silence is the only way you can connect with your intuitive vision to advance your nursing career.

You must also avoid negative naysayers. You might not think of a relationship as clutter, but it can be if it’s blocking your intuitive vision. Negative people, negative relationships and other energy vampires will stand between you and your vision. Cut them loose. This act is one of the most freeing acts you will experience.

Finally, to become more successful, begin to see yourself as more successful. Envision your new success over and over – planning, taking action, succeeding. If your goal is to put together a legal nurse consulting marketing proposal that wins a new attorney-client or to earn a promotion at your hospital job, vividly see the benefits you’ll receive and the people (you, your husband, your kids) who will enjoy the fruits of your efforts. You must see the change you wish to be – start creating it today.

Success Is Inside!

I just got back from four wonderfully luxurious days sitting on a beach in Mexico with nothing more on my mind than my stack of novels. You’d think that for a woman who grew up in New Orleans, in a home that didn’t have air conditioning, I’d only like warm weather places like beaches or jungles. Surprisingly it’s exactly the opposite! Many of my favorite travels have taken me to colder climates.

I’ve been snow-shoeing in the high Rockies, explored Iceland, the Antarctic, the Arctic (600 miles from the North Pole), trekked the Everest and Annapurna sides of Nepal and stood among prayer flags on a 13,000-foot high mountain pass looking across Bhutan’s Haa Valley and the Himalayas into Tibet. Standing in rushing water up to my waist while fly-fishing in a Canadian river in a cold drenching rain, I remarked to

Vickie at Chelela Pass in Bhutan

If you plan to go somewhere or start something big, whether it’s a vacation or a legal nurse consulting business, you need to be sure that you’ve completed all the necessary preparations. You need to dress yourself and your CLNC^® business appropriately if you want to enjoy success. Just like you can dress badly for an outdoor event, you can also dress your legal nurse consulting business badly with poorly designed marketing materials, an unprofessional-looking website and unclear communications with attorney-prospects.

As a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant, you need to always dress yourself and your business for success. Today, as you begin your day, I’d like to know what clothing you’re planning to wear for your legal nurse consulting business.

Success Is Inside (but the fun’s outside!)

Tom has a T-shirt he picked up in Fiji a couple of years ago while on his quest to dive with hammerhead sharks. It says, “You can run out of air and die. You can get bitten by a shark and die or you can fall off the couch and die. Get off the couch and into the water!”

I love the pithiness of T-shirt philosophy – even when it seems that the same twisted mind writes them all. The slogans distill our thoughts, humor and fears into easy-to-laugh at sound-bites. “No matter where you go there you are” is an insightful reminder that external factors don’t control our happiness. I once saw a T-shirt with a seated Buddha, making a mudra with the same hand that was holding a hot dog, the caption – “Make me one with everything.” Cracked me up right on the spot. “Your mother was right about me” is one that always makes me nostalgic about the fact that Tom never got to meet my mom.

If I were to put my personal favorites on a T-shirt to wear for fun, they’d read, “Put down the phone and drive,” “Life is good all the time” and “Happiness is a choice.” The T-shirts I’d wear to work would say, “Today is the first day of the rest of the work-week” or “Just do it – NOW!”

What nurse, or legal nurse consultant, won’t crack up over a T-shirt that says, “Great veins,” “My catheter bag’s on the other leg,” “Rehab is for quitters,” “DNR (by popular request)” or “Nursing, it can make strong men weep.” Belly laughs all around.

I’m even thinking of creating my own line of CLNC^® wear for my future Camp Buck-Up. They’ll have all sorts of catchy phrases like, “Lead, follow or get out of the way!,” “We were all born crying – time to outgrow it” and “Whining and complaining are NOT competitive sports.” If I get contemplative about business, perhaps I’d offer the Zen-like shirt “After the marketing, the marketing.”

T-shirt philosophy captures not only pop culture but also our 140 character Twitter/texting culture too. At the same time, it reflects our fears, our prejudices and sometimes our beliefs, all on a pre-shrunk cotton billboard that we can change as quickly, and as often, as we change our minds.

Tomorrow when you start working on your legal nurse consulting business, what T-shirt will you put on? What will be the first thought in your day, the one you’d want or wouldn’t want others to see and judge you by? Will it be positive or negative? Will it be something irreverent? That thought on your T-shirt tells you everything you need to know about the success of your day and the success of your CLNC^® business.

Success Is Inside!

Tom, my twin brother Vince and I were walking through the mall the other day with no particular destination on our minds. It was just one of those evenings when you just troll the mall because it’s there. Since we didn’t have a goal or focus I found myself taking in the shops from a different perspective. Normally, I’m what Tom refers to as a F&F shopper – fire and forget. I’m a laser-like focused shopper, entering the mall at a fast pace, making my purchases and coming back out just as fast, paying no attention to the in-between.

To give you a little dish, Tom and Vince can spend more time in a store than I do and still come out empty-handed. I’m always perplexed that they can spend so much time in a store (even a sporting goods store) without buying anything. I need to keep those two apart or leave them at home.

Being with Tom and Vince that evening at the mall (and nope, they didn’t buy a thing) gave me time to think about our legal nurse consulting businesses.

I walked past windows and display after display of the same lines of clothing. Mind-numbing displays of solids, stripes, plaids and every color under the sun – virtually the same from store to store. I realized that no matter where you are in the developed world, the shopping is disturbingly similar. Global brands have limited our choices from what was once a world of many selections to a world of few. Walk through Macy’s, Sak’s, Neiman’s, Nordy’s, Target or even my favorite, Walmart and they are scarily the same.

So I started to wonder what really makes one store more successful than another since it’s not really the product. Tom and Vince were still debating the merits of one brand of athletic supporter over another, so I chose a couple of stores at random and walked in. I learned more than a few things from this, both about myself and what I think Certified Legal Nurse Consultants can apply to their legal nurse consulting businesses. First of all, I noticed the few stores that had inventive window displays designed to catch my eye, did just that. Next, the stores that presented themselves in the best possible light seemed to be the most inviting.

But, the busy stores were the ones that raised my curiosity the most. If a lot of people were looking at their products, then surely I must look too. An empty store, no matter how clean and attractively laid out, tells me it’s empty for a reason. Something is clearly lacking – it might be value, quality, price or service but I’ll never know because I didn’t go in (sorry Valentino). Of the stores I did go in, the one thing that made the difference between the ones that were successful or not, was the service.

I’m not a fan of the hide and seek game that some salespeople play. If I have to hunt all over for a salesperson just to ask if they have a particular blouse in a size 2 (just kidding), I’m going to lose interest fast. Even more disturbing to me is when I do find a salesperson (or two) and they’re either talking on their cell phones or chatting it up with each other and can’t be interrupted to service a customer. That’s a quick way to lose a sale, sister.

Okay, so let’s look at the lessons for Certified Legal Nurse Consultants. First of all, present yourself in the best possible manner. Dress neatly and professionally. No one likes sloppy looking salespeople. If you can’t be bothered to dress appropriately for work, how do you think attorneys can trust you to help them? Attorneys and other professionals are drawn to successful-looking people. Although some of the rules from the old “Dress for Success” book don’t apply, the basic one does – dress like you’re part of your market.

Second, how are you displaying your products? Is your line sloppily presented or do your marketing materials practically snap with crispness? Start with your cover letter, is it on good quality bond paper? Do you use a letterhead that matches your other materials? Is your message congruent throughout? I see business cards that look like they’ve been hand-printed and sales brochures that look like they’ve been pasted together from ransom notes. You have seconds to get your attorney-prospect’s attention and catch their eye. Think of the way you sort your own mail and make sure your materials represent the professional you are. Too cute, too poorly done and too cheaply done send the same message. One your attorney-prospect won’t be receptive to.

Third, are you on your feet marketing or are you passively waiting for your market to find you? In the stores that I enjoyed shopping the most, the sales clerks didn’t wait for me to walk up to them, they were all over me from the minute I walked in. Not in a clinging manner, but in a professional “how may I help you find something” manner. There’s a certain salesperson in the shoe department of one of my favorite stores who always makes a point of acknowledging me no matter how busy he is. He checks to see if I need something in particular and lets me in on any upcoming sales – all while juggling other customers and an armful of shoe boxes.

He makes me think of one of the CLNC^® Mentors who exhibits at legal conferences. She positions herself in front of her booth and walks up to the attorneys as they come by, offering descriptions of her CLNC^® services. She’s got a super high success rate. I can contrast her to another legal nurse consultant (not a CLNC^® consultant) who she often sees at many of the same conferences. That woman sits inside her booth (a total no-no) and waits for attorneys to approach her. She has commented that she’s surprised she doesn’t do as well as the CLNC^® Mentor at attracting new business.

The salespeople who earn my business are often the ones that offer the business – not the ones that earn their commission simply by ringing me up. If I know something is likely to be available in that product line at another store with better service, guess where I’ll go to buy it. Even if I end up having to order the item, I’d rather do it where I experience good service and have the commission go to someone who’s earned it, than someone who hasn’t. Attorneys are the same way. They’re crazy busy and don’t have time to go looking for you. You need to get out there and, as one Certified Legal Nurse Consultant once said, if they don’t know why they need my CLNC^® services, I just explain it to them until they do!

Fourth, the best salespeople are the ones who not only help you find the perfect item, but also help you accessorize it or supplement it. You can always find the perfect jacket, but blouses, earrings or a purse that compliment it and extend its range are great. Make yourself indispensible. You’re not there to sell the attorney-client just one service. Certified Legal Nurse Consultants know how to deliver over thirty different CLNC^® services to attorneys. Don’t be the store with just one pair of shoes on the shelf. If they’re not the shoes the attorney-client is looking for (or they don’t fit) they’ll go elsewhere.

Remember, ultimately you may be offering the same services as the next legal nurse consultant so you need to distinguish yourself in the eyes of your market and make sure that you offer them what they want and what they need. The best performing Certified Legal Nurse Consultants deliver quality service when they say they will.

Next time you’re in the mall, zero in on what attracts you to a particular store or salesperson. Ask yourself what makes you loyal to a particular line of products or store. Then apply these insights to your own legal nurse consulting business. I know I bring home something different every time I go to the mall and I don’t mean purchases – I’m talking about new ideas I discover for improving my own business.

Success Is Inside!