Marketing

While I was pursuing my nursing degree in the late 90s, I was also working on my Spanish degree. Being from North Dakota where few people speak Spanish, Hispanic friends and colleagues often ask me how in the world I learned Spanish. I tell them I just fell in love with the language when I started taking Spanish in the 7th grade. I received my Spanish degree in 1998 and have been speaking Spanish since then.

I remembered what Vickie taught me in the CLNC^® Certification Program about using my unique selling position (USP). So, I started including the phrase, “I also have a degree in Spanish” in emails to attorney-prospects and paralegals. In one email to an attorney-prospect, I briefly told her about the services I offer as a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant and mentioned that I have a Spanish degree. A couple of weeks later, I received an email from a paralegal at that law firm asking if I could attend an independent medical examination (IME) for his Spanish speaking client. Two months later, I received a voicemail from another paralegal at the same law firm requesting my services at an IME for a different Hispanic client and a different attorney.

Each CLNC^® consultant brings something unique to the table. Like Vickie says, we are in the business of marketing. After attending both IMEs, I realized that I always need to market my USP of speaking Spanish. Marketing your USP will save a lot of time and energy. I kick myself now for not using my USP the first day I began marketing to attorneys.

Maybe your USP is speaking another language. Maybe it’s the fact that you have 25 years of nursing experience and you’ve worked in every area of the hospital. Maybe your nursing specialty is forensics. Whatever it is, every Certified Legal Nurse Consultant has a USP. The question is, are you marketing your USP to attorneys?

Guest Blogger Profile

Brian Brandser, RN, BSN, CCRN, CLNC assists attorneys with personal injury and medical malpractice cases. Brian also serves as clinical coordinator in a critical care unit at a Washington state hospital. Brian has a Spanish degree and lives with his wife and two boys.

Marketing your CLNC^® business successfully to attorney-prospects and attorney-clients requires that you provide a safety net and build trust. Here are some strategies for achieving both:

1. Make a professional first impression. In doing so, you have begun to construct a safety net for the attorney-prospect, ensuring the attorney that he is making the right decision in hiring you for his medical-related cases.

2. Communicate. Listen carefully to the attorney-client’s needs and demonstrate your understanding of those needs as you proceed through the meeting. Ask questions to clarify specific points. Confirm the attorney-client’s expectations regarding the CLNC^® services you will provide and the schedule for its completion.

Stay in touch. Provide an easy way for the attorney to reach you and notify you of any changes in needs or the case. When you deliver your work product, make it clear that you are available to collaborate on any necessary additions or amendments.

3. Guarantee. This step may seem risky, but think about how much more secure you feel about purchasing when you know you can return a product that fails to meet your expectations. For example, if your report failed to meet your attorney-client’s expectations, wouldn’t you be eager to correct any problems? Then why not offer that guarantee up front, thus satisfying your client’s psychological need for security?

Guaranteeing satisfaction does not mean you would compromise the integrity of your opinion or work product by adding something you know is incorrect or misleading or by making inappropriate changes. Nor does it mean you guarantee your work product will win their case. It means you will make any corrections or additions needed to the research, wording or format to guarantee the client gets value for the dollars invested. You aren’t offering to revise your work product endlessly either. State a specific time period, say two weeks from the date of delivery, during which the guarantee is in effect.

4. Start Small. Before you get to those bigger projects and cases, you may have to build trust step-by-step. Customers generally are more comfortable starting a new relationship on a small scale. When a woman buys a new line of makeup, in addition to being sure the color is right for her, she wants to know if the makeup suits her skin type, contains sun protection and holds up during the day. Likewise, a new attorney-client wants to make sure your product will perform as expected. The attorney wants to know:
• Will your work product meet expectations?
• Will your report be supported by appropriate standards and research?
• How conscientiously will you meet deadlines?

A woman at the makeup counter might start out with a smaller container or trial size of a new product. Similarly, an attorney might suggest beginning with a brief report and ask for a quick turnaround. Recognize this as an important step in building a long-term relationship.

5. Deliver. Actions sell and quality counts. Your attorney-clients often deal with people who talk a good game but who don’t deliver on promises. By turning in a quality product on time, or even ahead of deadline, you reinforce that the attorney has made a wise buying decision and can depend on you for bigger and bigger projects and more medical-related cases.

When you provide a safety net and build trust, hard-sell is never necessary.

• Every time you present yourself with professionalism, you sell.
• Every time you listen intently and affirm the attorney-client’s expectations, you sell.
• Every time you deliver a quality product, you sell.

Every step of the way, you build into your attorney-client relationship a sense of trust and dependability – a safety net.

Beginning with that initial interview and that first small project, you can create a mutually satisfying, long-term business relationship. And a few loyal, lifetime attorney-clients will make your legal nurse consulting business prosper. You won’t need dozens. Soon you will find attorney-clients relying on you, recognizing your CLNC^® and nursing expertise and your ability to make them look good. They will begin to trust that without your help and expertise they could miss significant issues and even lose cases.

Success Is Inside!

A marketing plan without accountability is not much of a plan and is unlikely to get you the attorney-clients you want for your legal nurse consulting business. Accountability is the muscle in your marketing plan. Making a plan without accountable goals is like grabbing for a fistful of rain.

For example, if you set a goal of marketing to five attorney-prospects each week, you could meet that goal without accomplishing any results for your CLNC^® business. While this goal sounds like a good objective, the objective of simply meeting the goal is in no way accountable to you and your CLNC^® business. Instead, you must develop an objective that is accountable to your legal nurse consulting business. That means developing an objective that reaps a result.

Here’s one example of an accountable objective, “I will market to attorneys to obtain one new attorney-client each month.” This results-oriented objective not only propels you to act, but requires you to act until you achieve the desired result. While you’re setting up your accountable objectives, attach a target completion date to each objective and hold yourself accountable for hitting it.

I teach that during the first 30 days of your CLNC^® business the most important thing to do is take action every day to create the habit of acting on your business, but beyond 30 days it’s a mistake to think that just taking action is making progress. The savvy Certified Legal Nurse Consultant knows that when your actions meet accountable objectives you’re truly making progress. Make sure you’re one of the CLNC^® consultants taking action, making progress and not just making plans.

Success Is Inside!

Purchasing any service or product is an emotional event. A customer buys not primarily to own the item or have the service, but to meet emotional needs: to seek comfort, reduce stress, fulfill social needs, achieve something significant, change status or lifestyle or even invest in the future.

Your attorney-prospects are no different from any other retail shopper. For example, a woman shopping for lipstick at a makeup counter is satisfying the emotional need to feel good, look pretty or just indulge herself after a hard week at her job. When attorneys purchase your CLNC^® services, they are satisfying emotional needs that are high-stake such as:

• Properly representing their client,
• Winning the case,
• Attaining partnership status,
• Garnering referral business from other attorneys,
• Maintaining their comfortable lifestyle, and
• Fulfilling a deep desire to be a winner, not a loser.

They need to believe and validate that they are making a wise choice when they hire you. Your attorney-prospect is shopping and shopping is legal.

Understanding that successful attorneys use emotion in buying decisions just like the rest of us gives you an edge in marketing to them. Credentials and qualifications are nice, but that’s not why attorneys buy. What does sell is getting the attorney-prospect to connect emotionally with how your nursing experience and credentials will make a difference in his medical-related cases.

So how do you get the attorney to shop ’til he drops on your next interview? By tapping into the five senses.

1. Sight. First impressions are everything. As much as 55% of a decision is made before either person says a word. Fair or not, people size you up and form an impression of you within seconds of meeting you. We all do this. Remember that blind date you had years ago? You knew instantly, and before words were exchanged, whether you would have a good time or even go out again.

Are you neat or sloppy? Do you stand tall or slouch? Are you carrying an organizer or a handful of loose papers?

Before you go on any interview, take the time to check out your physical appearance. Dress professionally and conservatively. Pay attention to details – trim your nails, polish your shoes, and buy one powerful business outfit. Then stand tall and walk with confidence.

Pay equal attention to the appearance of your promotional package. A sloppy or amateur promotional package suggests that you are an amateur legal nurse consultant who will submit a poor quality work product. Use the promotional package developed by the Institute or hire a professional designer and copywriter. Your promotional package must look as good as you do.

2. Sound. Another 38% of a first impression comes from how we speak. When we’re nervous, we naturally tighten up and our voices turn squeaky. We talk too fast, stumble over our words or forget entirely what we intended to say.

Have a written checklist of points you want to make. Rehearse these main points well in advance of the interview. Read them again shortly before you enter the meeting. Then relax and concentrate on listening to the attorney. Taking your mind off yourself to pay attention to what the attorney is saying will help you relax. Focus on the attorney, not your state of discomfort and you will conduct a much stronger interview.

3. Taste. How do you respond when a prospect offers you coffee, tea or a soft drink? If the attorney is having something, I recommend you have something too. People associate positive feelings and emotions with their favorite drink, so go ahead and have the same drink unless it’s just not palatable to you. For example, a cup of hot tea symbolizes both relaxation and renewed energy to me. While accepting a drink may seem like you are imposing, it will not only relax you, but will also create an immediate bond between you and the attorney-prospect.

4. Smell. Avoid heavy perfumes and colognes. A scent you find delightful might turn another person’s stomach. Any heavily applied scent will be distracting. Usually, the best choice is to avoid perfume and cologne altogether.

5. Touch. Offer a firm handshake. Once you’ve finished with the introductions, confidently place your promotional package and sample work product in the attorney-prospect’s hands. Like trying on a lipstick color, sampling any product makes the buying decision easier. When the attorney touches your business card, introductory letter, brochure and sample work product, he sees and feels the professional quality you deliver.

One of the biggest mistakes I see beginning legal nurse consultants make is neglecting to put together hypothetical report samples. With your sample in the attorney’s hands, that attorney holds a report similar in size, weight, texture and content to the reports he needs and you can provide to help win cases.

The ability to give your attorney-prospect this hands-on, multi-sensory experience of your work product is the advantage of one-on-one selling. A smart CLNC^® consultant takes every opportunity to capitalize on this advantage to help the attorney-prospect make a positive decision.

Yes, shopping is legal, but make your next interview more than a shopping experience. Make it an emotional confirmation of the attorney’s need for your CLNC^® services and validate that you are an investment in the attorney’s legal practice. If you succeed in doing so, the attorney will shop ’til he drops with you and smile while he does so.

Shopping anyone?

Success Is Inside!

What are you waiting for before you start your career and business as a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant? In this video, Doris Huegel, RN, CLNC shares that after attending the CLNC^® 6-Day Certification Program, she didn’t even wait to unpack her bags before marketing herself to an attorney-prospect near her hometown in rural Pennsylvania. Her enthusiasm and initiative secured that first case for her. Congratulations Doris for going for it.

Success Is Inside!

On your legal nurse consulting desk or credenza is a powerful and effective marketing tool that you’re already paying for but probably using a lot less and a lot less effectively than you could be. The tool is… the telephone.

Telemarketing is an area of tremendous interest to a new Certified Legal Nurse Consultant as the cost of other methods of prospecting and qualifying attorney-clients, and marketing, continue to increase dramatically. For the small business owner and consultants, telemarketing has many advantages.

Among them, the fact that you literally pay as you go. In direct mail, for reasonable economics, you may have to print thousands or even tens of thousands of CLNC^® consulting brochures and materials all at one time. In media advertising, you have to pay for circulation of thousands, tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people all at one time, but with the telephone you can reach out and contact as few or as many attorney-prospects as you wish at one time.

You literally have no marketing costs other than time. For example, a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant, who disciplined herself to call just three prospective attorney-clients a day could promote to almost a thousand new attorney-prospects a year in less than a half hour a day at virtually no cost. This is one type of telemarketing that works great for Certified Legal Nurse Consultants just starting their practice.

Telephone prospecting, this method can be used to qualify good prospective attorney-clients to mail materials to.

Like direct mail, this method of marketing does require the selection or compilation of a prospect list. Then you’ll find it best to write a legal nurse consulting script to use and refer to when making calls. You can refine the script through practice.

Another application of telemarketing for most legal nurse consulting businesses is as a way of communicating with past and existing customers. Omaha Steaks, for example, calls their customers from time-to-time with special offers. A legal nurse consultant should do the same thing.

Now, I would like to give you some basic guidelines and tips you’ll want to keep in mind when using the telephone to grow your legal nurse consulting business.

First – the real key to effective telephone marketing is structure and organization. Winging it is a real bad idea. A script, an outline, notes, flip cards, some written tools to help you stay on track are important. The most experienced telephone selling professionals in the country use scripts and notes.

Second – courtesy is paramount. Remember that the person on the other end of the phone can’t see you; they can only react to what you are saying and how you’re saying it.

Third – recognize that some people will not respond well. They’ll cut you short, even hang up on you. You’ll just have to be okay with that. Don’t take it personally. Remember people throw out your mail pieces unread too. You just don’t have to be there to see it.

Fourth – practice makes perfect or at least better. You need to give yourself the benefit of at least twenty or twenty-five calls of a particular type with a particular offer before even beginning to be judgmental about yourself, your skills or the results. If you’ve never used a telephone this way before, you’ll be understandably uncomfortable with the process.

It’s important to remember that just about everything you now do well was once difficult and uncomfortable for you. Stretching comfort zones and mastering new legal nurse consulting business skills are important, reoccurring parts of living to be enjoyed not feared.

Learning telemarketing skills is a way to greatly enhance your personal worth and be able to increase the profits of your CLNC^® business.

Guest Blogger Profile

Dan Kennedy is internationally recognized as the ‘Millionaire Maker,’ helping people in business turn their ideas into fortunes. Dan’s “No B.S.” approach is refreshing amidst a world of small business marketing hype and enriches those who act on his advice.

Take the Stage for Legendary CLNC^® Success. That’s right – take it. Don’t just wait for legendary success to happen to you.

You’re probably wondering: “Okay Vickie, how does someone just take what they want? Especially legendary success?” Easy. To have legendary success, you just have to be legendary. Likewise, to be legendary, you have to act legendary. So how do you act legendary?

First, ask yourself what would a CLNC^® legend look like?

How would they walk?
How would they talk to attorneys?
What would their marketing consist of?
What would their work product be?

And most importantly – what would you look like if you were a CLNC^® legend?
Even if to start, you’re only a legend in your own mind. Johnny Cash knew he was a legend long before anyone else knew.

Once you convince yourself that you’re a legend, and really believe it, you’ll find it easy to convince your attorney-prospects that you are indeed legendary. When you go to the attorney’s office, you’ll carry yourself with legendary confidence. You’ll stand apart from the crowd. Soon you’ll be walking out with more cases than you ever imagined.

People associate legendary with successful and so once attorneys perceive you as legendary, they assume you are successful and want you on their team. The more success you have, the more success you will have. That sounds unfair, but it’s true. Attorneys want to win so they want to hang with winners.

Once you’ve landed the attorney as a client, how do you prove that you are authentic – that you are indeed legendary? By being better today than you were yesterday. By being stronger and swifter each day. The same static behaviors day after day and year after year won’t cut it. Remember the definition of insanity? Doing the same behavior over and over again and expecting different results? To get different results, you need to change your behavior. In fact, just to get the same results year after year, you have to change your behavior.

That’s why I love what Geoff Colvin says in his book Talent Is Overrated.
His position is that high achievers are not just talented (i.e. have an inborn ability) – they might not be talented at all.

So what trumps talent? What separates highly successful entrepreneurs from the rest of the pack? Repetitive, focused and deliberate practice designed to specifically improve performance.

Now, if that sounds like hard work – it is. If you’ve ever watched American Idol or Dancing with the Stars you know it’s not always the most talented who advance. It’s the one who puts on the best show who wins. And to put on the best show requires repetitive, focused and deliberate practice.

Another distinction of people who are legendary – they are able to assess for themselves how they’re doing. They don’t need someone to watch over them or push them. You can only improve performance if you know what needs improving. That’s why honest and competent self-analysis is so important. You must act as though you’re on the outside looking in. You’re an active observer of your own actions.

We all know it’s easier to analyze someone else (like our spouse) than to analyze ourself. To analyze yourself objectively is truly a legendary quality. For example: if you’re about to interview with an attorney, you don’t just show up, you apply repetitive, focused and deliberate practice to make that interview the best one yet. Once in the interview, you need to be able to recognize if you’re off target and pull your act together swiftly. You must be able to self-analyze at the very moment something is going wrong, so you can rescue the situation. If you can’t competently self-analyze the situation, not only will you fail in that interview with that attorney, you’ll keep making the same mistakes over and over again in future interviews with other attorneys.

It’s no surprise that people who fail, fail often. And people who succeed, succeed often.

Practicing the answers to interview questions over and over is an important step to mastering your self-analysis skills. But, that only works if you’re practicing the correct responses. Repetitive, focused and deliberate practice is worthless if it’s the wrong practice. Practicing the same bad tennis swing over and over just produces more of a bad tennis swing. At first you need a tennis coach to straighten out your swing. And then you’ll be able to tell for yourself when your swing is off.

As Vince Lombardi said – “Practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect.” That’s why you must choose your mentors and advisors carefully. An inept coach doesn’t just fail to help you, they actually help you to fail.

I recently invested 8 months mentoring a woman at the Institute through repetitive, focused and deliberate practice on a job function I wanted her to master. I required her to do the job herself first. Then I gave her feedback so each time she was doing it more and more correctly. Sometimes we don’t know what we don’t know. That’s why the correct mentors are so important to the process of learning how to analyze yourself competently. And I didn’t just give her feedback. At first, I would ask her to tell me what she needed to do differently the next time. I wanted her to analyze herself, before I mentored her. My goal was – she would become me. In other words, it would be like Vickie was standing over her shoulder guiding her every step of the way. I wanted her to be able to assess herself in the same way I would assess her if I were standing there.

It was time consuming, and sometimes painful for both of us, but this investment has paid off in tens of thousands of dollars each year. She still occasionally looks over her shoulder to see if I’m there. And sometimes I am! But not to correct her, just to ask her how her day is going.

I challenge you to apply repetitive, focused and deliberate practice to key parts of your CLNC^® business (such as marketing, report writing or anything significant of your choosing). When you do, you’ll never be the same Certified Legal Nurse Consultant again. Hey! You might even become legendary. Any of you can, because after all, talent IS overrated.

Remember – We Are Nurses and We Can Do Anything^®!
Especially something easy like becoming legendary.

Success Is Inside!

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.