Are You Serving Meatball Sundaes to Your Attorney-Clients?

I’m not a pack-rat, but I’ll admit a couple of bookshelves in the business section of my “library” are a bit overrun by books I’ve read, plan to read and some books I will probably never read. The other day Tom was doing some unsolicited (and unwanted) Spring cleaning and ran across a book given to me by the marketing guru Seth Godin. Tom looked at the cover and asked me “Vickie, what the #&%* is a meatball sundae?” He held the book up and I laughed because it does indeed have a photograph of a pretty unappealing meatball sundae (as well as a funny shot of Seth in a chef’s cap).

Still laughing I explained that, according to Seth, a meatball sundae is what results from a disconnect between your marketing and your message. In other words they are totally out of sync &#8211 you get a meatball sundae when you mix together two good ideas, like meatballs and sundaes, and the combination results in one bad idea. In my 27 years of managing LegalNurse.com, as well as teaching and certifying legal nurse consultants, I’ve seen a lot of meatball sundaes cross my desk. Some were my own (or at least my marketing department’s), others came from legal nurse consultants I was mentoring.

Here’s a great legal nurse consulting example. You’ve done your research on the Internet, browsed the attorney-prospect’s website pretty closely and are ready to send your first batch of marketing materials. Instead of positioning yourself properly and marketing to the attorney-prospect’s strengths and core business (personal injury cases), you send materials including and discussing medical malpractice cases; you also emphasize your experience in the ED without explaining its relevancy to the attorney. You just sent the attorney-prospect a meatball sundae, a perfect serving of a mix of bad ideas. Not only did you send the wrong materials to the attorney-prospect, you blew any chance of appearing to be savvy and sophisticated by sending him materials that won’t interest him from the beginning and will put him off from reading the rest of your promotional packet. So, no matter how appealing (and tasty) your promotional materials are, if the attorney-prospect doesn’t have the appetite for the meatball sundae you just served him, you’re not going to get his business.

As a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant you’ve been trained by the Institute not to send meatball sundaes to your attorney-prospects. We’ve taught you how to research attorneys, their practices and their firms to be sure you’re properly targeting your market. We’ve taught you positioning strategies that keep you in the mind of the attorney-prospect. We even mentor you on the proper responses for the interview questions you’re likely to be asked.

I can’t be there to stop you from stuffing a meatball sundae into an envelope and addressing it to an attorney-prospect or heading into the attorney-prospect’s office for an interview and dropping a meatball sundae on her desk during the interview. So I thought today is a good day to remind you to get out there, get cooking on your marketing and make sure you know what you’re serving to attorneys.

Personally, I prefer my meatballs with spaghetti and my sundaes with hot caramel.

Success Is Inside!

P.S. Comment and share how you avoid sending attorneys meatball sundaes.