It’s time now to discuss our last marketing forte, Partner. In my previous blogs, we discussed how best to Pitch, Publish, Present, and Profile in this lockdown environment. But even when quarantined, it is important to work on Partner. In fact, I find myself naturally developing my friendships more during this strange time as I make it a point to check in on my acquaintances and to connect with them here, on a virtual level.
Are you connected with the other collaborative professionals in your community, in practice groups, on collaborative teams, and in other professional organizations, in order to increase the likelihood that others will choose you to staff their collaborative teams? Are you connected with groups of first responders and other referral sources, in order to ensure that they think of you when they are approached about how best to get a divorce? Have you formed collaborative teams of your own or are you waiting for others to invite you to join theirs?
Strengthen Your Partnerships
Work on these activities during lockdown to ensure that you have more and stronger partnerships when it’s over:
- List your key contacts. Arrange virtual one-to-ones with them. Respond to inquiries of any kind and consider the partnership possibilities. Write out and practice your partnership pitch.
- Seek out a mentor you admire. Reach out to other collaborative professionals on-line whom you admire or who have a great reputation or influence in the local or on-line community, perhaps for their counsel on issues by which you have been confronted. Offer to blog or to co-author an article or a book with them. Offer to conduct trainings, seminars, or workshops with them. Offer to write anthologies with them.
- Reach out to mentor others. Offer your protégés opportunities. Volunteer for collaborative committee work and, when you do, reach out to younger or less-experienced professionals and offer them related experiences. Offer to blog with them, to edit their publications, and to critique their pitches.
- Offer virtual seminars and trainings to your collaborative and professional communities.
- Also, to gain experience, to share the opportunity to gain experience, to create new partnerships, and to spread the word, are you offering pro bono services? Ensure that your pro bono clients agree, in exchange for your free services, to inform the community; to waive confidentiality (not of their financial details, but of their identities); to give interviews afterwards; and to give testimonials, if appropriate, both written and video. With client permission, send press releases to the media about your cases that merit media attention. (Ensure that you identify any elements of your pro bono cases that might merit media attention.) To read more about the reasons for organizing a collaborative divorce pro bono project, how to do it, and how to manage it once it’s up and running, read A Free Divorce Handbook (How to Organize a Collaborative Divorce Pro Bono Project). You will find it on Amazon as well as at OpenPalmPress.com.
Email me at Joryn@OpenPalmLaw.com, and let’s discuss how my marketing tools and webinars can help you learn how to effectively market during lockdown so that you are ready to leap into the future when the lockdown ends!
