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Oh No! It's competition time

29/1/2010

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At last the votes are cast...and guess what, the sole practitioners didn't attend.  Well of course they couldn't, they're too busy dealing with business, firefighting, answering the phone, doing vat returns and all the other small but necessary things that drains their time and reduce their ability to provide a better service.

There is a better way and it's coming soon.

If you are a sole practitioner or a lawyer wanting to start on your own, believe it or not, this is probably the best time in history to do it.  And in these pages over the coming month I will be showing you why and how.


If you've not read the article, it's here:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/scotland/article7005416.ece

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Raise the minimum wage?

26/1/2010

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What would you do if you were the Chancellor and you'd just announced that halving the UK's annual budget deficit was "non-negotiable"?
There are a few things I think we'd all get sorted in a hurry. We'd cap all public sector salaries at, say, £175,000. We'd cut all benefits to the middle classes. We'd try and make the tax system flatter and less complicated (how hard can it be?).

And we'd ban management consultants.

But then what? Here's an idea. How about we increase the minimum wage by 30% or so, making one hour of basic work worth £7.50 and a year's work on the minimum wage (assuming a 40 hour week and four weeks paid holiday) worth £15,600, rather than the current £11,856.

http://www.moneyweek.com/blog/its-time-to-raise-the-minimum-wage-00111.aspx
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Entrepreneurship is the answer

19/1/2010

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Entrepreneurs create companies. They create them for various reasons – to build up and sell, or to generate wealth for their families.

Eventually, if these companies survive, they’ll change hands. They’ll either end up with the next generation, or they’ll be sold into private hands, or they’ll go public.
 
At no point is the government directly involved (nor should it be involved) in that decision-making process. But once a company’s gone public, you have to accept that you can lose control of it. (For example if Cadbury’s had wanted to stay British, it should never have been listed. )

But life goes on. A successful economy creates companies, builds them up, then lets them go. And the important thing is that this entrepreneurial process is given an environment in which it can thrive.

That’s why it’s important to have a nice stable taxation system, and as little red tape standing in the way of business creation as possible.

That’s why a warning from the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) that new taxes and regulation will cost British firms £25.6bn over the next four years is such a worry.

The group wants a three-year moratorium on new employment laws in the UK, and a campaign for an EU-wide moratorium. Of course the BCC is always going to talk up the interests of its members, but given the government’s constant fiddling with the country’s tax laws it’s not hard to see their point.

And it’s an important one. If there’s one thing that can help the UK  economy get out of its debt-burdened holesand grow again, it's entrepreneurship.

And as a Lawyer, if you're considering setting up on your own, you will soon be able to take advantage of a new website that provides you will all you need to start your own law firm, from as little as £500 per month.

There will be more on this when I confirm the name of the site and the basis of their offer.
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Change is inevitable...get with it...

15/1/2010

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If you're familiar with the story, "Who Moved My Cheese?" by Dr. Spencer Johnson, you already know that when change happens, you either adapt or perish. If your cheese supply dries up, you have to go looking for new cheese.

The gist of the story is; change happens and the cheese keeps moving. And like the little mice in the story, you must change and adapt, if you want to keep ahead of the pack.


I could relate this story to the Law and the changes in the law, but I won't, instead I'll relate it to something else you ought to be doing to position yourself within the legal industry....your website presence.

Web 2.0 properties like social news and bookmarking sites are spidered quickly and often. So are blogs and any sites containing RSS feeds.

To those who say "social media marketing" is a fad or a buzzword, it's time to stop the denial and get over it. Sometimes things change and they're never the same again.

According to Dr. Spencer Johnston, "If you do not change, you can become extinct. Get out of your comfort zone and adapt to change sooner. Take control, rather than let things happen to you."

According to Forrester Research, "Stop the denial. Get over it, get on with it, figure it out. Or end up in the dustbin of history, along with sheet music publishers, cassette manufacturers, BETAMAX and now VHS"

So it's time to change and adapt your SEO strategies to include blogs, social media and bookmarking, or end up extinct.

Are you ready to change?
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Bentleys and Lawyers

7/1/2010

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One of the privileges bestowed upon anyone turning up at the Bentley factory, especially arriving in one of their cars, is that they let you park up right in front of the main reception...and you’re greeted!

And sure enough, as we neared the main entrance, there was a small party of company executives and other guests waiting for us.

They call it a factory, but bits of it look more like a showroom. Clinically clean, not a thing out of place...and quiet! It’s about as far away from the typical image of a mass production assembly line as you can get.

On the way round, I learned some fascinating stuff...

Every Bentley Arnage takes 14 weeks to make from start to finish, and just 30 cars are completed each week. The wood trim alone takes 11 weeks to make, and the company have 86 people working on that and nothing else!

All the veneers for an individual car are cut from a single piece of 80 year old timber. If just one of the veneers (say for the ashtray cover) gets spoiled in production, then all the other wood pieces for that car are scrapped, and they start again. Everything has to match perfectly. Even the pieces you can’t see (like the underside of the picnic tables) are finished to the same standard.

Fourteen cow hides are used to trim the interior of every car. I watched as staff painstakingly inspected every square inch of every hide. The slightest blemish results in a hide being rejected. It has to be totally perfect.

We went into the engine workshop and watched the engines being built from scratch. Some of the parts you never get to see are like works of art...perfect in form and finish. The gearbox control unit alone consists of over 130 separate parts. We spoke to the bloke who puts the units together. He’s been there for 28 years, and has assembled every unit personally over that time. That’s all he does.

As we got to the finishing area, we watched as every panel was exposed to very bright lights and examined in minute detail for the merest hint of a paint defect. The slightest imperfection resulted in a piece of sticky tape being applied and a trip back to the paint shop.

Nobody else would notice, but that doesn’t matter.

Every single aspect of the car is built with perfection in mind, and is then subjected to microscopic inspection to ensure that those standards have been met.

And here’s what’s interesting...

The Bentley Arnage costs around £150,000 brand new, which is a great deal of money. But everyone who tours that factory leaves with a far better understanding of why they are so much more expensive than the competition...and why they’re probably worth the difference.

The visit...organised by the Marketing Department not surprisingly...serves to justify the price.

You see, your average multi-millionaire didn’t get rich by having people overcharge him for stuff. He might be able to afford 10 cars at £150,000 each, but he’s only going to buy if he can see the value, and he’s certainly not going to buy if he feels the company are trying to rip him off.

But when he’s told how long the car takes to make, sees the attention to detail that goes into it, and the quality of the materials which are used, (even in the areas he can’t see) the high price becomes one that he can justify to himself.

You get what you pay for, and he can see very clearly why what he’s paying for costs as much as it does.

Now, what does this mean to you and your business? Well if you’re anything like me, it probably means that when you look at what Bentley do, you realise you’re not doing enough to help customers appreciate the value of what you’re selling, or to help them justify the price they’re paying.

Let’s take one of our seminars as an example...

I could tell prospective students that the course took over a year to prepare, cost over £25,000 in "hidden" costs, and gives them unlimited access to several recognised legal experts with a combined experience of 122 years in the field. All for just £150...

Which may seem a lot of money - until you learn what goes into it.

But do I tell them that? Sadly, for both them and me, I do not. Sadly for us because we’d sell more courses if we did, and sadly for them because I’m not giving them all the information they need to justify a purchase to themselves.

If you look at your own business, I’m sure you’ll see similar opportunities lost.

Are you telling your customers things like...

*   How long your product takes to produce?

*   How far afield you go to get the very best materials?

*   How long you, and your staff, had to train to do what you do?

*   What lengths you go to, to ensure quality?

*   How passionate you are about attention to detail?

*   How much money you’ve invested to be able to bring them a product/service like this?

These are just examples of course, which might not necessarily be applicable to your business. But the point is that there is probably information about your product/service and the way it is produced/delivered, which would differentiate it from the competition, and make customers more comfortable making the decision to buy from you...even if your prices are a little higher.

In competitive markets, the temptation to compete on price is a strong one - but it’s usually wrong. Fact is that your profit margins get cut to the bone, and everyone else just follows suit. Great for the customer, but not so good for the businesses which end up working for nothing.

It seems to make a lot more sense to follow Bentley’s example...stay with your premium price, but give your customers as much detailed information as you can to justify your price, and make them want to do business with you.

This idea isn’t new, and you don’t have to have a massively superior product like Bentley to make use of it...

In his book Scientific Advertising, first published in the 1920s, Claude Hopkins tells the story of a brewer who multiplied his sales by demonstrating the purity of his product. He used a photograph of a plate glass room where his beer was cooled in filtered air. He told how bottles were washed 4 times by expensive machinery and how he went down 4,000 feet to get pure water. He explained that 1,018 experiments had been carried out to make yeast to give a matchless flavour. And how all the yeast they used was forever made from that adopted mother cell.

Very persuasive information, I’m sure you’ll agree...

But what’s really interesting is that there’s nothing special about any of this. All brewers at the time were doing pretty much the same thing. It’s just that this one was the first to go to the trouble of telling people about it.

In the 1980s, the brewers of Stella Artois used a very similar approach to justify the comparatively high price of their lager. They went into great detail in their advertisements about the quality of the hops, the length of the drying process and the experience of their brewers, before stating that their product was “reassuringly expensive”.

For all I know, the various processes they described could have been ‘industry standard’, but it didn’t really matter. The perception of a superior product was firmly planted in customers’ minds, and they felt comfortable paying the higher price because of that.

So here’s a question...

Is there something fascinating or impressive in your sphere of business which everybody does, but nobody has bothered to tell customers about yet?

If there is, you could ‘claim’ it for your own, and use it to justify your higher price, or to avoid matching a price cut made by your competitors.

The bottom line on all of this is that the more you can tell people about the time, trouble and expense you go to, to bring them a first class product or service, the more comfortable and willing they will be to pay your price.

Article first published by John D Harrison
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    Author

    After many years paying lawyers,I became one in 2005 Just in time for the largest upheaval in the law since records began. Brilliant. Exiting times ahead.

    Disclaimer.  The thoughts, ideas and comments on this Blawg ("Blawg - a legal Blog) are my own and not to be confused (unless otherwise stated) with anyone else and certainly not of anyone in the Firm where I used to work and they are not the views of the firm where I used to work.

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