How To Motivate Clients To Take Action | Show 191

Dave Lorenzo (00:00):
How do you get people to do what's good for them? We're going to share that and so much more on this episode of the Inside BS Show. Hey, now I'm Dave Lorenzo, the godfather of Growth, and I'm here with my pal, my buddy Nicki G. That's the face Nicole just made is fantastic, but this is an audio show so you can't see it. You also can't see the ridiculous headset I'm wearing that she's making fun of me for wearing. So hello folks and thanks for joining us today. Hi, Nicki G, how are you?

Nicola Gelormino (00:34):
Hello, Dave. I'm doing great. How are you?

Dave Lorenzo (00:37):
I'm great, thanks. So folks, we want to talk to you today about compliance, right? So here's the thing, it's not legal compliance. I mean, Nicola would probably, her head would spin around if we talked about legal compliance, but we're talking today about getting people to do what's good for them. If you're in the advice business or if you're a c e O of a company and you've got employees, you need to get the employees to do what's good for them. So I'll share a story about somebody who's a dear, dear friend of mine was a client of mine for years and years and years. She had a great immigration practice. She was an attorney and she was based here in Miami and she was brilliant and she and I are working together and she hated, absolutely hated a lot of the recommendations I made. She's a wonderful person, but the recommendations I made took a lot of time and she had limited staff.

(01:29):
She had like six people and she hated that the marketing stuff took up a lot of the admin time and every time I made a recommendation on the marketing side, she would resist. And she was brilliant and she was brilliant in her area of the law. So I didn't really push back hard when she resisted doing things partially because she's a client and nobody wins an argument with a client. You got to persuade clients, you can't argue with them. And also partially because I thought she was really intelligent and I thought she would come around eventually in time. So we worked together for five years and she says to me one day when I used to go to her office in person, this is how long ago this was, I used to go to her office in person, downtown Miami. And one day I go into her office, she goes, I want to take you to lunch today instead of meeting in the office.

(02:22):
So if you're in a relationship and somebody decides they're going to take you to lunch on the spur of the moment, that usually means bad news. Usually means a breakup is imminent, right? So we go to lunch and sure enough, she says, I'm selling my firm to a larger firm. She sold her firm to Carlton Fields and she said, here's the reason why, Dave. I need all kinds of tax help. I need transactional help. And what's going on now is I'm referring all this stuff out and I get no money for referring the workout. Carlton Fields is going to give me a multiple. She actually got, I think she got because she's passed away now and it's irrelevant. I can tell you, I think she got a 1.5 multiple, which in professional practice is great. Usually you only get one year's worth of earnings. She got a 1.5 multiple on revenue for her practice and she got a base salary commensurate with what she was taking home.

(03:10):
And she also got origination credit in the way of financial bonuses for all the work she originated for others. So she was going to make out more financially from selling her practice to Carlton Fields. So I said, that's great. So she sells her practice to Carlton Fields and we don't talk professionally, we talk personally, but we didn't talk about business for about six months. And she calls me up and she says, Hey, you want to go to dinner? She says, I haven't seen you in a while and I want to kind of share with you what's going on. So the two of us go to dinner and she says to me, I got to apologize to you. And I said, what could you possibly? We were good friends, we don't have to apologize, nothing to apologize for. She said, no. She said, the reason that I was able to sell my business for what I sold it for, the reason I was able to sell my practice for what I sold it for was because of all the marketing stuff I had done and all of the lifetime value the firm saw in my clients because I had kept in touch with them.

(04:06):
And because it wasn't just ad hoc revenue, they viewed the trust that I had built up. I've been able to originate more for others from my database of clients that you helped me with over the years. Then I originated from my own practice, it's like two to one. So she was originating, I think like $8 million of work, and of the 8 million, 6 million were coming more than two to one. 6 million was coming into Carlton Fields from her clients for other work, and 2 million was coming into the immigration practice and she was blown away. It's more money than she'd ever made in her life. And she said it was all because of the marketing stuff we had done. She said, the only regret I have is that I didn't do everything you told me to do. I only did about a third of the stuff I told you you told me to do.

(04:50):
She said, if I had done everything, she said I'd probably be making even more money now. And the really fun thing about this whole conversation is three years after being at Carlton Fields, she realized she was an entrepreneur at heart and she took her whole practice and went back out on her own again and made even more money on her own by leaving all those clients at Carlton Fields and starting over using all the recommendations. So getting people to do what we want them to do in our businesses is essential. Now, Nicki g I know that you're hesitant. You don't want to reveal any of your confidential information or conversations, but in the practice of law you give advice all the time. Surely people don't follow your advice all the time. What do you do to get people to do what they need to do?

Nicola Gelormino (05:40):
Sure. So let me approach this from and kind of broaden you because I work with a lot of companies. You know that. And when you work with companies, the bigger they are, they have in-house lawyers at companies as well as business decision makers, and you work with both when you're a lawyer who advises companies and you have to work with both because oftentimes the work that we do is a business decision, but we have to make sure that we are providing legal advice that will inform those business decisions. But the two can't be divorced from each other because if you are providing legal advice and you don't understand the ramifications to the business of your advice, you will not be an effective counsel to a business. I like to make sure I get to know as much as I can about a business when I start working with them because you have to really appreciate what they do.

(06:24):
Not all businesses are the same. Just because you're providing legal advice in a space that you're familiar with, it does not apply the same way it applies specific to the business you work with. So in working with companies, I work with inhouse leading professionals and business decision makers, and I've done that for my entire legal career. So that dynamic is an interesting one and here is why. Because oftentimes the in-house lawyers and the business decision makers will have a little bit of tension and I'll call it like friendly tension because they do have to get along inside the organization. But obviously when you're in the role of an in-house lawyer, you have to be providing legal advice that is going to best protect the company from exposure to what may come from the advice may come from the circumstance you are advising on, and the business owners are focused on increasing revenue and making sure that the company is growing.

(07:16):
There will be a tension sometimes between the advice and the impact that it will have on the decision that they're making from a business standpoint. So you'll see the back and forth between them and you have to cut a middle ground. In house lawyers, they do an excellent job of this because they navigate so much internally as the outside counsel who works with them. We get involved in the dynamic a lot of times. So how do I get clients to go back To answer your question, Dave, how do I get clients to do? What is good for them is I have to think about who is my audience and I need to speak to that audience. And here it's not the lawyers we're always on the same page because they've been in my shoes. Most inhouse lawyers become in-house lawyers after they've worked as outside counsel.

(07:56):
So they get it. I love those clients. They just get it and you don't have to really push too much with them, but it's the business folks. So I think about, well, they're the ones who are going to make a lot of these decisions, so how am I going to get them to do what I know is good for them? And it's, think about it in the business way. So sometimes what I'll do is I approach them from the numbers standpoint. If you do this today, you are going to reduce your risk in the longterm and your exposure and fat is going to help you grow faster with a company rather than taking that on right now, if you don't follow that advice, sure, that may be a short-term game, but it's not going to be a long-term one, and here's why. So when I understand how that applies to the business and I know what the financials are, I can break that down from a numbers perspective. Now we're talking the same language. We're not talking law anymore, we're talking business, we're talking numbers, and that gets through to 'em. So that's really how I get there, Dave, is really understanding who my audience is and making sure that I'm speaking to them. That's going to motivate them almost every time to do it, but sometimes will be, the decision will be this is what it's going to be, and I respect that because they're the ones ultimately who make that decision.

Dave Lorenzo (09:06):
Got it. Okay. It's interesting that your approach is quite rational and you share the numbers with them, but what you started out with was here's the risk. And when you start out with the risk, you're starting out with an emotional element. We talk all the time about this, you and I, and we talk about it with people that we're advising, that we're coaching up, that all decisions have an emotional element to it, and usually it's the emotional element followed by the rational, which is the justification. So there's three reasons why people decide to do anything in business, make money, save money, reduce risk. That's it. Those are the only three reasons people decide anything in business, make money, save money, reduce risk, far easier to lead with what they're missing out on or the fear element. In fact, we were talking about show opens earlier today, and you were like, okay, I can go with fear, I'll scare the hell out of 'em.

(10:10):
Let's do it. Because that's what you do. That's what you do as a lawyer. The way you get people to comply, and we could sum this entire show up in this, the way you get people to comply is to scare the hell out of 'em. Think about political messaging. This is the most consequential election in our history. How many times I've heard that as long as I've been voting in elections, every election I've ever voted in was the most consequential presidential election in our history. I mean, to an extent it's true, but the messaging is if you don't vote, the world will collapse. Climate change, it's a real thing, but the planet is going to fry. We're all going to die tomorrow. No, our kids are going to suffer and their kids are going to suffer. But people are not going to act to protect their children's children, but they'll act if they go outside and their skin is going to get scorched and they're going to get skin cancer immediately.

(11:08):
So that's why the messaging is done to influence people today to be concerned about things. Emotion is what leads, and the rational is what supports those things. The challenge we face, you and I, Nicki g, and the people who are listening to the show, is we're not in this just for the one time deal. We're not in this to make the one time sale. We have to maintain our credibility. So we can't tell them that if they don't make this decision, the world is going to end because it's not. If they don't make this decision, the world's going to be just fine. You'll make a little less money. That's what'll happen. If the money's important to you, make this decision. Now, that's the way to phrase it. When you're thinking about how you get people to take action, when you're thinking about how you get people to move, how you want to motivate people, what are they going to miss out on if they don't act?

(12:05):
It's the gambler's fallacy, okay? If you've ever met a hardcore gambler and growing up, my parents don't listen to the show, so I can tell this story. Growing up, every vacation we ever took started or ended in Las Vegas, okay? Because my father likes to gamble. So we either started in Vegas or we ended in Vegas. And the gambler's fallacy is this, you never bet enough money on a winning horse. A gambler is always concerned about missing out on big upside rather than having big downside. So if a gambler wins $10, they should have bet more because they missed out on a hundred bucks had they bet more. And that's the way to appeal to business people. If you want a business person to do something, if you don't do this, you're going to miss out on X. If you do this and you make the wrong decision, you're going to lose y. That's the way you appeal to business people, and a business person will then ask for the rational facts to back it up. And being a data-driven person just like you, Nicki G, we can torture the data to get it to say whatever we want it to say. What are your thoughts?

Nicola Gelormino (13:09):
No, I think that's right, Dave. I think that is the way to really get them to hear what you're talking about. I mean, it's a funny example that you've used with the gambling perspective, but there's a lot of truth to it, which is really getting them to see it in a way that they see it themselves. So it's really just putting yourself in their position and providing the advice that you know would want to hear as the person who is making that decision.

Dave Lorenzo (13:35):
Alrighty, folks. So you want to get people to do what you need 'em to do. Here's how to do it. Make money, save money, reduce risk, focus on the emotional element, support it with logic. That's how you motivate people to do what's good for them. Join us again tomorrow for another edition of the Inside BS Show. I'm Dave Lorenzo, and you are

Nicola Gelormino (13:55):
Nicki G.

Dave Lorenzo (13:56):
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