Don’t get a job at a great firm. Make your good firm great.
Where’s the challenge in working at a firm that’s already great?
It’s much more satisfying taking something with potential and making it great. Starting with something great and failing to screw it up is just maintaining someone else’s work. It’s treading water.
In my first year in law school, I asked around – “Which is the best intramural softball team?” Then I worked my way onto that team. Sure we won the championship that year and the next. But they’d already won the previous year without me. It was lots of fun, but it was hardly a great accomplishment.
Helping turn the worst team into a contender would have been fun.
We’d still have lost, but any improvement would have been particularly rewarding — and specifically measurable.
At Fishman Marketing, most of our clients start out “awful.”
They’re terrific firms, but many of them have awful marketing. Typically this means that their websites are simply past their prime, and no longer reflect the high quality of the firm. From there we can usually find countless other areas of potential improvement. And if working together we can use effective marketing to show that a C-tier firm is actually a B? That’s a big win, for morale as well as revenue. Polishing a B+ into an A is equally satisfying.
It’s not always about winning. Sometimes it’s about improvement.
Below is the before and after on a project we’re launching for a national honorary association of 3500 outstanding trial lawyers. The organization is terrific and the lawyers are world class, but the current website no longer showcases the group’s remarkable quality and integrity.
Basically, it’s hard to persuade prospects that you’re brilliant when you’re wearing a cheap suit. And a four-year-old website is the online equivalent.
Before and after:
My wife says she feels better when she buys or puts on a great new pair of shoes. As marketers, we can do that – we can help them feel better, and look better — and be better. More confident. They put their best foot forward.
Marketing can improve the perceived quality of your product.
And a better product is easier to sell, and at a higher dollar.
And why wouldn’t you invest in that?
