Rainmaker Institue : Small law firms & solos leverage technology to grow business
You’re a small business owner, looking for advice from a professional on how to effectively market your company. So you head over to Google and search for “marketing coach.”
But when the results return, there are a lot of them – almost 15 million. The question now isn’t whether you will be able to find a coach who meets your needs, but whether you will effectively be able to separate the fakers from the real deal.
There are a lot of coaching options available for business owners, often charging exuberant amounts to do little more than speak about things that seem to be common sense.
And then there are those that work.
Ask anyone who has attended one of his seminars and they will agree that Stephen Fairley falls into the second category. A Chicago-based business coach and author who is president of Today’s Leadership Coaching (TLC) and CEO of The Rainmaker Institute, Fairley has developed a national reputation for his unique approach to coaching, making him a favorite at workshops and seminars.
The numbers speak for themselves.
“Over 6,000 attorneys from hundreds of firms have attended one or more of these Rainmaker seminars and programs,” says Fairley. “We have strong relationships with more than a dozen of the largest state and local bar associations, who sponsor our seminars to help their members become better rainmakers.”
On June 15-16, Fairley and Travis Greenlee, president of The Rainmaker Institute, will bring their techniques to Las Vegas, Nevada, where they will present to lawyers and attorneys from across the country in a two-day, 10 session seminar.
“The Rainmaker Institute specializes in helping small and solo firms find new clients, generate more revenue and leverage technology to automate, simplify and build their practice,” explains Fairley. “We hold four to six Rainmaker Retreats in different cities each year, generally in large metro areas.”
There are more than one million attorneys in America today, Fairley says, and that means more competition than ever. He hopes that the retreat will give some of these lawyers the advantage needed to build a solid client base.
Geared towards partners at small firms, solo practitioners, of-counsel attorneys and associates, the retreat is designed to provide companies with financially feasible strategies that can be accomplished without a big-budget marketing team.
Rather than focusing on speeches and a one-sided conversations, the Rainmaker Retreat is aimed at encouraging lawyers to apply the skills as they learn them. In an environment that the Rainmaker Institute calls a “Working Retreat,” attorneys are given marketing assignments throughout the weekend that require them to think and put their new skills into action before they’ve even left Sin City.
“One of my clients told me last week, with tongue firmly in cheek, ‘Stephen, you make marketing my law practice so easy even a lawyer can do it,’” Fairley says.
When it comes to blogging – another marketing approach rapidly increasing in popularity among lawyers – Fairley says that, from his experience, smaller firms are still behind the times.
At a recent Rainmaker Retreat in Los Angeles, for example, he asked the 40 attorneys in attendance – made up almost entirely of lawyers from small firms – whether they were familiar with blogs. Less than 10 raised their hands. When he asked how many of them work for a firm that operates a blog, only one woman raised her hand. She was the lone representative from a firm with more than 500 lawyers.
“My prediction,” says Fairley, “is [that] within five years, having a professionally-designed blog will be mandatory for any law firm who is serious about attracting more (and better) clients over the Internet.”