There’s a space somewhere between the present and the future that contains the sweet spot for generating profits in your firm. It’s important for you to be able to identify that spot and position yourself squarely in the middle of it.
The future is not the answer.
Here’s what I mean:
If you’re living in the future (thinking about what’s coming from a marketing, technology, and management perspective), you’re ahead of the industry and likely ahead of the customers. If you’re offering services no one wants yet, and if you’re doing it in a manner customers aren’t ready to accept, then you’re going to have a really cool service offering and no sales.
The present doesn’t work so well either.
If you’re living in the present (thinking about what’s due today and how you’re going to get it done), you’re probably going to miss opportunities. We lawyers tend to be in the present or sometimes even in the past. We’re not very open to change, and we resist the future. It’s easier for us to bury our heads, avoid change, and stay right where we are.
Your customers in the present are content (although you might be losing leading-edge customers) and pleased with your offering. The problem is that one day soon, they won’t be happy. They’ll be susceptible to poaching by others offering more up-to-date services and approaches to delivering the service.
There’s a middle ground.
In either the future or the present, you’re not really where you need to be. In the future, you’re often so far ahead of the market that there aren’t any customers. There isn’t any money. It’s great for bloggers and other pundits to spend time in the future (I like it there), but their purpose isn’t really to bring you along right now. They’re plotting the future, and you need to join them when the future gets here. Sure, you might want to arrive early, but it’s too early now to jump right up there with them because you’ll go broke.
The present isn’t so great either. The problem with the present is that we’re so bogged down in the details and busy with the day-to-day that we lack the time and energy required to keep moving forward. The folks stuck in the present are still using Windows XP and justifying it by explaining that it “gets the job done.” Yep, it does, but it needs to go. It’s time to move forward. You might not want to move all the way to the future, but it’s time to move forward some.
I’m using a technology example, but my point isn’t limited to technology. I’m talking about moving beyond the present in every element of running our businesses. I’m thinking about the evolution of the law, the evolution of the tools we use, and the evolution of the approaches we take. It’s important that we stay open to change and that we keep moving.
It’s easy to come up with examples from the past. I remember firms that resisted developing a firm brochure when everyone from every industry had brochures. Then I remember the resistance to websites ever after everyone had one. Now we see it with social networks, even though almost everyone is on Facebook.
The world—our world—is moving forward all the time. We’ve got to keep one eye on the future and determine the steps to take to keep up. We don’t need to fast forward; we just need to keep moving forward.
How do you find it?
The middle ground, the profit sweet spot, varies by market. There’s not one sweet spot for every kind of practice. You’ve got to match up what you’re offering with what your market is ready and willing to accept. You need to figure out what customers want (by asking them) and figure out what they’d like if they knew it were possible (and this is harder). You’ve got to look at the competition locally and consider what colleagues in other markets are doing (ahead of you and behind you) for perspective. All of this requires that you get curious, that you engage with your peers nationally and internationally, and that you explore what’s happening in other industries.
Thankfully, it’s easier than ever to satisfy your curiosity and gather information as a result of the available technology. Today online, you can not only read about what others are doing, but you can also actually communicate with those folks with ease. You have access to those living in the future, the past, and the present with a few keystrokes. You can ask colleagues endless questions as you figure out what makes sense for your market. You can easily figure out what’s working in your area of the law, other practice areas, and other industries without leaving your desk. Of course, getting up and getting out with others is also a tremendously valuable source of intelligence.
You should always be interested in what’s coming down the road. An awareness of the future is essential. You should also be keenly aware of where you stand relative to the rest of our industry. Most importunely, you should stay very aware of what’s happening with your customers. Don’t assume that what was once good enough is good enough now. Things are changing fast, and if you blink, you’ll miss subtle shifts in your customer.
But awareness is just the first part of the equation. If you’re going to find the profit-making sweet spot and stay in it (remember, it’s always moving forward), you’ve got to have more than awareness. You’re going to need to apply what you’re learning. You’re going to need to test some of your ideas. You won’t necessarily implement every innovation you discover. You should, however, experiment with some of your discoveries. Don’t hesitate to test those things you’re finding as you learn about the future. Be open to learning something new. Be open to being incompetent with respect to something you haven’t yet had a chance to learn.
With a balance of doing the work and listening to your market in your present, being curious about the future, and experimenting with some of what you’re learning, you’ll find the sweet spot of profitability. You’ll find yourself moving forward as time goes by, and you won’t find yourself left behind—and left without profits—when the future comes.
