Almost exactly twenty years ago, I arrived in San Francisco to start working at my first startup, Flycast Communications. Flycast was led by Rick Thompson and Larry Braitman, two gentlemen from whom I learned a lot, and this morning, I’m thinking about something Rick said way back then. We were a small startup with zero…
22017Mar
By Peter Darling
In Business development,
Mindset,
Thinking Out Loud,
Uncategorized
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Everything Hurts: Fitness and Business Development
Let’s take inventory. What hurts? Quadriceps. Hamstrings. Butt. Chest. Shoulders. Hips. Basically, everything between my knees and my head hurts somehow. The worst is the quads. If I have to move something on the floor, I try to do it with one of my feet, only bending down if I absolutely have to. I’ve been…
52017Feb
By Peter Darling
In Business development,
Networking,
Relationships,
Sales,
Sales and Selling
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Connections: Both Priceless and Free
One of the best ways to add extra value to your clients as a legal marketing consultant is to be the son of a small-town doctor. Obvious, right? I grew up in the small town pictured above. Corning, New York — Population: 12,000. Looking back at it from middle age, I now realize it was…
To Bring In Business, Start Paying Attention
The single best way to improve your business development expertise is not to read articles like this. It’s to pay close attention to what the best business developers around you do, then steal from them. Right down my street, in Santa Cruz, California, is a little joint called Charlie Hong Kong, or CHK as it’s…
To Develop Business, Start Somewhere, But Not Everywhere.
I coach a lot of attorneys, and one of the things I always try to do is get them to define a practice area, vertical or other domain, and as much as possible, own it. For one client, that means VR law — the emerging law related to virtual reality and augmented reality technology. For…
You Have To Provide the Thrust
Sometimes I think business development consists of about five concepts, repeated over and over. I was reading a printout today of a Powerpoint presentation that was part of a sales training program. One of the bullet points on one of the slides included a sentence that really struck me: Do not assume the prospect will…
You Can Be Replaced
Today is Beyonce’s birthday, in honor of which we here at Repechage present the following: One of the best approaches for legal marketing and business development is to go outside the still somewhat insular world of legal marketing. Human beings have been selling each other things for 10,000 years. There is a lot of expertise…
Here Comes Blake
Sometimes, just to get their attention, I show lawyers I’m working with on business development the Blake speech from the film Glengarry Glen Ross. Blake is the ultimate two-fisted, hard-driving salesman in this script by David Mamet, and this speech to a group of failing salespeople may be the best work Alec Baldwin has ever done….