Mediation Marketing and Career Guide: Making Mediation Your Day Job

When Tip O’Neill, legendary Speaker of the House for 35 years, first ran for office, he was defeated by 150 votes.

Speaking with his landlady (or neighbor, depending which version of the story you’ve heard) afterward, he asked, “Did you vote for me?”

“No,” she replied.

O’Neill was shocked and disappointed. “Why not?” he inquired.

“Because you never asked,” said the landlady.

O’Neill was never defeated again and is famously known for quipping, “All politics is local.”

Have you asked your best marketing leads for their business? Have you told a prospective client you’d love to work with them?

Making Mediation Your Day Job by Tammy Lenski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at MediatorTech.com.

Before any client hires you, they’re asking themselves two critical questions:

Is mediation (substitute other conflict resolution services you offer if needed) relevant to my problem?

Why should I hire this mediator instead of someone else?

Can you answer those two questions right now, clearly and concisely, and without mediator jargon? Your answers need to be at the foundation of your marketing efforts and without superb answers, your marketing will be weak.

Is mediation relevant?

It’s so easy to say yes to this when you sit in the mediator’s chair. But the public doesn’t have the clarity you have about mediation and a mediator’s impartiality.

This one takes work – elbow grease by every single mediator who wants to thrive in business and do good in the world. And to start blogging, or podcasting, or Twittering without knowing the answer is one of the reasons so many social media marketing forays go nowhere. An ad exec interviewed a couple of weeks ago for the New York Times article Multiscreen Mad Men put it this way:

“…we do have a ton of different new media and new ways to use them. But before we get there, I would suggest that first, you take a step backward and ask yourself, How do I make my brand relevant? Overalls are a staple of Americana, a cultural icon. The question is, How can you make overalls relevant to people today, and how can you use these different media channels to accomplish that?”

Why should I hire you?

Again, an easy answer from the mediator’s perspective and a whole lot less clear from the other side of the table. In fact, you may take this so for granted that you’re not spelling it out clearly enough for your prospective clients. They need it spelled out because they don’t have the experience, knowledge and understanding of mediation’s power that you do.

The Marketing Experiments Blog explains why things like taglines and brand statements often miss the mark:

“The statement ‘My Life Is Beautiful’ makes a catchy tagline, but it’s not what we consider a true value proposition. Why not? Because it doesn’t answer this question: ‘If I’m your ideal prospect, why should I buy from you instead of anyone else?’ Answer that with ‘My life is beautiful’ and you’ll clearly see the disconnect.”

Answering questions like the two above is the foundation of everything you do in your marketing. Sounds like a perfect time for a ramp-up and renewal retreat!

Making Mediation Your Day Job by Tammy Lenski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at MediatorTech.com.

Would you choose a hospital because its surgical suite features “non-halogen lighting for accurate color rendering”?

I’ve written before about the value of selling benefits instead of features when marketing mediation and other ADR services.

Today I came across a great example of an ad written about features and written from the orientation of a surgeon instead of from the patient. Here’s an excerpt:

These [surgical] suites will offer:

• In excess of 600 square feet; 700+ square feet for robotic and cardiac suites.
• Non-halogen lighting for accurate color rendering.
• Three flat-panel monitors for x-ray images received via electronic PACSA for on-the-spot consultations.
• Individual sound systems and no in-room paging.

Sure, I can extrapolate what some of it might mean for me as the prospective patient, but the point is that I shouldn’t have to. Spell it out for me instead of making me guess. I may not take the time to guess or I may guess wrong.

Why should I care about the sound system in a room where I’m under anesthesia? Why should I care about accurate color rendering at all?

Is all the jargon meant to impress me? I don’t want to be impressed so much as I want to be told why I should care and how the electronic PACSA capability sets them apart from any other hospital that does similar surgeries.

When you talk to prospective mediation clients, or network at business events, or write copy for your print and online marketing materials, do you tell them why they should care? Do you write from where they sit or from the mediator’s (surgeon’s) chair?

Making Mediation Your Day Job by Tammy Lenski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at MediatorTech.com.

I’ve just put up a new reader-only resource for those of you who’ve purchased my book, Making Mediation Your Day Job: How to Market Your ADR Business Using Mediation Principles You Already Know.

Reader-only resources are a special thank you for those of you who’ve bought the book and supplement some of the ideas discussed in its pages.

Here’s an excerpt of the new article:

Before you print up more or new brochures for your mediation marketing, consider the waste of most brochures:
 

• Brochures are static. They capture you for a moment in time only.
• If you’re new in the mediation business, the likelihood’s pretty high that your print materials will be out of date within 6 months. That’s because you’ll refine the way you describe what you do as you hone your practice and your marketing.
• Brochures tend to be generalist, trying to say everything to everyone, so you can use them for multiple purposes. If you’ve been a reader of Mediator Tech for 6 months or more, you know I believe that trying to be everything to everyone with a broad generalist market is the kiss of death for too many mediators.
• Brochures eat trees. At a time of growing interest in minimizing the environmental consequences of excessive paper use, more and more of us are printing only when we know the resource will serve someone effectively.
• Done well, brochures are not inexpensive. Paying for quality graphic design, quality printing, and perhaps even quality copywriting can add up quickly. The ROI with brochures is unclear enough to suggest your money may be better spent elsewhere.
• Done poorly, brochures do more to harm your ADR business than help it. Designing them yourself with stock logo and printing them on your home printer can convey an unprofessional image you don’t intend.

I usually advise mediators to forget printing brochures and take an alternative, much more effective marketing materials path instead.

Read the rest of the article at Forget the Brochure and Use Customized Resources Instead. You’ll need to own the book to gain access.

Odds and Ends

For those of you interested in joining one of my workshops or seeing me speak, I’ve got several gigs coming up around the country in the next month:

• Making Mediation Your Day Job, Maine Association of Mediators Annual Meeting, Augusta, ME, November 19
• The Sustainable ADR Career: What Mediators Can Learn From Hybrid Cars, Southeastern Mediators Summit keynote address, Nashville, TN, December 1
• Marketing Your Mediation Practice: Craft Your Plan for the Next 90 Days, Southeastern Mediators Summit 2-day workshop, Nashville, TN, December 2-3
• Client Relationship Management: How to Track, Groom and Grow Your Client Base, New England ACR Annual Conference, Shrewsbury, MA, December 11

Making Mediation Your Day Job by Tammy Lenski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at MediatorTech.com.

Two videos crossed my path today within 30 seconds of each other. Though they come from different sources, the link between the two is perfect.

While you watch the first, ask yourself, How would I approach my mediation marketing if I thought like this guy?

While you watch the second, ask yourself, What if I played with my mediation marketing idea-generating like a child plays?

One Day Like This

Tim Brown: The Powerful Link between Creativity and Play

[Obligatory note: If you can't see one or both of the videos in your email or feed reader, click on the post title to head straight to the page and you'll find them there. Some feed readers and email software don't translate the video embed code well.]

Making Mediation Your Day Job by Tammy Lenski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at MediatorTech.com.

In what began as a mild dare, Gavin Heaton and Drew McLellan challenged bloggers around the world to contribute one page — 400 words — on the topic of “conversation.” The resulting book, The Age of Conversation 2, brings together over 100 of the world’s leading marketers, writers, thinkers and creative innovators in a ground-breaking collection of essays about the value of dialogue in the world of marketing and idea-building. Contributors hail from 29 U.S. states and 14 other nations.

I’m proud to be among the contributors to The Age of Conversation 2, which comes out on October 28. My essay, “Emptying Your Teacup in the Age of Conversation,” uses an old Zen koan, or story, to discuss the new marketing as an act of dialogue, instead of an act of controlling a one-way message. Collaborating on a book about conversation was a natural extension of my work as a dialogue-builder and my work helping mediators market themselves more effectively.

Not only does the book promise to be a compelling read about marketing and dialogue, but it also promises [Read more...]

I read a great little article in the Harvard Business Review recently. In Psst! Your Product Annoys Your Customers author Rita McGrath discusses ways to improve customers’ experience by taking away something they find negative about your product or service.

McGrath argues that anything customers find “irritating, inconvenient, painful, or even worse, scary and disgusting” can doom your prospects as a service provider.

Of course, my mind went straight to mediation and arbitration because “painful” or “scary” could be apt descriptors in some prospective clients’ minds. But my mind also went there because of the potential parallel between mandatory ADR and the pre-loaded computer software example in McGrath’s article: [Read more...]

Charles Green, author of the excellent (I just finished it) Trust-Based Selling: Using Customer Focus and Collaboration to Build Long-Term Relationships, recently blogged some ideas for trustworthy and future-thinking ways small businesses can act during difficult economic times.

In Top Ten Ways for Your Business to Deal with a Recession, Green offers up strategies that capitalize on this kind of thinking:

• Don’t fall prey to short-termism
• Do well by doing good
• Meet transactional opportunism with relationship strategies
• Be there for others now, and they will be there for you later
• We remember those who helped us when times were tough
• Now’s the time to prove you’re trustworthy–worthy of trust.

While not every item on his Top Ten list makes sense for mediators in small or solo practices, many of them do. I particularly like #3, #7, #8 and #9.

Have a great idea for staying on course during a recession? I invite you to share it in the comments.

Making Mediation Your Day Job by Tammy Lenski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at MediatorTech.com.

In my last article, Mediation in the mainstream: how to make it a successful innovation, I discussed ways to increase the rate at which innovation — like mediation or conflict coaching — gets adopted by the mainstream.

Now I’m going to discuss the five critical characteristics for innovation diffusion and the implications for ADR marketing. They apply to those of you who are marketing your own ADR firms and services, and to those of you who may be considering how your state, regional or national ADR association can contribute to public education about ADR.

1: Relative advantage
An innovation will spread more quickly if it’s perceived as better than the status quo – that is, its advantage relative to the status quo is quite clear. [Read more...]

What will it take for ADR to reach a real tipping point? This may be the single most important question for practitioners who want to build their ADR practices and market themselves successfully.

There are five critical characteristics that, while not requirements for an innovation to meet success, can greatly affect the rate at which it gets adopted. And it turns out that all five are highly relevant to successful mediation marketing.

Know the five — and how to address them in your marketing efforts — and you have a powerful key not only for your own success, but also for helping ADR gain traction more broadly.

Back in 2000, when a Boston-based environmental sustainability nonprofit was one of my clients, I facilitated one of their retreats for college and university leaders who wanted to green their campuses. I had the good fortune to watch Alan AtKisson lead his Diffusion of Innovation game at the retreat. The point of the game, [Read more...]

Last year, I wrote about thank you gifts for mediation clients and referrers. In the post, I suggested sending Thanksgiving cards instead of Christmas cards as part of your mediation marketing strategy:

“I thank my clients and referral sources at Thanksgiving instead of in December because:
 

• No one else does, so my thank you stands out.
• I can neatly sidestep the entire Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, Chrismukkah thing.
• Thanksgiving is a time of giving thanks. What better time to give thanks to those who chose me or suggested my services to someone?”

The nonbillable hour’s Matthew Hohmann has now added [Read more...]

Playing the stock market these days is not for the faint of heart. Each night when I get home from working with clients, I gulp, turn on the television, and wait to see what transpired on Wall Street. The past few days have led to some heart palpitations here in the U.S., that’s for sure.

But don’t let economic woes shrink your business success dreams. I have one colleague who’s buying as much real estate as he can get his hands on in a couple of the hardest-hit markets in New England, because he’s not seen prices like these in recent memory. He’s investing for the long run, and you should too. There’s big-money investing like my colleague’s, and there’s big-thinking investing…anyone can do the latter.

I’ve gathered some good recession-proofing articles [Read more...]

Who’s your biggest competitor for mediation clients?

Is it the mediator down the street, the one who’s been in business for a decade and whose name is synonymous with mediation? Or the newly minted mediator who just opened shop across town? Or the world-known guru who gets the high-profile cases? I don’t think so.

Is it the attorneys in your area who specialize in whatever arena you also specialize in? Maybe they now mediate too? I don’t think so.

Is it family therapists and counselors, if you’re a family practitioner? [Read more...]

When the media calls, are you ready?

Most calls I get from from reporters, columnists and freelancers – many of whom found me because of my online presence in the blogosphere and social media – have incredibly quick turn-around needs. They’re on deadline, they need a response that day, and they’re looking for someone who has their thoughts already gathered.

So it makes sense to have a media preparation plan you can put in place quickly when those mediation marketing efforts pay off.

Joan Stewart, aka The Publicity Hound, offers a terrific post on the subject, Prepare for an Interview with a Reporter These 8 Ways. I always appreciate that Joan’s advice is clear and straightforward, offered in digestible chunks like this one: [Read more...]

Your website isn’t about you. Or, at least, it shouldn’t be.

Your website is about your clients and visitors. Your prospective clients. And their pain and problems, their hopes and dreams.

When you make your site about them, you give people a reason to stay. And maybe come back. But when you make your site all about you, well, to paraphrase the book, they’re just not that into you.

Marketer Mark Nagurski calls companies’ penchant to write mostly about themselves Ain’t We Great (AWG) Syndrome: [Read more...]

Back in March, attorney and marketing consultant Cole Silver interviewed me for his Raindancing Expert Audio Series.

At the time, I shared the 30-minute interview audio, How to Market a Mediation Practice and it’s still there for the listening if you’re new to Making Mediation Your Day Job or didn’t have the inclination at the time.

Cole’s alerted me to a marketing article he’s got running at The Complete Lawyer (also home to The Human Factor, from fellow ADR bloggers and super-women Diane Levin, Vickie Pynchon, Gini Nelson and Stephanie West Allen).

In Powerful Cures for an Allergic Reaction to Marketing, Cole suggests,

Getting started is the most difficult part. We need to shift our attitude. Many of us see marketing as demeaning, and a waste of our precious time. We dread the very idea of it. Yellow page ads, obnoxious late night cable commercials, or costly glossy brochures all seem to gratify an attorney’s ego rather than sell real benefits. Most of us disdain the legal marketing spectrum—on one end, professional garbage about the impressive “image” of the lawyer; at the other, raunchy ads about getting the client massive amounts of money for injury claims. Worse, they all look alike.
 
In truth, most of us dislike marketing because we were never taught how to do it in a professional and personally fulfilling way. I can assure you, though, that marketing your solutions can be easy and enjoyable, especially if you implement these ideas.

I hope you’ll take a look at the ideas Cole’s referring to, because they’re good ones. Whether or not you’re an attorney.

Making Mediation Your Day Job by Tammy Lenski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at MediatorTech.com.

When you’re marketing your mediation services, are you selling the features (great shovel, ergonomically designed, sharp cutting edge) or the benefits (the fastest, cleanest hole you’ve ever dug…and no back pain, either)?

Here’s a little clip from last week’s Making Mediation Your Day Job summer book club conference call, where I read a brief excerpt from my book to kick off the conversation. The excerpt distinguishes features from benefits and why you want to focus on the latter.

Features vs benefits in marketing

Which are you selling? If you already have a “Frequently Asked Questions” or “Why Choose Mediation” section on your website, why not take another look at your answers.

Making Mediation Your Day Job by Tammy Lenski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at MediatorTech.com.

In the first group call for the Making Mediation Your Day Job Summer Book Club, conversation about mediation marketing turned several times to selecting the right target market for your ADR business, and differentiating between a market niche and a target market.

Click the link to listen to a 5-minute clip on the difference between mediation market niche and target market.

Making Mediation Your Day Job by Tammy Lenski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at MediatorTech.com.

I while back I received an email from a mediator called SnarkMonster (well, not exactly that, though pretty darn close. I changed it slightly to protect the sender). That’s the name in the “From” field, along with a return email address that was similar.

And I couldn’t help wonder, Do they send emails with that name to potential clients? Would you hire someone called SnarkMonster to be your mediator?

Dear SnarkMonster, please change your email name.

Here are some good articles from other sources [Read more...]

The Mediator Tech File Vault is a regular feature that dips into the archives and shares still-relevant mediation marketing and practice management articles from around this time a year or two ago. Here’s the selection for May:

• 4 questions your ADR website should answer immediately
• Do you know how to make mediation a sticky idea?
• 584 business card ideas
• Are your website’s colors conveying the message you intend?
• The secret of successful business card exchanges
• Are big turnoffs lurking on your website’s homepage?

Enjoy,

Making Mediation Your Day Job by Tammy Lenski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at MediatorTech.com.

Is it possible to give too much information about mediation or your services in your marketing?

Maybe so.

Consider this University of Iowa study and the so-called Blissful Ignorance Effect:

“We found that once people commit to buying or consuming something, there’s a kind of wishful thinking that happens and they want to like what they’ve bought,” said assistant professor of marketing Dhananjay Nayakankuppam. “The less you know about a product, the easier it is to engage in wishful thinking. But the more information you have, the harder it is to kid yourself. This can be contrasted with what happens before taking any action when people are trying to be accurate and would prefer getting more information to less.”

The study focused on products, but I couldn’t help but wonder if the conclusions teach us something about marketing services as well. While I’m always cautious about generalizing beyond the research scope, it sure is tempting to consider it.

What do you think? Leave a comment with your opinion.

Found via Guy Kawasaki.

Making Mediation Your Day Job by Tammy Lenski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at MediatorTech.com.
Copyright © 2008 by Tammy Lenski. All rights reserved.

LegalZoom is suggesting that mediation is one of the Top Businesses to Start in a Sluggish Economy. It comes in at #4 in the list of ten.

Their reasoning is, “In tough economic times, many people turn to mediators rather than attorneys to settle disputes simply because they are less expensive. If you’re skilled at negotiating this may be the business opportunity you are looking for.”

The full list looks like this: [Read more...]

A teleseminar participant recently asked me for advice about making time to do the marketing necessary to build a truly healthy mediation practice. I’m already working full-time as an attorney, she said, and have a family. Exactly when would I market my mediation services…midnight?

Making Mediation Your Day Job offers an entire chapter on the topic, of course, and I’ve also written about it here in articles like Do You Let the Urgent Get in the Way of the Important? and How Much Time Should You Spend on Marketing?

Chris Brown of Branding & Marketing blog [Read more...]

One of my most effective marketing strategies has always been to offer presentations on conflict resolution to audiences in my target market. In my first year of business over a decade ago, I gave more than 30 such presentations. Almost all of them created valuable connections and interest that helped me make mediation my full-time work in less than two years.

For a long time, I avoided PowerPoint in my presentations. I’d sat through far too many boring, bullet-point packed, read-word-by-word PowerPoint events and didn’t want my own presentations to be associated with a tool that’s been sorely misused. I didn’t want to be someone about whom PowerPoint comedy sketches could be made!

In the past year, thanks to Garr Reynolds’ blog, Presentation Zen, I reconsidered my vow and began reintroducing PowerPoint into my speeches and mini-workshops for prospective clients. And I learned that, used well, PowerPoint substantially improved my speaking gigs and made the material — and thus me — much more memorable.

If you want to — or already do — give presentations as part of your mediation marketing strategy, I highly recommend three Garr Reynolds resources: His blog, his superb book, Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery, and the video below.

The video is from Reynolds’ 21 March 2008 presentation to Google employees. Settle in with a cup of coffee, a note pad, and watch a master at work. It’s worth every minute:

Enjoy,

Making Mediation Your Day Job by Tammy Lenski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at MediatorTech.com.
Copyright © 2008 by Tammy Lenski. All rights reserved.

Mediation Marketing Resources is my periodic roundup of articles, tools and ideas that offer insights and support for your ADR marketing efforts.

This month’s roundup gathers together articles on branding, blogging and ways to avoid watering down your valuable time:

How do you set yourself apart from the competition? Business coach Dave Navarro offers three powerful questions for clarifying your brand and differentiating yourself in 3 Steps to Creating a Freelancing Brand that Sells.

What associations do you want prospective clients to make with your business brand? In The Brand-Name Brain, Deliberations blog shares research on the associations created by well-known logos (found via Victoria Pynchon).

Do you run your business by trying to be all the roles (bookkeeper, graphic designer, etc)? In Refocusing Your Business With an “I Am No Good At” List freelancer Samuel Ryan reminds us that being the “do everything” entrepreneur can be path to business failure.

Have you ever been asked when you plan to return to “real work”? Most new micro-business owners and consultants have. In How to Stay Confident in Your Decision to Start Your Business small business marketing entrepreneur Shannon Cherry offers some advice for responding.

Thinking about blogging as part of your mediation marketing strategy? Marion Sanchez of Shoestring Branding has a terrific post on the Ten Essential Tools You’ll Need to Launch a Blog. I use almost all the same tools Mario does and can vouch for their excellence.

Happy reading,

Making Mediation Your Day Job by Tammy Lenski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at MediatorTech.com.
Copyright © 2008 by Tammy Lenski. All rights reserved.

“A major stimulant to creative thinking is focused questions. There is something about a well-worded question that often penetrates to the heart of the matter and triggers new ideas and insights.”

— Brian Tracy

[Found via fellow mediator and ADR blogger Lee Burns] [Read more...]

What happens when you give 100 of the world’s leading marketing professionals, writers, thinkers, innovators and bloggers a book title and an invitation to write about that topic in 400 words or less?

The Age of Conversation happens. Born as an off-hand comment, then growing into an e-book and ultimately a printed book, The Age of Conversation takes the individual musings of 100+ authors from all over the world, many of whom have no connection other than shared belief in the power of social media, and turns them into a collection that overflows with creativity and insight.

And just for today, March 29, The Age of Conversation is more than a book. It’s part of a social media experiment. And you can be part of it. [Read more...]

There are a few ways to succeed in ADR business: Serve a market that’s already served but do it better or differently than the rest. Compete on price point (high end or low end). Or fill a niche that’s under-served and succeed by being among the first.

Jim Melamed is a master at the latter (and maybe the others, too, but I’m focusing on the latter), seeing opportunities in the marketplace and creating ways to address them. Mediate.com had its foundation in that kind of market awareness and now he’s announcing InstantAssist.

InstantAssist’s tagline is “Immediate Conflict Advice,” and its market niche is described this way: [Read more...]