Drop the Hero Cape

Are your clients and potential clients the hero of your story, or are you? It’s so easy see ourselves as the heroes for our clients because we are the attorneys with all the legal expertise. Yet, this way of thinking is what prevents us from achieving unmet growth and potential. If you haven’t read Building a Story Brand by Donald Miller, you should. As Miller posits, and we agree, when it comes to your brand and your firm, your clients and potential clients are actually the hero of the story. You are the guide.

While at Client Care Academy we teach you the tools and steps to achieving a successful ongoing client care program and help you overcome the funding hurdle, it all means nothing if you haven’t shifted your view of your role to play with clients. Yes, you want to take care of families, but you can only lead a horse to water. If you want the horse to drink it has to be their choice. Much with clients you want them to choose you to be on their team, but to do so you have to cut through the noise as Miller puts it.

There is so much noise around estate planning. Pop culture promotes the idea of a will being all you need, and that estate planning is a one-time transaction. Soap operas further propagate this, and there are sites popping up online with strong social media influencer strategies touting “complete your estate plan in 15 minutes!”. With all this noise, how do you silence it? The reason the pop culture idea of estate planning is so successful is because it saves people time, and it is the loudest idea. Yet, what speaks clearer and with more conviction, is the idea of protecting loved ones, which people are inclined to view as a pursuit outside the constraints of time. People will drop everything to care for loved ones and see time as the greatest investment they can make in those they care for. Miller tells us the only way to cut through the noise is to disrupt it. To disrupt the noise and cancel out what pop culture is telling people requires you to disrupt the idea that people have taken care of their families with their “simple” and time saving estate plans.

In order to validate your disrupting message of helping clients truly protect families, you have to fill the correct role. Once you cut through the noise and disrupt people’s sense of security, you need help them achieve peace of mind by starting them on their hero journey. But if the attorney is the hero, then potential clients will only want to cling to what they know because what really makes you a better hero than the next person or that online site? Instead, if the client is the hero, then as Miller states, you become the trusted resource. This paradigm shift in the role you play is essential to making sure once you cut through the noise, you give potential clients something to believe in. You become the trusted advisor who will guide the client in overcoming their “problem”: the inability to protect their family when they are gone. Once the client believes in you, then you have laid the foundation to an ongoing and rewarding relationship.

This disruption idea might be familiar to you if you’ve read Blue Ocean Strategy. The fundamental difference here though is the shoes you fill, but if you couple these two ideas of disruption together, then you are well on your way to achieving the correct mindset for successfully taking care of families.

At Client Care Academy, we want to help you drop your hero cape and don the role of guide as you successfully help your clients navigate their hero role through your ongoing client care program. Let us be your guide and register for our spring workshops today! You can elevate how you take care of families while increasing profits, generating consistent and recurring revenue, and streamlines your processes.