How to use corporate values to differentiate your firm from others

Ensuring your partners and employees understand your firm’s corporate values and live up to them is the key to long-term success, writes Leticia Mooney.

The legal sector is being shaken at its foundations by the entrance of new technology,¹ new models² and new client expectations³. For many established players, the market is a much less exciting proposition than it is for new entrants, for whom barriers to entry seem to be getting lower with every passing quarter. In this situation, it is easy to become fixated on the notion that price is everything. It is not.

One of the best-known business principles is the idea of delivering value over price⁴ – and this is where the focus should be for law firms which are seeking to differentiate themselves from their rivals. Otherwise, if the emphasis is simply on competing based on cost for service, they risk becoming engaged in a race to the bottom in a competitive, cost-driven market.

Find your passions

So what can law firms do? The great business mentors, writers and speakers, from Jim Rohn⁵ to Simon Sinek,⁶ talk about the importance of firms and their people finding their deep passions if they want to succeed. For many firms, however, it can be difficult to translate those sentiments into the actual things that they need to do to succeed and get over the value hurdle when dealing with clients.

This is why I am going to ask you to think about your corporate values. Do you have a mission statement and a company intention? Can you recite your company values without having to go and look for them? More importantly, can your team members do the same thing?

If the answer is ‘no’, then your firm’s future may be at risk.⁷ Simply chasing short-term dollars is going to do less for your firm over the long term than aligning your team with the core factors that are the key to moving your firm forwards. If you can clearly define your corporate values and ensure that everyone understands them, you will have taken the first step towards providing a point of differentiation for your firm.

Learn from great brands

The reality is that we all want our firms to stand the test of time. To this end, firms can heed the lessons of great brands that have enjoyed long-term success on the back of tradition. Trying to match such achievements can be intimidating for relatively young businesses or firms until they realise that tradition is nothing more than values and a story.⁸ Without these two elements, your firm suddenly becomes just the same as every other legal practice, selling the same thing in much the same way. If you cannot clearly convey those values and articulate that story, it is a sign that you have absolutely no way of differentiating yourself in the marketplace, and no intention of being able to do so.

This does not just become a marketing problem. It does not just become a sales problem. It ends up being a rot that changes how you relate to – and make decisions about – all of the content, communication, digital assets and attendant processes in your business. In short, it is a recipe for failure.

Drive team and message alignment

By contrast, your management team will know that everyone is working from the same script if all team members can explain what your mission is, what your values are and what your firm’s intention is (and why). Better still, when this occurs you know that you do not have to ride them to carry out that mission. Every decision that your team makes will be for the right reason.

Setting clear values also allows a firm to chart its own course and differentiate itself from others. Advice and information abounds online about how to market and run a firm, but the final decisions are always up to your team. Following what everybody else is doing is not likely to move you towards your destination any faster because everybody else’s mission, intention and values are different from yours.

This truth will have an impact on the decisions your firm makes in a raft of areas, including:

• the social media channels you use
• the extent to which you encourage your team members to be brand advocates online
• whether or not you frequently publish a blog, or a deep-dive journal
• how you approach your customer lifecycle – and even how you greet your clients
• the kinds of sales processes you follow
• what you do with your content and information assets
• the purpose with which you approach the market.

At all stages, your values should help inform decisions in these areas and others.

Know your position

The great thing about having corporate values and understanding their power is that it enables you and your team to make better business judgments. When you are absolutely clear about your approach, what you are doing, why you are doing it and where you are going, you are better able to assess any information with which you are presented.

If a thought leader advises you to scrap the billable hour, but one of your key values is transparency, you may make a strategic decision not to do that (or to present the work you complete in a different way). If a thought leader advises you to be in four social networks and to post something three times a day in every one of them, but one of your key values is simplicity, then you may choose not to do that.

Likewise, the types of content and communication with which you engage must always have a strategic imperative that complements your values. This does not necessarily mean that you have to sit in strategic planning sessions for days on end and agonise about decisions. It can be as simple as asking: Does this progress our intention? If the answer is ‘maybe’, then perhaps you park the idea until you have more information. If the answer is ‘hell yes’, then you know it is a good fit.

Do it your way

It is easy to get stuck feeling that your firm is not doing enough, or is not doing the right things. However, with your values firmly in place, you have the capacity to make a rational assessment about your direction. The foundations of your corporate strategy and position function as your ruler and guide, and sometimes that means having the courage to think differently from everyone else. The ‘right’ way for someone else may be the very thing that makes you fail.

So, in summary, my five key tips as to how firms can use corporate values to drive differentiation are:

1. Identify your corporate values.

2. Learn them, live them and make sure they fit with the intention of your firm.

3. Ensure that your employees understand the values and enact them.

4. Use the values to inform decision-making across all aspects of the firm.

5. Trust your values to set the long-term direction of the business.

Remember these five points and your senior management and employees will be able to differentiate your service offering from other firms – giving you a real chance of prospering in a highly competitive market.

Leticia Mooney is a content strategist for the legal profession and the director of content-strategy firm, Brutal Pixie. She can be contacted on email at leticia@brutalpixie.com.

References

¹ Koehn, Emma. How digital disruption is changing the game for small law firms, in Smart Company, 15 March, 2017. Online. [http://www.smartcompany.com.au/business-advice/innovation/how-digital-disruption-is-changing-the-game-for-law-firms]

² Chiocchio, Lucia. It’s time to change the law firm business model, in Law360, 18 January, 2017. Online. [https://www.law360.com/articles/881136/it-s-time-to-change-the-law-firm-business-model

³ Thomson Reuters. How a new legal resource helps Reinhard Boerner Van Deuren exceed client expectations, in Above the Law, 7 March, 2017. Online. [http://abovethelaw.com/2017/03/how-a-new-legal-resource-helps-reinhard-boerner-van-deuren-exceed-client-expectations]

⁴ Kim, W. Chan & Mauborgne, Renee. 2015. Blue Ocean Strategy, Harvard Business School, US.

⁵ Rohn, Jim. 3 ways to turn nothing into something, in Success. Online. [http://www.success.com/article/rohn-3-ways-to-turn-nothing-into-something]

⁶ Sinek, Simon. Start with Why. Online. [https://www.startwithwhy.com/learnyourwhy]

⁷ Chris Hooper, business futurist. Personal communication.

⁸ Aroche, Daniela. Interview: Wilhelm Schmid, CEO, A. Lange & Sohne, in LuxurySociety, 28 October, 2016. Online. [http://www.luxurysociety.com/en/articles/2016/10/interview-wilhelm-schmid-ceo-lange-sohne/]