Comment décrire votre produit?

Article intéressant publié sur le site Slaw hier qui explique, en généralisant un peu, la difficulté qu’ont les juristes à décrire le produit qu’ils vendent et à en démontrer les propriétés. En effet, selon Margaret McCaffery, la majorité des avocats décrivent leur produit comme étant «some combination of the three E’s – education, expertise and experience» tandis que c’est en fait l’application des trois E qui constitue le produit duquel votre client a besoin, même s’il ne le sait peut-être pas encore.

En voici un extrait assez représentatif:

So why am I writing about this? Because I’ve been in this business for 15 years and I still meet lawyers who think ‘marketing’ starts with listing all the services they offer, rather than first understanding what their clients want and need. I never cease to be amazed at how law firms describe themselves as client-focused, then go on to describe all the things they do—without once mentioning the client, let alone demonstrating that they understand the client’s business and legal issues!

Being client-focused means being focused on what the client wants to buy, not on what you want to sell. It’s really important to understand what the client both wants and needs, because you can’t be client-focused without it. A need is a rational expectation; a want is an emotional desire. A client’s need might be expressed as “I need you to handle this case” but what they’re thinking is: “I want you to make this go away, take this off my shoulders, give me a result I can take to my management.” In developing business for your law firm, you need to handle the wants!

Now, this is straightforward when clients know what their legal problem is. But this is where selling legal services does differ from selling soap: people usually know when they need soap. Not necessarily so with legal services: one of the hardest selling jobs is showing a client that you can solve a problem he doesn’t yet know that he has. (Note that I said ‘show’, not tell.)

Tel que mentionné, ça se lit assez bien. Et vous, qu’en pensez-vous?