Focus on Clients and Companies Who Value You
Whether you’re talking about chasing clients for business development, chasing employers for job openings, or chasing industry leaders for leadership opportunities, listen to this: just stop. Stop chasing people who don’t value what you offer.
Sounds simple? It is, and yet it’s advice that I’ve given almost weekly as a career coach for lawyers. Even general counsel of billion-dollar companies can need a reminder now and again. For them, it can creep up in a moment of doubt caused by crisis, like when their company is acquired and the senior management team, including the general counsel or chief legal officer, is abruptly replaced. (Somehow, even though the GC would have been involved in the seller-side of the acquisition and knows its coming, he doesn’t really believe he’s going to be one of the old guard who is shown the door until it actually happens.)
For mid-level professionals, it’s a problem that’s more chronic. When I ask them about their target clients or employers, they’ll say something like, “I don’t care! I just want a new job” or “I just need to start building my own client base.” Inevitably, they’re coming to me because they’ve been sending out hundreds of resumes — or in the case of one person, 5,000 resumes — but getting nowhere.
At the entry-level, it’s often a problem that creeps up in job search rather than building a clientele, and it’s problem that stems from inexperience. They truly don’t know what clients and employers want, and they may have unrealistic expectations about what it takes to land those jobs. Here’s an extreme example: I had a very junior lawyer tell me her career goal was to be GC of Sony, and she expected to be able to do that in two years. The only problem, in her mind, was convincing people she had enough experience for the job. (Newsflash, she didn’t.) Clearly, she had no idea what a GC actually does or how a company like Sony works.
You offer a particular package of experiences, skills, and philosophy. Not every client or employer will value what you offer. That’s okay — everyone has their own needs and is entitled to their own priorities. But those people and companies will never (or almost never) hire you. Chasing after them will not convince them that they need in you. In fact, chasing after them may have the opposite effect of convincing them that you do not understand their needs and priorities and, perhaps worse, are desperate.
Clients and employers do not hire people are don’t understand them and who are desperate. Therefore, if you focus all your efforts chasing people who do not value you, then you are setting yourself up for exhaustion and frustration.
A far more productive use of your time is to focus on those who *do* value what you offer. That’s where you’ll have your most productive networking, business building, leadership development, and job search. But doing this, of course, takes more work — and that’s exactly why people don’t do it.
To be successful on this path, you need to engage in honest self-reflection as well as
Identify what you offer your value is — not just technical legal skills, but also leadership, management, or work style and other “soft skills.”
Identify who values you — actually researching potential clients and employers to see what their needs are.
Identify decision-makers — again, requiring actual research and networking.
Introduce yourself.
If your current value doesn’t match what your targets want and need, then you need to work on building up your skills.