Think Like Your Best Clients™ Program for Legal, Financial, and Consulting Professionals

Purpose of the program

The purpose of learning to Think Like Your Best Clients is to consistently attract more of your Best Clients and do it in a way that is scalable across others at your firm.

I’m Bruce La Fetra. Clients call me The Client Whisperer because I show busy professionals how to Think Like Your Best Clients. In a market full of other professionals who do “what you do,” seeing your firm they way your Best Clients see it is a game-changer.

Does this sound like you?

I work with small professional services firms and service-based businesses such as Law Firms, Financial Services Firms, and Consulting Firms. While highly skilled professionally, generating business is either frustrating and mysterious or an intuitive skill that doesn’t transfer to others.

• My clients are very good at what they do. Satisfying clients is not a problem. Their challenge is finding more clients who truly appreciate what they do.
• My clients want exceptional results. Success in professional services often means working long hours at work that is a grind. Occasionally they meet someone who achieves success without the long hours or grind, so they suspect there is a better way.
• My clients are tired of screwing around. They are too busy to chase trends or they have hired experts and been underwhelmed. Some of my Best Clients have become jaded about marketing and business development “experts.”
• They may work hard at generating business or be natural rainmakers. They are frustrated others can’t figure out how to do it too.
• They focus on who they can help rather than their Best Clients. Not all clients are equally valuable. They either can’t bring themselves to say No or can’t identify non-Best Clients before they become clients.

Why do professionals need to Think Like Your Best Clients?

Many professionals get the bulk of their clients from word-of-mouth, and yet, most don’t have a predictable and repeatable system for attracting great clients.

They find it challenging to talk about what they do. They are uncomfortable to hype themselves, do hard-sells, or constantly look for client “pain.”

Marketing and branding are touted as replacements for the icky selling part, but it doesn’t work out that way.

Some typical issues they experience:

• They are not great at explaining their value so potential clients “get it.” Educating clients isn’t having the effect it should.
• They are not getting in front of enough of their Best Clients. Their marketing is generating leads rather than future Best Clients.
• They say Yes to bad clients because they don’t know which clients will become Best Clients.
• They invested in better marketing but are not seeing an impact from a new website, new content, new branding.

My work improves your business in 5 ways.

1. An attention-getting marketing message that clearly communicates the value of your work to future Best Clients
2. Prioritized marketing activities based on a clear strategy for attracting more of your Best Clients
3. An engaging, relaxed, non-manipulative sales process that closes more of your Best Clients with greater certainty and less effort
4. A faster and more consistent path to trust and durable client relationships
5. Greater ability to scale or exit because you have more people consistently generating business.

These practices are proven to consistently attract more of your Best Clients.

What can you expect to gain from working with me?

You will become better at identifying and attracting your Best Clients. And you will enjoy doing it.

You will feel more confident when talking about your business: explaining your value, networking, writing emails, creating content, developing marketing materials, giving presentations, preparing proposals, and closing business.

Marketing and selling your services will lose the mystery. You will realize that you can generate high quality business with integrity, authenticity, and without hype.

How do I work with my clients?

I work directly with the key stakeholders at a firm. This may be the Managing Partner, the owner, a set of partners or shareholders, or the executive team. While a project is typically 3 to 5 months, I don’t require much of your time. I do expect you to deeply engage at the launch, the Findings, and Recommendations. Most clients are more than happy to meet via Zoom but I do whatever is best for you.

I don’t expect you to learn a bunch of new skills. If you genuinely like helping your clients, the Interview Findings will change the way you see and think about them. I use examples from your own Best Clients—people you have your most successful relationships with—to show you how to re-frame your communications so others “get” your value. Once you start to see it working—with your own clients—the changes become a self-reinforcing, virtuous cycle. You will never go back.

My primary goal is to help you and your firm achieve its full potential by attracting more of your Best Clients. When you focus on your Best Clients, every part of your business gets better. You and your team spend more time and energy on what you are especially good at. It starts with marketing, but the impact is quickly felt across your entire firm.

Learning through implementation

My Think Like Your Best Clients approach attracts more of your Best Clients by re-framing what you already do well. After understanding your business goals and how you operate, you will introduce me to some of your Best Clients so I can reverse-engineer what makes those relationships so special. You will have to unlearn some marketing truisms, but you will do so knowing what works for you.

Trust happens when someone is confident your goals are aligned with theirs. That isn’t hard when you can see through their eyes. Empathy requires you to feel what they feel. You can be very successful in professional services by simply seeing what they see. For most experts, seeing is more valuable than feeling.

What does this program help you avoid?

Marketing professional services can be frustrating. Uncertainty often keeps you from acting. There are so many options and few experts agree. Some “best practices” are counterproductive.

I help you avoid the nagging feeling your time and money could be better spent. When you Think Like Your Best Clients, there is no mystery about how to communicate with your current and future Best Clients. I’m there guiding you with examples from your own Best Clients. You see the type of success that becomes a self-reinforcing virtuous cycle.

How is my program different?

Think Like Your Best Clients is practical, proven, and based on common sense. At its core, it is what master rainmakers do intuitively. And yet, it is unlike anything else I’ve seen and I’ve doing this work for two decades.

I focus on your Best Clients. These are the ones you would clone if you could. I don’t talk to your ordinary clients or even that former client you are still friendly with. That is, unless you want more of those clients.

My conversations are different. They are in-deep conversations with the person you have a relationship with: the CEO, CFO, or EVP. This conversation is completely different from what they expect: I want to talk about how YOU fit into THEIR business. As a result, I get nuance and depth that other client interviews simply can’t get.

My findings, insights, and recommendations are more credible and more actionable. Every insight and observation is tied to a name. These are your Best Clients. They are people you know well. There may be a backstory that makes the insight even more relevant.

They are your Best Clients for a reason. Often it is because of “little” things you do that have big impacts. You don’t do them because of the impact; you do them because they are “simply the right things to do.”

I demonstrate—using your own Best Clients—that these “little things” can be very important to your Best Clients. You build good will and trust by talking about them and doing them deliberately.

There are no complex skills to master. It may seem counter-intuitive at first, but if you genuinely like helping your clients (they are more than merely a way to generate an invoice), it will soon become second nature. And because it’s not built on intuition, we can teach your entire firm to Think Like Your Best Clients.

It is all backed by the latest neuroscience. Master rainmakers are successful because they know what to do intuitively. Neuroscience tells us why they are successful. I everyone at your firm how to achieve similar results.

What Think Like Your Best Clients is not

Think Like Your Best Clients is not a training program or coaching, although there are elements of each. It’s not positive thinking or creating a BHAG. It’s not branding or online marketing, although both directly benefit. It’s not trendy, although the latest neuroscience backs it up.

Think Like Your Best Clients is about time-tested principles and practices. It’s about what works for your, a busy professional who doesn’t have time to screw. It’s about getting big results for your business in the most practical and scalable way possible.

Your Next Steps . . .

If you believe the ability to Think Like Your Best Clients will improve your business, we will set up a 30-45 minute meeting to answer any questions you have to make sure we can work together productively. I’m interested in asking a bunch of questions to better understand your situation, challenges, goals, and what you’ve already tried. I only want to work with you if you believe I can improve your business. There are never any of those heavy-handed sales tactics you won’t use in your own business.

Set up a time to meet with me

If you are ready to explore if Think Like Your Best Clients can improve your business, please schedule a time on my calendar. Then fill out the form below so I can come to our meeting prepared knowing a bit about you and your business.