Market Research – where’s the pain?

From the blog Mediation Marketing Tips

Market Research is your friend.

It may take time to begin gathering it, but everytime you see some, gather it, e.g. I linked to the research cited by the Boston Law Collaborative last week, here.

Create a “market research” swipe file, print it out and begin collecting your nuggets.

Why?
Inertia.
As a marketer of your professional service not only do you want to create great education based content, you want to persuade your potential clients to take action, e.g. hire a mediator to resolve their conflict.

I heard some statistics that it takes the average couple 7 years to enter marital therapy. Maybe on some level they began having problems, but it takes seven years for the problems to percolate to the level one or both individuals are willing to do something about it.

We need to help people feel the “pain” associated with unresolved conflict.

Whether it’s statistics comparing the cost of litigation (where 97% of cases get settled anyway after hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees); or, whether it’s the cost of organizational conflict for consultants and mediators that work with organizations, use market research to create motivation to act.

Dan Dana, mediation pioneer of the top search-engine-ranked www.mediationworks.com, has been doing this for quite some time. He even created a tool that helps organizations measure the cost of conflict. See, here.

Dan understands that in order to motivate people to do something about their conflict problems, they need to feel the pain.

They need “proof” that the unresolved conflict is costing them not only in terms of legal fees but also in terms of productivity, efficiency, growth, lost profits and organizational costs.

For those of you who mediate litigated cases, the client is often in-house legal counsel. And as John Wallbillich (aka, the Wired GC) notes, “Litigation is revealed as a failure, not a strategy.” He states that most in-house counsel associate litigation with root canals. He further proclaims, “Enlightened lawyers on the inside will increasingly explore ways to avoid litigation and resolve it quickly.” To get a free copy of his report, “The Wired GC Legal Top Ten for 2008? from which these quotes are pulled, go here.

Back in 2006 I had cited to an ABA article that quoted a couple of GCs saying something similar. They noted that they opt for mediation often.

Begin gathering market research about cost savings and productivity gains wherever you can. Use this information in your education based marketing to help your market feel the pain of unresolved conflict.

People will act when they see the cost of inaction.

Overcome inertia today!
NEVER GIVE UP!
Kristina

                       

Kristina Haymes

Kristina R. Haymes is a mediator of litigated and non-litigated cases.  She has successfully assisted parties in resolving employment, real estate, commercial and family business & estate disputes. MORE >