TWO Matt Dixon: What Today’s Rainmakers Know About Client Loyalty and Personal Value

In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Matt Dixon discuss:

• Client relationship dynamics in professional services
• Shifts in legal business development and rainmaking strategies
• The role of value creation in winning and retaining clients
• Evolving mindsets and habits of successful professionals

Key Takeaways:

• Top rainmakers (“activators”) don’t wait for paid work to provide value — they proactively deliver business, trust, and personal value before being hired.
• Client loyalty is rapidly eroding; only about 50% of clients today automatically return to incumbent providers, compared to over 75% five years ago.
• The most predictive variable of long-term client loyalty is whether clients think of you even when not actively engaged — a sign of strong personal value.
• Lawyers should send LinkedIn invites to all prospects and recent contacts to trigger platform algorithms that surface client activity for timely, value-added outreach.

“The best partners lead to their capabilities, not with their capabilities.” —  Matt Dixon
Unlock the secrets of rainmaking success—join Steve Fretzin and four powerhouse legal experts for Be That Lawyer LIVE on August 27; reserve your spot now at fretzin.com/events.
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Episode References:

Atomic Habits by James Clear: https://www.amazon.com/Atomic-Habits-Proven-Build-Break/dp/0735211299

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg: https://www.amazon.com/Power-Habit-What-Life-Business/dp/081298160X

What Today’s Rainmakers Do Differently (published in Harvard Business Review): https://hbr.org/2023/11/what-todays-rainmakers-do-differently
About Matt Dixon: Matt Dixon is a Founding Partner of DCM Insights—a boutique consulting and training firm that uses research-backed methods to help organizations better attract, retain, and grow their client relationships. A noted business researcher and writer, Matt is a sought-after advisor to leadership teams around the world.

He is best known as the co-author of several of the most important business books of the past twenty years, including The Challenger Sale, which has sold more than a million copies worldwide and was a #1 Amazon and Wall Street Journal bestseller, and his other notable books include The JOLT Effect, The Challenger Customer and The Effortless Experience. His latest book, The Activator Advantage: What Today’s Rainmakers Do Differently, was released by Harvard Business Review Press in May of this year.

In addition to his books, Matt is a frequent contributor to Harvard Business Review on topics ranging from business development effectiveness to client experience. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh and currently resides in the Washington, DC area with his family.
Connect with Matt Dixon:

Website: https://www.dcminsights.com/

Book: The Activator Advantage: https://www.amazon.com/Activator-Advantage-Todays-Rainmakers-Differently/dp/B0D8V4SFGP

Other books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B0058M2ORW

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewxdixon/ & https://www.linkedin.com/company/dcm-insights/

Connect with Steve Fretzin:

LinkedIn: Steve Fretzin

Twitter: @stevefretzin

Instagram: @fretzinsteve

Facebook: Fretzin, Inc.

Website: Fretzin.com

Email: Steve@Fretzin.com

Book: Legal Business Development Isn’t Rocket Science and more!

YouTube: Steve Fretzin

Call Steve directly at 847-602-6911

Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You’re the expert. Your podcast will prove it.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Steve Fretzin: [00:00:00] Hey everybody. If you’re ready to be that lawyer and learn directly from four of the best rainmakers in the business, you’re gonna want to join us on August 27th. These top rainmakers will be setting up a virtual session packed with client winning techniques, mindset shifts that will help you to thrive, be that Lawyer Live is only 39 bucks and includes my bestselling eBooks, all as a package for you.

Seats are limited. Lock in yours now. Sign up today, Fretzin.com/event.

Narrator: You are listening to be that lawyer, life-changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Each episode, your host, author, and lawyer coach Steve Fretzin, will take a deeper dive helping you grow your law practice in less time with greater results. Now here’s your host, Steve Fretzin.

Steve Fretzin: Hey everybody. Welcome. Back. This is Steve Bresson and you [00:01:00] are on the Be That Lawyer Podcast. Be that successful, be that organized, be that lawyer. We are here for you twice a week to help you accomplish greatness in the practice of law. I love the guests that I choose. I just enjoy meeting them. I enjoy interacting with them.

I enjoy the time we get to spend even after this is all done. Because in many cases there’s relationships and friendships that are created. And this one I picked, I just, I don’t know how I get so lucky, but today I got really lucky and in bringing Matt on, how you doing?

Matt Dixon: I’m doing well, you’re saying that now, wait till, let’s see if you say the same thing at the end of the show.

I,

Steve Fretzin: Yes. And normally I’d have some concerns about that, but today I really don’t think that’s the issue. You guys are gonna get to know Matt really well and if you may have one of his books hanging on your bookshelf and we’re gonna talk more about that. But let’s jump in with our quote of the show and then we’re gonna get to know Matt really well today and all of his great advice.

The quote is, this is a Matt Dixon special. It’s the best partners lead to their capabilities, not with their capabilities. So Matt, welcome to the show and tell us a little bit about [00:02:00] that quote.

Matt Dixon: Yeah, absolutely. Steve, thanks for having me. Great to get to know you and look forward to future conversations as well.

So yeah, that quote is actually something that came out of a book we wrote back in 2011. Called the Challenger Sale, and I know we’ll talk a little bit about this, but the latest book, the Activator Advantage Challenger Sale, is really for B2B sales professionals, so people who sell products. The activator advantage is for people who sell themselves who sell advice for a living.

So lawyers, of course, consultants, accountants, investment bankers, search professionals, et cetera. And this is one of the commonalities we found between the very best salespeople and the very best partners, very best rainmakers and professional services. They don’t lead with what makes their product different or what makes them, their own capabilities different.

They don’t lead with their credentials. They don’t lead with their experience. They don’t lead with their degrees, they don’t lead with their accolades, they don’t lead with their differentiators. They lead to those things. So what does that mean specifically? What it means is they start the conversation with an insight that’s relevant to the client.

[00:03:00] New ways to mitigate risk, new ways to make money, new ways to grow market share, new ways to accomplish objectives that the client cares about. Leveraging that partner’s unique perspective on the market in a way that shapes the client’s understanding, that establishes preferences for you as the preferred professional for that client to hire to get after that specific objective.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah. And I think it’s when lawyers say and I’ve beat this like a dead horse, but like lawyers that say, Hey, we’re going on a pitch meeting, right? And what does that imply? Off the bat it implies we’re gonna go and we’re gonna talk about how great we are, our firm, our capabilities, and all the things you just mentioned.

And the quote that I often say, and I’m sure I stole this from someone somewhere this, prescription before diagnosis is malpractice. I’m sure you’ve heard that, dozens of times as well. Yep. And the idea that we’re gonna pitch instead of. Working towards it, working towards the understanding.

And yeah, I, and I know we are gonna take such a deep dive in this, everybody you were in for such a treat today. Everybody. Matt Dixon is the founding partner of DCM Insights. [00:04:00] Again, I dunno where it is, but I know at some point I had the challenger up on my bookshelf. I think I may have boxed it.

Don’t take that as a slight because I have you may have used that as a door

Matt Dixon: stop, Steve. I dunno. Doorstep.

Steve Fretzin: It’s one of the two. Yeah. Fire, I needed to start a fire or something, but no, but I remember it being one of the best books that came out. I know it was a big time bestseller at the time.

So catch us up on your background, how you came to be and how you ended up working in legal too. ’cause I think that whole transition is really interesting.

Matt Dixon: It was actually a funny story and it’s a story we open the activated Advantage with, but I’ll tell the brief version of it for your audience. Back to the Challenger Sale book about top performing B2B salespeople, again, people who sell products, productized solutions, et cetera.

Very different from law and professional services. So we, that book came out in 2011 and about a year after it came out, I was called by a one of the big strategy consulting firms to present that work at their partner retreat. So there’s about 500 partners in the ballroom. The meeting was in New York City.

I came and I never got to talk to the managing partner or the folks who signed the agreement, which I knew was the first sign that something was wrong. But [00:05:00] the second sign that song was wrong was that when the managing partner stood up in front of all 500 partners when I was 45 minutes into my 60 minute keynote and said, can you stop talking?

Like waving his hands? And I’m thinking. Holy smokes. This has never happened to me before. Thank God it’s never happened to me since. Yeah. Steve, don’t get any ideas here, but I was so unnerved by this and everyone’s looking at this guy, he gestures for a hand mic to be brought over and he says, Dr.

Dixon, I don’t know if anybody told you this before you came, and I’m thinking Uhoh, he said, you’re talking a lot about salespeople and sales effectiveness, and this is fascinating research, but what you gotta understand is none of us are salespeople. There’s not a single salesperson in this audience.

We’re partners in this firm. We’re consulting professionals, but we’re not salespeople. In fact, I would argue that our firm doesn’t actually sell anything. And the, I was thinking, what time is my flight home? But I can I move to an earlier flight? But what I said was in that moment, which could have been funny or could have been a career limiting moment, fortunately they found it funny.

I said, we just stipulate to the fact that there’s a mysterious process by which the client’s money ends up in your firm’s bank account. We just call it sales. So everyone laughed and he said, [00:06:00] okay fair enough. Go ahead and finish. I did two things from that point forward. Thing number one was I turned down every invitation to speak to lawyers and partners in professional services firms.

’cause our stuff was interesting at a high level, but it wasn’t about them. And their job is different. As I’ve come to appreciate. And the second thing is I thought, hey, this would be a really fascinating area to study at some point with data and science, because there hasn’t been a lot of true research.

Of top rainmakers, top lawyers, what the best business developers do differently. And so we finally got the chance to do it many years later. Kick this study off in 2022, took us about two years to collect data from 3000 partners across about 40 different professional services firms, and do all the analysis and published those results in HBR at the end of 2023 in the book.

Just came out in May of 2025. Yeah. Pretty exciting to finally have something to say to partners. Yeah.

Steve Fretzin: And it’s, look, I, at one point my company was called Sales Results Inc. You can’t get less interest from lawyers on a name than that. That implies [00:07:00] everything in the kitchen sink that you just said.

Yeah. I, look, we are talking about some very sensitive people and some dandelions and some butterflies and things like that, but they’re not wrong in the sense that. Business development in growing a law practice has a lot of unique factors to it. It does. So what about your research demonstrated that, or proved to you that, hey, while we’re all in sales, and by the way, that’s like the only argument I ever won with my sister, who’s a therapist, that we’re all in sales, whether we want to call it that or call it business development or something.

We’re all out selling ourselves, to make a client feel better, to help someone solve a problem. But what your research, how did that all play out?

Matt Dixon: Yeah, I think there are some similarities and some differences, and we’ll get into the details of the research and the big aha findings.

But at the highest level, I’d say, and this is not gonna be news to anybody on who’s listening to your show. It might be interesting to know just how different the rest of the B2B sales world is. So yes, we are all in the business of transacting paying work, right? We’re trying to sell products or solutions to customers, or we’re trying to [00:08:00] sell matters, engagements, consulting, support, whatever it is to our clients.

The biggest difference is that in B2B sales, it, this is a linear process. So I get a lead typically from marketing. I work that lead, I qualify it. I ideally close it. But then I hand it off to the rest of the company, the cus the implementation team, the customer success team, the account managers in customer service, those people are responsible for maintaining, renewing and expanding the client relationship and dealing with any problems that come up in professional services.

It’s a circular motion, isn’t it? So we not only are we often generating our own leads from our own network, yes the marketing team will pass us leads, but we’re often doing our own marketing. But then we sell that, we demonstrate value, we sell that opportunity, we do the work. So because we are the product and then we’re dealing with all the renewal, the expansion, and dealing with all the problems, right?

Chasing invoice, like in this circle goes around and around again. So that is fundamentally different. And then I think the other big difference is, and this was pretty fascinating to me academically, [00:09:00] is the winning profile. And again, we’ll talk about what we mean by that. These profiles of partners that we found.

The winning profile in B2B sales actually has some similarities with the winning profile in professional services, but there are also some pretty stark differences. And those differences are really a function of the fact that if you are selling a product, you can sell in one way. If you are the product as lawyers are and you’re selling yourself, it’s a different kind of go to market approach or way to sell or to to develop business.

So yeah, we’ll talk more about that as we get into it.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah. So then what, talk a little bit about the changes in the client buying behavior, and I covered this with Dan Lear. I dunno, A week or two ago. A few weeks ago. And how that behavior has driven new rainmaker behaviors. ’cause one affects the other.

Yeah.

Matt Dixon: Yeah. Absolutely. It, I think it’s more, while the story is funny and it was a personal aspiration of mine to study professional services and law. I actually, the reality is like we could have done this study at any point, but I think right now was the right [00:10:00] time to do it. And the reason is, as you said, the client buying environment is changing dramatically.

I would argue it’s changed more in the last five to 10 years than it has in the previous a hundred years combined. So I think in professional services, and again, not telling anybody anything they don’t know, but the access upon which that whole industry has spun for a very long time has been the belief that if we do great work for our client and if we build a great relationship with our client.

That client should come back to us the next time they need support. And that is what creates this massive incumbency advantage in law and professional services that is fraying if not breaking entirely. So our research shows, and this is where the HBR article starts out, it’s where the book starts out that five years ago, C-level decision makers on the client side, more than three quarters of them would said, yeah, if the partner did a great job, if I’ve got a good relationship with them and their team, yes, I’ll go back to them again automatically.

Today that’s closer to 50%. Now that doesn’t mean the incumbent won’t win the work.

But it does mean they’re not gonna automatically get the work. Increasingly, now they’re gonna be [00:11:00] invited, but they’re gonna have to compete for it. Go through RFP pitch for the business. Even though you’ve done unquestionably valuable work for that client in the past and you’ve got a great relationship with ’em, they’re still gonna make you fight for it.

Then five years from now, only about a third of C-level decision makers said, yeah, we will go back to the incumbent again. Now what’s driving that is a whole bunch of stuff, right? There’s the increased involvement of procurement and formal purchasing methodologies, legal operations, which I think many of us are familiar with, right?

The GC got their own procurement department, and so that’s really formalizing the way that outside council spend is deployed by B2B buyers. Alternate service providers, AI enabled tech providers, boutique and niche providers who were once taking on that transactional low value work are now starting to compete for higher value complex work that only the white shoe firms are competing for.

The game is on and the door is open, and we’ve had many partners tell us, look, I’ve been doing this for 20, 30 years, and it’s never been more competitive than it is today.

Steve Fretzin: [00:12:00] I’m talking about this with my clients all the time. The sense that, you know what we, what you just described, what I call the client loyalty myth.

Yeah. And if we do good work at a fair price, the business will stay with us. And that you just laid that out eloquently. The piece of it, and I want to get your take on this, is. Yes, we can do the work and yes, we can do it in a way that they’re gonna be very happy with the results because we’re experts at what we do.

It’s what else, right? Yeah. What else are you doing to provide value? What other things are you doing to help them in their business? And I call it like more of a are you more of a counselor or more of a lawyer? Can you expand on what you would consider drives long-term loyalty based on either the research or your own experience?

Matt Dixon: Yeah, I, so I’m getting a little bit ahead of myself here. ’cause what, this is one of those elements. So remind me that I don’t repeat myself later. This is one of those central elements of the activator approach. So this winning profile in law and professional services, one of the things that these activator partners do really well is that they really understand the sources of value for the client.

And in the book we [00:13:00] talk about these activators have identified basically three levers, three sources of value and how they deliver work to clients. The first two are obvious. The third one, less so the first one is business value. We’re helping the client do something they, they hired us to help ’em save money, make money, mitigate risk, deal with a regulatory change, win a court case, whatever it is.

That’s obvious. The second one we call trust value. So we’re doing that work. We’re doing it in a trustworthy way. It’s transparent, it’s above board, it’s ethical, it’s compliant, it meets or exceeds the client’s expectations. Then to your point, see it’s done at a fair price.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah.

Matt Dixon: So those two things, trust, value, and business value.

That is,

Steve Fretzin: yeah. I’m sorry, but before you move on to the third one, I just wanna meant Sure. Does that include communication, responsiveness as a part of that trust? Yes. Yeah. Great. Great

Matt Dixon: point. Okay. Yeah, it does. It does. So we go into some depth about that, right? It’s the manner in which you help the client achieve those business outcomes.

Awesome. So those two together, I would argue, are the core of being a trusted advisor. Yes. You deliver the business value, deliver the trust [00:14:00] value at a high level. But what activators are very clear on is that’s not enough. And that increasingly in today’s market, that’s table stakes.

And the number of activators I had tell me proactively look, I consider myself a trusted advisor, one of the best in my space, but. I’m surrounded by trusted advisors who work at my competitors and work at firms I’ve never even heard of before. And they’re really good too. So then I, we ask ’em what do you, what’s the extra thing you do with the extra level of stickiness?

And what most of ’em went to is a third source of value I would call personal value.

Steve Fretzin: Now,

Matt Dixon: personal value to be very clear, is not knowing your client’s kids’ names or remembering their wedding anniversary. That’s just being a nice person. And of course, lawyers should do that. Personal value is understanding your client as a person and understanding what is important to them personally.

What are they trying to accomplish in their career or in their job. Are they dealing with a new boss an initiative that’s gone sideways in the underperforming team? Is there some way you could help them on that? What are they passionate about outside of war? Causes interests personal challenges and struggles.

Is there a [00:15:00] way that you, maybe a colleague that you work with in your firm, or maybe just somebody from your network you could connect them to who could help them move the chains down the field on that stuff? Now, what’s so interesting about that is it’s outside of the scope of a paid matter, right? This is stuff that’s outside the scope of A-S-O-W-A paid piece of work.

It’s the other stuff. And what activators will say is look, you can’t whiff on being a trusted advisor. You gotta do that. The thing that creates the stickiness and the longevity in the lasting relationship is when you layer personal value on top of those things. That is a difference maker.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah.

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What are some additional things you would add into that? Sure. To create the personal, because like you said, you can remember their kids’ names or birthdays. Yeah, those are great too. But there’s, I’m all about giving, like I’m helping, I’m connecting my clients with 5, 10, 15 strategic partners.

Clients. Anything I can do. And then also, but I love what you said about getting to know them on a personal level and in that level of understanding on a human level, not just on a lawyer matter level.

Matt Dixon: Yeah. Which I think we would both agree is, can be difficult for lawyers right. To be that, to have that.

Because I think many lawyers fall into the trap of. I don’t think my client wants that kind of [00:18:00] relationship with me. But in fact, clients are very clear that is exactly the kind of relationship they want. And what was so interesting is the most impactful variable of all the things we studied in the entire model was how partners responded to the following statement.

My clients think of me even when we’re not engaged in paid work. So what does that mean? That means they reach out to you for your perspective. They reach out to pick your brain, they reach out for your opinion, right? Yeah. Because they care, because they know you are a, so they think of you as somebody who’s thoughtful and helpful to them and for them.

What’s so interesting is that so many lawyers have an aversion to sales. But for activators, what they’re doing is actually. Building value and building relationships before they ask for paid work. Yeah. They’re not using paid work as a prerequisite to have a, to deliver value and build a relationship.

And for them it doesn’t even feel like selling. Because I’ve delivered value to you. I’ve been helpful and thoughtful to you. Paid work is just the natural evolution of our relationship. So the thing, I think you hit one of the big ones, Steve, is connection. Leveraging your network is a really important business asset that can deliver value [00:19:00] to your prospects and to others in your network.

So that’s a great one. I think one of the other ones that I’ve heard so we’ll, I’ll just give you two examples. One’s a little bit more complicated, one’s super simple. So a little bit more complicated. We interviewed an activator at a big consulting firm who said that his client was really struggling with a team.

This is his client was the head of market research for a big CPG company. It was really struggling with their team, who were technically awesome researchers. Awesome with data and analytics. Really bad at presenting findings of the executive committee and had no executive presence. Now that’s what consultants do all day long.

So this consultant was working on a project for this client and said, Hey, I’d be happy to coach your folks because clearly they’re not, and this person was under a lot of stress, but the fact that he couldn’t put his team in front of the executive committee, why don’t I have them pitch me their decks and I’ll just give ’em feedback?

And so we set up a learning series. It was like a lunch and learn over the next couple months. The team, they would take turns pitching and say, here are my findings. Here’s how I’m gonna present [00:20:00] it. And this partner would say, actually, here’s what I might do. And he said, I didn’t have to do any prep. I just sat back and listened and did the thing I do with my own associates.

Yeah. Yeah. And it, and this client came back and said, that was amazing. These people are so much better. Their decks are sharper, their talking points are tighter, their presence is much greater. So that obviously takes some investment. They give you a small one, which is, we talked to a search professional one from the one of the big five search firms.

Who said that she’s often working with clients who are being deployed globally. They’re moving from New York to London to Hong Kong to wherever, and said one of the things that when a client moves overseas, one of the things she always does is introduce that client to some of her colleagues on the ground.

And it’s not to sell them work, it’s to have somebody to talk to about schools and things to do on the weekends and restaurants and where, what neighborhood to maybe look for an apartment in. ’cause like it’s hard moving to your family, to a new city and being a stranger, right? Yeah. And not having people who are in the know.

Yeah. So just a small element of personal value that’s again, rooted in thoughtfulness and helpfulness.

Steve Fretzin: [00:21:00] Yeah. Look, it takes. Extra effort. Nobody’s gonna argue that point. There’s a statistic from the eighties or nineties, it’s six times more effort, time, money, energy to get a new client than to keep an existing one.

Exactly. And expand it. Yeah. Is that number still around or is it like, 20, how much more work effort, time is it to get new business then? If you’ve got a million dollar client and you’ve gotta go replace that client or a hundred thousand client? I’m working on that with my clients all the time, is going on and getting new stuff.

Keep what you have and expand it. That’s a better play.

Matt Dixon: Absolutely. I would say for sure. Now I don’t the math maybe it’s changed at the margins, but I think it’s generally like a well-known axiom in business that keeping a client is way more profitable and easier than going to find a new one. That being said I think it’s interesting ’cause if you look at how activators spend their time, their BD time is actually pretty evenly weighted between net new client acquisition and growth of existing clients.

Most partners overweight their time on existing clients, and this is interesting, we talk to activators about why. They say, look, it is increasingly true [00:22:00] today that as we talked about before, despite the unquestioned value delivered to your clients, despite the great relationship you have with them, despite the fact that you know them really well and they know you really well, that client who’s been a client of yours for several years may pull up the 10 stakes and go with somebody else tomorrow.

So you’ve gotta keep your foot on the gas, on the net new as well. You can’t take your IF ball. Yeah. Yeah. One of the profiles that we discovered, this confidant profile, it’s very old school, I call ’em an old school trust advisor in the way that they really anchor their book of business on a small handful of key clients.

And when one of those leaves, they are set back dramatically in terms of the health of their book of business. So this is a risk that activists try to try to balance out.

Steve Fretzin: And a lot of rainmakers. Who will boast that they’re a rainmaker. They’ve got one or two clients and it’s millions of dollars with one or two clients, and they’re not gonna get another one or two like that.

They have that and that’s where they’re settled. Then they lose one. Everything is cut in half. Yep. And then they call me and I’m like, okay, this is gonna be a road to build. [00:23:00] Because you’ve been living high and mighty for so long, then it’s, it can be very frustrating for them. So I to your point, like yes, keep the two you have, but look.

Businesses get bought and sold. Things happen. Economy leaders change, people get fired. Yeah. All kinds of stuff. So just get cut. Yeah. We gotta keep at it. So then what, from your research, and we’re gonna, we got maybe time for one or two more points on this, but Sure. What from the research you did and from the work that you’ve done.

What are one or two more tips that you would give to potential rainmakers to get to be rainmakers, bringing in the business and be that lawyer, all that fun stuff we talk about on the show.

Matt Dixon: Sure. And this is, I think for folks, and maybe in the show notes or as a follow up, I’d encourage people to go read the HBR article.

It was called What Today’s Rainmakers Do Differently. Again, Harvard Business Review. It came out in the fall of 2023, or obviously check out the book, a lot more information there called The Activator Advantage. And what we do is we lay out the five statistically based on a study of 3000 partners, the five profiles of partners.

You’ve got experts, we talked about a couple of these already. Experts, [00:24:00] confidants, activators, debaters, and realists. I won’t go into detail about all the other ones, but I will say the winning one by a country mile was the activator. And interestingly, it’s not the profile that most partners fall into. Now to your question Steve, tactically, what can we do?

So what do activators do? Activators commit to business development. That means they don’t do what that client you just mentioned does, which is holy smokes, I lost a longtime client now on back square on Steve. What do I do? They’ve got a metronomic kind of rhythmic cadence to their business development.

They’re never taking their eye off the ball. They’re never taking their foot off. The gas business development is a routine that they stick to. The second thing they do is they connect broadly and deeply. So just like you talked about, a source of value is how can I connect my clients or my prospects to people inside of my network who I think could add value to them?

And activators are always doing that. Now they’re doing that externally. They’re managing their professional network as one of their most important strategic business assets, but they’re also doing it internally. They really do believe sticky [00:25:00] relationships with clients are when you shift the locus of loyalty from me to we.

How do we get that client to stop just buying from me and start buying from the we of the firm? And that is all about bringing colleagues and serving the client across multiple different priorities and objectives. And then the last one is this delivery of value. They create value in that value source.

As we talked about, pours not just business and trust value. It’s increasingly personal value that creates that stickiness, and importantly, that value is delivered proactively. It’s not based on predicated on a signed in, signed agreement. It’s not predicated on the client saying, yes, we’re gonna hire you.

It is done proactively. In the spirit of being helpful and thoughtful, which establishes a posture of goodwill towards your client, it gives you an opportunity to get a leg up, even if it does go through RFP, I’ve, I’m the one who brought this idea to you because I was the only one thoughtful enough to do so and not charge you for the time.

And ideally, I’ve shaped your understanding of the opportunity in a way that benefits me and my firm. So those are the three high level things. Now, [00:26:00] tactically, things we can do, let me just give a couple things. I mentioned the personal value, so we won’t hit that one again, but let me hit the other two.

Committing to business development, one of the biggest mistakes I see lawyers make is they hear that and they say, wow, I’m not doing any BD right now. I’m gonna put two hours on my calendar for Friday and it’s gonna be my BD time. And I say that’s a little bit like going to the gym and saying I haven’t.

Worked out in 20 years, but I’m gonna go lift the heaviest weight in the gym. It’s a, that’s a recipe for injury. And see those And a hundred pound

Steve Fretzin: dumbbells, I gotta grab those.

Matt Dixon: Yeah, you’re never going back after that. So start small. We’re not the experts on habit formation. There’s lots of great books on that.

Atomic Habits, the power of Habit. There’s tons of great books on this, but all of the habit formation experts agree. Being small, precise, and actionable is what leads to habits that stick. So not two hours start with 15 minutes. And even more importantly, here’s another tip. Think about on Sunday night or early Monday morning before other people show up for work.

When that calendar reminder pops up on Thursday for the 15 minutes of BD [00:27:00] time or the 30 minutes, what am I gonna do when it pops up? Because if you don’t have a plan when it pops up, you’re like a deer in the headlights and you go right back to the client matter you’re working on and you ignore it.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah.

Matt Dixon: The other thing I’d give you on the connecting. This is one that I think is especially relevant for lawyers, and I get a lot of head scratches on this one, is send every prospecting client who you’ve met with over the past three or six months, a personal LinkedIn invitation, and everyone who’s on your calendar to meet with over the next three to six months, send them a LinkedIn invitation.

The number one objective objection I get from that for lawyers is. Don’t you think that’s presumptuous? Is that really the relationship? Yeah. Are my clients even there and I’m like, look, they definitely want that relationship with you and here’s why you do it. And put that aside. Here’s why you really do it is that once you do that, you’ve trained the algorithm to start feeding you the stuff that client posts they like, they comment on, they repost, they share.

You have basically bugged their office, like you’re now in the flow of information. And that is a goldmine for opportunities to jump in, demonstrate value, create personal value. Find an [00:28:00] opportunity to engage in a conversation about paid work. And by the way, if you don’t do that and your competitor does do that, then don’t act surprised when they go with them instead of you, even though it’s work that you probably deliver better than they do.

Yeah, and it’s probably because that person spotted an opportunity to engage and the client didn’t even think to come to you because somebody beat you to the punch. Yeah. But we talked about the personal value. The last thing I’ll share with you is this idea of being proactive around insights. All lawyers should be asking themselves, what is the thing that I know that all of my clients need to know?

If you’re an IP litigator, if you are a human capital you’re in LA labor and employment law, wherever you are, there’s stuff that we know that’s boy, I just wish my clients were aware of this risk, aware of this regulatory change, aware of this opportunity. And if they just understood that they’d be lined up around the box ready to hire me and my team.

So be proactive. Bring that insight to ’em. And lawyers, that idea of reaching out to people really rubs lawyers the wrong way because they think I don’t wanna be bothering my clients because that feels like selling.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah.

Matt Dixon: What clients tell Steve is their biggest objection to [00:29:00] lawyers they work with is they don’t hear from them often enough.

They only hear from them when they think they ha they need help. Yeah. And they reach out to the lawyer. And they say, look, as a gc, as a CFO, as a whatever, head of hr. You’re gonna talk to more people in a week just like me, and companies just like mine. Industries just like ours that I’m gonna talk to in a year.

So bring those ideas to me. Be a window into the market. I will always make time for the thing I don’t know, but need to know.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah, and it’s hard to do a lot. Everything you’ve shared. I’m in a hundred percent agreement with alignment with. I think one of the challenges that we didn’t talk about and we don’t have time for is, there’s a fire hose in the mouth happening for these lawyers and there’s so much pressure, billable, hour pressure and email 4, 5, 600 emails a day.

Yeah. That, how do they, so we have to address a lot of the time management and habits and things that delegation and what’s important to us and ’cause to make then, alright, so we make the time for it, but then they still need to know what to do and how to approach it. Absolutely. I think you’ve covered that really well today.

Let’s wrap up with something I want to hear and that’s [00:30:00] what’s Matt’s big mistake.

Matt Dixon: I told you at the beginning, Steve, that my, the challenge was gonna be picking one. So I think

Steve Fretzin: let’s give a top 10 list.

Matt Dixon: No, we’re not gonna do that. Do have time for a top 20. I think. One of the things that I realized later in my career.

Is that I probably should have gone into business for myself earlier on. I fell into this mindset of, and you know this as an entrepreneur yourself, but this mindset of oh, success and, this kind of thing is a function of working for big companies and moving up the hierarchy.

And I think that is true for a lot of people, but I think for me it was never true. But I had convinced myself that it was, and so it was only a few years ago where I actually made the leap and started a business. We, we focus on. Teaching lawyers and partners to be activators, and to make that good use of their business development time, as you said before.

And it’s been incredibly rewarding in a way that I guess I never really appreciated before. And if I’d known it, I probably would’ve done it 20 years earlier. Yeah. Time. I, there is a benefit to there’s lesson time, there’s a right time. Time though. Time. There’s a time. Most

Steve Fretzin: people, there’s a time where they get to an [00:31:00] inflection point and I think the lawyers who decide to go out on their own or go to a small firm and be more entrepreneurial.

The only ones that regret making that decision are the ones who don’t look at being an activator. They don’t look at being that lawyer. They don’t take the business side seriously enough and be a student of that game. So then they get into it, they realize how hard it is, and they get the hell out and they go back running back to the big firm, which again, that’s fine.

That’s a choice. And, but I think the people that learn the stuff you and I talk about every day. They would never go back. And I’m one of those people, and you’re one of those people, we would never go back. ’cause now we have it all. We have the business, we have the enjoyment, we have the freedom, flexibility.

No one’s telling us what to do. Not for everybody, but it’s, I think a lot of people in the future are gonna realize that it’s a better direction to go than being at the will of other people’s decisions. Yeah,

Matt Dixon: you’re right. It’s definitely not for everyone and it is both the most stressful and the most I’ve worked in my life, but also I’ve found the most rewarding to be my own boss.

Yeah. And learn [00:32:00] lessons and see, literally the direct impact of decision you make, but also recognizing. You make a misstep and you could be outta business pretty quickly. So

Steve Fretzin: those are the mis, the Matts and Steve’s big mistakes we hope don’t happen, right? Try to make small mistakes if possible.

Matt Dixon: Future episode for all the other mistakes. Oh my Lord.

Steve Fretzin: Hey everybody, we gotta wrap up and thank our wonderful sponsors, of course, legal verse media.com. If you want to check out international legal content, that’s gonna help you be that lawyer. We’ve got the law, her podcast with Sonia crushing it for women, and of course Pim Con coming up in October, coming up soon, I’ll be out there on stage talking about podcasting.

And we’ve got some amazing keynotes all day long. So you’re gonna wanna check out PIM Con, I think it’s pim con.org. Matt, people wanna check out your books. They want to hear more about you. They wanna look at getting help for their firm. What are the digits?

Matt Dixon: Yeah the book is available everywhere.

Books, good books are sold and it’s basically on the internet. So anywhere you the Activator Advantage is the title. If you want to learn more about our company, it’s DCM insights, uh.com. On that page, we’ve got a [00:33:00] whole section dedicated to the activator advantage. There’s actually a lot of bonus materials on there that are not in the book that we just try.

We tried, we lost the arm wrestling match with Harvard Business View Press and it didn’t make the cut, but lots of great content for folks who wanna continue the learning journey about, becoming activators, hiring activators, building an activator firm, all that great stuff.

Steve Fretzin: Amazing stuff everybody.

Thank you so much. I’m happy that I reached out proactively to, to get to know you. There you go. Meet you. You activated. So I activated, I was proactive and having you on the show, sharing your wisdom. I have, look at this. I have these, remarkable too. But look at this. I have just a page of notes and videos and quotes and things that I’m gonna use to help break this down into manageable pieces.

But just so impressed by you and I hope that you and I can continue talking. ’cause I think absolutely there’s opportunities for us to collaborate. But really great stuff, Matt. Thanks again. Thanks for the invite, Steve. Yeah, and hey everybody, thank you for hanging out with Matt and I for a little over 30 minutes today.

Just really focused on the activator message and being that lawyer and things that are gonna help you take your career to the next level. So thanks everybody. Take [00:34:00] care. Be safe, be well. We’ll talk again soon.

Narrator: Thanks for listening to be that lawyer, life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Visit Steve’s website Fretzin.com for additional information and to stay up to date on the latest legal business development and marketing trends. For more information and important links about today’s episode, check out today’s show notes.