Opportunity Knocks : Litigation Support Staffing : The Cowen Group : Ediscovery Recruiters, Candidate Search, Practice Support, Position Placement

I thought you might appreciate the below Seths Godins article on growing a customer base…

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/05/deeper-or-wider.html

If you want to grow the size of your customer base, you need to confront the buffet dilemma.

Any decent buffet has foods that please 85% of the population. Meats, cheeses, potatoes... the typical fare.

Once your business hits a natural plateau, it’s tempting to invest in getting more people to come. And what most buffets do is double down. Now, they have bacon, plus they have beans with bacon and turkey-wrapped bacon. Now, instead of one chocolate cake, they have three.

This is essentially useless. You haven’t done anything to grow your audience. The base might be a little more pleased, but not enough to bring in any new business. And the disenfranchised (the vegans, the weight watchers, the healthy eaters, the kosher crowd) remain unmoved and uninterested. And one person like this out of a party of six is enough to keep all six away.

So, there are two ways to go. Much deeper, or a bit wider…

Deeper would mean a bacon-focused buffet, a dozen bacon dishes, including chocolate-covered bacon. Deeper would mean a chocolate-obsessed dessert bar, ten cakes, fondue, everything.

Deeper gets you people willing to drive across town to visit you. It’s remarkable. It’s not like every other buffet but a little bit bigger. It’s insanely over the top. People will bully their friends in order to get them to come.

The other choice is wider. Instead of adding a handful of dishes that mildly please the people you already have, why not add brown rice and tofu and vegetarian chili? Now you’ve opened the doors to that last 15%.

This thinking isn’t available only to buffet owners. It works for summer camps. Resorts. Conference centers. Spiritual institutions [and E-Discovery firms]. It works for any business that seeks to attract customers that come in groups where people have different wants and needs.

.....Do you have the right talent in place to execute your growth strategy?

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As law firms continue to add talent and clients to their IP practices, Litigation Support professionals will see a dramatic increase in workflow and new client demands.

And I do not mean scanning and coding. IP clients are highly sophisticated and demand more.
This means meeting your firm's clients.

The client's CIO will demand to meet you and the rest of your firm to be sure that you can handle the case. This includes your knowledge of various strategies, data collection options, online tool selection, server space, backup solutions, EXPERIENCE with similar matters and the firm wide talent to handle the case.

The lawyers have the easy role here. Try spending 2 hours being grilled by a Biotech CIO in Indianapolis. It’s 5 o’clock somewhere.

The King & Spalding link below is just example of this war for talent. The hidden story is how the role of Litigation Support will change and become more critical to winning the assignment (top line revenue) and ultimately the case.

Yes, the case. IP clients don’t tend to blink. They go to court and litigate.

Need more budget for staff, tools and training? Here is your business case:

King & Spalding Raids Rival for IP Talent [From The Daily Report Online, registration required]

King & Spalding, looking to beef up its intellectual property and biotechnology practices, hired three attorneys from cross-town rival Kilpatrick Stockton and may be scoping out more hires in those areas.

King & Spalding wants to grow its IP practice group within three years to about 150 members from the current 100 lawyers and patent agents, said King & Spalding partner Courtland L. Reichman, head of the firm's IP group.

Lead, Follow, or Get Bought.

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