“I’m too busy to market”
By Adam Radzik
Consultant to Professional Firms

In my 24 years of doing sales coaching with professionals, this is one of the most common responses I receive when I inquire as to why an individual is doing virtually no marketing. I usually nod empathetically, interested in why he or she is so busy. Sometimes, a series of legitimate work situations occurs that keeps professionals busy day and night, striving to meet tight deadlines. When this occurs, it is indeed understandable and reasonable that little marketing activity occurs for these brief intense periods. My concern, however, is with those individuals who waltz in at 9:30 a.m. or 10:00 a.m. or even later and who are regularly found yawning with fatigue at 4:00 p.m. or 4:30 p.m. and seeking any excuse to bolt for the front door. “I’m tired!” they say. “It’s been a long day!” This same group often espouses the “I don’t want to be like my father—I want to be home with my family for dinner” philosophy. Each month the billable hours of this come-late, leave-early crowd fall short of firm goals, and at the end of the year, the firm totals are often unimpressive and the firm pot is significantly smaller than it needs to be or could be. The come-late, leave-early group are informed that their hoped-for compensation will be dramatically less than what they had counted on. They are incensed and insulted. They mutter to each other in hushed tones that the firm’s fat cats are siphoning off the firm’s profits with unconscionable compensation packages and threaten to leave for more lucrative jobs. “My cousin works at Hotzenplotz and Hotzenplotz, puts in half the time that I do and gets paid 30 percent more than I do!”

What is the nature of this problem? Professionals too often forget that they are, in essence, in business for themselves. If they work the requisite number of hours, bring in a reasonable amount of business, bill their hours, collect their fees and make a positive impression upon their peers, chances are their compensation will be favorable. What they are forgetting, whether they have partnership status or not, is that they are entrepreneurs and no entrepreneur is working 40 or 50 hours a week. The entrepreneur works as long as it takes to get the job done. If the entrepreneur leaves his or her labors at 8:00 p.m., that person considers it an early night. Working one day on a weekend is regular fare, and most of the time entrepreneurs forgo the pleasure of eating dinner with their families—not because they care any less about their families, but because they want to be sure the family has dinner on the table, today, tomorrow, next month and next year.

The bottom line is that you can’t have it both ways. You can’t work 60 percent of the required hours, bring in no clients and expect to receive superior revenue. Furthermore, the idea that the financial realities are any different at other firms is simply magical thinking. The other firms have roughly the same expenses and face the identical financial imperatives. No executive committee, no compensation committee, no matter how skilled, has the ability to dole out more income than is present in the firm pot. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is reality.

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Comedy Corner

He was being honored as Entrepreneur of the Year, and Elmer Greenwood was waxing eloquent about his inspired rise to great fortune. “When I started I had nothing, but I got myself a shoeshine kit and soon I was giving the best shoeshine on Broadway. I saved my money, got another kit, and hired my first employee to work on Fifth Avenue. After six months, I had opened up yet another shoeshine stand in Grand Central Station and we were working around the clock. Money was pouring into my thriving business and within a year I had saved up $144.49. I decided it was time to expand. We started selling shoelaces at all three stands. It was very exciting. At that time my aunt Tillie got very sick and died and left me 23 million dollars. I gave my shoeshine stands to a recent immigrant and retired to Palm Springs.