I am still trying to go deep with the 5 laws but it is the law of value that intrigues me most. As a lawyer (Attorney), the moment you mention the idea of giving value to people without looking at the quid pro quo (yes I know we only have our time to sell) the knee-jerk reaction is “we are not a charity.” There is a further dichotomy to overcome which relates to the trite expression: “We need to look at the added val[ue] element.” Surely this is at the core of the Go-Giver principle; but the problem is that lawyers are still fixated with asking the question: “Yes but what’s in it for me?” In other words even if they start off with a free initial meeting they would still look to make this up in fees somewhere along the road.

If only they could see beyond the horizon of the hourly rate and take a holistic view of the client relationship and think what they can do for the client that provides significant commercial advantage without the client feeling like they owe the lawyer one.

I like to spend (free) time with a client to understand their business even if I don’t get instructed. I know down the road that something will happen that will work for both of us.

I love the book so much but it does require a paradigm shift in our thinking around value.

Kind regards.
Julian

Another insightful post!

This is sometimes a hard lesson to learn. One of the best statemements I have heard that relates to this premise is, “Don’t say YES to so many good things, that you have to say NO to the great ones.”

I heard a minister of a church say that he would go out in his backyard and walk up to each tree as if they were a person that had just offered him some great opportunity to join and he would practice saying,”Thank you for this offer, but at the moment, I just don’t have room for this one in my schedule. I am honored by the offer. Please keep me in mind on other opportunities such as this in the future.”

This post was mentioned on Twitter by BobBurg: Just posted Part Two of “Beware of False Go-Giver Premises” at http://bit.ly/9Y9myl...