Demand Trigger TIP: Tangible, Immediate, Personal

August 19, 2008

For many years, we have urged lawyers to base their marketing communications and sales investigations on a Demand Trigger. Pat Sweeney and I define this as the underlying business problem or condition that begins a reliable causal chain that culminates in demand for service from someone like you.

For a DT to resonate, however, it cannot be intellectual or abstract. It must be tangible, immediate and personal.

I'll give you an example. A medical malpractice litigator would get little value out of a Demand Trigger expressed as "overworked nurses." While most hospital executives recognize intellectually that it's not a good thing to overwork nurses, "overworked nurses" is too vague for our purposes. Those executives would have to fill in important gaps in your logic to experience some business-related discomfort.

A more useful driver would be "when more than 20 percent of a hospital's nursing positions are vacant." If this condition exists, nurses must work longer shifts for more consecutive days. Unless this hospital has somehow managed to hire superhuman nurses, the nurses' cumulative physical and mental fatigue over time virtually guarantees that some will make mistakes. Some of these mistakes will result in allegations of material harm to patients. A percentage of these allegations will result in medical malpractice claims. It's a certainty.

So, let's look at the DT and how it meets the TIP test: "More than 20 percent of a hospital's nursing positions are vacant."

• The 20 percent makes it tangibleby providing a specific threshold.
• The immediacy comes from hospital executives living with the problem daily.
• It's personal because these executives are likely to be co-defendants with their hospital in any med mal suit.

The lesson? Take this TIP to heart and craft a Demand Trigger that actually drives demand.

Mike O'Horo