Many attorneys and law firms concentrate their marketing too much on the services that they provide. Although the services may be just the thing that your clients need, when they retain you, that’s not why they’re doing it.

Your services may well be crucial to their lives, but that’s not what they’re buying when they decide to retain you. Instead, they’re buying the results that come from your services. As author Andrew Stickel points out, they aren’t interested in the process itself, just as no traveler is interested in the airplane ride. What they want is the “resort” —the destination where they experience the solution.

Why Clients Aren’t Buying Your Services

For most people the legal process can be very frustrating, painful, and stressful. It’s not something they want to go through. They just know they have to in order to get the desired solution.. The services are a means to an end.

As Stickel puts it: For clients, these services are simply the airplane rides to their resorts, and as a law firm owner, it’s critical that you remember what they’re truly seeking in all of your client-facing interactions.

Focus on the Outcome, Not the Process

When it comes to marketing your firm and communicating with clients, shifting the focus from “airplane” to “resort” will change the way you connect with them. Be sure to emphasize the impact of those services. This will get them engaged by how much better life can be once these hurdles are behind them.

How to Emphasize the Solution

But how do you do that? How do you focus on the solution over the service? Well, to use this approach successfully, you need to integrate three key elements in your messaging:

1. 1. What They Want. Understand the true desire behind why they’re contacting you. They may reach out for a divorce attorney, but what they really want is freedom, stability, or a fresh start. You need to dig deeper and ask questions because they won’t always give you the information you need right away.
   2. How They Get It. Once you know the solution they are looking for, you need to convey that your services will lead to that outcome. Walk them through the process and connect the dots in their mind to the solution.
   3. What Their Life Will Be Like Afterwards. “Imagine” is a very powerful word and can paint a picture in their minds of where they will arrive (the destination/resort) after working with you. Be sure to use it to show them the confidence of a secure financial future, the peace that comes with a stable family arrangement, or the empowerment of living a life free from the constraints of their current legal issue.

Applying the Airplane Test in Your Law Firm’s Marketing

Andrew Stickel also offers a useful litmus test that you can implement in order to be sure you are showing your leads the destination to which your services will take them.

1. 1. Each time you create content or speak with a client, ask yourself: Am I talking about the airplane ride (the services) or the resort (the results)?
   2. When you focus on the transformations your clients experience as a result of your services, you’re building trust and connecting with them on an emotional level. This is important because people tend to make decisions emotionally and then justify them with logic. Clients invest in you because they’re investing in their futures, not because they want a step-by-step breakdown of your services.
   3. Are you focusing on the destination or the journey? Because in the end, the destination is what your clients are truly looking for.

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