Do you hate selling your services?

For most lawyers, this answer is an easy “yes.” Sure, there’s a small cadre of lawyers for whom business development is energizing and gratifying. Most others, however, would rather do anything else. The words most lawyers use to describe the business development part of their jobs include “draining,” “uncomfortable,” “difficult,” and “intimidating.”

What if you didn’t have to sell, but could still build a robust practice?

What if all it took was some time and effort at your computer, and a strategic approach that requires only the skills that already make you a successful lawyer?

The good news: That’s the whole answer. Your “lawyering” skills are the only ones you need. You don’t have to become a “schmoozer.” Whatever personality your clients already like while you’re performing legal work will also serve you incredibly well when getting legal work.

As for the traditional sales behaviors you wish to avoid like the plague? Those are good instincts. Such behaviors are counterproductive; buyers find them just as distasteful as you do. Nobody wants to be targeted, pitched, or closed.

RainmakerVT shows you how to get the right prospects to come to you

Think about the problems that create the kind of work that really gets your juices flowing. The matter or case for which you’re qualified, that you find really challenging and intellectually stimulating, and for which you can bill at a healthy rate that the client will happily pay.

Prospects are out there with those problems and need a lawyer like you – but they just can’t find you. If you don’t provide them with an effective way to associate you with their particular problems, they’ll never know that they need you, specifically.

What if:

• a high percentage of those prospects had a reason to pay attention to you, got to know how you think, and developed a virtual relationship with you – long before they needed to hire you?
• you were the first lawyer prospects thought of, and contacted, when the problem you love to solve first arose for them?
• prospects reached out to you to discuss their problems – before conducting any lawyer-selection activity? How would being the “insider” with whom they consult about this problem affect your odds of being chosen to solve it?

That’s what the lawyers we’ve trained experience every year, and what you’ll learn with RainmakerVT.

[Try RainmakerVT Risk-Free for 90 Days]

Check out this excerpt from “Expanding Your Network From Your Desk.”

RainmakerVT teaches you a guaranteed method for standing out from the crowd

You want prospective clients to know who you are and to associate you with a specialty. You’ve probably tried communicating that message to your audience through traditional media, social media, or articles on your website about a recent legal development. You’ve also probably done a Google search a few days after your article appeared…only to find that hundreds of lawyers around the country had written a very similar article to yours. Why does this happen? It’s because…

Most lawyers write and speak about the wrong things

The topics with which you’re trying to associate yourself virtually ensure that you’re going to disappear into the crowd of lawyers attempting to do the same thing. RainmakerVT teaches you to look at your subject matter differently, and broadcast it in a way that inevitably distinguishes you from the crowd.

Wouldn’t you like it if:

• you could be the first lawyer in America writing about a problem that will inescapably lead to a massive amount of legal work?
• you could quickly develop such a strong association with a novel problem that you created first-mover advantage between you and the rest of the lawyers in that niche?
• because of your perceived expertise in solving this problem, prospects you’ve never met continually contacted you and added you to their “short list” of lawyers being considered to handle their matter(s)?
• you were considered worth more than your fee, and clients paid you fully, quickly and gladly?

That’s what the Getting Found section of RainmakerVT is all about. It shows you just a few simple, sensible, and strategic tweaks you can start implementing immediately. Many lawyers we’ve trained have responded by calling this approach “genius.” What they’re actually thinking, however, is: “This is so simple, and makes so much sense. How is it that I never thought to do this before?”

The RainmakerVT virtual world is safer than the real world — and available on your schedule

Getting Found by prospects on a regular basis is exciting, but you still have to transform prospects into paying clients. That’s the essence of our Getting Chosen section — a private, virtual world where you learn to master client procurement by doing, not by merely reading or listening.

You’ll manage an avatar through simulated sales and marketing activity, e.g., networking events, prospect calls, beauty contests, etc. As each scenario unfolds, as in the real world, you’ll face a series of junctures at which you must choose what to say or do next.

With each choice you make, you get immediate feedback in the form of context-sensitive video coaching that explains the nuances and subtleties of why that choice isn’t — or is — optimal. Choosing the optimal response causes the scenario to progress to the next decision, and so forth.

According to detailed feedback from lawyers just like you, the best part is that, in the virtual world, there are no witnesses to the mistakes you’ll inevitably make as you learn, and the only clients you’ll lose are virtual ones. The only thing the world will see is the confident you, succeeding by applying the skills you’ve mastered online to real world situations.

Don’t merely learn. Gain actual experience and get good at it.

Because of all the time you have to spend practicing law, you might have only two or three legitimate sales opportunities per month in the real world. Such scarcity means two things: It will take a long time to get any good at this, and the stakes for each opportunity are too high to use any of them for practice. RainmakerVT’s virtual world enables you to gain far more experience than the real world can allow, given the limited time you have to market and sell.

RainmakerVT provides you with a Practice Mode that lets you do just that — practice. In just 5-10 minutes before going to a real-world networking event or sales call, you can refresh what you learned previously and go out there with confidence.

Your way, on your schedule.

All of this is available from any Internet connection, 24/7, in bite-sized chunks, on your schedule.

When do you prefer to learn?

At night, after putting the kids to bed? Early morning, before the day’s demands take over? During lunch, or while taking a break between tasks? Or, maybe on your iPad while waiting for your flight to board? You decide.

The purpose of this website

Here, much of what we’ve learned over the past 20 years helping lawyers get clients (about a billion-and-a-half dollars worth, they tell us) is free. Take advantage of as much as you can.

Subscribe to ResultsMailVT, our weekly marketing and sales tip. Just for subscribing, we’ll send you a free copy of our eBook, “The One Mistake that Keeps Lawyers from Doubling Their Income” (a $59 value).

Or register for or our biweekly “Lunch with the Coach,” a live coaching/Q&A session where Mike O’Horo will answer questions you submit about the challenges you face daily.

Connect with us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or Quora. Subscribe to the RSS feed to follow our blog and participate in the conversation in the Comment area.

Stick around for awhile. Get to know us.

Decide for yourself if the way we approach getting great clients — and preparing you to do it well, and painlessly — is comfortable for you.