This document summarizes a workshop for workplace neutrals on expanding their ADR practice. It discusses establishing credibility through training and experience, gaining visibility through activities like writing and speaking, and achieving acceptability in the marketplace. It also covers finding niche areas of practice, setting competitive fees, dealing with competition, tax strategies, and creating a business plan to define goals and marketing approaches. The overall message is that technical skills alone are not enough - neutrals must work on credibility, visibility and acceptability to build a successful ADR career and business.

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Expanding Your ADR Practice
as a Workplace Neutral
Finding your niche, gaining acceptability, and making money
Annual ACR Conference
Minneapolis
October 9-12, 2013
Richard Fincher, Debra Dupree, Michael Dickstein

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First assumption
You fall into one of three categories, reflecting your
career experience…
Starting neutral…0-2 years
Emerging neutral…3-5 years
Established neutral…5 plus years
This workshop offers different value to all of you…
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Second assumption
You have or will build your technical skills.
(mediation, arbitration, facilitation, etc.)
You must have the technical skills to succeed in
this profession.

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What business are you in?
• You are selling resolution, fairness, patience, integrity,
trust and sound judgment...
• Your products are settlements or awards and
neutrality…no one remember the actual terms, but how
you got there…

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What is the number one barrier with your
career journey?
What is holding you back?
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Good news: ADR as an industry
• ADR is a huge growth industry
• Applications for ADR are expanding
• Societal acceptance of ADR is rising
• Recognition of ADR as a real, paying profession is finally
being realized
• Money is to be made

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General Company Description and Industry Overview
Other news: ADR as a profession
• Moving towards becoming a true profession with
accepted credentials, codes of conduct, and professional
development
• Difficulty leaving behind its volunteer image
• Becoming a niche driven profession
• Becoming lawyerized
• Starting to be placed under the microscope, with
criticism
• Massively increased demand for competent mediators –
projected to be 3x in the next 10 years

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Finding your niche:
The competitive markets of
workplace ADR
Do you have a professional niche today?

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Evolving marketplace for workplace
mediation
A core practice for neutrals (but 80/20%)
Interpersonal mediation
Internal EEO mediation
Litigated case mediation
Three schools of mediation

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Evolving marketplace for workplace
arbitration
A core practice for neutrals
Labor arbitration
Employment arbitration
FINRA arbitration
Hearing Officer

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Emerging niches of workplace ADR

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General Company Description and Industry Overview
Evolving areas
Facilitation
• Strategic planning
• Teambuilding
• Retreats
• Public planning
Other Areas
• Systems design (ICMS)
• Conflict coach
• ADR consultant
• Conflict style diagnostics
• Investigator
• Trainer
• Executive mediation

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Market segmentation: setting your
market niche…
For example, some labor arbitrators have a niche in railroads, or airlines,
or in teacher disputes, or in sports…
Most commercial arbitrators have acknowledged niches…
Most employment arbitrators try to have substantive niches…
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The three step marketing paradigm
Credibility – Visibility – Acceptability

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Credibility – Visibility – Acceptability
Building personal capability
• Step 1: Establish your credibility
• “If they knew me, they would agree I am competent.”
• Gaining credibility and capability
• Skills training (volunteer or professional, training for cost or
for free, and how many hours of initial training)
• Apprenticeships (not that common in mediation)
• Volunteer opportunities (court annexed)
• Formal education
• “Doing” which makes a longer resume

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Credibility – Visibility – Acceptability
Visibility to potential clients
• Step 1: Establish your credibility
• “If they knew me, they would agree I am competent.”
• Step 2: People cannot buy things that they don’t know
about. “Now they know about me.”
• In professional services, most visibility comes from word
of mouth (passive), not from “active” marketing (e.g.,
advertising)

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Credibility – Visibility – Acceptability
Simultaneously building credibility and visibility
Speeches
Writing Articles
Joining Boards
Writing a Book
Mentoring others
You must focus or risk becoming overwhelmed
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Credibility – Visibility – Acceptability
What if it isn’t working?
• If you cannot be first in your niche, create a niche you can be first
in…try to create new markets.
• Don’t compete against entrenched competitors…create a bigger
pie
• Embrace Segmentation – Targeting – Positioning (dig where there
is water)
• Be sure you know your market:
• You know the client base
• Clients need your services
• Clients can afford your fees
• You can communicate with them

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Making Money as a Workplace Neutral
Getting paid: fees, cash flow and taxes

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Are you charging enough?
Do you increase your fees annually?
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Are you being paid on time?
Have you changed your billing practices?
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What are the customers saying about ADR,
and what do they look for in neutrals?
Complaining about costs and delay…
Criticize weak arbitrators who fail to manage the process
Lawyers seek strong evaluative mediators
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Facing the Competition
(other neutrals in the market or entering the market)
Name the top five neutrals…
Estimated income…
Publicity…
High profile cases
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Setting Up Your Business – Tax Strategies
Advanced tax strategies for self-employed
neutrals
• Not how much money you make, but how much you
bring home…
• How aggressive are you with tax deductions?
• How aggressive should you be?
 Lots of different ways to organize your business –
repercussions for taxes

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Finally, continual driving to the next level…
analyzing your local market for opportunities
The “four Ps of marketing” are product, pricing, promotion and place…

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General Company Description and Industry Overview
Integrated framework for strategic analysis
Sustainable Competitive
Advantage
ProductProduct
PricePrice PromotionPromotion
PlacePlace
CompetitionCompetitionCompanyCompanyCustomerCustomer
VulnerabilitiesCompetencies &
Costs
Unmet needs
S – T – P
Appraise the Situation
What business are you
really in?
Who else is in it?
Further Break Down
the Market
Sub-markets?
Whom to target?
How to differentiate
yourself?
Propose Tactics to
Implement the Strategy
How do the tactics
deliver value to the
target market?

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Drafting a Business Plan
“It is not the plan that’s important,
but the learning (and insight) that you gain
in the planning process.”

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Creating your Business Plan
An essential step for everyone!
• A business plan helps to
• Define your market, organize what services you will provide, analyze
competitors, determine pricing, and overcome barriers to entry (and
erect your own),
• It also forces you to consider marketing practices, cash flow issues,
startup costs, and business steps
• In ADR, you are very unlikely to be “pitching” your plan to investors looking
for money.
• However, you should write as if you are going to get funding.
• Would you fund your business idea?
• Get feedback from local businesspeople as to whether they would fund
your plan. Their reservations may be the key to your success!

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Goals for your business plan
• The plan should tell a compelling story about your business.
• Your plan should be focused and clear. It’s not about the number of
pages or style of the cover.
• The plan should define specific business objectives and goals, and
include general parameters that will guide the next several years of
development.
• Writing a business plan should force logic and discipline into a
business.
• Properly used, a business plan is a living document. It should be
updated regularly.
• Is it compelling? Would you invest money in this plan if someone
approached you with it?

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The seven Cs for career success
1. Clarity of who you are
2. Competence of service
3. Overcoming constraints / 80%
4. Concentration and focus
5. Creativity to new ideas
6. Courage to do the right thing
7. Continuous learning to improve

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ACR Advanced Practitioner Designation
Mediator AP
Arbitrator AP