How Smart Attorneys Double Their Revenue in a Year
As you may have heard from me (several times) it is better to have 100 ways to get one client than it is to have 1 way to get 100 clients.
But there is one thing you should do first, actually NOW, if you really want to grow your client base in the next twelve months. In fact, this activity is possibly THE BEST way to ensure you will DOUBLE your revenue.
It is not sexy.
But it works.
What is this mysterious client acquisition tactic? Is it something on the Internet? Is it social media? Is it some new form of technology?
No.
It is called follow-up.
Good, old fashioned, follow-up.
Here’s how it works:
Let’s say you are introduced to someone by a client, friend or referral source. You have a brief conversation and you believe this person has the potential to become a client in the future or refer you to potential clients. What happens next? Usually nothing.
Replace “nothing” with these steps and you will double your revenue in a year:
1). Go to lunch: Take your new friend to lunch and learn everything you can about his business. Don’t sell yourself. Learn about him and his business.
2). Send a hand written note: Let him know you enjoyed meeting him. Enclose a business card.
3). Send your contact information in electronic form. People like to have your information in their PDA or Smartphone. Make it easy for them. Send your contact info in an email.
4). Introduce this person to someone who can help his business. This point is critical. You need to go the extra mile and actually HELP your new prospective client. You must give something before you can expect to receive something.
5). Provide them with something of value a least every month. This means you should send them something they will enjoy every month. It can be a newsletter. It can be a greeting card. It can be a phone call where you touch base and help them solve a problem. The key is to help them remember you by providing them with something valuable.
People do business with people they know, like and trust. If you implement a simple follow-up and monthly contact system you will reap the rewards.
It takes about six months for people to get used to interacting with you on a consistent basis. But once they realize you are interested in helping them, they will warm up to the idea of trusting you with their most important matters.
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EmailFour Approaches Lawyers Take to Acquire New Clients
There are four basic approaches most lawyers adopt when it comes to client acquisition. If you read them carefully, I’m sure you will see someone you know in each of them. They are:
Do Nothing: “The Field of Dreams” Approach
If you build a law firm they will come.
These folks sit in their office and wait for the phone to ring. They may occasionally hand out business cards to friends, family and acquaintances. Most of the time these attorneys work hard on the matters that fall into their lap.
Some of the people in this category believe that business development is evil. Some believe that if you are a good lawyer, the universe will reward you with clients.
Do Something: “The Throw Stuff Up Against the Wall” Approach
These attorneys try all kinds of marketing gimmicks and they hope that one of them delivers a truck load of new clients.
Billboards, bus stop benches, Yellow Pages ads with fists full of cash, subscribing to a referral service. Do something, do anything, just give it a shot.
These folks are looking for a lawyer lottery ticket that will pay off with new clients.
Do Something Right: “The One Hit Wonder”
These lawyers are on the right track.
They take their time and decide who their ideal client is. Then they do some research on how to target the ideal client. Finally they develop a message that resonates with their audience and they deliver it.
They run into trouble when they only do it one time.
Do Things Right Consistently: “The Natural”
These attorneys are good lawyers and good at developing new business.
They use ethical, legal methods for attracting clients. They test their messages with their market before spending big dollars. They do the fundamentals as well as the new stuff. By this I mean they network, they publish papers in trade journals and they keep in touch with their past clients while they blog and tweet and update their LinkedIn Profile.
But the real key to success is that they do the right things consistently. They develop systems that help them keep on top of their business development activities. They work hard to make client acquisition easy.
Their reward for investing in client acquisition systems is a better client base that appreciates them and gladly pays their fees.
If you want to learn how to develop systems that will help you attract new clients who are IDEAL clients, give me a call and ask about my new Rainmaker Underground Client Acquisition System. It is Super-Affordable and it comes with a 2-year guarantee.
How many ways do you have to get new clients?
One of the first things I review with attorneys is the variety of ways they attract new clients. At first, I am usually greeted with a blank stare when I pose the question: “How many different ways do you have to attract new clients?”
The puzzled look is followed by a statement like:
“I can’t afford too many marketing initiatives. I rely on referrals and word of mouth.”
The folks who offer up this response have three specific problems:
They have made a decision to cap their income. The fewer ways you have of attracting new clients the less opportunity you have to grow your firm’s revenue. Keep in mind, I love referrals. I think you should have a system for nurturing referral relationships. But referrals will generally come from people who know you, like you and trust you. Most of us – even the super-networkers – will have a limited sphere of influence from which we can attract referrals.
They do not know that there are more personal forms of marketing. Networking is a great way for attorneys to make contact with potential clients but the follow-up from networking (which is marketing by the way) is how the relationship grows. Educational events are fantastic ways to introduce the value you provide to potential clients. Writing articles, giving speeches and serving on the board of directors of a charitable organization are all ways to develop new relationships and new potential clients.
They are looking for the magic bullet. They want one way to attract 100new clients. They want the easy money that comes with running ads or mass mailing. The trouble with these forms of marketing is that they are expensive and their effectiveness is often fleeting.
The key to developing new client relationships lies in the diversity of your marketing efforts. I have been developing business strategy for my entire career (22 years) and I say with confidence that I have seen very few individual marketing methodologies that consistently attract hundreds of clients – yet I have seen hundreds of ways to attract one client. The key to growing your law practice lies in improving the diversity of your client attraction tactics.
How Attorneys Can Make a Great Living and Live a Great Life
There are two kinds of law firms in existence today:
FREE Law Firms and FAKE Law Firms
Your law practice or your professional service firm is either FREE or it’s FAKE.
A FREE Firm is:
Fun – You enjoy what you are doing and who you work with.
Rewarding – Your work helps fulfill your personal mission.
Easy – Your work comes naturally to you.
Engaging – Your firm magnetically attracts others.
You know your law firm is FAKE if it is:
Frustrating – You can’t seem to break through to the next level.
Annoying – Going to work bothers you.
Killer – Your business is literally taking years off of your life.
Exhausting - You’re tired all the time and you don’t know why.
My mission is to help FAKE firms become FREE firms.
If you feel like you have been stuck in a rut in your law practice…
If you have not eaten dinner with your family in months…
If you can’t believe that you have to see that difficult client AGAIN…
If you are just flat out tired of busting your butt today to pay yesterday’s bills…
Listening to this interview may be the most valuable time you have ever spent.
Call Kary Cheda today to request your FREE copy of this interview. 888.692.5531
Thick Skin and Unsolicited Advice
NOTE: This article contains adult language for emphasis. If you are offended by slang words used to describe poop and donkeys, please do not read this article.
Being uncomfortable prevents thousands, (maybe millions) of people from becoming financially free. This is especially true of attorneys.
An example: Most lawyers I meet tell me they use their current method of billing because “that’s the way everyone else does it”. Essentially they fear the discomfort of being different. This fear is so great they refuse to buck the current trend.
They tell me that people will not work with them if they are different. They say they must conform or face financial ruin.
Of course that is a huge pile of crap.
It is just fear that prevents them from developing an alternative billing model. Fear and insecurity. Nothing more.
But this is not an article about billing. It is an article about you and the way you deal with “unsolicited negative feedback”.
We all fall victim to unsolicited feedback offered by other people.
In many cases, the person who gives you “a little friendly advice” is not actually being friendly. They are being destructive.
Why do they do this? Why give you unsolicited advice that only serves to bring you down?
I don’t know the technical term for it but at a deep psychological level, for some people, making others feel less successful fills some kind of need.
It happens to everyone and it can get inside your head…if you let it.
I fell victim to this just the other day.
Click Continue Reading for more of my foolish behavior and learn how you can avoid the mistake I made
The Lawyers Who Don’t Need Marketing and Business Strategy
If you work in a law firm – particularly a big law firm – you may not need to know how to originate new business. Someone may feed you business. And they may do so for years and years.
You will probably make a respectable salary and you will get to do meaningful work, some of which you’ll enjoy.
If you work for yourself, own your own law firm, you may not need to do much in the way of marketing. You may be able to go directly from a public position (Prosecutor’s Office or Public Defender’s Office) into a practice where your reputation delivers clients to your doorstep on a steady, regular basis.
Both of these options are true career paths that thousands of lawyers have worn over the years. Many of the lawyers that follow these paths make a good living.
There is one challenge with these two paths: They leave an awful lot to chance.
With the big firm path, you never have the opportunity to control your own destiny. You constantly wait for someone to deliver work to your office, you say thank you, and you kill yourself for no glory.
On the second path, you have every opportunity in the world at your feet. You can take whatever cases you’d like. You can charge whatever you’d like and you can work whenever you’d like …
…if you know how to attract and retain clients.
Note: Being a good lawyer is not a strategy. Being a good lawyer is a prerequisite for any attorney who owns his/her own firm. If you stink as a lawyer, your lousy reputation will overwhelm any marketing efforts you can possibly employ.
Being a good lawyer and promoting yourself minimally (putting up a website and attending a few local events) will help you expand your reputation and get you to a comfortable place financially.
If you want to make more money, mid six figures to seven figures and beyond, you will need to do some marketing and set a sound business strategy.
That means creating a message and targeting a specific market with that message. It’s not necessarily advertising…it is marketing and business strategy.
The bottom line: If you want to top out at $150,000 - $300,000 per year, that’s great. Continue to work for someone else or start your solo shop and rely solely on good fortune and your reputation.
Risky but possible.
If you want to make $500,000 and beyond (I have several clients who make multiple millions of dollars per year in law firms they own, with less than 10 employees) you need a sound strategy and you need marketing.
Need help with this? Think I’m wrong? Give me a call.
Dave Lorenzo 888.692.5531
Thoughts on Motivation, Lawyers and Marketing
I am a marketer and business strategist.
I am good, some would say excellent, at helping attorneys attract and retain clients.
I didn’t always work with lawyers. For a number of years I worked with business owners, managers and executives in many industries. My only guidelines for accepting new clients were that their business was operated in a legal, moral and ethical manner.
I made a decision to focus exclusively on working with attorneys. I did this because I felt there was an underserved need for business fundamentals, strategy and marketing savvy in the profession.
That assumption was correct.
I don’t question the motivation of anyone who chooses to become a lawyer. Some folks go into the law because they want to break new ground – set precedent. Some folks become attorneys because they have a desire to help others. Some folks become lawyers because they want to make a lot of money. Some folks are motivated by all three things.
I have worked with people who are motivated by each of these factors. Marketing and business strategy can help an attorney no matter what his/her motivation.
Here’s how:
For the lawyer who likes to break new ground: We develop a strategy for attracting the kinds of matters that are likely to need new precedent in order to be successful. We then position the attorney (marketing) as the logical choice to help the client in this particular predicament.
For the attorney who wants to help people: Finding someone to help is generally not the hard part. Finding the RIGHT someone to help can be difficult. If you work in private practice you can only take on a select few cases pro bono. This means that you need to attract the majority of your clients from a pool of people you can help who can actually pay you something. Finding those people and getting them to hire you is where marketing and business strategy are helpful.
For the attorney who wants to make lots of money: Identifying, attracting and retaining the best clients with the highest value are great uses for a sound business strategy and good marketing.
I am essentially making two points:
- Marketing and business strategy are not the enemy of a good lawyer. If they are used correctly, they can help any lawyer in private practice.
- Nobody has the right to question your motivation as long as you operate in a legal, moral and ethical manner.
Attorneys love to argue about marketing and motivation. They love to bash their fellow attorneys who have made their law firms into large productive businesses. I don’t partake in those arguments because I am personally in business for all of the reasons I outlined above. I like helping people (and many attorneys desperately need business help). I like doing new things in my field (setting precedent). And I like making money. I find that the people who judge my motivation are usually envious of my success in any or all of these areas.
One of my first mentors once told me that people who complained about someone making “too much money” were people who didn’t have any money themselves. I wonder if the same is true of people who question the motivation of someone who does their job because of the money they make…
In a perfect world we would all do what we love and make as much money as we wanted while doing it. Until that world exists I’ll keep helping the people who show up regardless of why they came to me.
Dave Lorenzo
888.692.5531
