"Get A Life" presentation prompts ABA Journal to take a look at The Rainmaker Institute
The American Bar Association Journal recently profiled my law firm marketing presentation on “The 5 Immutable Secrets to Building a 7 Figure Law Practice...While Staying Sane” at the “Get A Life” conference in Chicago.
Mark your calendars for the Rainmaker Retreats coming this fall to a city near you. This 2 day marketing book camp for attorneys is full of information that will boost your referrals and increase your bottom line.
Our schedule is:
Chicago - Friday, October 16 & Saturday, October 17
Orlando - Friday, October 23 & Saturday, October 24
Los Angeles - Friday, November 13 and Saturday, November 14
Las Vegas - Friday, December 4 & Saturday, December 5
The schedule for each retreat is Friday – Registration at 8:00, Retreat begins at 8:30, and breaks for the day at 5:30. Saturday begins with breakfast at 7:30 and the retreat runs from 8:00 – 2:00 p.m.
To register for a Rainmaker Retreat or for more information, please visit our website, http://www.rainmakerretreat.com/.
Rainmaker Institute founder to be featured on Blog Talk Radio September 3
DID YOU MISS THE RAINMAKER PRESENTATION AT THE “GET A LIFE” CONFERENCE IN CHICAGO? HERE IS YOUR SECOND CHANCE TO HEAR THIS VALUABLE INFORMATION.
Last spring I had the privilege of presenting at the inaugural Get A Life.™ Conference in Chicago. The event was hosted by the Total Practice Management Association (Total PMA) and their mission is near and dear to my heart: to help legal professionals achieve greater work-life balance with access to education, community forums, workshops and discounts on products and services every legal practice needs to thrive.
If you attended the conference but wish you took better notes or missed it altogether, I've got good news for you!
Total PMA has invited me to host a live Blog Talk Radio program AND they're posting my entire conference session online for everyone to see. If you want to run your practice without running yourself into the ground, I encourage you to check these programs out. My Blog Talk Radio show will air live on September 3rd at 3:00pm CST. I'm going to recap my presentation entitled Build a Seven-Figure Law Practice, answer your questions and share more tips. I hope you'll call in and chat with me or listen to the live broadcast online. Total PMA members* can also check out the video of my conference session online for even greater insights. And there's plenty more where that came from! Membership is completely free so visit TotalPMA.org to view the rest of the Blog Talk Radio and conference video schedules.
To tune into the Blog Talk Radio Show on Thursday, September 3 at 3pm Central, follow this link: Blog Talk Radio.
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Want to learn more, check out Practice Made Perfect for Lawyers: 10 Principles for Marketing your Legal Services. Written especially for solo practitioners and partners at small law firms (less than 25 attorneys), this practical manual includes dozens of specific marketing and sales recommendations that can be easily and quickly applied to your firm. This set includes 2 CDs and a practical manual. Click here to order.
Marketing For Lawyers - Mistakes Attorneys Make-and How to Avoid Them, Mistake #10
MARKETING MISTAKE 10:
Trying To Be Completely Self-Sufficient
As a partner in a small law firm, it often feels like there is just so much to do to keep the marketing efforts going that no one person can adequately do it all. The sense of being overwhelmed with everything is a common experience among entrepreneurs and business owners, which can easily lead you to either burn out or to work “harder rather than smarter” by trying to be completely self-sufficient. It is a common mistake small business owners make and it feeds into the myth of the “super-hero”—I can do it all and have it all—all at once. Asking for help with your law firms marketing efforts is a sign of strength and wisdom, not weakness and senility.
To be successful with small law firm marketing, you must recognize your strengths and weaknesses. The goal in life is not to eliminate your weaknesses. In fact, many people make the mistake of focusing too much on trying to overcome their weaknesses when their time and mental energy would be much better spent in trying to maximize their strengths.
There are two major reasons why you should spend time identifying your strengths and weaknesses. It helps you surround yourself with the right people and it gives you a clear picture of what areas you need to spend your time on versus outsourcing.
If lawyer marketing is not your thing, you need to find someone in your firm to play point on this because developing and implementing a powerful marketing strategy is critical to the success of your business.
Many business owners waste far too much of their precious time, energy, and potential profits by trying to do everything for themselves as a way of “saving a little money” or not wanting to give up “control.” Remember, control is an illusion. Don’t let your need for control or your need to be right every time get in the way of becoming a successful entrepreneur. When it comes to taking on another project or heading up a new initiative, consider the real cost to your business in terms of lost time, wasted efforts, poor productivity, and decreased revenues. You are the most important person at your company and your time is valuable.
It used to be said that ‘time is money,’ but that’s not true in our modern society. Time is worth more than money because you can always make more money but you can never make more time.
Here are a few common examples of what many attorneys try to do single-handedly when they would be better off delegating or outsourcing:
- Creating and launching a direct mail campaign.
- Developing their own law firm websites or learning how to build one from scratch.
- Designing a comprehensive law firm marketing plan or strategy.
- Implementing systems and processes to better manage their client and prospect relationships.
I'm not saying you should outsource your entire firm or use a law firm marketing consultant, but unless you have a lot of extra time or specific experience in certain areas, you will not be able to represent yourself and your company in the best possible light without the help of other experienced professionals. Remember, asking for help is a sign of strength and wisdom, not weakness and senility.
I strongly encourage you to take a few minutes right now and create an Action Plan for how you are going to put into practice two to three specific items you discovered in this article in the next 30-60 days.
Then find someone you can share your plan with and ask them to hold you accountable for the results.
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Stephen Fairley will be presenting “The Top 10 “Secret” Strategies Used by Rainmakers: How to Build a 7 Figure Law Firm During Difficult Times” on September 10, 2009 from 2:15-5:15 p.m. during The State Bar of California 82nd Annual Meeting. This is a timely presentation that you won’t want to miss.
Marketing For Lawyers - Mistakes Attorneys Make-and How to Avoid Them, Mistake #9
MARKETING MISTAKE 9:
Under-Funding Your Law Firm Marketing Plan
In my #1 bestselling book, Getting Started in Personal and Executive Coaching (www.GettingStartedInCoaching.com), I write that under-funding your law firms marketing plan is just as bad as not having a law firm marketing plan at all.
Implementing an under-funded marketing plan is just as bad as not using any marketing plan at all because of the Law of 7 Touches. Remember in a previous blog, I mentioned it takes seven to 10 meaningful touches to move someone through the sales process to get them to the point where they are ready to buy from you.
If your marketing plan only has enough steam in it to produce five meaningful touches, it will be almost as if you never touched them because it won't break through all the other law firm marketing efforts made by other attorneys vying for that person’s time and money, including your biggest competitors. How much do you need to invest in your marketing efforts?
There are many lawyer marketing variables to consider in answer to that question. Here are a only a few of the variables you need to consider:
• What practice area are you in? Some practice areas require significantly more time and money to market (litigation and personal injury to mention two).
• What are your profit margins? The larger your margins, the more you can invest on marketing and new business development. Some practice areas have bigger profit margins (litigation) while others have notoriously low profits (insurance coverage and residential real estate).
• What are your annual revenues? It is not unusual for successful law firms to spend between 15 percent and 40 percent of their annual revenues on legal marketing services.
• How much time can you devote toward your marketing plan? In general, the more time you can devote toward implementing the plan, the less money you have to use. For example, if you use direct marketing as part of your plan, you can spend less money and send out fewer letters with less frequency if you're able to follow up with a phone call. Also consider internet marketing for attorneys and how that can add to your 7 touches
• What's the geographical size of your prospect base? For many professional service firms, like doctors, lawyers and accountants, it is usually limited from five to 25 square miles.
• What is the average sale size? How much does your average client spend with you? $500? $5,000? $500,000? $5 million? Items costing less than a $500 require different marketing strategies than those costing between $500 and $5,000. Typically, the higher the price tag, the more you need to educate your customer as to the benefits of your services and provide more evidence of your credibility.
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Want to learn more about becoming a Rainmaker for your small or solo practice? Come to the Los Angeles County Bar Association on Tuesday, September 15 for a 2-hour “Becoming A Rainmaker” session with Stephen Fairley. To register, please click on the Register Here button on the website.
Marketing For Lawyers - Mistakes Attorneys Make-and How to Avoid Them, Mistake #8 Part 2
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MARKETING MISTAKE 8 Part 2:
Not Having a Solid Marketing Plan
What does having a marketing plan really do for you and your business? Let me give you a few more major reasons why you need a solid law firm marketing plan:
5. It Can Help You Think Outside the Box.
It’s very easy to copy someone else’s marketing model, which is what most people end up doing (consciously or unconsciously) when they don’t have an individual law firm marketing plan.
There are several potential dangers to copying someone else when it comes to a law firm’s marketing efforts:
• You miss opportunities that are perfect for you and not other people due to your unique experiences, knowledge, background, your location, or surrounding demographics.
• You take advantage of “business opportunities” that are not right for you. Many good people fall into the trap of believing MLM (multi-level marketing also known as network marketing) is an easy way to make money. We have all seen the ads “stay at home and make $3,000 a month”. But critical to the success of these and other “business opportunities” is the ability and the willingness to be a phenomenal sales person. That’s why, according to Entrepreneur Magazine, the overwhelming majority of people who start an MLM “business” drop it within 6 months.
• In marketing for attorneys, you make the same mistakes as the person you copy. (Note to Self: If you're going to copy someone else, make darned sure they know what they are talking about and you can independently verify their claims of success). There are hundreds of people out there selling their “secrets to success”—which is usually nothing more than their personal success story.
6. It Helps You Create a Vision for What You Want in the Future.
Where do you want to be in 12 months? How about three to five years? Ultimately, your business
will be driven by your vision and the process of developing that vision is critical to your long-term
success. The real value of law firm marketing plans is not just having it done; it’s all the time,
energy, and research you put into thinking about your business in a strategic way and then
implementing those plans.
7. A Marketing Plan Sets Up Measurable Objectives for You to Evaluate Your Success
How will you know if you’ve had a successful year? Will it depend on how you feel or can you set up
measurable objectives to compare your results against? If you fail to set measurable standards in
your law firm marketing, how will you know whether or not your specific efforts were rewarded? How
will you determine where to put your future efforts and your marketing dollars if you don’t know if a
given idea worked?
A marketing plan with objective goals can help you ask and answer the right questions when it
comes to evaluating your marketing and sales efforts. The answers give you indications as to your
next steps.
8. A Marketing Plan Sets You Apart as Being Committed to Your Business.
Let's face it, if you're not willing to spend a few days writing up a solid marketing plan to grow
and develop your business, why should anyone take your business plans and ideas seriously?
Do you really have something more important to do than taking some time and writing down your
plan for how you are going to succeed in your business?
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Rainmaker Founder Stephen Fairley will be a Keynote Speaker at the State Bar of California’s 82nd Annual Meeting on Friday September, 11, 2009 from 12:15- 2:00 p.m. He is speaking on "Unlocking the Secrets of Social Media: How to Leverage LinkedIn, Fix Facebook and Tweak Twitter for Your Law Firm.” Come and learn how you can stay current with technology while boosting your bottom line.
Marketing For Lawyers - Mistakes Attorneys Make-and How to Avoid Them, Mistake #8 Part 1
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MARKETING MISTAKE 8 Part 1:
Not Having a Solid Law Firm Marketing Plan
Do you really, truly need a business or law firm marketingplan to build a successful law practice? NO. Although my answer may surprise you, research from participants in the “Inc 500 Fastest-growing Companies Survey” (sponsored by Inc Magazine) shows that many people have built successful companies without using a business or marketing plan.
Anything is possible, but the real question is—Is it probable? How is a business plan different from a marketing plan?
Essentially they are the same. I prefer to use the term “marketing plan” because a good business plan focuses 75 percent on marketing your service; therefore, I like to emphasize that aspect of it by referring to it as a “marketing plan.”
Another reason why I prefer to use the term “marketing plan” is because the term “business plan” is so overused and it sounds so boring. I think a lot of attorneys perceive a business plan as some worthless binder collecting dust on their shelf. I look at a marketing program as a flexible, research-based, real-world driven, living, breathing, ever-changing exercise that is the heart of everything you do on a daily and monthly basis. It is your guide to success!
What does having a marketing plan really do for you and your business? Let me give you a few of the major reasons why you need solid law firm marketing plans:
1. A Marketing Plan Increases Your Chances of Long-Term Business Success.
It is possible to succeed without a marketing plan, but having a solid marketing plan that you can follow will significantly increase your chances for business success. A solid, well thought-out plan keeps you from making serious mistakes later that can quickly sink your practice.
2. It Gives You Structure in an Otherwise Unstructured Business.
One of the major reasons why people start a new law firm is to achieve a sense of independence and freedom—taking charge of your own destiny, setting your own schedule, and not having any one tell you what to do. This can be a great feeling, especially when you know exactly what to do every day, month in and month out, year after year, or if you already have so much business you can't keep up.
However, most attorneys don’t know exactly what they should be doing on a day-to-day basis to keep the momentum moving forward. On the other hand, many business owners are so overwhelmed with the daily activities that they don’t take time to think strategically about how to grow their business.
If this is your first try at building a business and you need direction in small law firm marketing; if your business is relatively new or if you're struggling to find new clients, you need to create a solid, well thought-out marketing plan. Having a solid marketing plan can help give you structure and a context for your everyday activities. Your plan will help you put these daily activities into the context of a larger, more strategic plan of how you are going to grow your business. These plans may include a law firm marketing consultant that offers legal marketing services.
3. A Marketing Plan Can Keep You on the Right Track.
One of my favorite business quotes is from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland where the Cheshire cat meets Alice for the first time and responds to her questions of where she should go with the classic reply, “If you don’t know where you're going, any path will do.”
When marketing your law firm one of the best reasons to develop a marketing plan is to help you stay on the right track. It is so easy to become distracted by problems that arise, new opportunities that sound great or the daily grind at the office, but don’t exactly fit with your long -term goals. A marketing plan is not designed to be unduly constrictive, but to provide you with freedom within defined boundaries, the “boundaries” being your short term goals (three to six months) and long-term goals (one to three years) and reaching financial independence.
4. A Marketing Plan Will Help You Count the Cost of Creating Before You Start Building.
Critical to any marketing plan is an outline of your anticipated expenses, your marketing budget, your sales goals, and a clear path to profitability. Knowing your financial costs and risks ahead of time can be invaluable in planning out your growth strategy and managing your budget.
You must have a clear idea of what costs are associated with starting up a new business in your field, along with realistic expectations of how long it will take to obtain enough clients or sell enough products to cover your overhead and provide some profits.
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Want to learn more about becoming a Rainmaker for your small or solo practice? Come to the Los Angeles County Bar Association on Tuesday, September 15 for a 2-hour “Becoming A Rainmaker” session with Stephen Fairley. To register, please click on the Register Here button on the website.
Marketing For Lawyers - Mistakes Attorneys Make-and How to Avoid Them, Mistake #7 Part 2
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MARKETING MISTAKE 7 Part 2:
Not Using Marketing to Support Sales
To explain in more detail how to avoid this mistake in your law firm marketing, I would like to outline the 5 stage sales cycle. Let's take an attorney who practices business law for small to mid-sized companies. For most attorneys, your law firm marketing plan should include a five-stage sales cycle:
Stage 1 is identifying your ideal target market (ITM).
Your ITM is the person or company who is most likely to hire you initially, repeatedly and at the highest profit margin.
Stage 2 is “lead generation.”
“Lead generation” is finding prospects in your target market.
There are several kinds of activities you can do when marketing your law firm to jump start this process:
• Internet marketing for attorneys can be a great tool. You can capture their contact information when they visit your website using an opt-in method.
• Purchase a list of names from a trade association or list broker.
• Speak at area associations who are in your target market and collect business cards.
• Attend networking events filled with your prospects.
Stage 3 is “prospect qualification.”
“Prospect qualification” is examining each potential prospect and qualifying them according to set criteria. One of the marketing efforts you can add to your law firm marketing plan at this stage is to make them fill something out—whether that’s an information request form, an intake form, or a request for a free report.
Stage 4 is individual consultation.
Individual consultation is where they have proven at some level they are a qualified prospect and they get to meet with you and have an individual consult—which is usually a soft pitch presentation to determine if there is a good fit.
Marketing materials, like articles about you in the press or special reports you have written to educate your client, can provide you with instant credibility and increase the level of confidence your prospect has in doing business with you.
Stage 5 is an informal or formal proposal of work.
Marketing material that provides case studies, testimonials, and references show that you have helped people just like them before and you have achieved a high level of good results from your past clients.
Stage 6 is providing the paid product or service.
Once you land a client, that’s just the beginning of the relationship, not the end. You always want to have a next step. Use your ongoing law firm marketing efforts to tell them about how you have helped other clients with different kinds of projects. Keep them informed about your successes, your published articles and upcoming interviews. Ask them for referrals on a regular basis. Don’t ever stop building a relationship with them. The most expensive thing you can have is a one-time customer because it takes 10 times as much to find a new customer than it does to serve an existing one.
When marketing your law firm, think of it like a lawyer builds a legal case. Step by step, you are giving your prospects more and more information about you, your company, the benefits of your product or service, and the results you can help them achieve. You are giving them all the information and education they need to make an informed decision.
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Stephen Fairley will be a Keynote Speaker on Thursday, September 10 from 2:15-5:15 at the Annual Meeting of the State Bar of California being held in San Diego, CA. The Annual Meeting will feature more than 130 legal education courses, an exhibit hall, and more!
Marketing For Lawyers - Mistakes Attorneys Make-and How to Avoid Them, Mistake #7 Part 1
MARKETING MISTAKE 7:
Not Using Marketing to Support Sales
A lot of people confuse sales and marketing. Simply put, law firm marketing is building a relationship with people who are most likely to purchase your services or refer business to you. Sales is closing the deal.
Marketing is everything you do to make the sale easier. In my experience, most attorneys who are good at marketing are not great at sales and vice versa. Yes, there is overlap but the skills sets are distinct.
One of the keys to a law firms marketing and sales success is making sure that you have good people in charge of both areas to maximize your chances for achieving your goals.
You don’t do marketing just for the sake of it. A Law Firm Marketing plan is not a goal in and of itself. It is a means to an end—the end being obtaining the sale.
That’s why I tell attorneys I work with that if you don’t like sales, you probably need to invest more time and money in marketing your law firm.
But don’t make the mistake of thinking that means you need to do more advertising. Marketing and advertising are not synonymous. Advertising is only one kind of marketing and in my book, Practice Made Perfect for Lawyers: 10 Principles for Marketing Your Legal Services, I go into a lot more detail about several other forms of marketing that are much more effective.
To maximize your law firms marketing efforts, they must be thoroughly integrated with and supportive of your sales efforts.
Let me give you an example. I interviewed Randy, the CEO of a software development company with about $10 million in annual revenues and discovered their sales force was split between Chicago and Atlanta. There were four sales people in Atlanta and one in Chicago.
He told me their target market was companies with $500 million to $2 billion in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. When I asked how he supported the sales people with marketing efforts, he didn’t quite know how to respond.
Come to find out, 90 percent of the limited marketing budget was spent on advertising in the Chicago marketplace, while all their sales force was in Atlanta. This is a classic example of not integrating your sales and marketing efforts and of not using marketing to support your sales people.
You need to have a clear understanding of how people move through your marketing funnel. What I mean is, you need to understand how people go from not knowing anything about you (entering the funnel) to being ready to buy from you (within the funnel). And once they are in the funnel, what's the next step you want them to take? You need to answer these questions each step of the way (all the way through the funnel) and you need to support each step with your law firm marketing efforts. I will go into this in more detail in our next post by explaining the 5 stage Sales Cycle.
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If you are interested in learning more about this topic you can purchase my book Practice Made Perfect for Lawyers: 10 Principles for Marketing Your Legal Services.
Why Law Schools Are Failing Attorneys and The Legal Industry
Law schools are failing the 43,600 attorneys who graduate from them year after year...
A bold statement? Not really from my perspective.
I was watching the video interview of Rex Gradeless on his Social Media Law Student blog the other day.
If you don’t know Rex I first found him on Twitter.
Rex has, according to Lextweet.com, the largest number of followers on twitter of anyone in the legal industry. At last count he was well over 63,000 followers (@Rex7). I was very impressed with this and so I started following him some months back just to see how a law student was using social media to build a loyal following. In the video interview he mentions just graduating law school and taking the bar exam (I hope you pass Rex).
I was inspired to write this post partially by his situation and also a discussion on LinkedIn under the Legal Marketing group. I'm sure more than a few law schools will not like this post, but then again, as those of you who know me understand that being liked by everyone has never been a very strong motivator for me.
I truly believe law schools are failing most of the attorneys who depend on them to show them how to be a successful attorney.
I have heard that around 85% of lawyers end up in a small law firm at some point in their career. The number of new solo practices that open up every year far outweighs the number of attorneys who are now entering big law.
If you do not even know the fundamentals of setting up a law practice (from a business perspective), how to build relationships with referral sources, the principles of excellent customer service, and specific strategies for law firm marketing and business development how can you reasonably expect to succeed in this dog eat dog environment?
Bottom line: You cannot...unless you depend on someone else to feed you, thereby making you a helpless and hapless dependent.
For those of you running or working at law schools who follow me (yes, I know who you are) here is my challenge to you:
Is this really the best you can do? You are the institution whereby almost every single person who wants to practice law must go through—you are the first line of defense for the legal industry...and you are failing them.
You must hold yourself to a higher standard than to continue cranking out lawyers who are entirely unprepared for the intensity and effort required to build a financially successful and personally satisfying law practice. You are better than this!
Your constituents depend on you to teach them how to be successful lawyers, in every sense of the word. If you know the majority of them will require an understanding of various areas of the law, you teach them.
So will someone PLEASE tell me why you will not teach them the business side of law if virtually all of them will be required to know it and practice it when they get out?
Most, if not all, law schools do not teach (and many do not even offer) a single course on the "business of law." What? Are you serious?
Can anyone please give me a logical reason why you should not require at least 2-3 entire classes on this? Perhaps even require it in your internship experience?
Many attorneys are still taught the best way to grow a law firm is to go work for "big law" for 7-10 years and see how the big boys do it (bottom line is they don’t know how either). There are several myths and unspoken implications in this fallacious thinking:
- Just being a good attorney is enough: Hogwash! That may have worked 20 years ago, but certainly not in today’s hypercompetitive environment. 20 years ago (probably the last time when many law school professors were last practicing) it was enough to be a good attorney and just by hanging out your shingle, clients would start coming in. But does anyone still remember those days?
- Competency will rule the day. How does anyone still believe this stuff? Look around...we all know attorneys who are borderline incompetent who have more clients than they can handle and vice versa we know many attorneys who excel at their craft and are dead broke!
Let's put this myth to rest once and for all: Having a financially successful practice has absolutely NOTHING to do with being a great lawyer or having perfected your legal skills!!
You can hire great technicians who can do the legal work for you. They are a dime a dozen right now. Who is truly in demand? Rainmakers! Lawyers who can bring in the business and the deal makers will always take their rightful place at the head of the table.
Do not misunderstand: I am not giving anyone an excuse to be incompetent in your craft. There is no excuse for that. Like thousands of others, I too have been taken advantage of by incompetent attorneys, but unlike others I know the truth—the majority of attorneys (at least in small law firms) are fair minded, competent, caring professionals who love to serve their clients to the best of their ability.
Competency is necessary, but not sufficient to a successful law practice!
- You can learn good rainmaking skills by osmosis: The implication is that you will naturally pick it up if you are smart enough. As someone who has taught over 6,000 attorneys how to be rainmakers I can tell you with some authority that having intelligence does not in any shape or fashion equate to being an effective Rainmaker.
Intelligence may help you pick up the skills faster, but it does not ensure you will know how to apply them. Rainmaking is a skill you must learn and develop. It is not something that 95% of people are born with.
In other fields, the companies that hire graduates have demanded their training change to meet their needs. It does not serve the best interests of attorneys nor does it serve law firms to have to hire young attorneys who are incompetent when it comes to business development.
And how about the role the media plays in this? Every year U.S. News & World Report’s law school rankings come out and every law school fights to be in the top positions! There’s big money riding on this not to mention prestige.
U.S. News & World Report (and other ranking systems), here's my recommendation: add a new category in “Training in Business Development” or “Law Firm Marketing Training” that plays a part in weighing your rankings.
When every law school (except one or two) FAILS the test, those who pay attention to this critical area will rise to the top.
We have ranking categories for everything else from Alternative Dispute Resolution to Zoning law. So why not “law firm marketing training”? And no, “clinical training” does not cut it.
Entrepreneur magazine rates business schools in terms of how well they prepare students for entrepreneurship. We all know that small businesses are the back bone of America. So Entrepreneur magazine has taken up the mantle to reward universities and B-schools who teach core skills of entrepreneurship. BTW, if you were interested Babson College is #1 and University of Arizona (my adopted home state) is #4.
Why shouldn’t a legal magazine rate law schools in how well they prepare attorneys for the business of law?
Is this pie in the sky thinking? Perhaps, but someone needs to exert some outside pressure on these behemoths in order to effect real change.
Attorneys in practice, here is my challenge to you: When will you stand up and say you have had enough? When will you demand a better trained workforce of young associates? Have you had a heart to heart conversation with your local law school? Have you tried to push for change from the inside out?
Until lawyers in both "big law" and small law firms lobby these law schools I do not believe you see a change in this irresponsible behavior.
If you do not take up the banner and demand something better from law schools who will?
I await your comments, rants and insights...
Marketing For Lawyers - Mistakes Attorneys Make--and How to Avoid Them, Mistake #6
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MARKETING MISTAKE 6:
Focusing On Services and Features Instead Of Benefits and Results in Law firm marketing
Marketing Mistake #6 is focusing on services and features rather than benefits and results. I came across law firm websites the other day that listed on their home page more than 20 different “packages, programs, and services” along with all the different pricing structures they offer to businesses.
This is ridiculous! People don’t care about the different programs and packages you offer. If the truth was told, they don’t really care that you're licensed, certified, registered, or accredited.
They expect everyone they work with to be competent, just like they expect every product they buy to be a quality one. When it comes to doing business with you, your clients only care about three things:
The Benefits they receive.
The Value they perceive.
The Results they achieve.
Highly-successful attorneys don’t sell their services as part of their law firm marketing plan. Instead, they focus on selling the benefits they offer, the value they provide, and the results they achieve.
Your service is simply the tool or the process you use to solve problems and to achieve the results. Don’t focus on the process of small law firm marketing—focus on the results, the benefits, and the value you bring to the situation.
Let's say you're an attorney who in your marketing your law firm targets high net worth females. Instead of saying you “help people prepare for their retirement,” focus on the value you provide and benefits you offer by stating:
“I work with high net worth females to help them create a comprehensive financial plan, allowing them to feel safe and secure about their retirement years while providing for their children so that they can continue to lead healthy, productive, and confident lives.”
As an attorney who specializes in small business employment law, don’t focus on creating a comprehensive list of all your services. Clearly identify your ideal target market, small business
owners with revenues of $5MM to $50MM, recognize their points of pain, and tell them how you help them resolve their pain.
“Our law firm concentrates in helping small business owners avoid 20 common mistakes when hiring and firing employees and limit their risk of facing costly litigation or negative press.”
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If you weren’t able to attend the recent Rainmaker Retreat we have the 2 Day Marketing Boot Camp for Attorneys Live on CD. Set includes 6 audio CDs and a 70 page PDF Marketing Manual. Over 6,000 attorneys from hundreds of law firms across the country have discovered how to generate more referrals and find new clients by simply applying our Rainmaker Marketing System. Click here to order
Marketing For Lawyers - Mistakes Attorneys Make--and How to Avoid Them, Mistake #5
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MARKETING MISTAKE 5:
NOT TESTING AND RETESTING YOUR LAW FIRM MARKETING EFFORTS
Not testing your marketing efforts is like going through an entire jury trial but neglecting to hear the verdict. Here's a great little litmus test to apply to your lawyer marketing efforts:
If you can't measure it, you probably shouldn’t be doing it.
I recommend you try to measure your every marketing effort and if you can't measure it, you probably shouldn’t be doing it because you can never be sure about your results other than basing them on a feeling or your intuition.
In marketing for attorneys - Every marketing effort you make should have at least one to two things you are testing. For example:
Let's say you own an accounting firm and you want to do some direct mailings. You decide as part of your marketing plan to send out 1000 postcards to prospects on your mailing list to invite them to contact you.
Develop two postcards with two different headlines:
• Postcard 1 says: “Every year most small business owners overpay 22% on their federal taxes due to errors made by their accountant. Call today for your FREE report on 10 common mistakes accountants make that cost you money.”
• Postcard 2 says: “Last year the IRS conducted audits on 425,729 small businesses that cost the average owner 276 hours of their time and $9, 223 in legal and accounting fees. Call today to receive your free 75 question checklist and how to audit-proof your business in 5 easy
steps.”
• Then divide your mailing list into two groups of 500 each and track the results by putting a different code word on the bottom of each group of postcards. When prospects contact you to receive their free report ask them for the code word to track which headline produces better results.
You can use a similar strategy for many different marketing tactics. For example, if you're offering a discount for your product in a newspaper ad—try offering a percent off the retail price for two months, then try offering a specific dollar amount off for two months and track the results. Or if you use email and law firm Internet marketing strategies, create two different landing pages on your law firm websites with two different offers and see which one “pulls in” more prospects to your email list.
Always look for ways you can test your efforts, but don’t introduce too many variables at once because if you're trying to measure three or more variables you can never be sure which one is responsible for the results.
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Marketing For Lawyers - Mistakes Attorneys Make--and How to Avoid Them, Mistake #4
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MARKETING MISTAKE 4:
NETWORKING TOO MUCH OR IN THE WRONG PLACES
I recently met an attorney who was struggling to find new clients. When I asked her the primary way she was looking for clients, I discovered she belonged to more than 30 networking groups.
Assuming she attended only one meeting from each group each month, she could have easily
visited a new event every day of the week and never hit the same one twice.
Here are the problems with that approach:
She was spending so much of her time networking that she didn’t have time to do any other lawyer marketing activity. Networking is often not the most effective form of marketing for lawyers. She didn’t have enough time to properly follow up with any leads she received during the events; she was always on the way to her next meeting.
She could probably stop attending 80-90 percent of those groups and still had the same results in her small law firm marketing plan.
In my research, I have found that networking works really great for some people, and not at all for most people. The only way to be sure which category you fit in is to track the results you achieve from particular networking groups and actively cut out the ones that don’t produce results then integrate your findings into marketing your law firm.
By asking yourself these three critical questions, you can assess the effectiveness of your networking.
1. Am I networking to my peers or my prospects? I'm continually amazed at how many business owners go to networking events in their own industry looking for new clients.
2. What is my goal in going to this networking event? Is it to:
• Find new clients?
• Build my database with prospects?
• Understand the major points of pain in my target market?
• For professional development and connecting with others in my field?
3. What results have I received from this event in the past? You have to be clear about your objective and measuring your results. Set up a simple Excel spreadsheet that tracks your results from various networking events you attend:
• How long have you consistently attended the meetings?
• How many people did you meet?
• How many were qualified prospects?
• How many face-to-face meetings or presentations did you land from that group?
• What business can you directly attribute to those meetings?
• How much longer are you willing to attend before seeing solid results?
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