Law Firm Marketing: Secrets Top Rainmakers Use to Fill Their Practice
"In the 20 years I have been an attorney, I have never had to market my law firm," an attorney I'll call Ralph told me. "However, about six months ago, my biggest client was bought out by a Fortune 500 company and my revenues dropped from $600,000 to $60,000 in 60 days. I'm 55 years old and I feel like I'm starting over. What can I do to quickly find more clients?"
Ralph approached me just before I was scheduled to give a presentation on rainmaking to a New Jersey State Bar audience of 160 attorneys. Since I only had a few minutes before going on stage, I gave him my card and asked him to meet me after the seminar.
That evening at dinner, I shared with Ralph how our company has studied hundreds of top rainmaker attorneys to discover their secrets to building a financially successful and personally satisfying law practice.
I worked with Ralph over the next few months and with a lot of hard work he was able to build relationships with several referral sources that sent him dozens of new cases. He doubled his revenues in less than twelve months.
Fast forward two years. I had just finished up another bar association presentation when Ralph walked up to me. "I'm sorry I've been out of touch, Stephen," he said. "My business has grown so fast I couldn't keep up with it at first. I've had to hire three new people just to serve my clients. I drove in from out of town just to see you again and say thank you."
As Ralph discovered, the field of law firm marketing is highly competitive with more and more attorneys competing for the same clients. In my work with small law firms and solo practitioners, I have found there are at least four common strategies used by top attorneys to generate more referrals and fill their law practice. Here’s the first; I’ll talk about the others next week:
Strategy 1: Build Relationships With Strategic Referral Partners
Strategic Referral Partners (SRPs) are people who already have a relationship with the people you want as clients. For example, if your niche is business law for small business owners, possible referral partners would be accountants, financial planners, local bankers, commercial real estate agents, and insurance agents.
Here's the step-by-step referral building system we created that's used by hundreds of attorneys in a variety of practice areas:
- Identify several professions or industries that already have trusted relationships with your target market.
- Build or buy a database of potential referral sources (www. infoUSA.com and www.superpages.com are two great resources).
- Focus on refining your Unique Competitive Advantage by answering this question: "Why should someone hire me versus any of my competitors?"
- Create a form letter that includes who you work with, how you are different, and a personal invitation to get together to determine if/how you could work together.
- Send out 10-20 letters per week.
- Have your assistant call the people you sent letters to and determine their level of interest in connecting with you.
- Have your assistant set up appointments for you over lunch or coffee.
- When you meet with prospective SRPs, find out more about their businesses and how you can help their clients.
- Ask compelling questions to let them know you are interested in building a mutually beneficial referral relationship, and don't forget the best question:"How would I know if the person I'm talking to would be a great referral for you?"
- Ask them if they would be willing to send you referrals.
- If possible, try to send them a referral in the next 30 days.
- Follow up every 4-6 weeks to stay connected with them (send them a letter, article of interest, or one of your press releases).
Sounds simple, right? Not really, but it does work. Every week we help attorneys use this exact strategy to meet with two to three new potential referral sources. Just remember, referrals are a contact sport! You must leave your office and connect with local professionals in order to build your referral network.
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