Client Development: Plan or Random Acts of Golf and Lunch?

As the Cheshire Cat observed to Alice long ago, the path you take doesn't matter if you don't know where you're going. That applies to marketing for too many lawyers and law firms. We know we want more clients and more business, so we go to a trade association meeting, invite a prospect to lunch, send out a newsletter, and hope something sticks.

This scattershot approach is counterproductive. Far more effective is to develop a plan and adhere to it. The two primary ways you can do this are to evaluate your marketing tactics, and the hypothetical client targets they're aimed at.

First, target your strategies. Make a list of five things you do to market yourself, your department or your whole law firm. Rank them in the order of what has worked best. Which activities bring in the most profitable new clients, develop most referral sources or generate the most inquiries? Your list might read something like:

Networking with other professionals and referral sources
Seminars
Website
Advertising
PR

Now cross the bottom two off the list. You need to be ruthless, this is no time for sentiment or favorites. Stop doing them and put the money you've devoted to them back into the top three performers -- the ones with the most bank for the buck.

Then, target your clients. Create a profile of your ideal client and develop a marketing strategy that focuses on this target, not everyone. Here are some questions to ask yourself:

What characteristics describe your ideal client?
What is your client's occupation?
What are your client's demographics?
Where are your clients located?
How do you know when it's a "fit?

Then, go get 'em! Increase your revenue by five and six figures while everyone else is sitting still, wondering how you flew so high! When it comes to the strategies you want to pursue and the targets you want to reach, you can't create them until you conceive them.

This post courtesy of LawBiz® and reprinted with permission. "Copyright 1999-2005 Edward Poll." Thanks, Edward!

Rainmakers Make Housecalls

Easily the most effective, usually immediate way to get new legal business is to get more business from the clients you already have. The best way to do that- visit your clients at their place of business. This strategy bears fruit repeatedly in an attorney's dual role as their law firm's marketing consultant, and in the practice of law.

Face time with current clients is the number one tip of many legal marketers. So, why don’t more lawyers do it?

I know many rainmakers who do believe, as well as many consultants, including Tom Collins and Michelle Golden, both of whom have recent posts on the subject. They cite a survey conducted by John Remsen of the The Remsen Group. John’s November 2006 reader survey (with 138 responses) found that visiting clients was the most effective marketing tactic according to 59% of respondents. In second place was “organizational activity” (12%) and third, “firm-sponsored seminars” (9%). Not the most scientific survey, but impressive nonetheless.

Now, do you believe me? You will, if you give it a try.

Get The Fees You Deserve

Learn how to command the fees you deserve.RainToday is offering a free 39 page special report on setting fees. In the report 12 experts on pricing professional services answer this question: What is the one piece of advice you would give a professional service provider to maximize their fees for service?
Some of the experts interviewed include:

Convince the Buyer that Value-Based Fees are Best
- Alan Weiss, Author, “Million Dollar Consulting”

Price with Confidence! Follow These 10 Steps to Stop Leaving Money on the Table
- Mark Burton, Co-Founder and Vice President of Holden Advisors and Co-Author, “Pricing With Confidence: 10 Ways to Stop Leaving Money on the Table”

A Magic Bullet? No, a Process
- Bruce W. Marcus, Marketing and Strategic Planning Consultant and Editor, The Marcus Letter on Professional Services Marketing

The Best Kept Secret of the Selling World
- Jeff Thull, President and CEO, Prime Resource Group and Author, “Mastering the Complex Sale, The Prime Solution”
If You Don’t Discuss Value, Expect to Discuss Hours

- Ronald J. Baker, Founder, VeraSage Institute and Author, “The Firm of the Future: A Guide for Accountants, Lawyers, and Other Professional Services”
Take Courage: Demand Full Price (And seven steps to get you there)

Think of Services in Terms of Value – Not Rates
- Gerry Riskin, Co-Founder, Edge International

Discounting Doesn’t Work
- Jeanne Urich, Managing Director, Service Performance Insight

Over-Serve Your Best Clients
- Neil Fauerbach, Partner and Director of Business Development and Marketing, Smith & Gesteland, LLP and President, Association for Accounting Marketing

Maximize the Value of Work to Your Clients and Your Firm
- Andrew Sobel, Founder, Andrew Sobel Advisors and Author, “Clients for Life” and “Making Rain”

The link to download the report is:
http://www.raintoday.com/onepiecefees.cfm

Draw Visitors to Your Website and Keep Them Coming Back!

With the importance of a Firm's website growing every day, how do you attract potential clients online and keep them coming back? Today we examine the best way to do just that.

Welcome Web surfers: How to attract first-time visitors.

1. Search engine optimization. Google is the search engine that drives the most traffic to your site so task your staff to incorporate into your Firm Web copy key terms that people might search. This organic search method is called search engine optimization, or SEO.

Click here to learn how your Web site winds up on a Google search page.

2. Content syndication. Disseminate your legal intelligence articles to other Web sites. That way, someone searching a particular topic might stumble upon an article written by one of your attorneys and then head to the company’s Web site.

Please come again: How to ensure return visitors.

Ensuring visitors return to your Firm site begins with a payoff. What’s on the site better match what you promised would be there.

1. Quality video. If the Firm's bios are videotaped, ensure that video is quality. If the Firm has been involved in some high profile litigation and received media coverage, make sure the clip is featured on the site.

2. Strong writing. Keep Web copy short and punchy.

3. Customized pages. That means someone interested in a specific service, say Intellectual Property, can follow a link from the company’s home page that brings them to a landing page built specifically for the topic. The purpose of these customized pages, is to give visitors easy, bulleted scannable content as well as an easy pass to find more information.

Marketing Priorities in a Down Economy

Figuring out new ways to deliver value to clients is exactly what the marketing department should do. That’s true not only when the economy is soft, though it is certainly more of a priority when times are tough.

Besides clients, another important audience for your marketing department in tough times is your managing partner and CFO. Believe me, they will be delighted if, rather than proposing a higher budget for 2009 filled with all sorts of new initiatives, you propose a flat or even smaller budget but still deliver great value. In the process, you can weed out a number of low-value sacred cows that have burrowed into your budget over the years and refocus your department on things that enable your lawyers to add value for clients. You will probably improve your staff’s job satisfaction as well.

The tool for this is zero-based budgeting, which simply means that instead of using last year’s budget as a starting point, you start with a blank piece of paper. Everything has to earn its way into the budget on its own merits after a fresh analysis of costs and benefits.

If you enlist the CFO and managing partner up front and explain how this process will add value for the firm, you will likely be able to enlist them to help you fight the political battles that always accompany change.

Zero-based budgeting is a great way to wring out of the budget all kinds of random, scattershot, one-off activities that provide nothing more than a little general visibility to a poorly targeted audience and enable some lawyers to feel like they have “done their marketing,” despite not having actually talked to a client, prospect or referral source. In my first year at Davis Wright, we cut the general sponsorship budget by one-third, reduced our spending on directories and eliminated most of the advertising budget. That freed up funds to support three very substantial and targeted business development initiatives, to pay for a comprehensive positioning program and new Web site and to hire some senior staff in critical positions—all within a flat budget.

So as you approach the 2009 budget cycle, take nothing for granted. Start from zero and build a budget based on particular needs and opportunities, not on history. You will likely deliver a lot more value in 2009 while spending less. That is a result that works well in any economic environment.

This post comes courtesy of Mark Usellis, of Legal Business Development blog. Reproduced from Strategies - The Journal of Legal Marketing with permission from the Legal Marketing Association. July 30, 2008 |

The Importance of Client Relationships

Ballard Spahr (500-plus layers) has hired a full-time “client interviewer,” and Stanislaw Ashbaugh (19 lawyers) prominently links to their Chief Results Officer from their home page. Also, Ward and Smith PA (80 lawyers) has a partner who is devoted to visiting clients nearly full-time.

Apparently other firms have similar positions. This development exhibits the number one rule of business success: keep the clients you already have. Its been estimated it costs ten times the amount of time and money to get a new client as opposed to keeping an old one.

Take this approach to heart and grow your existing relationships today. The best investment any lawyer can make is to spend fifteen minutes each week thinking about new projects he’d like to do for existing clients. We’re always pursuing the next client - when we should be pursuing a better relationship with our existing clients.

Adding value to the client relationship is the best way to grow revenues and keep clients. One path is to offer them more than words. Demonstrate the simple fact that you bring something to the table beyond the ability to provide what they ask for.

Spend a few minutes researching your clients' competitors. Google a few statistics, then put it all down on a single sheet of paper (or e-mail). Offer the client your solution to a problem they didn't even know they had and reap the rewards!

The Houston Business Journal is seeking nominations for the 2008 Best Corporate Counsel Awards program, honoring outstanding general counsel in the greater Houston area. The awards will be presented at a reception on October 14, 2008 and will be published in the October 17 issue of the HBJ.

Categories include: outstanding solo corporate counsel, outstanding corporate counsel with an attorney staff of 11 to 30, outstanding associate or assistant corporate counsel, best team effort by a corporate legal department, and many others.

The deadline for nominations is Thursday, August 21. So if you are a Houston-based attorney who actively practices inside a corporation or other private sector organizations get nominated!

Award categories, details and nominations will be accepted online at the Best Corporate Counsel nomination site. Click here

The Era of the Sales Attorney Begins

If there was any doubt as to the importance of business development in all firms large and small, this development should dispel it. San Diego based construction law firm, Scholefield Associates, P.C. recently hired their first ‘sales attorney’, and possibly created the legal industry’s first associate position who’s only job is to bring in new clients. This is the first step in implementing their controversial business development strategy unveiled earlier this spring.

When the concept of a ‘sales attorney’ position was announced by Scholefield this past March, there were as many detractors pointing out the flaws as there were supporters applauding their bold move. This novel approach to law firm business development received press nationally and internationally with commentary and job candidates coming from as far away as Australia.

The firm hired Johnny Manriquez to fill this role. Mr. Manriquez, a California attorney, has years of firsthand experience in business development, sales, and client relationship building in the educational services arena.

“Johnny is a perfect fit for this position and our firm culture” says lead attorney Pam Scholefield. “Since this is an all new position for any law firm, there were no obvious role models or even a known talent pool to choose from.”

Ironically, the approach that Scholefield is taking toward growing the firm’s business is based on successful business development models borrowed heavily from Ms. Scholefield’s past career as a sales engineer with General Electric.

“A law firm is a business first, and we must never forget this if we want to be successful.” Scholefield remarks. “There are no ivory towers here.”

The success of the position, claims Scholefield, is the credibility of the person doing the selling. And she believes a law firm needs to be represented by lawyers. Even though Mr. Manriquez expects to spend very little time engaging in legal jousting, he has an impressive legal background. Not only is he well versed in business negotiations, he is an experienced patent attorney. Mr. Manriquez received his law degree from California Western School of Law in 2001 and is admitted to practice in California, District of Columbia, and before the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

Is this the shape of things to come for all law firms?

Client Feedback

It's extremely important for attorneys and law firms to "measure" their marketing efforts. If you don't, you'll never really know if your efforts are worthwhile. For instance, if you purchased an ad in a circulation, did you get any calls from the ad? If you've given the ad some time to work but have not seen any results, you may want to re-direct that budget to something that's working.

One of the most effective ways to measure your marketing efforts is to initiate a client feedback program. After all, it's free and it really allows you to find out where your business is coming from. Consider these tips:

1. Once you gain a new client, make sure you sit with them at the beginning of your representation and ask them how they came to find out about your services. You might even want to prepare a survey for them. Just be sure to go over it with them in person. Face to face interaction is key. You might even want to meet with your client over lunch or coffee.

2. If you went "head to head" against a competitor and won the client's business, ask your new client why they chose you over other law firms.

3. At the end of the representation, be sure to do another face to face evaluation with your client. They will appreciate your efforts. This is also a great time to seek out referrals. You might say something like this: George, I really enjoyed working with you and if you have any friends or colleagues who might need legal assistance, please be sure to pass on my name and number.

4. You can begin a client feedback program at any time. Don't wait to start on new clients, begin now and implement this procedure with all your clients. For an existing client, just explain it's a new way for you to better service your clients.

5. If you have lost touch with one of your former clients and you want to gain their business back, call them and let them know that your firm is implementing a client feedback program and you would love to take them to lunch or coffee to discuss your past representation. This is a great way to open the door and try to re-gain lost business.

Just remember to be genuine and to meet face to face. Good luck!

Rainmaker Awards

Marketers and consultants across the nation are invited to nominate lawyers for the Rainmaker of the Year Awards, sponsored by the editors of Originate! - the monthly business development newsletter, and judged by LSSO - the Legal Sales and Service Organization.

Winners will receive a handsome award, be publicized in a nationally-distributed press release and be interviewed for articles to be published in Originate! and on the LSSO website.

The newsletter is now soliciting entries for the Rainmaker Awards from lawyers, firms, marketing specialists, recruiters and consultants, in six categories:

1. Associate
2. Small firm lawyer (30 or fewer lawyers)
3. Partner – transactions
4. Partner – litigator
5. Woman Lawyer
6. Diverse Lawyer

Law firm marketers and marketing consultants are encouraged to submit an entry on behalf of a top rainmaker they know in one of these categories, and self-nominations are also welcome. There is no entry fee this year. The deadline for submissions is Monday, July 21, 2008. Entry forms are available online at www.pbdi.org/originate.

A panel of independent judges with expertise in legal business development has been assembled by the Legal Sales and Service Organization (LSSO):

• Martha Fay “Marty” Africa, Managing Director of Major Lindsay & Africa consultants
• Gabe Miller Esq., General Counsel of The Law Offices of James Sokolove
• Catherine MacDonagh, Esq., President of LSSO.

The judges will determine the best of the best among the submitted entries.

“With sales and marketing now so critical to the careers of individual lawyers and the vitality of law firms, we know how important it is for the best to be recognized and share what they do,” said Beth Cuzzone, a co-founder of LSSO, who is the Director of Business Development for Goulston & Storrs in Boston.

More information on the contest, as well as the entry form, can be found here