Archives for November 2012

Evernote search just got easier. Well, sorta

November 14, 2012 by
Share

Although I use it extensively, I don’t write much about technology. One reason is that by the time I’m up to speed on a new piece of software or hardware, it’s usually old news. One exception is Evernote, my favorite tech tool.

I’ve written before about how I use Evernote for everything from note taking to writing to managing all of the information in my personal and professional life. I also use it for Getting Things Done (GTD).

In fact, so great is my love for Evernote, I wrote a book about it: Evernote for Lawyers: A Guide to Getting Organized & Increasing Productivity.

I included in the book’s resources an extensive list of Evernote’s “Search Operators”–the syntax used by Evernote to find notes. These search operators are powerful but can be difficult to remember, so many of us use “Saved Searches,” another Evernote feature that comes in handy, especially with complex searches. But Saved Searches don’t help when you’re looking for something for the first time.

I just found an alternative that looks promising. BitQwik is free software (for PC’s and Mac’s that can run Windows) that serves as a front end portal for searching your Evernote database using natural language. That is, you don’t have to remember precise search operators to find something. Instead, you can use a regular query, much like you would ask Siri.

Here are some examples, from the BitQwik web site:

  • “Show me notes created between May 1st and March 15 that are tagged with robotics, surgical robots, or telepresence”
  • “I want notes sent to me via the E-mail gateway”
  • “Find my encrypted notes that have the words financial data or private in the title but leave out notes I created yesterday”
  • “Give me notes with pictures from Skitch”

I usually find notes in Evernote by browsing tags and using a few simple search operators. But as my database has grown to over 5,000 notes, I find myself relying more on search, and BitQwik looks like it might be just what the doctor ordered.

I just downloaded BitQwik, so I don’t have a lot to report just yet. If it pans out, I could see Evernote adopting this technology, and that would be great because I don’t like the idea of using yet another piece of software. But I’m not holding my breath because everything Evernote does has to work on ten platforms, not just one, and that doesn’t happen overnight.

If you’ve tried BitQwik, let me know what you think. You can add your comments below, or join me on the Evernote Forum.

Get your copy of Evernote for Lawyers. Unless you don’t want to be organized and productive.

Share
Filed Under: Law office management, Productivity, Technology Tagged With: , , , , , ,

What your veterinarian can teach you about marketing legal services

November 13, 2012 by
Share

A couple of weeks ago, our cat had a thorn stuck in his paw and was limping. We took Seamus to a new vet, someone we’ve never visited before. She removed the thorn and gave us antibiotics for the infection. She called a few days later (personally) to ask how Seamus was doing. (He’s fine.)

Did the vet call to protect herself against possible liability? I’m sure that’s part of it. Would she have called if we had come in for a check-up and nothing was wrong? I don’t know. What I do know is that getting that call meant a lot to us.

When your clients leave your office, do you call to find out if they’re okay? You should.

See how they’re doing. See if they have any questions. See if there’s anything else you can do for them. And while you’re at it, thank them again for choosing you as their attorney.

Do this yourself if possible. At the very least, have someone from your office call. It only takes a minute and yes, you can leave a voice mail.

If you want to convert a first time client to a lifetime client, you need to get the little things right. In a professional practice, the little things are the big things.

Marketing legal services is simple, if you know The Formula.

Share
Filed Under: Client loyalty, Client relations, Law office management, Marketing legal services Tagged With:

How to get endorsed on LinkedIn (and why you’ll want to)

November 12, 2012 by
Share

Recently, I’ve gotten several Endorsements from connections on LinkedIn. I’ve been endorsed for Blogging, Marketing, Published Author, Referrals, Productivity, and other skills. If you were kind enough to endorse me, thank you!

So what do these endorsements mean? They mean pretty much what LinkedIn’s “Recommendations” mean–someone thinks highly of you and wants the world to know. So what’s the difference?

“Recommendations” come with a narrative from the endorser, a personalized testimonial from someone who has hired you or otherwise done business with you. Endorsements are more casual observations that can be added with the click of a button.

Recommendations carry more weight than Endorsements because of the personal attestation, but because they take time to write, they are harder to come by.

I think there is a place for both.

How do you get Endorsements and Recommendations? This article suggests two ways:

  1. Ask for them. Send an email to your list, post on your blog, etc., and
  2. Endorse others. Many will reciprocate.

Comments under the referenced article suggest that the ease of getting Endorsements diminishes their value. That’s probably true. But that doesn’t mean they don’t have value.

When someone visits your profile, either because you sent them there or they found you through search, having lots of Endorsements will give them an instant dose of “social proof” regarding your skills and experience. Yes, there may come a time when Endorsements are so common people don’t notice them, but they will surely notice if other attorneys have them and you don’t.

Want to earn more? Of course you do. Here’s where to start.

Share
Filed Under: Client loyalty, Social media, Social media marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The simplest way to get things done when you have too much to do

November 9, 2012 by
Share

In yesterday’s post, I told you how I was able to organize my work flow and do a better job of following up with prospective clients. Today I want to talk about what to do when you find yourself not following up on your tasks and projects.

Actually, there are a lot of things you could do to improve your “completion ratio.” The simplest strategy, however, is to take on only one thing at a time.

One goal. One project. One task.

Start. Finish. Next.

It’s easy to get overwhelmed when there are too many things on your plate. It’s a lot easier when you only have one.

When you focus on just “one thing,” you aren’t distracted by everything else. You’re better able to complete that task or achieve the goal when it’s the only one in front of you.

Of course you will still have many tasks and projects on your list and many will need to be done today or this week. That will never change. You’ve got five files you need to work up, two hearings to prepare for, and three documents to draft. But while they all need to get done, they don’t need to get done simultaneously.

Do one thing at a time. Finish it. Or take it as far as you can right now and then move it out of the way. Now, what’s next?

I remember a time when I got way behind in my work. I had several stacks of files on my desk and I wasn’t working on any of them. There must have been 40 files and I didn’t know where to start. I had put off working on them for so long I think I was afraid of what I might find. Deadlines missed, responses long overdue, problems I had ignored and made worse.

I was overwhelmed and feeling sorry for myself. If I had a blanket in the office, I probably would have crawled under it.

My wife was in the office that day and offered to help. Not with work itself but to help me get through it. She sat across the desk from me and asked me what I needed to do with the file on the top of one of the stacks. I opened it and could quickly see what to do. It wasn’t so bad. I either did it on the spot or made notes for myself or my secretary.

“Great, what about the next file?” my wife asked.

And so it went. In about two hours, I had gone through all of the files on my desk. My wife sat with me the entire time. My Consigliori.
.
When I was done, I still had files I needed to work on but I had a handle on it. I had notes about what to do, I knew which ones I needed to work on first, and I was able to move forward. There weren’t any major problems.

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. How do you get more work done? One file at a time.

If you don’t know what to do next, I suggest you read The Attorney Marketing Formula.

Share
Filed Under: Law office management, Personal development, Productivity

Poor follow-up: another symptom of underearning attorneys

November 8, 2012 by
Share

Yesterday’s post was about the price you pay for under-valuing and under-pricing your services. It is one of the 12 “Symptoms of underearning” on the Underearners Antonymous web site.

Today’s post is about another symptom of underearning common to attorneys. It’s number 11 on the list, “Not Following Up”. This includes failing to follow up on “opportunities, leads, or jobs” or beginning many projects and tasks and not completing them.

“Not following up” may be caused by psychological issues (i.e., low self-esteem, fear of failure), but it’s often just a matter of poor organization.

There was a period in my career when I had a large number of people I needed to follow up with every day. These were prospective clients I had spoken to but who weren’t ready to sign up. I needed to follow-up with them in 30 to 90 days. If they still weren’t ready, I would schedule another follow-up.

Every day, I spoke to prospects at various stages of readiness. Some I’d spoken to once, others I’d spoken to several times. Every day, new prospects were added to the list and before long, I started to fall behind. Out of necessity, I developed a system for tracking follow-ups. It allowed me to efficiently manage hundreds of prospects who were in my “funnel” at any given time.

You may not call prospects like I was doing, but the concepts behind this system may help you stay on top of other follow-ups you need to do.

The first thing I did was make a prospect tracking form. It was a single page with space for their contact information, notes of our discussions, and a place to record the next follow-up date. Everything I needed was in one place. (I do everything electronically today, but the principles are the same.)

Next, I developed a set of rules for when follow-ups would take place. As I recall, I had criteria for two week follow-ups, 30 days, 60 days, and 90 days, depending on their level of interest and stated reasons for not going forward.

The key to making this work was to decide when to follow-up, and record it, before moving onto the next prospect. There were four choices for follow-up and all I had to do was choose one. Prior to this, I would put the day’s tracking forms in a pile and go through them at the end of the day, deciding when to follow up. This wasted time and was unnecessary. With my new rule, I looked at the page just once and not again until the follow-up date arrived.

What did I do with the tracking form? I filed it in a manual “Tickler” file, a metal file box with hanging folders. I used a variation of the system described at 43 folders–twelve monthly folders and 31 daily folders. As I scheduled follow-ups, I filed them in the appropriate folder (well, on the closest weekday).

Every day, I would empty that day’s folder and move the empty folder to the back of the group. At the end of the month, I would do the same thing with that month’s folder. This way, “today’s” folder was always in the front of the box.

Every day, I knew exactly who to call. When I was done with those calls, if they still weren’t ready to sign up, I put the prospect form back in the tickler box at the appropriate future date.

Why not use the calendar? Because the calendar should be reserved for tasks that are due on a given day, like an appointment. If you want to follow up with someone in 30 days, this is approximate. If you don’t call them on that day, they won’t know it. So if you aren’t able to do some of your follow-up calls on a given day, you can move them to the following day.

There were times when I scheduled a follow-up for a specific day and I did put those on the calendar. If the prospect and I had a phone appointment (which I encouraged), the date and time were scheduled on my calendar. If the time was not specified but I was asked to call on a certain date, I would calendar it for that day but not at a specific time.

This system made me a champion at follow-up. I signed up many new clients that I am sure would have otherwise fallen through the cracks.

You may be wondering how many times I followed-up with a prospect. Well, some of my prospects didn’t sign up until I had followed-up six or seven times. Some, after ten or more. So, I my rule for how many follow-ups: Follow-up until they “buy or die”.

It kept things simple. And profitable.

Want to earn more even if you’re NOT good at follow-up? Download The Attorney Marketing Formula and find out how.

Share
Filed Under: Closing the sale, Productivity, Salesmanship Tagged With: , , , , , ,

If you do this, you won’t have to join “Underearners Anonymous”

November 7, 2012 by
Share

I heard from an attorney recently who said his business is off. When I asked him why he thought that was, he referred me to a page on the “Underearners Anonymous” website that lists 12 “Symptoms of Underearning”. He claimed he had all 12.

I don’t think that’s really true and I don’t think he believes it, either. He’s blowing off steam. I know he’s been very successful in the past and his current situation is undoubtedly a temporary slump. But he is correct in looking inward for answers because even in a bad economy, many attorneys are thriving.

In today’s post, I want to talk about one of these 12 systems because I see it a lot. I’ll cover a second symptom in tomorrow’s post.

Number 7 on the list is “Undervaluing and Under-pricing’ — We undervalue our abilities and services and fear asking for increases in compensation or for what the market will bear.” I’ve done hundreds of consultations with attorneys and I can tell you that “undervaluing and under-pricing” is very common.

Charging less than you could is an obvious cause of lower income and it’s an easy fix: Raise your fees. But that’s easier said than done for the attorney who undervalues his or her services. If you don’t believe you’re worth more than you currently charge, you must first reconcile that belief with the truth.

Do your homework. Find out what other attorneys with similar experience charge. If most charge more than you do, you can assume that you can safely set your fees higher, and get it. And if you can get more, then you are worth more. Yes or yes?

What if you’re not worth more than what you currently charge? Well, then you’re not undervaluing yourself, you’re undervaluing your potential.

If you’re not worth more, charging more isn’t a good idea. You can get away with it for awhile but you will be found out, eventually. Instead, you need to increase your value. When you are worth more, you can charge more.

What about the attorney who knows he is worth more and still doesn’t raise his fees? These attorneys (and there are a lot of them) are afraid that if they raise their fees their clients will leave. And this is not without justification. Some clients will leave. A lot may leave, in fact, but losing clients is not the only thing to consider.

If you increase your fees you may lose some clients. But you can replace them with other clients who pay you more. The additional revenue from these new, better-paying clients, will offset the loss of revenue from clients who leave. Eventually, when you’ve replaced enough of the clients who leave, you’ll be earning a lot more than you do now.

You’ll probably want to increase your fees in phases. Start with new clients. They only know what you tell them and you won’t tell them about what you used to charge. As you get more new clients at higher fees, you can begin to raise fees for existing and former clients.

By the way, I said earlier that you should look at what other attorneys charge, to find proof that you can safely charge more than you do now. But be careful. What other attorneys charge doesn’t preclude you from charging more than they do, so don’t let it. But many attorneys do.

Many attorneys are afraid that if they charge more than other attorneys in their market, they won’t get hired. Well, there’s truth in that, too. If you charge more, some clients won’t hire you. But guess what? There are enough who will. And those are the clients you really want.

Set your fees high, my friend, and then do everything you can do to justify those higher fees. Give more value than other attorneys give and you’ll earn more than other attorneys earn.

If your clients say things like, “Yeah, she charges more, but she’s worth every penny,” then you know you’re doing it right.

If you want to learn how you can be worth more so you can charge more, you need The Attorney Marketing Formula.

Share
Filed Under: Attorneys fees, Client loyalty, Fees and Billing, Increase your income Tagged With: , ,

Yes, you do have time for marketing

November 6, 2012 by
Share

One of the most common reasons lawyers give for not marketing (or not marketing enough) is that they don’t have the time. Of course I don’t agree with that. There’s always time. You can make substantial progress in marketing your practice in as little as 15 minutes a day. I don’t care how busy you are, you can “find” 15 minutes a day.

You know this is true. And you also know that marketing is important to your success. So if you ever find yourself saying, “I don’t have the time,” you know that’s just an excuse. The real real reason is that you don’t know what to do, or, you don’t want to do it. So you tell yourself you don’t have the time.

If this sounds at all familiar to you, I have a suggestion. A place to begin.

Put 15 minutes on your calendar each work day. Call it “marketing time”. Make it an appointment, with yourself. Tell your secretary that you are busy at that time and not to book anything else for you. If a client calls and wants to talk to you during that time or come in to see you, you have to say no. You’ll talk to them 15 minutes later. You already have an appointment at that time. It’s your most important appointment of the day, and you can’t miss it.

Will you do that? Will you commit to a 15 minute appointment every day? Good. You’re on your way.

Now, what do you do during that time? If you don’t know, I suggest you start out by reading this and other marketing blogs. Just read. Take some notes. Write down ideas.

You will probably find a lot of things you don’t want to do. But you will also find some things you do want to do. Do this for a couple of weeks and you will have plenty of ideas you’ll be itching to try.

Once you try them, and once you see some results coming in, you won’t have to “force” yourself to keep your 15 minute appointment. In fact, marketing time may become your favorite appointment of the day.

One of the six key strategies in The Attorney Marketing Formula is leveraging time to get more results from less effort. You can read all about it on this page.

Share
Filed Under: Increase your income, Marketing legal services, Marketing Plan, Productivity, Time Management

Goal setting and the law of attraction

November 5, 2012 by
Share

He never said, “The Law of Attraction,” but when Earl Nightingale recorded “The Strangest Secret,” that’s what he was talking about. Throughout history, the phenomenon has been described in many ways, but they all mean the same thing: “We become (attract) what we think about.”

So if you think about money all the time, you should attract plenty of it, right? In theory. But in practice, when we think about money, we’re usually thinking about the fact that we don’t have enough, why we need it, and why it has eluded us. We’re not thinking about “more money” we’re thinking about the absence of more money and that’s exactly what we attract.

We attract what we think about. Think about wellness and you attract wellness. Think about illness (or, more properly, the absence of wellness), and you attract illness.

if this concept seems like “new age” folly to you, think about it in terms of what we know about the human brain.

Our subconscious mind cannot distinguish between reality and imagination. If you walk up to a closed door and hear the sound of a roaring lion on the other side of it, you will have a physiological response to that sound (fear, rapid heart rate, sweating, etc.) and you will hesitate to open that door. If you believe the lion is clawing his way through the door, your subconscious will inject adrenalin into your bloodstream and give you the urge to flee. It will direct more blood to your leg muscles to make that easier.

You will have the same response to the sound of the lion whether it is made by a real lion or a recording.

Your subconscious mind works to protect you and your perception of reality. Our nervous systems plays a role. In a previous post about “Why goal setting works,” I said that the Reticular Activating System (RAS) filters the stimuli around us, making us more aware of threats and opportunities.

If you think about getting more money, your subconscious, in conjunction with the RAS, helps you spot opportunities, wake up earlier, and remember to smile when you meet the right people. On the other hand, if think about your lack of money, your subconscious mind will guide you towards behavior that is consistent with that reality. You will find yourself missing opportunities, or sabotaging them.

What does this have to do with setting goals? Well, we are told that, “A goal without a deadline is just a dream,” so when we set goals, we are told to set a date for their accomplishment. The deadline starts the clock ticking and whenever we think about the goal, that ticking clock reminds us to get to work.

That sounds like the right idea, but in the context of the Law of Attraction (or it’s physiological equivalent), the impending deadline may actually cause us to attract the opposite of what we want.

Here’s what I mean.

Let’s say your goal is to earn an additional $50,000 in the next 12 months. If you believe that this is possible and you have the resources and plan to accomplish this, fine. But too often we set goals that are out of our reach and instead of rising to the occasion, we fail to accomplish them.

You start thinking about why your goal is difficult to achieve. You think about all of the things that could go wrong. You might think, “I don’t have enough time,” “I don’t really know what I’m doing,” or “I’m not going to be able to do this by myself.” You’re not thinking about reaching your goal, you’re thinking about not reaching your goal, and “not reaching it” is what you attract.

In setting my own goals over the years, I’ve found that “what” and “why” are more important than “how” and “when”. When I think about what I want and why I want it, it feels good. As long as I stay with that feeling, I move forward. When I think about how I’m going to accomplish my goal, or when, those good feelings often dissipate.

So, should we set our goals low enough that we’ll be assured of achieving them? No. It may feel good to accomplish them, but if the bar is too low you won’t be accomplishing much. The answer is to set goals that you really want, but not let yourself get caught up in their achievement. Today I focus more on what I want and less on how I’m going to get it. I don’t get hung up on deadlines. I trust that my subconscious mind will take me where I want to go and that I’ll get there at the right time.

I let my feelings guide me. If what I’m thinking feels good, I keep going. If it doesn’t, I change what I’m doing or I change my thoughts.

Some say this is God’s hand at work. Others stick with the physiological explanation. Some say the Law of Attraction is the answer. I don’t know how it works. I just know that when I listen to my instincts, I’m almost always guided in the right direction.

I still have goals. But I don’t let my goals get in the way of my dreams.

If your goal is to increase your income, get The Attorney Marketing Formula.

Share
Filed Under: Goal Setting, Personal development Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Don’t Worry, Be Happy

November 2, 2012 by
Share

In 1988, Don’t Worry, Be Happy reached number one on the Billboard music charts, a position it held for two weeks. Bobby McFerrin’s a cappella hit had us singing (or whistling) along, buoyed by it’s upbeat message. Right now, there’s a whole lot of worrying going on in the world and it might do us all some good to listen once again.

“In every life we have some trouble. When you worry you make it double. Don’t worry, be happy……” (lyrics)

A long time ago, I eliminated the word “worry” from my lexicon. Worry is not a helpful word, or emotion. All it does is make you anxious. Today, I might be “concerned” about something, but never worried. I find I can deal more clearly with things when I’m not caught up in the emotions surrounding them.

Worrying about a problem will never fix it. Creative thinking, asking for help, taking action–these can fix a problem, but not worry. So stop it. Stop worrying about your problems. Get yourself a big box and put all your worries in it. Set that box on fire. Burn it up. You don’t need what’s in it, so get rid of it. (At least put it in storage. You can come back later if you really miss your problems.)

“I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.” –Mark Twain

While you’re at it, throw into your box all of the things you worry about that aren’t problems. Stuff that never happened and probably never will. That includes all of the “missed opportunities” that nag at you. All of the shoulda’s, coulda’s, and woulda’s.

What good is it to worry about your web site and all of the search engine traffic you’re NOT getting, for example? Let it go. Stop thinking about it. In fact, what if you never had to think about SEO again? How would that feel? You wouldn’t have to think about it or read about it or spend money on it.

Release it. Let it go.

There are other ways to get traffic (and clients) that have nothing to do with search engines. Sure, it’s nice when you get them through search but wouldn’t it be nice to know you don’t have to depend on it?

Relax. Everything will be fine. Don’t worry. Be happy.

“Here is a little song I wrote
You might want to sing it note for note
Don’t worry be happy

Now that you’re feeling better and you have more free time, you can explore SEO if you want to. But only if you want to, not because you have to. No worries, no “have to’s,” just an opportunity. Do it or don’t do it.

Make a list of things you’re thinking about right now. Projects, ideas, things you have to do. Make sure you add anything that you’re worried about. Get them off your desk and out of your head. That alone feels good, doesn’t it?

Then ask yourself, “How many of these things could I cross off my list?” If you can’t cross them off, label or tag them with “someday/maybe” and file them away, out of sight.

Spend your time thinking about things that are important, and things that feel good when you think about them. No, you can’t ignore your responsibilities or pretend you don’t have any problems. But you don’t have to worry about them, either.

Need clients? Don’t worry. Get The Attorney Marketing Formula and be happy.

Share
Filed Under: Career satisfaction, Dealing with stress, Inspiration, Personal development, Productivity Tagged With:

How to write something when you don’t know where to start

November 1, 2012 by
Share

It’s November and you know what that means? NaNoWriMo!

What’s that? You don’t know about National Novel Writing Month? I wrote about it last November when I shared some thoughts about “Writers’ Block”.

You may not aspire to be the next John Grisham, but if you’ve ever struggled to write something you’ve never written before, and you don’t know where to start, I have a possible solution.

When I was in high school, my parents had a friend who created several TV shows, wrote screenplays, non-fiction, and music. He also did some acting. Anyway, he didn’t have a musical background, but he wrote some very clever songs. One day, my father asked him how he did it.

He said he took an existing song he liked and used it’s structure as a template. He changed it, note by note, until he had an original piece that was nothing like the one he started with, except maybe in length, key, and tempo. (Since he couldn’t read music, he recorded himself humming his new tune and had someone transcribe it.)

For the lyrics, he took the original words and changed those word by word, or he found another song he liked and changed those words to create a new song to go with his new music. He used the same technique for creating screenplays.

Instead of writing from scratch, he re-wrote something that was already written. He didn’t plagiarize or steal ideas. He took the original, pared it down to it’s skeleton, and added new flesh and sinew to give life to a completely new creation.

Now don’t get me wrong, the guy had talent. Lots of it. He simply used his note/word-changing technique as a starting point. If I ever write a novel, that’s exactly how I will start.

After all, isn’t “getting started” the hardest part of doing something new? Once you have a first draft, you can make it better. But so many aspiring writers never get started so they never have a first draft they can improve.

If you wanted to use this technique to write the first draft of a novel, find one you like (in the appropriate genre and voice, i.e., “first person detective”) and create a “step outline”–a sequential list of the plot points. Note the number of major characters, when they are introduced, and their role (i.e., friend who encourages, villain, love interest, and so on). How many chapters are there? How long are they? When does the crime take place? When do we meet the hero?

Now you have a story skeleton, but of course it’s for someone else’s story. Your job is to change things, point by point, element by element, to write your own.

Your setting will be different. San Antonio instead of San Clemente. Your characters will be different. If the victim in the original was an insurance investigator who is murdered to cover up a fraudulent claim, your victim might be an accountant who knew too much about his crooked client’s business activities.

You write your own novel, using the structure of the original, but nothing else.

Now I didn’t say yours would be a good novel. That’s easier said than done. But your novel will at least be the right length, number of characters, and have the requisite elements in it. You’ll have a workable first draft.

You can use the same technique to write something much less ambitious, like an article or report. Decide on a topic you want to write about and find a model. How many paragraphs? How many main points? How many bullet points? Use this as a template.

Doing something new is much easier when you have a place to start. Fortunately, you don’t have to invent the place the start. You can follow someone who already finished.

Would you like a template for marketing your legal services? Use this

Share
Filed Under: Communication, Copywriting, Newsletters, Productivity, Writing Tagged With: , , ,
« Previous Page