Marketing legend Dan Kennedy who passed away recently once noted something he learned from consulting clients in the dry cleaning industry. He said that if you get a new customer to return to your store three times in a relatively short period of time, they’re likely to be your customer for life.

The banking, insurance and investment industries also know that getting a customer to open three accounts or buy three of their products makes it much more likely the customer will stick with their company.

I can’t imagine why this wouldn’t also be true for lawyers and firms.

Get your clients to hire you for three different matters or cases, and the odds are they will keep you as their lawyer for life.

Assuming you don’t give them a reason not to, of course.

Does this fall into the category of interesting information or can you do something with this little gem?

No doubt you do whatever you can to get first-time clients to return and “buy” your other services, and you don’t stop with three.

But perhaps now, knowing the magic of the number three, you’ll work a little harder to get a first time client to hire you again, and a client who has hired you twice to hire you a third time.

Maybe you’ll work a little harder to get them to do that sooner, rather than later.

Maybe you’ll offer your clients an incentive to do that.

Invest a little at the beginning of your relationship to create a lifetime of client loyalty.

Yes but, what do you do if most of your clients only need your service one time and you don’t have any other services to offer?

You might break down your service into smaller parts. Get them to hire you for part one and then offer them parts two and three.

You might promote to them the services of another lawyer you recommend and stay involved during the engagement (ie., go to the first meeting, get cc’d on progress reports, etc.)

You might get clients to engage with you in other ways such as attending a seminar in your conference room or online. They might not need to hire you again but attending your seminar does fill in the gap between first time/one-time client and lifetime client (and source of referrals).

Get your clients to hire you again, sure, but if you can’t do that, get them involved with you in some way after the first engagement.

Good client relations leads to referrals