David M. Ward – Page 185

Are you overly analytical?

December 1, 2017 by David M. Ward

You’re a lawyer. Being analytical is part of your job. But if you’re overly analytical, you may want to consider a different modus operandi.

Continually weighing the “what ifs” and “on the other hands,” re-doing your research “just to make sure,” and scrupulously avoiding any and all risks, can easily do you more harm than good.

While you’re figuring out what to do, opportunities are passing you by.

What if instead of analyzing everything to the nth degree before taking action, you take action first and then analyze?

You’ll make some mistakes. Suffer some losses and embarrassments. Have some sleepless nights. That’s the downside. The risk.

What would you gain in return?

Opportunities for big breakthroughs. Amazing profits. And some wild adventures.

By accepting some risks you open doors to life-changing gains.

Now, I’m not saying you should “shoot first” in every situation. You have to use common sense. Look at the facts before you jump in. Gather enough information to know if what you’re considering is possible.

Has anyone done this (or something like it) before? If so, why can’t you?

It may be difficult. The odds might be against you. But if you believe something is possible, or at least not impossible, go ahead and take a leap of faith.

If you stumble, get up and try again.

Success always requires action. Always. Thinking is important but you can’t accomplish anything until you do something.

Once you do it, even a little, you will learn something. You’ll either be empowered to do it again (and better) or you will know it’s not going to work and you can do something else.

But you won’t have to guess or agonize about being right or wrong, you’ll know.

Act, then analyze.

Your plan for building a successful practice

Filed Under: Personal development, success

Stop writing a “to do” list and write this instead

November 30, 2017 by David M. Ward

We have lists. Lots and lots of lists. Things we need to do, things we want to do, things we’re not sure about but may do someday. How are we supposed to prioritize anything and decide what to do today?

I have a suggestion. Take your “to do” list, the one you wrote for today or this week, and change the name to a “to finish” list.

A to do list isn’t really a list of things we intend to accomplish, is it? It’s a list of things we plan to start. But creating value in our lives isn’t about what we start it’s about what we finish.

Changing the name to a “to finish” list forces you to write a better list. Instead of writing things you should do and hope you can finish, you make a list of things you know you have the skills, resources, and time to finish that day.

If you are planning to start a new project but realize you don’t have time to finish it today, you are forced to break up that project into smaller chunks you can get done today.

A “to finish” list forces you to think about what’s important. It makes you examine the many options available and organically prioritize your list. You not only get more done, you get the most important things done.

Shifting your focus from a long list of things you need to do to a short list of things you are committed to doing gives you clarity and peace of mind. As you finish the items on your list, you feel good, giving you the energy and desire to do more.

Starting is the hardest part of doing anything. But finishing is the most important. If you want to be, do, and have more in your life, stop starting so many things and start finishing what really matters.

Filed Under: Productivity, success, Time Management

Your goals are too big to box with God

November 29, 2017 by David M. Ward

Time flies. Another year-end approaches. Are you on track to reach your goals this year? If not, it may be because your goals are too big or too long term.

There’s nothing wrong with big goals. It’s just that we tend to fixate on the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and forget about the short-term activities it takes to get there.

When a goal takes months or years to reach, it’s easy to lose sight of what we’re supposed to be doing today. We need to couple our big goals with short-term goals that we can track on a daily basis.

One author says the problem with long(er) term goals is that there’s no sense of urgency. It’s too easy to tell ourselves that we have lots of time before the deadline, and our mantra becomes, “I’ll do it tomorrow”.

Before we know it, days turn into weeks and months and the deadline has come and gone.

His solution is to break up big goals into goals that can be accomplished in seven days.

“If you can’t accomplish it in seven days, the goal is too big. It’s all right to have a big goal on the horizon, but you’ll never get there if you can’t break it down into actionable steps. So ask yourself, “If my massive goal is all the way over there, what do I need to get done this week to move myself in that direction?”

I think most of us manage our lives with a weekly calendar, so breaking things up into weekly goals makes sense. We might not be able to see what a month looks like but next Monday is just around the corner.

Filed Under: Goal Setting

It’s not about how much you know or how good you are at what you do

November 28, 2017 by David M. Ward

Education marketing is about showing your market what they need to know about their legal issues and the available solutions. It’s about teaching them the benefits of taking action and the risks of delay.

That’s why you create content and deliver it to your target market. But if that’s all you do, you’re not doing enough.

Effective content isn’t about showing people how much you know. It’s not about showing them how good you are at what you do. It’s not about those things because effective marketing isn’t about you, it’s about your audience.

Your articles, posts, and presentations need to map what you know and what you do to the fears and desires, wants and needs of the people consuming your content.

Think about your ideal client. What keeps them up at night? What are they worried about? What do they fear might happen?

What keeps them going during the day? What are they working to achieve? What makes their sacrifices worthwhile?

Once you know what makes them tick, show them how you can help them get what they want.

You do that by speaking to them, not at them.

Engage them. Show them that you truly understand their situation–their problems, their pain, their desires–either because you’ve been in their shoes before or because you’ve worked with and helped people in that situation.

Tell stories about your clients and former clients who are like them. Describe their background, occupation, and legal situation. Use the terminology common to their industry or market. Use quotes from people they recognize.

Turn up the heat and acknowledge your reader’s pain. Dramatize their problems and warn them, in no uncertain terms, of what might happen if they don’t take action or they make the wrong decision.

Wake them up and shake them up and tell them what to do to get relief.

Don’t deliver a white paper, sell them on taking the next step. Because you can’t help anyone until they do.

How to write a report that gets prospective clients to call you

Filed Under: Communication, Copywriting, Marketing legal services Tagged With: education marketing

Focus, yes, but on what?

November 27, 2017 by David M. Ward

Everyone tells you to focus. Be a master of one thing, not a jack-of-all-trades. I’m in that choir, singing that same hymn. You know we’re right and you want to focus. But on what?

Which practice area? Which target market? Which strategy?

Which project should you work on? Which task should you get done today?

Nobody has the answer for you. You have to decide for yourself. But how?

Should you use logic? Trust your gut?

Should you do what nobody else is doing?

Should you do what others do but do it better?

There’s really only one definitive way to figure out where you should focus and that is to try lots of things.

Look at 100 ideas. Get rid of 90 that don’t make sense or that don’t inspire you. Out of the ten that are left, run with the top three. That’s what Steve Jobs did and those three ideas became the company’s focus over the next year.

Experiment constantly. Test lots of variables. Don’t try one or two headlines or email subjects, try fifty. Don’t try five keywords, try 105.

Talk to more people, write more articles, give more talks.

When you find something that works well and feels right to you, make that your focus. At least for now. What works this year may not work next year. Something new may work even better.

Keep learning, keep trying new ideas and different ways of implementing them. And always, keep your eyes on the market. It will tell you what it wants and how much it will pay.

The formula for building a successful practiceÂ

Filed Under: Marketing legal services, success Tagged With: focus

Aim for the top dogs

November 22, 2017 by David M. Ward

You know a lot of people. You’d like to know more. Instead of meeting people randomly, you should meet and work with the biggest and the best.

The ones who influence the right people in your niche or local market. The ones who can send you business, introduce you to other influential people, and show you how to do the things that got them to the top.

They might be other professionals. They might be bloggers, authors, speakers, coaches, or trainers. They might be politicians, consultants, business owners, or industry leaders.

They all have one thing in common. They can help your career take a giant leap.

It may be harder to connect with them but it is worth the effort. One top dog can do for you what 100 other dogs cannot.

Don’t settle for building a network of ordinary people. Set your sites on the biggest and the best.

Start by asking yourself these two questions:

1. Who are the 10 leading people in my marketplace, and
2. How can I connect with them?

Answer these questions and get to work. One day, your name will appear on other people’s top dog list.

Building a successful practice starts with a plan

Filed Under: Networking, success

“New arrivals” might be great prospects for your services

November 21, 2017 by David M. Ward

For obvious reasons, many real estate agents target new arrivals in town, both homeowners and businesses. You might want to do the same.

When someone moves to your city, there’s a good chance they don’t yet have an attorney. If you are first attorney to “greet” them, when they are ready to hire an attorney, you’ll be first in line.

If you handle real estate, family law, estate planning, or immigration, or you represent small businesses, new arrivals are a natural target market.

One way to get your name in front of them to is to create a booklet, guide, or checklist specifically for them. Your guide might provide a list of names and contact information for vendors and government agencies they need to notify of their new address:

Banks, PayPal, credit card companies
DMV, registrar of voters, TSA Pre
Federal, state, local taxing authorities
Insurance: health, renters/homeowners, auto, etc.
Online retailers, subscriptions, home deliveries, shippers
WHOIS (domain names), hosting, email providers

A checklist like this, provided “compliments of” your firm, will make a favorable first impression and provide prospects with an easy way to contact you to get more information.

Make sure you include another offer in your guide, for a report related to your practice area, available for download at your website. This will help you build an email list so you can stay in touch with the new arrivals.

You can advertise your guide or mail it. You can also provide free copies to local merchants, especially real estate agents, moving companies, builders, decorators, and so on, who can provide them to their customers and clients.

New arrivals also need other services–insurance agents, an accountant, landscapers, painters, and so on. You can offset some (or all) of your printing costs by including small ads in your booklet from these local merchants and service providers. Your advertisers may pass out copies of your booklet to their customers and clients.

This is a simple idea that you could put together in a couple of hours. It could bring you a lot of new business. It will also allow you to meet other professionals and business owners in town, giving you an opportunity to show them how you can help them and their clients or customers.

Marketing is simple when you know the formula

Filed Under: List building, Marketing legal services

A cost of doing business that pays for itself

November 20, 2017 by David M. Ward

You have overhead. And discretionary expenses. Rent, wages, payroll taxes, equipment, advertising, and everything else, and each has it’s own category in your expense ledger.

Everything except one. Customer service.

Customer service should have its own expense category because it is clearly a cost of doing business and it should be accounted for.

The things you do for your clients–to deliver value, to give them a good experience with your firm, to “take care of them” and make them glad they hired you–has a cost.

Some money and a lot of time.

Money spent on overnighting copies at your expense, remembering birthdays and holidays, and providing extra services free of charge.

Time spent talking to clients about non-billable matters and explaining things you’ve already explained, to make sure the client understands. Time spent training and supervising your staff, to make sure they know why taking care of clients is good for business and so they are well equipped to do it.

There’s also time spent on personal development, to develop the habits and skills that make you better at serving your clients.

Add it all up and it’s a big number. Or it should be because it is a key factor in the success of your practice.

The more you give your clients, the better you care for them, the bigger your practice will grow. Clients who feel respected and appreciated are clients who hire you again and again and sing your praises to others.

Customer service also cuts down on problems. Clients who are well informed and regularly updated, for example, are less likely to call you again or complain to you and to the Bar.

Sometimes, customer service means giving clients the benefit of the doubt when they want more from you than they paid for. Sometimes it means cutting your fee or issuing a refund.

That doesn’t mean you should allow yourself to be taken advantage of or put up with abuse. It means understanding the lifetime value of a client and being willing to sacrifice a dollar today to earn $1000 long term.

Customer service is a cost of doing business. But it more than pays for itself.

Henry Ford said, “A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large.”

Your goal is to earn more income. One of the best ways to do that is to invest in your clients.

The Attorney Marketing Formula is here

Filed Under: Client relations, Law office management, Marketing legal services Tagged With: business expenses, cost of doing business, customer service

How to make next year your best year ever

November 17, 2017 by David M. Ward

Where do you want your practice to be next year at this time? Wherever that is, the way to get there is to identify and exploit your current “areas of opportunity”.

Areas of opportunity include

(1) weaknesses you can reduce or eliminate;
(2) strengths you can make stronger; and
(3) unexplored or underutilized strategies, techniques, tools, and relationships.

Take some time to examine your practice, and yourself, and look for areas of opportunity you can work on in the coming year.

Here are a few examples:

new target markets
new practice areas
strategic alliances with new business contacts
new places to advertise, network, speak and write
improving client relations
new skills to acquire, hire or outsource
eliminating bad habits
developing new habits
retraining or replacing under-performing employees
marketing strategies that work and should be expanded
new marketing strategies
improving website copy
eliminating marketing activities that use too much time
giving some employees more responsibilities
reducing overhead by cutting expenses, consolidating, negotiating
opening satellite offices
improving your brand
getting more online reviews
setting up additional websites to leverage important keywords
working fewer hours
improving billing and collection methods

There are many more.

Start by spending some time identifying major weaknesses, if any, and patching the dam.

Spend more time identifying and implementing things you’re not doing that could help you grow bigger or faster.

Spend most of your time identifying your strengths and making them stronger. Your strengths got you to your current level and, more than anything, they will get you to the next.

Client referrals are a major area of opportunity

Filed Under: Law office management, Marketing legal services

Suck it up, buttercup

November 16, 2017 by David M. Ward

My wife needs a new chair for her office. Last night, we stopped at our local Staples, which is having a sale on office chairs, and she found one she liked. I had a $30 coupon in my pocket which was for phone and online orders. The plan was to find a chair she wanted, go home, and order it.

Eduardo came over and asked if he could help. I asked him if I could use my coupon if the chair we wanted was already on sale. He said he wasn’t sure but would go ask his manager.

He came back with good news. Not only could we use the coupon, we could buy the chair in the store and take it home with us. His manager would override the “online” code and make it happen.

Nice.

Eduardo rang us up. He called his manager over to handle the override. The manager came, clicked some buttons, and the deal was done.

On our way home, my wife and I compared notes about the manager’s attitude. Whereas Eduardo was friendly and helpful, the manager was a walking corpse.

He didn’t say anything–no “have a nice evening,” “enjoy your new chair,” or “thank you for shopping at Staples.” No smile, no eye contact. Nothing. He clicked some keys, threw the used coupon in the trash, and turned to walk back to wherever managers hide out.

As he walked away, I said, “Thank you for your help”. He half-turned back to me, mumbled something, and continued his retreat.

So, what’s the problem? The problem is, he didn’t do his job. If I was his district manager, I would have fired him on the spot.

His job isn’t just to approve coupons. His job is to foster a pleasant customer experience. Make customers feel welcome, appreciated, and glad we chose to spend our dollars with them instead of anywhere else.

It’s the most important part of his job and he didn’t do it.

Maybe he was ill. Maybe his wife just left him. Maybe he hates his job and his life.

So what? When you show up to work, you leave your problems in your car and do your job.

You do your job even if you don’t feel like it. If you have serious issues, stay home. Take a few days off. Do what you have to do, but don’t bring your problems to work.

Nobody cares about your problems. Everyone has problems of their own. Suck it up and do your job. If you can’t do that, go work somewhere else.

As employers, we know that everyone can have a bad day. Hell, we have them ourselves. But nobody should be allowed to let their problems get in the way of our job.

How to use your website to make your phone ring

Filed Under: Client relations, Law office management