David M. Ward, Author at The Attorney Marketing Center

Sorry, I can’t finish your case, I have lawyer’s block

December 29, 2015 by David M. Ward

You think you have writer’s block. You don’t. It’s an excuse for something else:

You don’t know what to write about. You don’t think you’re good enough. You don’t know enough about the subject.

The solution? Write anyway. Anything. Badly. Just get something on paper for now and fix it later.

Write quickly, without stopping to think. Get it all out of your head, no matter how cringe-worthy it might sound.

You can re-write it, as many times as you want. You can do more research. You can take a terrible page and make it better.

But you can’t editÂ a blank page.

There have many times in my career when I have had issues completing a writing project. I’ve had issues with starting, too. The solution has always been to do it anyway, promising myself that I didn’t have to show it anyone until I was happy with it.

When I gave myself permission to write badly and get a first draft done, I almost always found that I had more to say than I thought I did and I had actually done a pretty good job of saying it.

Writer’s block is no more a thing than lawyer’s block. You may not like your client or their case. You may not know the best tactics. You may think you’re in over your head. But you move forward anyway and you figure it out.

Get help if you need it. Confer with another attorney or hire an editor. But move forward, because you must, and because there’s no such thing as writer’s block.

Filed Under: Personal development, Productivity, Writing Tagged With: writers block

You are more powerful than you may know

December 28, 2015 by David M. Ward

As you think about your New Year’s resolutions and goals for the coming year I feel compelled to remind you that you are more powerful than you may know.

Fear not. Great things await you. You can have what you want, do what you want, and be who you want.

The world might seem to be upside down right now, you may at times despair for the future, but everything you need is within your grasp. You can create your own miracles and in so doing, you can save the world.

You may not be comfortable with that power, but you have it nonetheless. It is in each of us and we should not hide from it, we should embrace it.

As Marianne Williamson, in “A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of ‘A Course in Miracles,'” elegantly put it:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Think bigger. Reach higher. Get out of your own way and allow your dreams to become your reality.

You are a child of God and He doesn’t want you to play small.

Filed Under: Goal Setting, Inspiration

All I want for Christmas is YOU

December 23, 2015 by David M. Ward

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, the day men start shopping for Christmas presents.

You’ll see them in stores, looking like lost puppies, desperateÂ to find something their wives and girlfriends won’t hate. You’ll also see them at the card shop or the card aisle at the grocery store, shoulder to shoulder with other men, hoping to find a card that’s not too soiled or bent and not too mushy or sentimental.

Or is that just me?

I know I’m on your list this year, and I appreciate that. But all I really want for Christmas is you.

Your loyalty, your patronage, and for those of you I know personally, your friendship, are all I need and want. Well, that and an Amazon.com gift card.

So thank you. And please say thank you to your clients for me. Without them supporting you, you wouldn’t be able to support me.

Merry Christmas to you and your family and your clients.

Filed Under: Just for fun Tagged With: merry Christmas

Do no harm: The easiest way to increase law firm profits

December 22, 2015 by David M. Ward

[I’m taking it easy this week and re-publishing this postÂ from 2012.]

In medicine, The Hippocratic Oath includes the Latin phrase, Primum non nocere, meaning, “First, do no harm.” Attorneys need a similar pledge, not just to protect our clients, but to protect our bottom line.

According to a study from The George Washington University (ppt–not worth downloading, IMHO), the cost of a dissatisfied customer is staggering:

The average business does not hear from 96% of unhappy customers
For every complaint received, there are 24 people with unvoiced problems; six are serious
90% who are dissatisfied with the service won’t return
The average customer with a complaint will tell 9-10 people; 13% will tell more than 20 people

Other studies confirm numbers like these. The bottom line: losing one client could cost you a lot more than you earn from one new client.

Therefore, the easiest (and smartest) way to increase your profits is to stop losing clients.

There is some good news from the study:

Of those who complain, 50-70% will do business with you again if the complaint is resolved. 95% will return if it is resolved quickly

Therefore, you must encourage your clients to let you know when they aren’t happy so you can fix the problem quickly and can take steps to make sure the problem won’t occur with other clients.

Remember, most unhappy clients don’t complain. They just leave–and tell others that you are a Bozo.

Here’s how you can solicit this extremely valuable feedback from your clients:

Include feedback forms in your “New Client Kit”
Post surveys on your web site
Tell clients (repeatedly) that if they ever have an issue of any kind, you want them to call you personally (and give them your cell phone number or direct line)
Put a “Suggestion Box” link on your web site. Allow people to contribute (or complain) anonymously. Promote this box via your newsletter and blog
Put stories in your newsletter about suggestions you received and implemented.
Interview clients at the end of the case. Ask them, (1) What did we do well? and (2) What could we do better?
Thank everyone for their ideas and feedback, publicly if possible

In other words, if you want feedback, create an environment where feedback is encouraged, appreciated, and most of all, acted upon.

Often, perhaps most of the time, unhappy clients aren’t unhappy because the attorney did something wrong, they are unhappy because of poor communication:

Something wasn’t explained properly.
The attorney didn’t keep the client informed.
The client’s phone calls weren’t returned.

If you ever drop the ball in any of these areas, don’t worry, these are easy to fix. If any of your clients were unhappy with their previous attorney for any of these reasons, celebrate. This is aÂ tremendous opportunity for you to convert them into raving fans.

The best way to maintain law firm profits: marketing

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

Marketing online by profiling your clients

December 21, 2015 by David M. Ward

Dollar Shave Club has a unique approach to marketing. On their website, they feature the businesses of their customers and the stories behind them. They recently featured a coffee roaster, for example. According the folks at Small Business Trends:

“Each article comes complete with an interview that gives a glimpse into the personality of that person’s brand. Rather than sum it up, they go to the source, which gives a more truthful glimpse into the companies they are featuring. The people that run and care about the business are those who get to speak about it and that’s not so common anymore.”

Customers can fill out a form on the site describing themselves and their business. “If the submission catches the editor’s eyes, a rep may reach out with some more questions.”

If you represent businesses of any kind, you could do the same thing. Profiling and promoting your clients’ businesses will benefit you in several ways:

First, it makes you look good. Instead of saying nice thingsÂ about yourself, you’re saying nice thingsÂ about your clients.

Second, your client gets more exposure and more business, thanks to you. They might reciprocate and tell their customers all about you and your practice. Also, as their business grows, they will probably have more legal work for you. More referrals, too.

Third, no doubt your featured clients will tell everyone they know about their profile on your site. You’ll get more traffic, more subscribers and followers, and more clients.

Fourth, this is an easy way to create interesting content for your blog.

Finally, you might get other websites talking about your innovative approach to marketing. Like mine.

If you have a consumer practice, undoubtedly some of your clients own or run a business. Or they are connected to a charity or cause-oriented group. Find the ones who have an interesting story to tell and help them tell it.

You can also interview your professional contacts and feature their business or practice. You may not be able to send a lot of referrals to an accountant you know; promoting his practice this way might bring him lots of new clients.

Marketing online for attorneysÂ made simple

Filed Under: Blogging, Client relations, Marketing legal services, Online Marketing, Web traffic, Writing

Getting things done by giving yourself less time to do them

December 18, 2015 by David M. Ward

In an interview, author Jodi Picoult was asked about her approach to writing. She said:

â€œI donâ€™t believe in writerâ€™s block. Think about it â€” when you were blocked in college and had to write a paper, didnâ€™t it always manage to fix itself the night before the paper was due? Writerâ€™s block is having too much time on your hands. If you have a limited amount of time to write, you just sit down and do it. You might not write well every day, but you can always edit a bad page. You canâ€™t edit a blank page.â€

Yep. That just about sums up my thoughts about writer’s block. It’s also a good metaphor for other things on our plate, especially things we’ve been putting off or have struggled to complete.

What project would you like to do but have told yourself you don’t have the time? The truth is, you might not be doing it because you have too much time.

I’ve found this to be a bigger issue for me since I stopped seeing clients and started working from home. Not having appointments and deadlines and due dates has resulted in my continually “not having enough time” to do things, and the things I have done have taken much longer than they should.

There’s one project I’ve had on the back burner for an eternity. I wasn’t close to starting, let along finishing. But about a week ago,Â I gave myself a deadline to finish it before the end of the month. With that due date looming, in one day I was able to make enormous progress and I am certain I will finish on time.

Parkinson’s Law says, “Work expands to fill the time allotted for it’s completion,” or something like that. The trick, then, is to allot less time. Perhaps a lot less.

Pretend you’re back in school and everything has a due date and serious consequences for missing it. Choose something on your list that you think might require a week or a month to complete and commit to doing it this weekend.

You might not finish it but you will surely make a lot of progress. You also might surprise yourself and get it done.

Get more things done by getting better at delegating. ThisÂ will help

Filed Under: Personal development, Productivity, Time Management Tagged With: getting things done, gtd, Parkinson's Law, writers block

Cats don’t like change and neither do your clients

December 17, 2015 by David M. Ward

When there’s a stranger in our house you’ll usually find my cat hiding under the bed. If we were to re-arrange the furniture, I’m sure itÂ would have the sameÂ effect.

Change makes cats uncomfortable. It’s different and scary. They prefer things the way they are.

To some extent your clients are the same way.

You know this is true. Imagine going to Amazon.com to shop your usual categories and one day all of the pages and links are different. You’d be confused and uncomfortable and wonder what’s going on. You might feel a little betrayed.

Why did they do that? Where’s the link? I don’t have time to figure this out! What else did they change that I don’t know about? What’s next?

I know you understand this. Lawyers tend to dislike change even more than their clients. But change is inevitable and more often than not leads to good things.

So don’t avoid change, just be judicious about implementing it. And think about it from your client’s point of view.

Consider what your client’sÂ might be thinking and feelingÂ when you:

Assign a different lawyer or staff member to their case,
Increase your fees,
Change billing methods,
Change the schedule/due dates,
Re-do your website,
Introduce new reports or forms you send them, or
Move your office.

Make changes as smooth as possible for your clients, and also for your staff who will be implementing these changes and explaining things to nervous or confused clients. Do your best to

Keep change to a minimum. Not too much, not too often.
Keep your promises. Grandfather in existing clients, if need be.
Give plenty of warning. Don’t spring thingsÂ on them at the last minute. Let them process and prepare.
Explain why you made the change, and how the client will be better off.
Offer extra help: people they can talk to, pages they can read, longer hours during aÂ transition.

Follow these guidelines, use common sense,Â and see things the way your clients see them. Your clients may not universally applaud these changes, but in time, they will accept them. Even my cat eventually comes out from under the bed.

Marketing is everything we do to get and keep good clients. This will help

Filed Under: Client relations, Law office management, Marketing legal services

How to quote your fee and get more clients to say yes

December 16, 2015 by David M. Ward

Here’s an interesting tidbit about how to quote your fee.

According to an article on pricing strategies, researchers have found that “prices” that contained more syllables were perceived by consumers as drastically higher than their fewer-syllable counterparts. Their findings were published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology:

When these pricing structures were shown to subjects:

* $1,499.00
* $1,499
* $1499

… the top two prices seemed far higher to consumers than the third price. This effect occurs because of the way one would express the number verbally: â€œOne thousand four hundred and ninety-nine,â€ for the comma versions versus â€œfourteen ninety-nineâ€ for the unpunctuated version. This effect even occurs when the number is evaluated internally, or not spoken aloud.

I know that when I hear prices or fees quoted verbally in a commercial or presentation, I listen to how that fee sounds and think about whether there’s a better way to say it. “Two-hundred and ninety-nine dollars” sounds like a lot more than “two ninety nine”.

I do my best to use this in my marketing, but there was this one time when it caused a bit of confusion.

My secretary was on the phone with an attorney who wanted to know theÂ cost for a product we were offering. Per my counsel, she told him “one-ninety-five” based on a price of $195. Â Sure enough, a week later, we got a check in the mail in the amount of $1.95.

So be careful. Especially with lawyers.

The leastÂ you need to know about fees, billing, and collection

Filed Under: Attorneys fees, Communication, Copywriting, Marketing legal services, Salesmanship

How much time do you spend on income producing activities?

December 15, 2015 by David M. Ward

What percentage of your day is spent on income producing activities? Before you answer, I must point out that it’s not just work product or billable hours that produce income.

Income producing activities include time spent on personal development. Better skills, better habits, increased productivity, and the like, can do far more to increase your value to your clients than hard work or longer hours.

Take writing for example. Spending 30 minutes a day to improve your writing skills can make you a more effective advocate. ItÂ could bring you more victories, bigger settlements, and better deals.

Improved writing skills can also bring you more clients. Your articles, blog posts, newsletters, and other content can do a better job of demonstrating your knowledge, abilities, and experience. It can also give prospective clients and the people who refer them a better sense of who you are and what it would be like to work with you.

Becoming a better writer can also lead toÂ more effective seminars, videos, and presentations. More people will be persuaded by your message and more people will become your client.

You’ll also get faster at writing and be able to produce more content. More content means more traffic to your website and more readers for your articles, reports and books.

Obviously, marketing is also an income producing activity. Get better at networking, for example, and you can bring in more clients and better clients, andÂ open doors to other opportunities to build your practice.

Investing 30 minutes a day to improve your writing orÂ marketing skills may “cost” you $150 per day that you might earn from client work but, over time, your return on that investment could be huge.

Chaw on this for awhile before you answer, “How much time do you spend on income producing activities?”

And remember, the highest paid attorneys work hard for their clients but they also work hard on themselves.

Marketing is easier when you have a plan

Filed Under: Marketing legal services, Personal development, success, Writing

What’s the best way to market your legal services?

December 14, 2015 by David M. Ward

So, you want to know the best way to market your legal services? Read on, my friend, and all will be revealed.

But first, we need to talk about the two kinds of markets to whom you are marketing. The first is your “warm market”. This consists of people you know. Your clients, former clients, friends, business contacts, and other people who, to some degree, already know, like, and trust you.

Generally speaking, your warm market will hire you or recommend you without your having to “sell” them. They’re already sold on you.

They know what you do. They know your reputation. They’ve seen you in action or heard about your successes with clients they’ve referred to you in the past.

How do you market to your warm market? Basically, all you need to do is stay in touch with them. Keep your name and contact information in front of them, reminding them that you’re still in business and can still help them and the people they know.

Make sure they know about “what else” you do (your other services), and send them information about why they (or people they know) would need those services. Occasionally share some success stories about other clients you’ve helped.

The easiest way to stay in touch with your warm market isÂ email. Stay in their minds and their mailboxes until they’re ready to hire you (again) or send you referrals.

Email is also best because it is a personal communication and gives you maximum control over the process. But you can also keep your name in front of your warm market via advertising, speaking and networking at their events, writing for their trade journals and blogs, and other means.

Am I saying that all you have to do with your warm market is stay in touch with them?Â Yes. Pretty much.Â You don’t have to do muchÂ more, although doing more is usually a good idea.

Consider reaching out to your warm market and helping them in their business and personal lives. Build a relationship with them, especially the ones who bring you the most business.

There are other things you can do, but if all you do is stay in touch with your warm market, you will probably get the lion’s share of theirÂ business.

(Note, prospective clients are often not warm market. You’ll want to send them more information, share more stories, make special offers, and do other things to encourage them to hire you or take the next step. Again, the easiest way to do that is email.)

Okay, let’s talk about the cold market. These are people you don’t know.

Most attorneys spend too much time and energyÂ marketing to people in the cold market rather than focusing on their warm market. Remember, people in the cold market have to be found and they have to be sold. This is more difficult and expensive,Â especially since you are competing with all of the other attorneys who are trying to do the same thing.

There’s nothing wrong with advertising, blogging, social media, SEO, and other methods of attracting prospective clients. Especially if you handle divorce, litigation, criminal defense, personal injury, and other practice areas where “something has to happen” before peopleÂ even think about looking for an attorney.

But there’s a better way to attract cold market prospects. Much better, because when they do come to you, they really aren’t cold market at all.Â I’m talking about referrals.

Instead of spending all of your resources finding and wooing cold market prospects, invest in growing your network of lawyers, other professionals and other centers of influence in your niche market or community.

Help them get to know, like, and trust you. Then, when someone they know needs a lawyer who does what you do, you’ll be in line to get their referrals. Those clients won’t have to be sold because someone they respect and trust is vouching for you.

There. Now you know the best way to market your legal services. Class dismissed.

Expand your referral network of lawyers and other professionals with this

Filed Under: Marketing legal services, Referral sources, Referrals, Relationship marketing