David M. Ward – Page 249

Career day for fourth graders

May 12, 2015 by David M. Ward

Did you attend your child’s third or fourth grade class for career day? Do you remember explaining what a lawyer does and making it as interesting as possible? Tough to do when you’re competing with Joey’s dad who is a professional magician, but you did it.

You explained what you did, who you helped, and why it is important. You helped some future lawyers see that being a lawyer is cool.

If you had to do it again (or for the first time), what would you say?

Think it through and write it down, or record it. This is a valuable exercise, even if you don’t have any kids.

It can help you explain what you do to prospective clients and referral sources. It can also help you create content for your website, articles, and presentations.

You don’t necessarily have to write at a fourth grade level, but keep it simple enough that your ideal clients can follow.

Here are some ideas to prime your mental pump:

What kinds of clients do you represent? What kinds of problems do you handle? Give some examples of real clients you have helped.
What’s the first thing you do when a new client comes to you? What do you do after that?
Do you charge by the hour? Flat fees? Why? How is this better for your clients?
Why did you become a lawyer? What do you want to accomplish in your career? Do you have any role models?
What’s the best way to find a good lawyer in your field? What questions should someone ask?
What’s the hardest part of your job? What’s the worst case or client you have had?
What are you most proud of about your work? What do you like best about what you do?
How is your practice different from others in your field? What do you do that other lawyersÂ don’t do, or what do you do better?
Who would make a good referral for you? If someone knows someone like that, what should they do to refer them?
What questions do prospective clients and new clients typically ask you? How do you answer them?

Take one of these and write a few paragraphs. It won’t take you more than a few minutes and you can start using it immediately. And, if you run into a fourth grade class and are asked to speak, you’ll be ready.

Filed Under: Communication, Inspiration, Legal industry, Marketing legal services, Networking, Online Marketing, Public Speaking, Referrals

If your mom managed your law practice

May 11, 2015 by David M. Ward

If your mom managed your law practice I have no doubt she would make you eat a good breakfast before you show up for work. She would tell you that you can’t watch TV until you do get all your work done and cleaned up your desk.

No work, no play. That’s how mom rolls.

If your mom managed your law practice, she would also tell you that if you won your case, she would take you out for ice cream or make you your favorite dinner.

Reward and punishment. Carrot and stick.

Mom would offer the employees extra incentives for getting their work done on time. She would put a little extra spending money in their pay envelopes when they come up with a money-saving idea.Â And make them employee of the month when a client gives them a five star review.

You could take a lesson from mom. Figure out what you want your staff to do and offer them bribes for doing it.

While you’re at it, do the same thing for yourself.

Look at your list of tasks and goals–for the day, for the month, for the year–and promise yourself a reward for getting them done. Empty your email inbox today and you get to take off at noon on Friday. Bring in a new client this week and you get to buy the tablet you’ve had your eye on.

Isn’t this kind of bribery cheap and manipulative? Sure. But mom knew it worked and who are we to argue?

Filed Under: Law office management, Personal development, Productivity, Time Management

Activating your list for fun and profit

May 8, 2015 by David M. Ward

You have a list of clients, prospects, and professional contacts. What are you doing to activate that list and turn it into repeat business and referrals?

How do you get that list to DO SOMETHING?

Some of the people on that list will do something merely because you stayed in touch with them. When they need something you offer, or know someone who does, they will click or call.

What about everyone else?

What about the people who need you but think the problem will go away by itself? What about the ones who don’t know how bad the problem can get if they don’t do something?

What about the people who don’t realize all of their options? What about the ones who didn’t have the money before, or didn’t want to spend it?

What about the ones who know people who need your services but didn’t think about referring them?

You need to do something to get these people to do something.

But what?

How about creating an event and inviting them to it? A webinar, teleseminar, or video hangout.

Invite your list to see some new information, or new ways of looking at the solutions. Teach them how to stop the problem from getting bigger and keep it from happening again.

You’ve got to get them thinking about the problem again. Comparing solutions. Considering the options. What better way to do that than to invite them to access this free information from the comfort of their tablet or smartphone?

During the event, make them a special offer. A free consultation, perhaps, so they can discuss the specifics of their situation with you. Or a discount, bonus, or inexpensive partial solution. Tell them you now take credit cards or offer a payment plan.

Give them an incentive to do something and tell them what to do to get it (e.g., call, fill out a form, stop by the office).

Record the event so you will have something to offer to new subscribers. Transcribe the recording and turn it into a report or ebook.

You can create an event today and announce it to your list tomorrow. By next week, you can have more people calling, subscribing, and referring.

How to set up an email list for your website or blog

Filed Under: Email, Increase your income, Marketing legal services, Newsletters, Online Marketing, Seminars and webinars

How to get your employer to approve your marketing plan

May 7, 2015 by David M. Ward

Back when I was selling a relatively expense marketing course, from time to time I would hear from lawyers asking for suggestions for getting their firm to pay for the course. “If nothing else works,” I said, “see if they will agree to reimburse you after you bring in a new case or client using what you learn. If not, negotiate. Maybe they’ll split the cost.”

No risk to them. How could they say no?

The other issue, then and still today, is that some firms aren’t always on board with some of their associates’ marketing activities. How do you convince them that what you want to do isn’t a waste of time or money and won’t embarrass them?

How do you get your employer or partner to approve your marketing plan?

I have a few suggestions.

First up, it’s often better to beg for forgiveness rather than ask for permission. Especially when what you’re doing is working and you’re bringing in new paying clients. Money is a salve for all wounds.

So do what you want to do (on your time and your dime) and show the firm that it’s working.

What if what you want to do will take a long time to bear fruit and you can’t hide it that long? What if it is difficult to tie what you’re doing to the results you’re getting?

In this case, instead of running at full speed, start with baby steps.

For example, I consulted with a lawyer recently about his firm’s website which is sadly in need of work. I suggested he create his own website. Start with one page, with just his bio, practice areas, contact information, and a link to the firm’s website.

Show this to your overseer and get them to okay it. It’s really nothing more than a business card and they can hardly argue that it is radical or harmful in any way.

Once you have buy in, you can (slowly?) add features to the site and see what they think.

You might add a contact form, for example, so visitors can email you directly from the site. Or a page with some details about your services. If anything isn’t approved, you can always modify it or remove it; you’ll stilll have the basic site and you can try again later.

By the way, every lawyer who works for a firm should have their own web presence. You want to brand your name online, not your firm’s. Even if you are a partner in your firm. In case you haven’t heard, partnerships do break up.

For other marketing ideas, try nibbling away at current protocol by suggesting variations on what is already approved, rather than suggesting something completely different. If you have a standard lunch presentation you do now, suggesting a different topic or different venue should be relatively easy to get approved. Suggesting advertising to a firm that has never advertised is a different story.

Another idea for convincing your firm to okay one of your ideas is to find other lawyers in your jurisdiction who are doing something similar. Use them as a case study to show your firm that what you propose isn’t unusual and, as they can see, it actually does work.

This can work especially well if the lawyer(s) you point to are direct competitors with your firm.

For a simple marketing plan that really works, get this

Filed Under: Marketing legal services, Marketing Plan

Another way to stand out and get noticed

May 6, 2015 by David M. Ward

Yesterday I talked about making your ad look like an article or feature story and thus get noticed and read.

Because people tend to ignore ads.

If your ad looks like an article, more people will read it. More readers eventually means more clients.

Are there any other ways to make your ad get noticed?

I’m glad you asked.

Another way is to get noticed is to make yourÂ ad. . . what’s the word?. . . oh yeah, UGLY.

Lost of copy, tiny print, random layout, “noisy” messages—-anything but pretty, anything but normal.

Why? Because in a sea of normality and prettiness, ugly stands out. People will notice your ad because it looks different.

When all the other ads look like they were designed by a slick graphic artist, your ugly ad gets noticed.

You still want the ad to be easy to scan and read. White space, short sentences and paragraphs, bullet points and sub-heads. But it should look different.

The same goes for your website and emails.

Show people that you’re not “advertising” you are telling them something they need to know.Â Put the magic into the words, not the photos and design.

When other lawyers use html emails, make yours plain text. When other lawyer’s websites use the same templates and layouts used by every other lawyer, along withÂ stock photos of The Scales of Justice, law books, and courthouse steps, make yours look anything but the same.

Be different.

Of course you don’t want to be so different that you scare people off. Clients have definite expectations about what a lawyer does and what they look like and you need to give them what they expect.

When you use a photo of yourself you should be wearing business attire. If you use a photo of your office, it needs to look like a law office.

Be different, but not weird.

Do you know what to put on your website? Find out here

Filed Under: Advertising, Communication, Email, Image, Online Marketing

Advertising legal services Gary Halbert style

May 5, 2015 by David M. Ward

Suppose a reporter for a decent sized publication contacts you for an interview. They heard about something you did and they want to do a story.

Nice.

They write the story and run it. They mention some of your accomplishments, quote you several times, and generally make you look like a stud.

Very cool.

Your phone starts ringing. A lot of people saw the article and want to talk to you about their case or legal situation. You sign up some new clients.

Awesome sauce.

The article includes a link to your website and your website heats up with traffic. You see a big bump in email subscribers and social media followers.

Who knew?

As a result of that interview, your practice starts to take off. You have your best month ever.

What do you do next?

You want the momentum to continue, so you take that article and run it as a paid ad in other publications in your niche market. You’ll probably have to add the words “paid advertisement” somewhere on the page but that’s no big deal.

Every time you run the ad you get more business. So you keep running it, bringing in more clients, making more money.

One reason the ad works so well is that it doesn’t look like an ad. It looks like a feature article or news. More people read articles than read ads and more readers translates to more business.

There’s just one problem. The odds of a reporter contacting you to interview you are pretty slim. If they did, the odds that they would do a puff piece that makes you look like the best lawyer in town are almost non-existent.

So don’t hold your breath.

Instead of waiting for the reporter who will never call. . .

. . .write the article yourself. Or hire someone to write it. Make sure it looks and reads like a newspaper article, and then run it as an ad.

Legendary copy writer, Gary Halbert, was a master of editorial style advertising. He sold me on the idea of running ads that don’t look like ads. When I was advertised my first marketing course in bar journals, all of my ads looked like articles.

Newspaper style headline. No graphics or photos. Quotes from me, talking about the benefits, as though I had been interviewed by the author of the “article”.

And they worked. Those ads brought in millions of dollars in sales.

Editorial style ads (“advertorials”) will also work for advertising legal services.

Filed Under: Advertising, Marketing legal services Tagged With: Gary Halbert

Ten ways to earn an extra $1,000 per month

May 4, 2015 by David M. Ward

How would you like to earn an extra $1,000 per month within the next 90 days?

I chose $1,000 because that seems to be big enough to whet your whistle, but not so big that it’s out of reach. Feel free to pick a bigger number if you want to.

Now, time for some brainstorming.

Let your mind run wild and throw some ideas on paper, on a white board, or on your screen. Shoot for a minimum of ten ideas, ten different ways you could earn $1,000 a month, or more, within 90 days.

The best way to come up with ten viable ideas is to start with twenty or thirty. So keep writing as many ideas as you can.

Don’t edit or judge anything. Just write it down. Nothing is silly or impossible when you are brainstorming.

Your ideas could be related to

Marketing your services–a new strategy, a new market, or a new way of doing what you already do
Managing your firm–eliminating unnecessary expenses, lowering costs
Creating a new service–a new profit center, a new “front end” service that creates more clients
Fees, billing, and collection–charge more, get paid faster, eliminate unpaid accounts
Creating a new offer–a free service, a discounted service for first time clients, bonus services, service package(s)
Finding new referral sources and/or joint venture partners
Offering your clients a product or service from a joint venture partner, or as an affiliate
Creating a new product (ebook, course, resource guide, etc.) to use as a marketing tool and new revenue source
Starting a new business
Contacting former clients, to stimulate repeat business and referrals
Setting up a new website, improving your existing website
Getting bigger clients/cases–bigger fees, bigger retainers, clients with ongoing legal needs
Getting more traffic, more subscribers, more prospect inquiries
Closing more prospects–better sales process, overcoming objections
And so on

With multiple ideas, you’re more likely to find one that you’re willing to do. Or you might find two or three ideas you can do that bring in an aggregate of $1,000 a month.

90 days is a long time. Maybe too long. You might be better off looking for ideas that could start producing in the next 30 days. A shorter deadline means there’s no time to think (or procrastinate), you have to start doing.

What could you do this week that could bring you an extra $1,000 a month?

Want to get paid faster? Collect unpaid invoices? Here’s howÂ

Filed Under: Law office management, Marketing legal services, Marketing Plan

Quieting my inner monster

May 1, 2015 by David M. Ward

I have a little monster living inside my head. He talks to me from time to time. Mostly, I ignore him and go about my day. But sometimes, he just won’t shut up.

I’ll start writing, for example, and a few minutes later, there he is. He has something to say that has nothing to do with what I’m working on, but he wants me to listen. Or he tells me he’s bored andÂ wants me to play with him.

I tell him not to bother me, but by then, I’ve lost my concentration. I go check email or get up and take a break. Sometimes it takes me 15 minutes before I’m able to get back to work.

I start working again, but ten minutes later it happens again. Stop, start, stop start. Before I know it, the day is over and I haven’t gotten much done.

Does this ever happen to you? Perhaps you have a little monster, too.

Good news. I’ve found a way to keep the little devil quiet. It sounds simple, but it works remarkably well.

All I do is put on my headphones and listen to music while I work. The music drowns out my monster’s monkey chatter so I can continue to work without interruption.

I listen to music without words: classical, new age, Celtic, and various forms of so-called ambient music.

I also listen to ambient sounds, like recordings made in a coffee shop, restaurant, or library. The sound of clinking glasses, whispered voices, pages turning, and the occasional cough take me to a different place.

I listen to recordings of people typing. The clickity clack sound and rhythm is a perfect background for writing.

I listen to birds chirping and rainstorms. I listen to the ambient rumble of Star Trek TNG ship’s engines idling in space.

I even tried something called ASMR. (It’s weird. Search for it on YouTube.)

They all work because I don’t consciously listen to the music or the sounds. They play in the background, a form of white noise, that allows my little monster to take a nap.

I’ve even set up a play list and have everythingÂ on autoplay. I’m able to put in an hour or more before I needÂ a break.

How about you? What do you listen to when you work?

Filed Under: Productivity, Writing Tagged With: concentration

Growing your law practice through osmosis

April 30, 2015 by David M. Ward

Yesterday, I did a consultation/strategy session with an attorney who has been practicing less than two years. During the session, we talked about his income. In the first three months of this year he has averaged $10,000 per month, which is more than double what he earned per monthÂ last year.

What made the difference?

He purchased and read The Attorney Marketing Formula in January of this year and thinks this can’t be a coincidence. He’s giving me the credit, and that’s great, but here’s the thing. He hasn’t really implemented anything from The Formula. Nothing major, anyway. In fact, he told me there were some concepts he was still unclear about.

So how could this have immediatelyÂ caused his income to more than double?

I think I have an answer. I think that although he hasn’t done anything new to market his services, he’s thinking about it. Those thoughts are changing what he says and does in almost imperceptible ways.

Now, he knows what’s possible. And important. His subconscious mind is starting to percolate with ideas. He’s paying attention to things he may have glossed over in the past.

He may not realize it, but merely by reading about marketing, he is becoming better at marketing.

I can’t wait to see what happens when he implements some of the strategies and techniques he has learned.

Click here to check out The Attorney Marketing Formula

Filed Under: Marketing legal services, Personal development, success

Begin with the end in mind (and work backwards)

April 28, 2015 by David M. Ward

Most people choose a goal and then start working towards it. They put one foot in front of the other and keep walking until they get to their destination.

If they choose the wrong step, however, they may get sidetracked and lose sight of their goal. If they do the steps in the wrong order, they may waste time and resources.

A better way, some say, is to begin with the end in mind and work backwards.

Let me give you an example of how it works.

Let’s say you have a goal of getting one additional referral each week.

Nice goal, yes?

Okay, now you have to ask yourself this question: Can I do this tomorrow? Can I get one additional referral per week starting tomorrow?

The odds are the answer is no. So you ask another question: What would have to have happen first?

Putting aside the idea of getting more referrals from your clients and existing contacts, let’s say the answer is, “I’d have to have twenty new professional contacts who know, like, and trust me. If each one of these twenty contacts sends me just one referral every five months, I would achieve my goal of getting one additional referral per week.”

That sounds doable. But can you do it tomorrow?

No.

What would have to happen first?

First (let’s say) you would need to connect with 100 new contacts (professionals, business owners, community leaders, centers of influence, etc.), in order to find twenty who are willing and able to send you one referral every five months.

Can you do this tomorrow? I’m guessing not.

What would have to happen first?

First you would have to identify (a) places where these people congregate, so you can go there and meet them, and/or (b) people you know who can introduce you to these people.

Can you do that tomorrow?

Yes you can. You can start anyway. You can do some research and find organizations comprised of people who fit the description of the people you want to meet who meet locally.

You can also comb through your current list of contacts to identify people who are likely to know these people. They have clients or colleagues or business contacts who fit the description. You know them well enough to ask for an introduction.

Finally, you have something you can do tomorrow. Now you can take the first steps towards your goal.

But if you do all of that, can you reach your goal tomorrow? No. What has to happen first?

You need to meet them and get to know them. You need to find out what they are looking for that you might be able to help them with. You need to show them what you do and how you can help their clients or contacts. And you have to build a relationship with them, earn their trust ,and eventually, their referrals.

Can you do this tomorrow? No. What would you have to do first?

You’d have to talk to them, get their contact information, and begin a dialog with them.

Can you do that tomorrow (if you meet them tomorrow)? Yes you can.

And now you have a plan.

You can’t “do” a goal, you can only do activities. Begin with the end in mind and work backwards. Identify the activities you need to do, and do them, and keep doing them until you reach your goal.

Marketing is easier when you know The Attorney Marketing Formula

Filed Under: Goal Setting, Productivity, success, Time Management Tagged With: goal acheivement