What would you do if you lost all of your clients and had to start over?

August 7, 2012 by
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I was a guest on a panel of experts taking questions from a group of business owners. One asked, “What would you do if you lost all of your clients and had to start over?”

In response, I asked, “What would you do if you didn’t?” In other words, do what you did to build it the first time. Go back to basics. Stick with what works.

It’s so easy to get caught up in the flavor of the day. The latest social media platform, software tool, or psychological technique. But these are almost always distractions. Let someone else try them. You stick with the fundamentals.

Jim Rohn said, “There are no new fundamentals. You’ve got to be a little suspicious of someone who says, “I’ve got a new fundamental.” That’s like someone inviting you to tour a factory where they are manufacturing antiques.”

I had to start over once. I got out of practicing law to pursue a business. After two years, I came back. But I had no clients and we had moved to another county where I didn’t know anyone. I had to build my practice again, from scratch.

In some ways it was easier the second time because I knew what I was doing. In other ways, it was harder because I knew how much effort it required. But I did it, by going back to basics.

Jim Rohn: “Success is neither magical nor mysterious. Success is the natural consequence of consistently applying the basic fundamentals.”

What exactly would I do if I was starting over? I answered that in my post, If I were starting my law practice today, here’s what I would do to bring in clients.

If you have lost everything and have to start over, don’t dwell on the loss and don’t look for short cuts. Roll up your sleeves and get to work.

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Filed Under: Marketing legal services, Marketing Plan, Personal development Tagged With: , , ,

You are friggin amazing!

August 6, 2012 by
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When was the last time you patted yourself on the back? If it’s been awhile, you might want to take a few minutes to do that.

Think about what you have accomplished in your lifetime. No doubt it’s quite a list. Remembering those victories and achievements makes you feel good about yourself. It gives you confidence about the future.

If you can’t remember all your accomplishments, or even if you can, I suggest you create a “Book of Achievements” to collect those memories. Probe your mind, dig through those storage boxes, ask your spouse for help. Record your accomplishements on paper or digitally, so you can look at them from time to time.

If you’re blue, you need to remind yourself that the future is bright. If you feel good, reviewing your past accomplishments will help you feel even better.

You can decorate your book and add photos if you like. Make it fancy and detailed, like a scrap book, or keep it simple, a line or two about each accomplishment.

Have fun remembering what you have done. Go back to your chidhood. Remember that school play or the paper with the gold star.

Remember passing the bar exam. The awards, the big cases, the letters of thanks.

Most people will never do what you have done. Hell, most people will never try.

Your life is a series of accomplishments. You have done more than you realize. You have helped a lot of people. You have made the world a better place.

You are friggin amazing. I hope you remember that.

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Filed Under: Career satisfaction, Inspiration, Personal development Tagged With: , ,

How to get your email deleted (aka, don’t do this)

August 3, 2012 by
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One of the email lists I subscribe to starts every email with, “Hello everyone,” and every time I read that I get a little bit annoyed.

I’m not everyone, I’m just me. I don’t care if there are 1000 people getting the same email, when you write to me, write to me. Use my name or just start writing.

This is a basic copywriting premise. Write to your reader in “me to you” language. Don’t call attention to the fact that I’m part of a list and you really don’t know who I am. Even if it is a newsletter and everyone knows it.

I open her email because she has some good things to say. But often, I delete her emails just as quickly. Why? Because her emails are ONE BIG FAT WALL OF TEXT.

Long emails are fine, as long as the content is good. But her emails make me work.

Long paragraphs with no breaks are hard to read. She should use short paragraphs. And short sentences.

Like this.

Break things up and make them visually inviting. Use bullet points and numbered lists. Let me scan the message and get the gist of it.

And then, get to the point. You don’t need to do a warm up, you’ve got my attention so tell me what you want to tell me.

The first sentence of an email is critical. It is a headline for the rest of the message. It determines whether I will read the second sentence, and beyond, so it must grab my attention by promising me a benefit or making me curious.

Of course I won’t be reading that first sentence if the subject line of the email doesn’t get my attention.

If the subject doesn’t grab me, I won’t open the email.

The subject of your email is the single most important sentence in the entire message.

One recent email from this woman had the following subject line: “Wow, another level”.

No, I don’t know what the email was about. I didn’t open it.

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Filed Under: Communication, Copywriting, Newsletters, Writing Tagged With: , , , ,

“Do you want the male version or the female version?”

August 2, 2012 by
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“Do you want the male version or the female version?” That’s something my wife and I say to each other fairly often.

It’s our way of describing how we want to hear “the story”. (What the heck were you thinking?)

We’ve discovered that when you’re telling a story, men want to know the bottom line first, then a few details. Women want to hear the beginning and middle of the story before they hear the end. They want to share the experience.

So if I get home from the market where I’d run into an old friend, I’m going to say something like, “Joe and Sue separated. I saw Joe at the market today. Pretty sad.”

My wife, on the other hand, might come home and say, “You’ll never guess what happened today. I was at the market in the bread aisle. Oh yeah, I got that sourdough you like. Anyway, I saw Sue and she looked terrible. Not a stitch of makeup. She looked like she just got out of bed. I asked her how she was doing and she said ‘not good’. She and Joe have been fighting for months. They went to counseling and really tried to work things out but Joe got fired and started drinking again. . .”

Male version. Female version.

I don’t know if there is any scientific basis for this. I could be dead wrong. Maybe it’s just that my wife and I are different.

The point is that people are different and you have to know who you are talking to. Some people want you to get to the point. Others want to hear the details.

If you’re not sure, just ask, “Do you want the male version or the female version?”

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Filed Under: Communication, Copywriting, Marketing legal services, Public Speaking, Writing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Get rid of what’s not working in your law practice

August 1, 2012 by
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The military periodically schedules a day or a week to “stand down” from normal operations and review everything they’re doing to make sure it’s still necessary and working at peak efficiency. They fix or get rid of anything that’s not working and make room for new or better ideas.

Anita Campbell, Founder of Small Business Trends, suggests we do something similar with our businesses. She says,

What if we approached innovation from the opposite direction – by getting rid of what isn’t working before we try to come up with something that works.

This is good advice for any law practice. Strip things down to the essentials, lighten the load and add back only what is necessary. Make room for new ideas, tools, and procedures by getting rid of anything that isn’t working:

  • Legal services you no longer sell or are no longer consistent with your long term plans
  • Inefficient processes (forms, letters)
  • Employee functions that are no longer necessary or can be assigned to someone else; employees who no longer carry their weight
  • Furniture, equipment, technology that no longer works
  • Office space that is not being used
  • Closed files you no longer need to retain
  • Ads that no longer pull or cost too much relative to the alternatives
  • Subscriptions you no longer read; books you haven’t referred to in over a year
  • Groups you no longer participate in

Campbell says,

Like cleaning out your garage and tossing unused belongings, jettisoning old processes or products can give your business a whole new start. You’ll be surprised how much space you suddenly find in your mind, and how free you and your team will feel to create something new without all that clutter clogging up your brain.

Earlier this year, my wife and I did an extensive spring cleaning at home. We got rid of a ton of stuff and simplified our lives. I guess it’s time to do the same for the business.

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Filed Under: Law office management, Personal development, Productivity Tagged With: , , , ,

Which of these companies do you think we hired?

July 31, 2012 by
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Our air conditioning is having some challenges. My wife called a few service companies. It’s been hot lately so they were all busy.

As she told me the story, I couldn’t help thinking about the parallel to calling lawyers. Clients, like air conditioning customers, often choose a lawyer based primarily on how they are treated on the phone.

So, which of these companies do you think we hired?

COMPANY #1:

  • Abrupt, unfriendly, not compassionate
  • Can’t come out for a week.
  • Laughed and said,”good luck” when my wife said she’d have to call around

COMPANY #2

  • Pleasant
  • Can’t come today
  • “We should be able to come tomorrow; call in the morning and we’ll give you a time”

COMPANY #3

  • Can come today; gave us a 3 hour window and will call 30 minutes before to make sure we’re home (in case we need to run an errand)
  • Friendly, patient, re-assuring, confident
  • Gave us a price range: “Most repairs run between $x and $y
  • Described the technician’s licenses and (extensive) experience
  • Gave her name; “call me personally if you have any questions”
  • Asked, “Where did you find us?”
  • Mostly “5-star” reviews on Yelp

So, which company do you think we hired? And which one do you think we’ll recommend?

Plaintiff rests.

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Filed Under: Client relations, Closing the sale, Law office management, Marketing legal services, Online Marketing, Salesmanship

Using LinkedIn to get more traffic to your blog or web site

July 30, 2012 by
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Are we connected on LinkedIn? We should be. Send me a request to connect and mention this blog as our connection.

I like LinkedIn. It’s an excellent social media platform for professionals. No LOL cats, vacation photos, or game requests.

Our LinkedIn profiles lets others learn about what we do, and if that’s all it did, that would be great. But LinkedIn is a giant directory of professionals and business owners we can reach out to and network with, and with a little effort, it’s also a mechanism for actively generating more traffic to our sites.

Here is a very basic example to illustrate:

Let’s say you represent small businesses and you connect with commercial real estate attorneys, brokers, bankers, et. al. One of them posts a link to an article on new government programs for small businesses. You like the article and

  • Comment on their LinkedIn post, which exposes your brilliance to others and brings traffic to your profile, and then to your blog.
  • Comment on their blog, which can also bring traffic.
  • Reach out to the author and tell him you like the article, which may lead to future networking opportunities, guest posts, etc. You can do the same with the person who posted the article if they aren’t the author.
  • Share the article with your clients and prospects, which earns their appreciation.
  • Learn something you can use in your practice and in your marketing.

There are lots of ways to network and share content on LinkedIn. This excellent article on how to use LinkedIn to drive traffic to your blog shows you seven ways to do precisely that. Some of these I’m doing; others are now on my “Next Action” list.

There’s a link in the article to LinkedIn applications you can install to help automate some of these tasks. I use the WordPress app to sync this blog and recommend it. A few applications are designated for legal professionals and I’m going to check them out.

Are you using LinkedIn to get traffic and make new connections?

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Filed Under: Marketing legal services, Networking, Social media, Social media marketing, Web traffic Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Three questions lawyers should ask prospective clients

July 27, 2012 by
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When you have a prospective client in the office or on the phone, chances are you assume they will hire you. At least you should. Assuming the sale is a smart strategy in any sales situation.

But what you think and what you say aren’t necessarily the same thing. Sometimes, it’s too early in the process to talk to the prospect about taking the next step. They’re not ready.

This article presents three questions you should ask to qualify the prospect and better prepare them for taking the next step. They allow you to gain valuable information about where the prospect is mentally, and help them to commit to moving forward because that’s what they want to do.

These aren’t the only questions you can ask, and they might not be appropriate to every situation. But they show the client you aren’t pushing them and help you to find out if there are any potential problems (with the client or their attitude) before you move forward.

Here are the three questions:

1. Was there a compelling event that caused you to request information from us?

Do they have a problem you can solve? Do they have a lawyer they aren’t happy with?

The problem they’re having may be obvious (e.g., divorce, accident, foreclosure). A similar question, i.e., “What brought you to see me today?” will get them to focus on “what happened” and get them telling their story.

2. What is the most important thing you hope to accomplish by solving this problem?

This helps you understand what they want and what they expect. If what they expect is unreasonable, you need to address this before you present your solution.

This also helps you find out if they are serious about solving their problem. If they are, it gets them to focus on results rather than how much you charge.

3. It sounds like you could benefit from our solution. What would you like to see happen as a next step?

I like this question because it invites the prospect to be a part of the process. There’s an old saying in sales: “If you say it, they can doubt it; if they say it, it must be true.” If the prospect tells you what they want you to do for them, they are effectively giving you the go ahead.

These questions will help you gain valuable information and position yourself as someone who cares about what the client wants, not just what you have to offer. The bottom line is a more relaxed and open prospect who sells themselves on hiring you, instead of you having to sell yourself.

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Filed Under: Closing the sale, Communication, Salesmanship Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Do you ever completely unplug? Me neither.

July 26, 2012 by
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I confess, I’m one of those people who is never completely unplugged.

When I’m not in front of my computer, I have my iPhone with me and it is never off.

I check email every hour, often several times an hour. In fact, in the middle of writing this paragraph, I clicked over to my always open gmail tab to have a quick look.

I can be reached by email or phone or text or instant message at any time of day (or night, if I’m up).

You may think I’m weird. Or you may say, “Me too,” or “That’s nothing. . .”.

In the Woody Allen movie, “Play it Again, Sam,” Tony Roberts plays a character who is obsessed with work and always being connected. Each time we see him he calls into his office to give a phone number of how to contact him and for how long, and then the next contact number.

That’s not me.

I am not a social media junkie. I get on when I can (perhaps once or twice a day), and get off.

I don’t get nearly the number of calls I used to get.

And even though I can receive information at any time, that doesn’t mean I respond to it. Sometimes I do, often I don’t, at least until I’m ready.

I like being connected. If I didn’t, if I was feeling overwhelmed by incoming communications or the need to respond, I would change something.

How about you? Are you always connected? Is it a problem for you? How about for your family?

How about vacations? Do you completely unplug?

I admit I don’t. I’ll shut things off for several hours, but I’m never completely “offline”. When we were in Europe years ago, before I had a smart phone, I made sure there was an Internet cafe within walking distance so I could log on at least once a day.

Michael Hyatt is a very busy and very accomplished individual who recently returned from a 100% unplugged vacation. I don’t think he needed to do it. He seems to lead a very orderly life. He wanted to unplug, and he did.

He wrote about everything he did to prepare for that trip, and it was extensive. He says it was worth it. He came home truly rested, and more in touch with the important things in his life. And because of his preparations, everything at work was just fine without him.

Reading his posts on the subject made me think he is onto something. Taking a vacation without my phone or the Internet, completely unplugged, intrigues me.

If I can just get used to the idea that everything at work will be fine without me.

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Filed Under: Inspiration, Law office management, Personal development, Technology Tagged With: , , ,

Why attorneys need to brag (and how to do it without opening your mouth)

July 25, 2012 by
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One of the primary objectives for any attorney interested in attracting clients is to show the world why they are a better choice. One way to do that is by bragging about your achievements.

Unfortunately, nobody likes a braggart.

The obvious alternative is to let others brag about you. That’s what word of mouth is all about. Happy clients telling others. Your task, then, is to make sure your clients and contacts know about your achievements and have an easy way to share them with others.

You need a “brag book”.

What is a brag book?

A brag book is a place to collect laudatory information about you. It’s a physical notebook, or the digital equivalent, with pages of clips and stories and information about you and your accomplishments.

Those clips and stories show people what you have done for others and suggest that you can do the same for them. The book is filled with third party validation, proving that you are experienced and knowledgeable and trustworthy.

What’s in a brag book?

Your brag book can have a variety of content:

  • Testimonials
  • Endorsements
  • Awards
  • Thank you letters
  • Articles about you, your cases
  • Articles by you, especially if they appear in an important publication
  • Photos of you with happy clients
  • Photos of you with important people
  • Photos of you helping a charity or important cause
  • Photos of you speaking from stage
  • A photo tour of your office
  • Success stories about your clients/cases
  • Stories about big/important verdicts
  • Press releases
  • Your CV or bio
  • Client survey results
  • FAQ’s that show how and why you are different/better

How do I use my brag book?

Use the contents of your brag book whenever you create a new marketing document. Having this information and these documents and photos in one place will make it easier for you or your copywriter to put together new brochures, seminar slides, web pages, or other documents.

You can also put together an entire book that can be shown to clients and prospects, meeting planners, publishers, and others you want to impress.

Use your brag book, or mini-versions thereof:

  • On the table in your waiting room
  • Framed on the wall in your office
  • As a page your web site; link to it from your “About” page
  • As a handout at seminars, networking events
  • As your “firm brochure”
  • In your “new client kit”
  • Send it to prospects who inquire about your services

How do I start a brag book?

Start by collecting these documents and putting them in one location. If you have paper documents, scan them. You could set up a separate notebook in Evernote for this purpose, or simply add a tag (i.e., “bragbook”) to any note that contains brag-worthy information or documents.

As your collection of items grows, you’ll be prompted to seek out additional documents to add to your book. You might ask more clients to provide a testimonial, for example, or make a point of saving copies of photos you have been tagged in on Facebook.

Once you have started your book, it will remind you to fill it, and use it.

Do you have a brag book? Are you going to start one? How will you use it?

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Filed Under: Communication, Law office management, Marketing legal services, Presentations, Productivity, Referrals Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
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