David M. Ward, Author at The Attorney Marketing Center

Want to bring in some new clients? What are you DOING about it?

February 16, 2012 by David M. Ward

I got an email this morning from a junior associate at a law firm in southeast Asia, thanking me for my blog and newsletter. He said that as a result of reading my posts over the last two months, he brought in one big client and three small clients.

Not bad. Not bad at all.

He said he “loved” yesterday’s postÂ and I can see why. He’s been regularly attending networking events and I could tell from his letter that he is very enthusiastic about what he does and the value he (his firm) is able to deliver. I suspect that the new clients he talked about were attracted to his passion more than anything.

I wrote back and told him that while I gave him some ideas and encouragement, all the credit goes to him. He’s the one who took those ideas and did something with them.

Many lawyers know a lot of information and could wax endlessly about what they know. Unfortunately, they often don’t benefit from what they know because they never apply it.

General George S. Patton once said, “A good plan vigorously executed right now is far better than a perfect plan executed next week.”

If you’ve been reading my blog for awhile, you’ve received many ideas for bringing in new clients. Have you used any of them or are you waiting for a “perfect plan”? Two months from now, you will have read many more ideas. I challenge you use them to bring in one big client and three small clients.

Filed Under: Marketing legal services, Networking, Personal development Tagged With: able-to-bringing-in-new-clients, books-on-bringing-in-the-big-clients, bring-in-new-clients, bringing-a-new-client-fee-lawyer, bringing-in-new-clients, fee-for-bringing-in-new-client, getting-new-clients-law, how-to-bring-in-new-clients, how-to-bring-new-clients, ideas-to-bring-in-new-clients, lawyers-how-to-bring-in-new-clients, legal-services-marketing, plansofbringinginofnewclients, strategy-for-bringing-in-new-clients, ways-to-bring-in-new-clients

The key to failure in marketing legal services

February 15, 2012 by David M. Ward

Bill Cosby was once asked if he would share the key to his success. He famously said, “I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.”

And yet that’s exactly what most people do.

They take middle of the road positions on issues because they don’t want to offend anybody. They write articles or blog posts directed to everyone, instead of addressing the specifics of their niche market. Or they don’t target a niche market at all because they don’t want to exclude any potential business.

Because this is what most people do, most people get mediocre results. Successful people don’t try to please everyone. In fact, they may do their best to antagonize a large segment of the population.

Name a successful political pundit on the right. How about Rush Limbaugh? Now, how about on the left? Let’s go with Chris Matthews. What do they have in common, besides being financially successful?

Both have millions of fans and. . . both have millions who hate them.

Instead of being on the right and the left, suppose they were centrists. Do you think they would be as successful?

The savviest politicians and political commentators know, the better you are at turning OFF those who aren’t your audience, the better you’ll be at turning ON those who are.

And it’s the same in marketing.

It’s all about passion. If you have it, and if you can get people fired up about something, either for OR against, you’ll be more likely to stand out from the crowd. Yes, there will people who are turned off by what you say or do, but guess what? They probably weren’t going to hire you anyway.

I’d much rather have a list of 100 people who love what I do and tell everyone about me, than 10,000 people who might not remember subscribing to my list. Those 100 fans will bring others who will do the same.

Don’t try to please everyone. Dr. Huxtable says it’s a prescription for failure.

Filed Under: Client loyalty, Marketing legal services, success Tagged With: 02-loans, failure-of-marketing, how-to-market-legal-clinic, httpwww-attorneymarketing-com20120215they-key-to-failure-in-marketing-legal-services, i-dont-know-the-key-to-success-but-i-do-know-that-the-key-to-failure-is-trying-to-please-everyone, i-dont-know-the-key-to-success-but-the-key-to-failure-is-trying-to-please-everyone-comment, i-dont-know-the-key-to-the-success-but-key-to-the-failure-is-trying-to-please-everybody, key-issues-marketing-legal-services, key-to-marketing-legal-services, Marketing legal services, marketing-plan-for-legal-services, speaking-marketing-legal-services, the-key-to-failure-is

How to get your clients to support your law practice

February 14, 2012 by David M. Ward

My wife and I are continuing to unclutter. Yesterday she brought our daughter’s Irish Dance costumes to her old school to see if they could use them.

The school today is much smaller than it was ten years ago when my daughter attended. My wife noticed that there isn’t room for the parents to congregate inside the school like we used to do. It looked like most parents dropped off their kids.

When the school was bigger, many parents stayed for the class. We spent time together–at the school, during competitions, and eventually, outside the school envirnonment–and we got to know each other and our families. The school became a social incubator and helped foster relationships that still exist today, five or ten years after our children attended.

When we were active at the school, there were competitions and shows and we parents contributed much time and effort building sets, working lights and music, and selling tickets to the shows to our friends and neighbors. Yes, we were supporting our children, but the amount of effort we contributed would not have been anywhere near the same had our social group of parents not been so strong.

Today, I’m sure they don’t get anywhere near the amount of parent involvement we had, simply because the parents don’t know each other as well. As a result, the smaller school is more likely to stay that way.

A business can leverage their customer base by creating a social environment where their customers can build strong ties among themselves and, therefore, also with that business. A law firm can do the same thing.

Most lawyers have a one-to-one private relationship with their clients. They don’t “cross pollinate” their clientÃ¨le. Because of privacy issues this is to be expected. Most clients don’t want anyone to know they’ve hired a bankruptcy or criminal defense lawyer. But not all practices are so constricted.

A small business practice, for example, has clients who can benefit from knowing each other. They can refer business, exchange ideas, and recommend vendors. If you hold a monthly event–a mixer, a breakfast or lunch, a seminar series–where your clients regularly come together, they would build a social network of their own. Your clients would benefit and as the organizer of these events, so would you.

When you have strong relationships with your clients, they are much more likely to remain your clients. No other lawyer will get their referrals. And if you need a favor–sending traffic to your web site, promoting your seminar, or distributing your new report–your clients will help. In fact, they’ll probably be more likely to do so because of the added accountability of the social network.

If there’s any way to build a social element into your practice, I suggest you give it a try. If this isn’t appropriate for your clients, you can do the next best thing–organize a breakfast or lunch or other regular social event for your referral sources and friends of the firm.

Strong relationships with your clients and referral sources help you strengthen and grow your practice. When they have strong relationships among themselves, your growth can be accelerated.

You don’t have to be the sponsor of that group, just the organizer. And the best part is you won’t have to listen to accordion music.

Filed Under: Client loyalty, Client relations, Relationship marketing Tagged With: attorney-marketing-new-parents, david-ward-attorney-marketing, getting-clients-in-a-law-practice, how-to-get-clients-for-law-practice, how-to-get-clients-for-your-law-practice, how-to-get-clients-in-law, how-to-get-clients-to-bring-guest, how-to-get-law-clients, how-to-get-more-clientele-as-a-criminal-defense-attorney, how-to-get-more-clients-attorney, how-to-get-more-clients-for-family-practice, how-to-get-more-clients-for-your-law-firm, letters-promoting-your-law-firm, marketing-to-parents-attorneys, promoting-your-law-practice

How to get a lot more clients without doing ANY additional marketing

February 13, 2012 by David M. Ward

Most people who visit your web site, hear you speak, or read your article, don’t call you. And if they don’t call, they aren’t going to hire you.

What’s worse, they’ll never return to your web site or re-read your article. At least you have to assume that because that’s almost always the way it is.

Unless you have a lead capture mechanism in place (and you should), this is a squandered opportunity, a loss for both you and the prospective client.

The good news is that for everyone who does call, there may be three or five or ten people who almost called. They liked what they saw but for one reason or another, they didn’t take the plunge. If they aren’t ready or they don’t have any money, there’s not much you can do. There is one reason prospective clients come close to calling but don’t you can do something about. And if you do, it could bring in a boatload of new clients.

Many people don’t call lawyers simply because they’re intimidated. Let’s face it, attorneys are usually not known for being warm and fuzzy. But while a tough exterior may be a useful quality in an advocate, it can damage our ability to connect with prospective clients.

Fortunately, there is an easy solution.

Your web site or other marketing communication needs to reach out to the reader or visitor, invite them to connect, and make them feel comfortable about doing so.

One way to do that is to feature testimonials from your clients, who speak about how great it was to work with you, how you were kind and helpful and took a personal interest in their case. They can say how they felt scared before they called and thought they were going to get a sales pitch or be told they had to come into the office before they could get any information. Instead, you talked to them on the phone and answered a lot of their questions and there was no pressure at all.

Another way to make people feel comfortable about contacting you is to describe the process. Tell them what happens first, who they will speak to when they call, what will be discussed, what happens next, and so on, so that people can get a picture in their mind’s eye of what it will be like when they call.

Yet another way to reach out to people is to simply tell them directly that you will be happy to speak to them via phone or via email, that you will answer any questions they may have, with no cost or obligation.

No pressure. No intimidation. Call or email, the door is open.

There are other things you can do to make people feel comfortable about contacting you. Reduce or eliminate the “disclaimer” language so prevalent on lawyers’ web sites and emails. Photos of you and your staff are good. Use head shots and also some informal shots of you with clients or you outside the office. Personal information helps. Talk about your kids, sports you enjoy, or your volunteer work. On your web site, consider adding a video of you speaking and welcoming visitors, telling them what they will find on the site, and inviting them to contact you by phone or email.

Show people you are a regular person and you want to speak with them and more people will call.

—

Want more great marketing ideas? Check out The Quantum Leap Marketing System for Attorneys

Filed Under: Communication, Increase your income, Marketing legal services Tagged With: how-to-gain-a-lot-of-clients, how-to-get-a-lot-more-clients-without-doing-any-additional-marketing, how-to-get-a-lot-of-clients, how-to-get-a-lot-of-clients-as-an-attorney, how-to-get-alot-clients, how-to-get-alot-of-advertising-on-my-phone, how-to-get-appointment-wit-clientss-by-doing-marketing, how-to-get-lots-of-clients, how-to-have-a-lot-of-clients, how-to-make-a-lot-of-clients, how-to-reach-out-to-a-client-via-email, how-to-reach-out-via-email, howto-get-clients-for-seo, legal-services-marketing, legal-services-online-advertising, Marketing legal services, marketing-legal-services-online, reach-out-to-the-client

Don’t read this unless you want to quickly bring in a bunch of new clients

February 10, 2012 by David M. Ward

If you have a few minutes today, there’s a very good chance you can use this time to bring in more business. I’ve been preaching the value of this “technique” for many years because it is an incredibly effective way to put people in your waiting room.

I put “technique” in quotes because it’s not a technique so much as common sense. You don’t have to study or practice. You don’t need any special tools. There’s nothing to prepare. You can do it as soon as you finish reading this post.

One lawyer who did this eventually wrote to me to tell me he was getting so much new business, his secretary made him stop!

So what is this brilliantly simple way to bring in more business? Simply this: Call your clients and say hello.

Call your current clients and your former clients and tell them you are calling to say hello and see how they are doing.

That’s it.

The first thing that will happen is that your clients will be amazed and delighted that you thought enough of them to reach out and say hello (without the meter running). They will appreciate you even more than they already do.

Ask them about their family or their work or business. They will be even more impressed that you remembered something personal about them. Let them talk.

Don’t ask for anything or offer anything. Remember, you’re just calling to say hello.

Now what?

Well, your presence on the telephone will prompt your clients to think about legal issues or concerns they’ve had recently and they will ask for advice. Or, they will think about a friend from work or someone in the family with a legal issue and ask you if you can help them.

Before you know it you will be talking to people who want to hire you.

Of course, you will also be talking to people with issues you don’t handle. You will refer them to lawyers in those practice areas and score points with the client and the lawyers you refer them to.

Not everyone will have business for you today. In fact, most won’t. But in reminding them that you still help people solve legal problems, when they do need your services, or know someone who does, guess who they are going to call?

If you get voice mail, leave a message and tell them you’ll call again. Call them again in a few days at a different time.

Your clients know, like, and trust you. They hired you once and they will hire you again. They know people who need your services or who will need your services in the future, and they will be only too happy to send that business to you.

And you don’t even have to ask.

—

If you want to grow your practice even quicker, go buyÂ The Quantum Leap Â Marketing System for Attorneys. It will show you how to build a large (or larger) practice quicker than you ever thought possible.

Filed Under: Client loyalty, Client relations, Marketing legal services, Relationship marketing Tagged With: attorney-blogs-for-work-less, bring-in-a-bunch, legal-services-market, Marketing legal services, the-attorney-marketing-center, unless-you-want-to-read

How to get more clients with joint venture marketing

February 9, 2012 by David M. Ward

John Jantsch shared a great marketing idea today and he used attorneys as an example. The idea is to get together with other professionals and businesses who target the same market you do and create a content-filled blog as a resource for that target market.

So the small business attorney pairs up with an insurance broker, an expert in employee benefits, a CPA, and a marketing expert, all of whom contribute articles or blog posts speaking to the issues business owners want and need.

The site or blog will get search engine traffic, attracting prospects who will learn about the individuals who write the posts and the services they offer.

Jantsch provides recommendations for WordPress plug-ins that will help you organize and run the blog. Here’s another post I saw today that recommendsÂ 15 plug-ins for multi-author blogs.

But what if you’re not up to the task of organizing and running this little venture just now? Is there anything else you can do to utilize this idea?

Yes there is and thanks for asking.

You can organize a one timeÂ collaborationÂ where you and other profoessionals contribute articles, posts, reports, audios, or other content. You can put that on a web site that won’t necessarily attract a lot of search engine traffic because the site wouldn’t be regularly updated, but it would be a tremendous resource for each of the contributors who send traffic to the site.

You can put the content on a cd or dvd or in an ebook and use it as a reward for opt-ins to your regular web site. Or as a gift to people who attend your seminar, webinar, or teleconference. Or as a giveaway to your clients and contacts, encouraging them to send copies to their friends and contacts.

You can also organize a live event in your local market, with half a dozen speakers, each of whom invites guests.

The value of a collaborate marketing effort like this is that each of the participants is repsonsible for creating only their article or report, but each of you benefits from the content of the others. In addition, with each of you sending visitors to the site or otherwise distributing the content, each of you will get the tacit recommendation of the other professionals, as well as exposure to their clients and prospects.

If even a simplified version of this idea seems like too much work to take on right now, find one other professional or business owner who targets your market and do something together.

Send an en email to each other’s lists, offering a free consultation or a free report. Do a guest post for each other’s blog or newsletter. Invite each other to attend a networking group you belong to and introduce each other to centers of influence you know.

Cooperative marketing is effective because it instantly exposes you to a large group of prospective clients, all of whom have the implied or explicit recommendation of a professional they know, like, and trust. It’s a great idea no matter how you go about it.

Filed Under: Blogging, Marketing legal services, Online Marketing, Referrals, Relationship marketing, Web traffic Tagged With: how-to-get-friends-to-to-help-market, how-to-get-more-clients-as-an-accountant, how-to-get-your-friends-to-support-you-on-a-venture, httpwww-attorneymarketing-com20120209how-to-get-more-clients-with-joint-venture-marketing, ideas-for-joint-lawyer-accountant-seminars, ideas-for-joint-seminars-between-lawyers-and-accountants, john-jantsch-joint-ventures, joint-venture-marketing, joint-venture-marketing-ideas, joint-ventures, law-for-accountants-seminar, lawyer-accountant-seminars, letter-for-j-oint-venture, letter-of-a-jpoint-venture-to-customers, letter-of-joint-venture, letter-of-joint-venture-recommendation-to-customers, letters-for-joint-venture, more-clients-joint-venture, sample-letters-on-how-to-market-your-insurance-broking-business-to-accountants, the-small-business-attorney

Attorneys: are you spending too much time on blogging and social media?

February 8, 2012 by David M. Ward

The big knock on blogging and social media is that it takes up too much time. And so many attorneys give up on it before they see any appreciable results. Many others never start.

It takes two things to be successful marketing online:

You have to know what to do, and
You have to do it long enough to see results.

You can’t just throw up some content or tweets and expect the world to come rushing to your (virtual) door. You need to know the fundamentals. And you need to put in some time and effort.

But you don’t need to take courses or read countless books. You don’t need to keep up with the latest plug-ins or stake your claim on every new site. Read a few blog posts, watch a couple of videos, and you’ll be on your way. The real learning comes from the doing, as this post clearly shows.

How much time do you spend on blogging and social media? Now, how much time do you spend reading about blogging and social media, or thinking about it and wondering if you should? What if you traded in some of the reading and thinking time and used it to actually write a blog?

Blogging and social media (the doing part) don’t require a lot of your time. It’s not the quantity of time that’s paramount, it’s the consistency. A few minutes a day, every day. Do that for six months and you’ll be amazed at what can happen.

Filed Under: Blogging, Productivity, Social media, Social media marketing, Time Management Tagged With: attorneys-who-spend-too-much-time-on-blogs, blogging-as-a-attorney, blogging-takes-too-much-time, how-much-do-attorneys-spend-on-marketing, how-much-time-should-an-attorney-spend-marketing, how-to-get-a-legal-job-in-this, social-media-takes-too-much-time, spending-too-much-time-blogging, spending-too-much-time-on-social-media, spending-too-much-tme-on-social-media, too-much-time-social-media, why-does-social-media-marketing-take-so-much-time

We’re putting our lives on a diet

February 7, 2012 by David M. Ward

After decades of acquiring and complicating, I’m going in the opposite direction. I’m downsizing. Uncomplicating. Uncluttering.

This week, my wife and I started a major spring cleaning. (You can do that in February in California.) We’re going through closets and storage cabinets, file boxes and dresser drawers.

It’s astounding to see how much we have collected. We’re not pack rats. We’re pretty good about “not buying too much” and “not keeping too much”. And yet we’ve already gone through and disposed of (trash, re-cycle, give-away) more than I thought we even owned.

Simple. Clean. Minimal. Relaxing. That’s the feeling I want to achieve.

I donated over thirty boxes of books to my library bookstore. They were taking up room in storage. If I want to read any of them again, I’ll replace them with an ebook version.

Lean. Light. Uncomplicated.

We’re getting rid of TVs we no longer watch. (We cancelled cable two years ago. If there’s anything we want to see, we watch it online.) And furniture we no longer use. We’re going through everything, drawing hard lines about what we will keep and what we won’t.

Less. Fewer. Modern. Efficient.

One of my goals is to become paperless this year. We’ve already converted most of our billing accounts to online. We no longer carry subscriptions to newspapers or magazines. We print very few documents anymore. We prefer to save them to Evernote where they are searchable and safely stored in the cloud.

I work from home. My wife and I agree, we want to live and work in an environment that is simple and uncluttered. Sometimes it’s difficult to get rid of possessions we’ve had in our lives for many years, but once you begin, it gets easier. And since we began, I can tell you it feels great.

Filed Under: Personal development, Productivity Tagged With: attorney-marketing, simply-unclutter, the-simply-and-uncluttered-life-march-25-2012, unclutter-uncomplicate, uncluttered-life

Not all clients are the same. Don’t treat them all the same.

February 6, 2012 by David M. Ward

Some clients are better than others. You know the ones I’m talking about. They have more work for you (or bigger cases), they pay on time, and they don’t call you every other day to ask the same questions you already answered three times before.

I’m sure you have your own list of what constitutes a better client.

Better clients are worth more to us and we should acknowledge this. We shouldn’t feel guilty about treating some clients better than others or trying to treat everyone the same because it’s fair or politically correct.

Look, if someone is paying me $150,000 a year, I’m going to give him more attention than someone who pays me $1,000 for a one time transaction. That’s just the way it is.

Of course today’s $1,000 client could refer tomorrow’s $10,000 client who could, in turn, refer next year’s $100,000 client. And so the notion of treating some clients better than others does not imply that it’s okay to treat some clients below a minimum standard of care. In fact, we should strive to exceed that minimum whenever possible. But let’s face it, not all clients deserve the same treatment.

Seth Godin agrees.

So does Richard Koch, the author of The 80/20 Principle:

“Marketing, and the whole firm, should devote extraordinary endeavour towards delighting, keeping for ever and expanding the sales to the 20 per cent of customers who provide 80 per cent.”

Make a list of your “twenty percent” clients, the ones who provide the bulk of your income. Start paying more attention to them, acknowledging them and strengthening your relationship with them. Give them more of your (non-billable) time, spend more on their Christmas gifts, and do whatever you can do to convert them from being merely “satisfied” clients to raving fans.

And while you’re at it, make a similar list for your referral sources.

By the way, the same idea applies to prospects. Some are better than others. You should have a plan in place to give more to those who are worth more.

Filed Under: Client relations, Law office management, Leverage Tagged With: clients-are-not-all-the-same, customers-are-not-all-the-same, how-to-use-evernote-4-for-law-office-management, lawerys-is-the-standard-of-care-the-same-for-all-clients, not-all-clients-are-the-same, seth-godin-10000-raving-fans-quote, seth-godin-treating-all-customers-the-same, sterotyping-clients-and-treating-them-the-same, treating-some-clients-better-than-others, what-is-it-when-you-treat-everyone-the-same, why-do-attorney-treat-their-clients-better