David M. Ward, Author at The Attorney Marketing Center

How much money are you leaving money on the table?

September 7, 2021 by David M. Ward

Every attorney has a list of prospective clients they’ve communicated with at some point but who haven’t (yet) hired them.

People who visited their website and filled out a form. People who called and asked questions. People they consulted with about their case or situation.

There are many reasons why someone who needs legal help contacts an attorney and doesn’t hire them. Some of those reasons are insurmountable. Some are an issue of timing.

They want to hire an attorney but. . .

They need time to get the money
They need to get buy-in from someone
They need time for their problem to worsen before they’re willing to spend the money
They’re still trying to fix the problem themselves
They’re hoping the problem will go away on its own
The problem did go away, but they’ve got another one they haven’t mentioned
They want to explore other options
They may have lost the attorney’s name and number

Just to name a few.

You have lists, don’t you? Lists of prospective clients who need your help but haven’t taken the next step?

Some of them will eventually contact you again and hire you.

But most won’t.

They need more information about their problem, about their options, or about your services. They want to talk to you again. They want you to convince them to take the next step, to assure them you really can help them, to tell them everything will be okay.

Unfortunately, by the time they realize this, they will have signed up with another attorney.

Which is why the expression, “The fortune is in the follow-up” is true.

If you follow up with the people on your lists, stay in touch with them, remind them you can help them (and that they still need help), and invite them to contact you again, more people will hire you.

If you don’t, they won’t.

Most people don’t buy a car the first time they visit the showroom, most people don’t get married after the first date, and most people don’t hire an attorney after one conversation.

Which is why you need to follow-up.

Write or call or use email to automate the process, but don’t leave the follow-up to them.

That’s not their job, it’s yours. And you are well-paid for it.

How to use an email newsletter to follow-up

Filed Under: Communication, Marketing legal services

The simplest way to be more productive

September 2, 2021 by David M. Ward

If you’re not getting the results you want in your work, you may be trying to do too much.

Which means you might get more done by doing less.

Take a few minutes to examine your schedule and see where you might need to cut down.

Too many commitments

When you take on too many cases or clients at one time and you can’t keep up with the work, the work suffers. To do your best work, you may need to hire more help or be more selective about the cases or clients you accept.

Too many projects or goals

Not everything on your list is equally important. You must ruthlessly prioritize your lists so you can focus on your most important tasks and goals.

It’s better to schedule 3 or 4 important tasks for the day, and get them done, than to complete (or attempt) 10 or 15 less important tasks. It’s better to set one or two achievable goals, and achieve them, than to reach for the stars and fail to get off the ground.

Too many hours

Humans are good for about 3 hours of peak mental performance per day. After that, we start to lose focus and the quality of our work suffers. Schedule two to three hours for “deep work” each day, early in the day if possible, and use the rest of the day for less-demanding tasks.

Working until exhaustion, or “eight to faint” as a friend of mine describes it, is never a good idea. Neither is working without taking breaks.

Many attorneys work too much. They see doing more as the best way to achieve more. Too often, it does the opposite.

If you’re not getting the results you want, you may be trying to do too much. Try doing less and you might find yourself accomplishing more.

Filed Under: Productivity

Give yourself permission to be a beginner

September 1, 2021 by David M. Ward

When you started practicing law, there were a lot of things you didn’t know and couldn’t do.

You put on a good face and hoped nobody figured out that that this was your first oral argument or your first negotiation.

You were nervous. Wished there was another way. But you did it.

Because you had to.

You took the chance that you would mess up or be found out, and you got away with it. Today, you can laugh at the memory of how awkward you felt and how bad your first efforts must have looked.

Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way, says, “It is impossible to get better and look good at the same time. Give yourself permission to be a beginner.”

You did that when you were new and felt you had no other choice.

How about today?

What new skill are you avoiding learning because you don’t want to look bad or feel uncomfortable? What’s on your marketing to-do list, for example, that you keep telling yourself you’ll get around to but never do?

What are you not doing because you do have other options?

If you want your practice to continue to grow, you might have to pretend you don’t have any choice. You have to do what you’ve been avoiding or you won’t make the rent.

Because that might be the only way you’ll give yourself permission to be a beginner.

Filed Under: Marketing legal services

A stupidly simple source of content ideas

August 31, 2021 by David M. Ward

You need ideas for your blog or newsletter. No worries. Just check out your competition’s websites and see what they’re writing about.

Their sites are a potential goldmine of content ideas, written from the perspective of a lawyer speaking to prospective clients.

Read through their blogs, see if they’ve covered any topics you haven’t covered. . . and. . . cover them.

You can also look for articles on subjects you have covered and see what they did differently. You might get ideas for new posts or updates on the subject.

You might agree with a post, write a similar post, and provide your own examples or client success stories.

You might disagree with a post and explain why.

If a lawyer wrote a short post, you might write a longer one and explain things they didn’t talk about.

If they wrote a lengthy post, you might write a shorter post, or a series of short posts on each of their sub-topics.

If they are in a state or country with different laws or procedures, you might write an opinion piece on why your jurisdiction should follow suit.

While you’re on their site, check out their blog comments. See what their visitors like and the questions they ask. The odds are your visitors have the same questions.

If they have a newsletter, sign up for it. They may offer additional content to subscribers that you canâ€™t access on the website.

In short, a visit to some of your competitor’s sites is a simple way to get content ideas. Probably more ideas than you can shake a stick at.

More ways to find ideas for content: here

Filed Under: Blogging, Content creation, Newsletters

Why do lawyers go out of business so infrequently?

August 30, 2021 by David M. Ward

According to The Bureau of Labor Statistics, 70% of business owners fail by their 10th year in business. In some industries, the failure rate is much higher.

So why do lawyers and law firms fail much less often?

Lawyers close shop because they don’t like the work or they find something else they’d like to do, but not so many leave because they couldn’t make it. Even with plenty of competition and tough times, lawyers can hang in there if they want to.

But why?

Many people start a business who have never run a business before. They may be good at making widgets or installing water heaters, but as Michael Gerber points out in The E-Myth, those skills don’t necessarily qualify someone to start and run a business.

But isn’t that also true for lawyers?

Just because we know how to prepare a lease or take a deposition doesn’t mean we’re qualified to run a law practice.

In addition, lawyers are far more risk adverse and often lack “people skills” that are the driving force of many businesses.

So why do we have better numbers?

Overhead and margin.

Lawyers have no inventory, lower rent, lower debt service, and a lower cost of doing business. It takes a lot less income to keep the doors of a law office open compared to many other businesses.

In addition, most businesses have smaller margins compared to a law practice. A business might markup their products by a few percentage points, requiring a lot of sales to make a profit, whereas a lawyer might need only one or two cases or clients a month to do the same thing.

The bottom line, therefore, is the bottom line. Lawyers don’t go out of business as often because they have staying power.

Lower expenses and higher margins give us time to learn how to build and manage a practice. We can survive lean times and growing pains and stick around long enough to become successful.

But don’t take anything for granted.

There are still lean times. Competition that wants to eat our lunch. A lot to learn and a lot to do.

If you’re like a lot of lawyers I know, you wouldn’t have it any other way.

Filed Under: Inspiration, Law office management

Networking math

August 27, 2021 by David M. Ward

We tend to think of networking as arithmetic. The more people we know, the more likely it is that someone will need our services or know someone they can refer.

But it’s not arithmetic. It’s multiplication.

It’s not just about the people you know, it’s about the people they know.

A new contact may never need your services themselves, they might never send you referrals, but might know people who know people who will.

When you meet someone new, therefore, don’t look “at” them, look “through” them. Who do they know? Who could they lead you to?

If you meet your new contact in a networking-type setting where giving referrals and introductions is expected, tell your new contact what you do, describe your ideal client, and also describe your ideal referral source.

If they know someone who might be a good fit, ask them to introduce you.

If you meet them under different circumstances, it’s a longer process, but unlike a formal networking group, there’s no competition and you might make some great new connections.

One new contact might lead you to dozens of new clients; if that contact is well-connected, if they are a center of influence in your target market or your community, they might lead you to enough business to put you in another tax bracket.

Yes, it can be a lot of work. The good news is that you don’t need hundreds of new contacts to make your networking efforts worthwhile, you only need one.

Because one can lead you to many more.

How to get more referrals from lawyers and other professionals

Filed Under: Networking, Referrals

Thank you

August 26, 2021 by David M. Ward

Every day, we’re presented with opportunities to say thank you.

To the new client who chooses you instead of any other lawyer, the existing client who sends you a referral, your assistant for covering for you when you’re late, the stranger who opens the door open for you.

And we usually say it.

We say it so often we don’t always realize we’re saying it.

We’re being polite. Saying what we were raised to say when someone does something for you. And in terms of civility, that’s good. But for the important people in our life, we can do better.

A recent study found that when it comes to showing gratitude, quantity doesn’t matter as much as quality.

So, what can we do to show people we truly appreciate what they’ve done? We’re not just being polite, we mean it?

The best way to show someone you mean it is to mean it. To feel it inside you and to share that feeling with them. Not just with your words, but with your tone of voice, your eyes, your complete attention to them.

When you are sincerely grateful, they know.

When you send a thank you note or letter, you can show them you mean it by personalizing the letter. Use their name, mention what they’ve done, and tell them why it means something to you.

You can also show people you appreciate them by showing them you’re thinking about them. Sending articles or links to videos you’ve found, about subjects you think will interest them, is a simple way to do that.

Remembering things about themâ€”where they went to school, the names of their kids, the breed of their dogâ€” shows people you care about them as a person, not just someone who helps pay your mortgage.

If you want someone to know you appreciate them, do what fiction writers do: “Show, don’t (just) tell.”

Filed Under: Client relations, Thank you letters

Information vs. Implementation

August 25, 2021 by David M. Ward

When I was studying for the bar exam, someone told me (or I figured out on my own) that I needed to not just read and re-read the material, the “input” side of studying and preparing for the exam, I also needed to work on the output.

So I spent a lot of time re-writing my notes and taking practice exams.

Most of my classmates read and re-read the material, seeking to memorize it. I did that too, of course, but I’m convinced that it was working on output that made the biggest difference.

One thing I did that really tested me was to re-write my notes from memory.

I’d take a topic, say “negligence,” and write down everything I knew. As though I was going to teach the subject to a classroomâ€”or the bar examiners.

There’s no better way to see how much you know (or don’t). Try it with a case or contract you’re working on right now, or something you have to write. No notes, just write down everything you know.

Anyway, I thought about my experience this morning when I read that most successful people tend to invest as much time, if not more time, on implementation.

For every hour they spend reading or listening to information, they spend two hours applying what they learned.

If they take a course on marketing, for example, they don’t just sit on what they’ve learned; they use it. They write something, they practice doing something, they improve what they’ve been doing or they do something new.

Or so the theory goes.

But how does a lawyer measure something like this in terms of their practice? How do we know how much time we spend on output?

We write and speak a lot, and we get paid for our advice, but we do more thinking than anything else.

Is “thinking” considered output? Implementation?

If it is, we’re covered. We output all day long.

The ultimate marketing course for attorneys

Filed Under: Personal development

The one thing your first-time website visitors look for

August 24, 2021 by David M. Ward

Someone finds your website and sees a lot to look at and read. Articles and blog posts about the law, about their legal situation, about the services you offer, and about you.

But that’s not what they’re looking for. If they’re like you and and me and everyone else on the net, they’re looking for a reason to leave.

Something that tells them, “This isn’t for me.”

It’s survival instinct. There’s too much to read online and too little time to read it. So while you may provide a lot of great information and reasons to hire you, if you don’t give them a reason to stay and read it, most people won’t.

Your website needs a hook. Something that catches the reader’s attention and compels them to keep reading.

Usually, that will be a headline that promises something they want or makes them curious about something that interests them.

It might be a sub-heading, a bullet point, or a callout box. It might be a chart, a checklist, or a few words of bold text.

But you need something to stop them in their tracks and give you a few seconds of their time.

Once you have that, once they decide they won’t leave (yet), you need to give them more reasons to stay and learn about what you do and how you can help them.

But they’re still not ready to read everything, top to bottom. People scan and scroll, so give them something that allows them to do that.

If you do, they might read more. If you don’t, they won’t get to read all of your amazing insights, hear about your glorious victories, or convince themselves to take the next step.

So you (and your team) have your work cut out for you.

You may get it right, or you may get close, but close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. That’s why, statistically, the vast majority of first-time visitors leave and never return.

So you need one more hook.

You need to offer them the opportunity to receive something they wantâ€”a report or ebook, checklist or formâ€”something that ties in directly with whatever brought them to your website in the first place.

Something that makes them say “I want that” and be willing to give you their email address to get it.

If they do, you can stay in touch with them and continue to persuade them to take that next step.

Here’s how to do that

Filed Under: Copywriting, Online Marketing

Someone needs your help

August 23, 2021 by David M. Ward

Imagine you have a lawyer friend who asks for your advice.

Not about legal matters, about marketing.

They are in the same practice area as you and want your advice about getting more clients and increasing their income.

What would you say to them? What would you tell them to do?

You would probably start by asking questions.

What do you do now to bring in business? How well does this work? What have you tried before? Why did you stop? What other strategies have you considered?

You’d want to know what’s working for them and what isn’t, what they like and what they’re good at.

And then, you’d probably tell your friend to continue doing what’s working and look for ways to improve his results. And you’d suggest some additional strategies to consider.

Yes?

Okay.

You’ve probably figured out that this other lawyer we’re talking about is you. You’re having this conversation with yourself.

And you should because it’s often easier to see answers for others than for yourself.

If I asked you those questions, your answers would help clarify where you’re at and where you want to go, and we would then talk about what to do to get there.

You can have that same discussion with yourself, because you already know many of the questionsâ€”and the answers.

Questions, answers, marketing plan: The Attorney Marketing Formula

Filed Under: Marketing legal services, Marketing Plan