How to create a ‘shock and awe’ marketing campaign for your law practice

June 7, 2012 by
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An estate planning attorney in northern California liked my post about “shock and awe” marketing campaigns. This is where you deliver to the prospective client “an experience that is so compelling, they are almost powerless to say no.”

He asked how he might create one for his practice, “without seeming tacky or unprofessional or violating some state bar rules?”

As for bar rules, obviously you shouldn’t contact someone you are not permitted to contact or say anything you’re not permitted to say. Don’t send testimonials, for example, if they are not allowed in your jurisdiction.

As for appearing unprofessional, you need to put together a campaign you are comfortable with, given your practice area, your target market, and your individual style. All aspects of your marketing should be congruent with the image you have or are trying to convey.

A “shock and awe” campaign does two things. First, it heaps on benefits and urgency in a way that gets the prospect’s attention. There’s so much evidence in front of them, they cannot ignore it. Second, it compresses the time frame they might ordinarily take to digest that information, thus heightening the affect. In war, a shock and awe campaign is meant to demoralize the enemy, hastening their surrender. The objective is the same in marketing, that is, you want the prospect to surrender to the proposition you put in front of them. The difference is that in marketing, you don’t want to demoralize the prospect, only his apathy or objections.

One thing every attorney should do is to include as much,”third party documentation” as possible. If you say it, they can doubt it as self-serving. When someone else says it, it carries more weight. An estate planning attorney would want to include articles from consumer experts, for example, explaining, “what happens when you die intestate,” and advising their readers not to do-it-themselves, but to “always hire an experienced estate planning attorney.”

If you are allowed to use testimonials, by all means use them. Let your clients tell your prospects why they should hire you: how you explained everything up front, answered all their questions, helped them get peace of mind, and so on. There’s nothing more persuasive.

To create your campaign, I recommend the following steps:

STEP ONE: ASSEMBLE ALL MARKETING DOCUMENTS

Put together everything you have that could be construed as a marketing document, or could be turned into one. You might transcribe the audio of a talk, print several blog posts, or take quotes from longer articles, memos, or briefs and paste them onto a single page.

Examples of marketing documents include:

  • Brochures about your/your firm’s capabilities
  • Reports, articles, white papers, audios, written by you, about your core practice areas
  • Articles about you, i.e., feature stories, interviews, announcements of milestones or awards
  • Content from lawyers, CPAs, financial planners, consumer bloggers, and other experts that tend to prove the need for what you do
  • FAQ’s about (a) the law and procedure, and (b) features of your practice, e.g., practice areas, office hours, payment terms, staff, parking, etc.
  • Scripts, slides, bullet points, notes from presentations you’ve given to prospective clients or referral sources
  • Answers to common objections. See my post on the seven reasons prospective clients don’t hire attorneys.
  • Testimonials (from clients) and endorsements (from influential non-clients).
  • Success stories about people who hired you and got the benefits or solutions they desired. And tales of woe about people who didn’t hire you or who waited or made a poor decision and got hurt.
  • Anything else that makes the case for hiring an attorney for the services you offer and why that attorney should be you.

You’ll also want one or more “sales letters”. This is a letter from you that tells the prospect what you are offering and “what’s in it for them” (the benefits). If all they read is this letter, they will know: what you do, why they need you, and what to do to take the next step.

The more documents you have, the better. The sheer weight of your documents is part of the affect. If you don’t have many documents, get to work creating them. Not only will they help you create an effective shock and awe campaign, you will be able to use them for other marketing purposes throughout your career.

STEP TWO: CREATE TIME LINES FOR TYPICAL CLIENT ENGAGEMENT PROCESSES

Not every client comes to you the same way. Some find your web site and fill out a contact form. Some ask you a question through social media that leads to a phone call. Some are referred by friends or colleagues and call your office directly. Others come via a professional who tells you they might have a referral and asks you for information they can pass along to their referral.

Each process is different and should be considered in putting together an effective campaign. Also, allow for differing levels of knowledge and “states of readiness,” such as:

  • Don’t know they have a problem/need
  • Aware they have a need, exploring alternative solutions
  • Starting to gather information on different attorneys
  • Currently represented but thinking of changing attorneys
  • Comparing attorneys/services
  • Already had a consultation with you, want more information
  • Former client, need to get them in for a review/update
  • Current client inquiring about one of your other services
  • Etc.

STEP THREE: CREATE YOUR CAMPAIGNS

Eventually, you should prepare “shock and awe” campaigns for each of the most common client processes. Take a look at how your last ten or twenty clients came to you to get an idea of where to start.

There are three basic types of campaigns:

  • All at once. This is where you send everything in one package. It is the simplest campaign and can make a big impact, but consider what you will send or say to prospects if they aren’t ready to hire you right now. You might want to hold back a few items for a follow up.
  • Spaced distribution. This is where you provide a series of two to five or more packages, sent out over a period of a few days to a few weeks. Each package might deal with a different aspect of your services, i.e., tax advantages, liability, peace of mind, etc., or each successive package might build upon the prior one, turning up the heat until the final package makes “an offer they can’t refuse.”
  • Drip campaigns. This is where you dole out a little bit of information at a time over an extended period of time. This isn’t a typical “shock and awe” campaign because of the extended time line, but it could have the same effect if you build your “case” properly and include an effective “closing argument” towards the end of the series.

Also, consider how you will deliver this information. A package delivered by messenger will have a bigger impact than an email. A letter in the mailbox is much more likely to be read and responded to than sending them to a web page. You must consider these various methods and their relative costs in putting together your campaigns.

Include “fear of loss” elements, i.e., deadlines for special offers, limited quantities, or impending changes in the law. Adding these to the weight of evidence you have provided could be just enough to get fence sitters to take action.

Finally, always leave the door open to go back to your prospects with more information and new offers. You may have done everything right in your campaign to shock them into realizing why they need to act, but if they aren’t ready, they aren’t ready. Stay in touch with them, continue to deliver information, and one day, perhaps years later, they may shock you by giving you a call to make an appointment.

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Filed Under: Image, Marketing legal services Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The magic of practicing law

June 6, 2012 by
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I live in a gated community and this week the streets are being re-paved. Our community is a labyrinth of cul-de-sacs and there is only one way in and out. Our street is partially blocked right now and we have to take a circuitous detour to get to and from the front gate.

The contractor has had to coordinate the closing of alternating streets to allow egress and ingress. There was a resident meeting explaining the schedule and a color coordinated street map and the schedule for paving them is posted on our community’s web site.

One street is finished and it is beautiful. The worn pavement and faded markings have been replaced with a smooth, deep black finish and crisply drawn lane lines and cross walks. Everything is new and pristine, a first class job through and through.

I enjoy watching the work being done almost more than the finished job. I grew up in a newly developed community and as a kid, loved watching the construction workers and their machines. Part of it was knowing that the workers were doing things I couldn’t do. I marveled at how they took truckloads of raw materials and out of chaos created finished buildings. As an outsider, I could only watch and appreciate the magic.

I had some of the same feelings as I watched the workers and machines paving our street. They poured the asphalt, rolled and smoothed it, and painted the white and yellow lines. I have tremendous respect for the professionals who planned and are executing this job. It is as much art as engineering. And yet to them, it’s just another job. It’s what they do every single day and there’s nothing artistic or magical about it.

I couldn’t help thinking that most people don’t know what attorneys do or how we do it, and that while few want to watch us at work, what we do is indeed magical. We are artists, engineers, and builders. With our words and ideas, we change minds, we help people prosper, we fight for freedom. Without us, the wheels of civilization would stop turning.

Never take your skills for granted. Most people don’t know what we do or how we do it, but what we do is magical.

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Filed Under: Inspiration, Legal industry Tagged With: ,

3 smart ways to create content your prospects really want to read

June 5, 2012 by
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Have you ever struggled to come up with ideas for your blog or newsletter? After you read this blog post, you’ll never have that problem again. Even better, you’ll be able to create content your target market actually wants to read.

It makes no difference whether you have a static web site, a blog, an ezine or a paper newsletter. There are three proven ways to find out what people want to know. You can use these strategies for any kind of content–seminars, webinars, white papers, articles, audios and videos–and come up with the perfect idea every time.

CONTENT CREATION METHOD NO. 1

Let’s start with the most obvious way to find out what your target market wants to read: asking them.

You can email (or write) your list, or ask via your blog or through your social media channels, to find out what people want to know. A free online poll service like Surveymonkey makes it easy.

When a lot of people say, “I want to know X,” you can be fairly certain that this will be a popular topic for a blog post or newsletter article.

For best results, give people a choice of topics: “Do you want to read about A or B?” “Rank these five titles in order of preference. . .”. Of course, this means you will have to come up with the titles you are asking them to choose between so you might want to start your inquiry with one of the next two methods.

CONTENT CREATION METHOD NO. 2

Every day, your target market searches online for information and solutions. A keyword tool like Google Keyword Tool or Wordtracker.com will tell you precisely what words are being searched for and in what volume.

You should have a list or spreadsheet of your keywords and phrases. If not, using a keyword tool will help you get one started. Searching on words like, “Los Angeles divorce lawyer” will lead you to related words and phrases to add to your list.

You’ll also be able to see the volume of searches for each keyword, and the number of web sites that use them, i.e., your competition.

Although optimally, you want a combination of a high number of searches and a low number of competing sites, the purpose of this exercise isn’t to find the best keyword deals for you to bid on, it’s to find keywords that allow you to create content people want to read. Therefore, for writing purposes, it doesn’t matter how much competition you have for those keywords.

Nevertheless, if you can find variations of high-ranking keywords with low competition, i.e., “Certified family law specialist Torrance,” instead of “Los Angeles divorce lawyer,” you will increase your chances of getting search engine traffic, especially if  you use those keywords in the title, in subheads, in the text itself, and in the image tags.

CONTENT CREATION METHOD NO. 3

In school, we were punished for copying off of someone else’s paper. In marketing, copying others can get you a gold star.

The simplest, and arguably the most accurate way to find out what your prospects want to read is to look at what they are reading on other blogs. If a particular topic is popular on the blog of another lawyer with a similar target market, you can be fairly certain that topic will be popular on yours.

Create a list or spreadsheet of your competition’s blogs and add the urls of the posts they’ve published recently. Then, look at each post and note how many tweets or Likes those posts received. If they don’t have buttons for Twitter or Facebook, type the URL into twitter to see the number of re-tweets or mentions. You could also find a non-competitive lawyer, i.e., in another state or province, and ask them which of their posts is getting the most traffic.

Now you know exactly what your target market wants to read and you can write content related to those topics. Don’t plagiarize the post. Write your own unique content, a different take on the subject, your own stories and so on, and change the title.

For example, if a lawyer is getting a lot of re-tweets and shares for a post entitled, “How to get joint custody in California,” you could write a post with the title, “Strategies for men seeking joint custody in a California divorce.”

With all of these methods, the key is to first let the market tell you what it wants, then go create it. You’ll save time, you’ll never run out of ideas, and you’ll always give people content they really want to read.

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Filed Under: Blogging, Communication, Marketing legal services, Newsletters, Online Marketing, Social media marketing, Web traffic Tagged With: , ,

How many lawyers really work from home?

June 4, 2012 by
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According to the latest US Census, 2% of lawyers now telecommute. That’s up 166% in the last ten years and it’s one of the fastest growing categories. But it’s still a small number.

I’m guessing that most of these lawyers don’t see clients. They write, research, and perform other functions that don’t regularly require meeting people in person.

I’m also guessing that if The Census had used a different word than “telecommute,” the results would have been different. I think a lot of attorneys do at least some of their work from home. They don’t call it telecommuting, however, a word that is not usually associated with professionals.

I also think a growing number attorneys, sole practitioners primarily, work almost exclusively from home. They see clients at an office suite where they have so many hours a month available for that purpose, or other arrangements, i.e., using a conference room or spare office in another attorneys suite.

I work from home. When I “see” a client (lawyer), it’s done over the phone. My overhead is a fraction of what it was when I had an office and I love not having to commute. If I was practicing today, however, I would still have an office.

For one thing, I got a lot of walk-in clients in my practice. Existing clients would bring their papers to the office when it was convenient for them and if they needed help with those papers, someone needed to be there to provide that help.

In addition, my clients needed to see me in person, even if it was only greeting them before turning them over to a member of my staff. They needed to see me wearing the uniform (suit and tie) and to see that I was successful (i.e., nice furniture, etc.) Most of all, they needed to see that I was physically present, committed to the community and niche market that I served.

Over the years, I’ve talked to attorneys who have an office in their home and see clients there. I think this is a mistake. Clients have expectations about what an attorney does and they expect attorneys to have an office. When you deviate from what they expect, they get nervous. They may not say anything but they are surely wondering why you can’t afford a real office.

Without an office, it’s more difficult to attract clients. There are exceptions–entertainment law, for example, where working from (an expensive) home may actually provide even better posture. But for most attorneys, not having an office, in my opinion, costs more in terms of lost business and referrals than the amount saved by working from home.

I would probably have a smaller office today, however. You don’t need as much space today because a lot of work attorneys need done can be outsourced to virtual assistants or employees who work from home. I talked to a secretary for a California attorney recently. If she hadn’t told me, I would never had known she lives in Florida and works from home.

How about you? Do you do some or all of your work from home? Do you have a smaller office than you had in prior years? Let me know in the comments.

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Filed Under: Law office management, Legal industry, Marketing legal services Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

How to make people like you–part 2

June 1, 2012 by
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Would you like to know how to make people like you? No, I’m not talking about cloning. (Sorry. And yes, I used the same joke in part 1 of this post. I just like that joke.) Being liked is important because clients prefer to hire lawyers they know, like, and trust. And no, “likable lawyer” is not an oxymoron. (Sorry. . . I can’t stop myself. . .).

Did you laugh when you read the previous paragraph? Maybe a snicker? If you did, there’s a good chance you like me a little more. Making people laugh is a great way to make them like you. If humor isn’t on your list of skills, try the next best thing: “a positive, happy outlook and perspective on life.” People like to be around happy people because everyone wants to be happy.

Another way to get people to like you is to find something you have in common. People tend to like people who are like them. When we meet someone for the first time, we ask questions to find out things about them, don’t we? We do that because we’re looking for commonalities.

Where did you go to school? Me too!

You know Joe Mantenegro? We used to be neighbors!

Your son plays soccer? Mine too!

When you find and acknowledge something you have in common, you have a bridge for moving forward. Tension dissipates, the conversation continues, and you tend to like each other because you share a common experience or interest.

I was getting my hair cut yesterday. Some of the men (and boys) were talking about sports. Okay, they were all talking about sports because that’s what you talk about in a barber shop. It’s what guys talk about, right? Because it’s a shared interest and because guys aren’t going to talk about weddings or graduations, thank you.

When you meet someone new, ask questions to find out what they do, where they are from, and what they are interested in. You can use this acronym as a reminder: F.O.R.M.: Family, Occupation, Recreation, Motivation. One of these will undoubtedly lead to something you have in common.

If not, you can always ask, “How about those Kings?”

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Filed Under: Communication, Marketing legal services, Networking, Relationship marketing Tagged With: , , , , ,

How to get more clients to schedule an appointment

May 31, 2012 by
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There’s a precept in marketing, and especially copy writing, that says you will get a higher response to your offer when you, “tell people what to do”.

Don’t leave it up to them to figure out. Tell them what to do, even if it’s obvious.

If you want people to call to schedule an appointment, tell them WHAT to do (call 888-555-4321), WHY (to get a free consultation and find out if you have case), and WHEN (now, between 8-5pm weekdays, any time 24/7).

If you leave something out, fewer people will call.

And whatever it is you’re telling them to do, make it easy for them to do it. Filling out a simple form on your web site with spaces for the information they’ll need to submit will get a higher response than an application they’ll need to print, fill out, and fax.

Making it easy also means being clear about what to do. Tell them what form to fill out and what button to push. Tell them what will happen after they do it.

Make it so clear that it is almost impossible to misunderstand.

And don’t change something that’s working. Once people get used to doing things a certain way, changes risk confusion and a lower response.

My wife went to pay our electric bill online. Last month, all she had to do was click the button that said “Submit.” This month, without telling anyone about it, the “Submit” button was now labeled “Save.”

She didn’t want to save, she wanted to pay. Where was the submit button?

She wound up calling the company to make sure she was doing it right. The person she spoke with admitted they were getting hundreds of emails from customers who were confused by the change. How many customers will be late paying their bills this month because they are confused?

Side note: Someone should fire the genius who thought “Save” was better than “Submit” or “Pay Now”. Yikes.

Another side note: If they’re getting hundreds of emails from confused customers, uh, here’s a thought: change the button back to “Submit”.

If you want to get more people calling, clicking, or pulling out their credit card, tell them precisely what to do and make it as easy as pie for them to do it.

If you’re not sure, show your page or email to a ten year old kid and ask them to follow the instructions. If they’re not completely clear on what to do, if they hesitate in any way, you’ve got work to do.

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Filed Under: Communication, Copywriting, Marketing legal services, Presentations, Salesmanship, Writing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I wish I knew this before I opened my law practice

May 30, 2012 by
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In high school and college I did some entry level work during the summers. I was a stock clerk at a department store, delivered flowers, that sort of thing. In law school, I worked as a law clerk.

By the time I graduated law school, the sum total of my work experience was. . . nothing to write home about.

I opened my own law office about a year after graduating and passing the bar exam. I had very little experience as a lawyer, no clients, and no money. Most importantly, my network of contacts was almost non-existent.

As you can imagine, my first few years of practice were very difficult. If I had known what it would take to start a practice and make a go of it, I might have done things differently.

Yes, I knew it would be rough. But I naively thought I would make up for what I lacked with hard work and determination. Like Mary Richards, Mary Tyler Moore’s character on the 1970’s TV show, I had spunk.

Unfortunately, spunk doesn’t buy groceries.

Anyway, things would undoubtedly have been different if I’d had a network of contacts before I opened my office. When you have relationships with the right people, you can leverage those relationships to get clients, leads, introductions, and advice. You can hit the ground running in a new practice. You’re not starting completely from scratch when you can tap into other people’s established networks.

The lesson is this: build your network before you need it. Or as Harvey MacKay puts it, “Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty.”

It’s more difficult to build a network when you need it. “Hello, I’d like to introduce myself and ask you if you can send me some business.” And yet, it can be done. If you approach them the right way, and you approach enough of them, strangers will help you. But it’s much easier to get that help from people who already know, like, and trust you.

If you’re thinking about opening your own practice, build your network before you make the move. You don’t need a huge network–a few well-connected individuals is all you need to start. They can lead you to others.

First, identify by category the types of people you would like to know. Then, look for ways to find and meet people in those categories.

If you have already opened your own practice, it’s never too late to start building your network.

The best day to plant a tree is 100 years ago. The second best day is today.

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Filed Under: Marketing legal services, Networking, Referral sources, Relationship marketing Tagged With: , , , , , ,

How to make your marketing irresistible

May 29, 2012 by
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Darren Hardy, publisher of Success Magazine, writes about an interview he did with marketing legend Dan Kennedy for a recent issue. I’m a big fan of Dan, who is well known for using bold, some would say outrageous concepts to gain attention and win the sale. He’s one of the best marketing minds in a crowded field and if you have not read his books, I suggest you do so as soon as possible.

One of the subjects discussed during the interview was “shock and awe marketing.” This is where the marketer (that’s you) delivers to the prospective client an experience that is so compelling, they are almost powerless to say no.

Hardy was familiar with the concept. He said that as a young man selling real estate, he used this strategy to get more than his fair share of coveted expired listings to re-list with him.

He describes his “Shock and Awe Blitz Campaign,” as follows:

I made up in hustle and aggressiveness what I lacked in age and experience. I developed what I called my Shock and Awe Blitz Campaign. Once I set my sights on you, you were either going to love me or hate me, but you would not be able to ignore nor forget me.

Between 6 and 7 a.m. the morning your listing expired, I’d be standing on your doorstep asking to relist your home with me (immediately separating myself from everyone else and delivering a little shock). Sometimes this is all it took, but if not…

Later that day you would get a package hand-delivered by an assistant, that we affectionately called “Da-Bomb,” because it was big and stuffed full of combustible materials explaining why I was “Da-Bomb.”

Then in the early evening an assistant would show up and hand them a SOLD sign and say, “This is a gift from Darren Hardy; you will need this soon after you hire him to sell your house.”

Later that evening I would stop by in person and ask for the listing again.
(Key point: More than 50% of the time the listing was won or lost within the first 24 hours. This is why I blitzed all-out during that time.)

If the listing still hadn’t been secured I would then have something hand-delivered or mailed to them every day for at least two weeks along with a daily call from me personally.

It wasn’t long before they would call exasperated, exclaiming that if I would market their house like I market myself, I had the job. Shock and awe baby!

Now I know there are lawyers reading this and thinking, “I could never do anything like that.” But they’re thinking inside a box that’s labeled, “lawyers can’t approach prospective clients,” or another box labeled, “that’s undignified.”

They need a new box.

You may not be able to approach prospective clients this way, or any way, but couldn’t you go back to a former client with a compelling campaign to win their business?

I’ll answer for you: yes.

What about a shock and awe campaign targeted not at prospective clients but at prospective referral sources?

Sounds like a plan.

Could you do something like this with a publisher, meeting planner, or the media?

Yes, yes, and yes.

Hardy challenges his readers to create a shock and awe package and campaign and I second the motion. Put together a collection of compelling evidence as to why you are the best lawyer for the job, and a process for delivering it. This could be as simple as a timed series of letters or emails that successively build upon each other, making the case for why someone should choose you.

At the very least, you should have a “shock and awe” package you can deliver to prospects who ask about your services.

In a world filled with lawyers who (appear to) do the same things you do, you cannot rely on charm and good looks to get clients to choose you. Unless, of course, your charm and good looks are irresistible.

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Filed Under: Image, Marketing legal services Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Organization 101: File it, don’t pile it

May 25, 2012 by
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I’m looking at the table I use for a desk in my home office. There is an in basket, a vertical file holder, and one stack of files and papers. At first glance, it is the desk of an organized person. It’s tidy and there is only one (short) stack of files and papers.

At second glance, it is a mess. It’s a mess because the files and papers in that one stack belong in a file drawer, not piled on the desk.

But on third glance, it is the desk of a genius: someone smart enough to know that filing (or scanning) the papers in that stack can wait until other, more important tasks are done.

At least that’s the way I choose to look at it. And being organized is subjective, isn’t it?

But only to a point.

We’ve all seen (and maybe been guilty of having) desks that look like the aftermath of a tornado. I don’t care what the owner of that desk might say or think, they don’t know where everything is. The owner of a desk like that is not organized.

But look, if you can find the file or paper you need (rule of thumb: thirty seconds or less) and you feel in control of your work place, who am I to suggest you need to get more organized. If, on the other hand, you are often unable to find what you need and you’re not happy about it, it’s time to do something about it.

Un-piling your desk isn’t difficult. I think the hard part for some people is the notion that if they file something away, they won’t remember a task they need to do or they won’t remember where they filed something they need. Ironically, that’s exactly what their mess of a desk does.

The solution is to have a system that (a) allows you to remember what you need to do, and (b) lets you quickly find what you have filed when you need it. That’s what Getting Things Done is all about. That’s what a program like Evernote allows you to do.

Getting things out of your head and onto paper or its digital equivalent is the first plank in the Getting Things Done platform. The second is having a system that allows you to regularly review your lists of tasks so that you will be reminded of them and can choose what to do next. The third plank is having a reference system that allows you to put things away, out of sight, but easily retrievable.

For me, filing reference material was the hardest part of the system, at least in a paper based world. For one thing, much of the reference material I collect has more than one purpose and could be filed in more than one place. Indecision often led me to defer filing and I wound up with boxes filled with paper.

Today, I file most things digitally. The pile on my desk will be scanned into Evernote. With Evernote’s  keyword searching capability, and other tools like tagging and “note links,” I can quickly find what I’m looking for, as I detail in Evernote for Lawyers: A Guide to Getting Organized & Increasing Productivity.

If your desk is a mess, it’s time to un-pile and smile.

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Filed Under: Productivity Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Could you charge more for your legal services? Here’s how to find out

May 24, 2012 by
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Could you charge higher fees for your legal services than you charge right now?

What if you could get paid one-third more than you now get without losing any business. Wouldn’t that be cool? Or, maybe you might lose some business but increase your net income because of the higher fees you are paid from everyone else. Also cool.

Most attorneys set their fees by looking at what other attorneys in their market charge. They don’t want to charge a lot more or a lot less so they play it safe. But some attorneys do ask for more and they get it.

True, these higher paid attorneys may have more experience or a higher-profile reputation. They might offer more value to their clients. Perhaps they are better “sales people” or have more chutzpah. Maybe they took a chance when quoting fees and got lucky.

The point is that some attorneys get paid more than other attorneys for doing essentially the same work. What if you could, too?

There is a way to find out if you could charge more. No, not by asking your clients or prospects if they would be willing to pay more. They have a certain, um, bias, don’t you think? No, if you want to find out if people are willing to pay more you have to charge more, and see if they pay it.

But hold on. Don’t raise your fees across the board just yet. That’s too risky. You don’t know if this will be successful. What if you ask for too much and lose too many clients? Not good. Conversely, what if you don’t ask for enough? Your clients may pay ten percent more without flinching, but how do you know they wouldn’t have paid twenty percent more?

The answer is to test higher fees with small groups of clients and/or prospects and measure the results.

Pay-per-click advertising is a great way to do “split testing”. Basically, you quote one fee to the first inquiry and a higher fee to the second. You alternate quotes until you have a meaningful sample of responses and clients. With enough responses, you’ll be able to see which fee is producing (a) the most clients, and (b) the highest income.

Pay-per-click advertising has become extremely expensive and you might not want to use it as an ongoing marketing tool. But for short term testing purposes, wouldn’t it be worth it to find out conclusively that you could safely charge a lot more than you do now?

If your practice isn’t amenable to advertising, there are other ways to test fees with smaller groups of prospects. If you do seminars, for example, you could quote every other attendee a different fee. Or quote different fees at every other seminar.

The results of price testing are often surprising. You would think that charging higher fees would decrease the number of sales (clients) but that is not always the case. Sometimes you sell just as many at the higher price. And sometimes, believe it or not, you sell more at the higher price.

But you’ll never know unless you test.

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Filed Under: Advertising, Attorneys fees, Increase your income, Law office management, Marketing legal services Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,
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