Why you should offer multiple versions of your legal services

April 4, 2014 by
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If you only offer one version of your services, you may be losing business and short-changing your income.

Think about it, when a prospective client thinks the fee you quoted is more than he wants to spend, he has two choices: hire you or go away. One of those choices is bad for both of you. If you offer two versions, however, the client might choose the lower cost version. They’ll get some of what they need now, they can get more later, and you get a client.

When I was selling my big ticket referral marketing course a few years back, I offered Basic and Deluxe versions. The Deluxe version offered more information and more help (consulting). Most lawyers chose the Deluxe package, which meant I got more customers and earned more on the average sale.

You want prospective clients to think “which package should I get?” instead of “should I get this?” In marketing, it’s called “alternative choice”. It’s used extensively  in direct response.  And sales people use it to set appointments: “could I come out tomorrow or would some time next week work better?”

If you currently offer a menu of different services, see if you can combine some of them into bigger packages. You’ll make it easier for clients to choose, because they will have fewer options, and you’ll earn more for the same work.

If you charge by the hour, see if you can break off some of what you do, package it, and offer it for a flat fee.

And, if you currently offer a package of legal services for one set fee, see if you could break up that package into two or three separate packages. You can charge more for each package separately, or offer a lower price if they sign up for both (or all three). Not only will you get more first time clients, you’ll also earn more for each component of your work.

Learn more about packaging your services. Click here.

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

Why some attorneys earn more than you do

January 16, 2014 by
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With my CLE compliance deadline approaching (I finshed, thanks for asking), I’m being inundated with emails offering all manor of courses. I noticed that some companies charge much more than others. In fact, prices are all over the place. I could get all 25 credits for $299 or for $60. Are one company’s courses five times better than another’s? Probably not.

So why would attorneys pay more for something they could easily get for less?

Because some companies are well known to them and have good reputations. Lawyers will order from a familiar company because it’s safe. They don’t need to check them out. Click, order, done. They may realize they are paying more but the convenience and peace of mind are worth it.

I’m sure some attorneys equate a higher price with higher quality. They assume that by paying more they’re getting better courses. Or conversely, that if they pay a low price they will get inferior quality.

Other attorneys simply don’t want to take the time to shop around. They’re busy.

Still others never considered looking at anything else. They simply order from the company they ordered from the last time. They are a satisfied customer. When they get an email from “their company,” they just order.

Make sense?

Well guess what? The same things are true for buying legal services. People will pay more to hire an attorney who is well known to them or who comes through a referral. They will pay more to attorneys who make it easy and convenient to hire them. They will pay more because they believe they are getting more value than they would get from a “cheaper” attorney.

Yes, some clients shop price. You don’t want them. You want the low-hanging fruit, the clients who are willing to pay more for intangibles that are important to them.

And that’s why some attorneys earn more than you do for the same services.

Want to get paid more? Get the Check: Stress-Free Legal Billing and Collection shows you how.

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Filed Under: Attorneys fees, Client loyalty, Fees and Billing, Increase your income, Legal industry, Marketing legal services

Opening a second law office

January 9, 2014 by
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Every four to six weeks I pop over to a small barber shop near my home. Snip snip, buzz buzz, and I’m done.  Its quick, they do good work, and it’s a heck of a lot cheaper than the fancy places I used to go.

On my last visit, I learned that the owner had opened a second location about ten miles away. Good for him. Entrepreneurship rocks.

He’s got more overhead, responsibilities, and risk, but he’s got the system down and I’m sure the second store will be running smoothly in no time.

He opened the second location, I’m sure, because he understands that there is only so much upside in a barber shop. Men don’t buy a lot of hair care products, we don’t get our nails done or our hair colored (usually), and in a small local shop, if all of the chairs are busy, there’s only so much the owner can do to increase his bottom line.

When I was practicing law, at one time I had three offices. I earned more, but frankly, it wasn’t worth the extra time and headaches. What I should have done, and what you should probably do if you’re considering opening a second (or third) office, is to work on increasing the profits in the first office.

There are lots of ways to increase profit in a law office. You can get bigger cases and better clients. You can get your former clients to hire you again, or hire you for different kinds of work. You can get more new business, from referrals or advertising or through the Internet, and short of needing a bigger office to accommodate additional staff, you can do all of this from one location.

On the other hand, clients will only travel so far to see a lawyer. Opening a second office is tempting. Does it ever make sense?

Theoretically, yes. In southern California, for example, if your office is in Los Angeles, you might want a second office in Orange County, and another in San Diego. Three different markets, with enough population to make the investment worthwhile.

But the investment in a second office encompasses far more than rent and employee expenses. You must hire, train, and supervise the new staff, which is difficult enough when you are present. There are additional liability and ethical risks, not to mention the risk to your reputation if something goes wrong.

If you’re thinking about opening a second law office, consider yourself warned. It’s not for the faint of heart.

If you have the resources and the thick skin, a second office is a viable way to increase your income. But don’t rush into it. A good place to start is to get a shared office arrangements where you can use a conference room to see clients. This will allow you to test both the market and your capacity for operating a satellite office, before you commit to something bigger and more permanent.

Proceed cautiously, limit your downside risk, and if things don’t go the way you had hoped, you won’t have to. . . forgive me. . . take a haircut.

Get more referrals. Quickly. Here’s how.

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Filed Under: Career satisfaction, Increase your income, Law office management, Legal industry Tagged With:

How to make next year better

December 26, 2013 by
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If you want to make next year better than this year, start by taking a look back at your practice over the last 12 months. Look at every new case or client and figure out where they came from.

Who referred them? How did they get on your list? What did you do to get them to call?

Do the same thing for repeat clients.

Also look at the quality of those clients. Some clients are better than others. They hire you more often, pay higher fees, and provide more referrals. Which of your new and repeat clients fall into the category of “better”? Where did they come from?

Grab your calendar, your bank statements, your website statistics, your notes and records, and take a mile high look at what you did last year and your results.

Look at your networking, speaking, writing, and blogging. Look at your keywords, your content, your offers.

What worked for you? What worked better? What worked best?

Look at your professional relationships. Who provided referrals or other help? Who referred more or better clients? Who provided you with important intangibles–support, ideas, friendship?

(Note to self: “Make sure to keep better records next year so the next time I do this analysis I’ll have everything in front of me.”)

You can see that some things you did this year worked great, many didn’t work at all, and most fell somewhere in the middle. The same with your relationships.

If you look hard enough, you will see that although a lot of things produced a lot of results (clients, money, subscribers), a few things produced the majority of your results. You may find that

  • Eighty percent of your results came from just twenty percent of your activities
  • Eighty percent of your referrals came from twenty percent of your clients and professional contacts
  • Eighty percent of your income came from twenty percent of your cases
  • Eighty percent of your new subscribers came from twenty percent of your posts, keywords, speaking gigs, ads, (etc.)

Or not. It doesn’t have to be eighty percent and twenty percent. But it is almost certain that a big percentage of your results came from a small percentage of efforts or sources.

Identify the activities that produced most of your results so you can do more of them. Identify the handful of referral sources that sent you most of your referrals or your best referrals, so you can strengthen your relationship with them and leverage those relationships to meet their counterparts.

If you want next year to be better than this year, you need to find what worked best and do more of it. To find the time and resources to do that, cut down on or eliminate things that didn’t work, or that didn’t work as well.

For me, one thing worked better than any other. My twenty percent activity was writing. The books, courses, and blog posts I produced brought me more traffic, subscribers, and revenue than anything else I did. Knowing this means I can make next year a better year by being more prolific.

I know where to focus. I know my priorities. I know where to spend my time.

How about you? What will you do more of next year? What can you cut down on or eliminate? How will you make next year better?

The Attorney Marketing Formula comes with a simple marketing plan that works. Check it out here.

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Filed Under: Increase your income, Law office management, Marketing legal services, Productivity, Time Management Tagged With: , ,

Law firm marketing: why you need to zag when other lawyers zig

December 20, 2013 by
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Most lawyers are pretty much like their counterparts. We all do the same kinds of work for the same kinds of clients and get it done with the same degree of skill and efficiency.

At least that’s what most people think.

If you’re better than average, you need to let the world know. Brag a little. Strut your stuff. Prove that you’re the better choice.

If you’ve got a successful track record, awards, endorsements, testimonials, and the like, they should be featured in your marketing.

But what if you don’t? Or what if your accolades aren’t any more impressive than the next guy’s or gal’s? What if you’re just getting started in your law career? How do you stand out in a massively crowded field?

You need to be different. When everyone zigs you need to zag.

If you do what everyone else does, the way everyone else does it, you’ll blend into the fabric of lawyerdom, where everyone looks alike and smells alike, and you will get lost.

Instead, I encourage you to get creative about how you package and present yourself. The good news is that because most lawyers are bland and boring conformists, it doesn’t take much to stand out.

What do most lawyers in your market do? What do they look like? What kinds of fees do they charge? How do they package their services? What’s on their website? What’s not on their website?

What can you do that’s different?

It might be something as simple as wearing red socks or a green bow tie. Make it your signature. You’ll stand out and people will remember you. It might also define you in a positive way. “Oh, she’s the lawyer who always wears a rhino pin on her lapel. She must have thick skin and a hard head.”

It might be something as complicated as taking a controversial stand on an important issue, when doing so risks alienating a large segment of the market. You might relinquish your claim to half of the market, but in return, gain the lion’s share of the remaining half.

If most lawyers charge by the hour, you can stand out by offering flat fees. If most lawyers avoid sharing information about their outside interests, you might stand out by promoting photos of your antique cuckoo clock collection.

As you make plans for the coming year, think about what you can do to stand out from the crowd. I know that might make you nervous. Lawyers don’t like to take chances. And if we’re honest about it, we really don’t want to stand out, unless it’s to get noticed for our good work.

But you should. Go a little crazy. Throw caution to the wind. Get down with your bad self. Because if you don’t get noticed and talked about and remembered, it might not matter how good you are at what you do.

Don’t like bow ties? This shows you more traditional ways to stand out in your law firm marketing

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Filed Under: Image, Increase your income, Marketing legal services, Marketing Plan Tagged With: ,

A high school class that has earned me a fortune

December 5, 2013 by
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I took a typing class in high school. I think we learned on Remingtons, ancient mechanical monsters that made typing a labor-intensive chore. The keys would get stuck, corrections were slow and frustrating, and typing line after line of “f-f-f-space, j-j-j-space” barked out by our instructor made the experience anything but enjoyable. But I learned to type.

Still, in my practice, I used a dictation machine and had a secretary do the typing. Even on a fast and forgiving IBM Selectric, typing was frustrating and it was better to let someone else do it.

Not anymore.

Today, with the computer I am able to type quickly and errors are no bother at all. I can get the words down “on paper” as soon as I think them. There’s no need to have someone else do the typing. In the time it would take to dictate, I can have it done myself.

I think that’s true of many attorneys today. But not all. Many attorneys never learned how to type, or if they did, they don’t do it well. If that’s you, I encourage you to do something about it. Take a typing class. There are many available online. Increase your speed and accuracy.

For the record, we’re talking about “touch typing” here–typing without looking at the keyboard. The two-finger jab, no matter how fast you are, doesn’t cut it.

The other day, I wrote about the value of practice for improving our skills. Typing is a skill with a huge return on time invested. The thought of spending 40 hours practicing typing may seem ridiculous when you bill $400 an hour, but it’s not ridiculous at all if it allows you to save 30 minutes a day for the rest of your career. You’ll be in the black in less than 90 days.

And, what if improving your typing skills allows you to lower your secretarial costs?

The idea is to “slow down so you can speed up.” Invest time to learn, practice, and improve. There is a cost, but there is a greater return.

I bought a new laptop last week and it arrived a few minutes ago. It’s my first experience with Windows 8 which I hear is not very intuitive. If I can’t figure it out, I’ll go online and learn what I need to know. I’ll take a class if I have to. Or. . . I might just trade that sucker in on a Mac.

Want more referrals? Quickly? Here’s what to do.

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Filed Under: Increase your income, Law office management, Leverage, Personal development Tagged With: ,

5 simple steps for improving productivity

November 19, 2013 by
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I’m going to give you a simple checklist for improving productivity. To use it, first make a list of everything you do in your work day. Do this over the course of a week so you don’t leave anything out.

Include everything: seeing clients, paperwork, calls, meetings, administrative. Include your commute and errands. Also include things you do during work hours that aren’t work related (e.g., playing games on your phone, coffee breaks, watching videos, etc.)

Once you have your list, go through every item. Look at the checklist and make notes. For best results, go through the list several times.

CHECKLIST FOR IMPROVING PRODUCTIVITY

1. Eliminate. Ruthlessly purge anything that is unnecessary or does not contribute enough value to continue doing. Peter Drucker wisely said, “There is nothing less productive than to make more efficient what should not be done at all.”

2. Delegate. Just because something must be done doesn’t mean you are the one who must do it. Assign these tasks someone in house or outsource them, so that you can do, “only those things that only you can do.”

3. Do it less. What could you do less frequently? If you do something daily, could you do it once a week? Once a month? What can you consolidate with other tasks? For example, can you do some of your reading or dictation during your commute?

4. Do it faster. What could you do in shorter chunks of time? If you routinely take an hour to do something, find ways to do it in 30 or 45 minutes. How? Eliminate or delegate parts, use forms and checklists, improve your skills, or get help (i.e., do it with a partner).

5. Do it later. Are you doing anything during prime time you could do after hours? What can you do when your energy is lower? Which tasks are routine or low priority and don’t require your full attention?

Improving productivity means improving effectiveness (doing the right things) and efficiency (doing things right). 80% of your improvement will come from steps 1 and 2 which focus on effectiveness. Eliminating and delegating things that don’t need to be done or could be done by someone else frees you up to do more high value tasks. The remaining steps will help you become more efficient at everything else.

The Attorney Marketing Formula shows you how to earn more by working smarter, not harder.

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Filed Under: Increase your income, Law office management, Personal development, Productivity, Time Management Tagged With: , , ,

How to get better clients

November 13, 2013 by
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A lawyer emailed wanting to know how  to get better clients. He said he is in a slump. “People come see me but they don’t have the money to retain our services. It’s been a tough month. What can I do?”

Are there any lawyers in your market who do what you do and have clients who can afford to pay their fees? If not, you need to change practice areas or move. If the business isn’t there, it isn’t there.

On the other hand, if other lawyers in your field are getting paying clients, then it’s not the market. The work is there. You just have to get those better paying clients to come to you instead of those other lawyers.

Start by looking at what those other lawyers are doing. Study them, as I mentioned yesterday. What are they doing that you’re not doing? What are they doing better than you are doing? What are you doing that they don’t?

Do they specialize? Specialists generally earn more than general practitioners. One reason is that clients prefer to hire specialists. They are also willing to pay higher fees to a specialist. If these other lawyers specialize and you don’t, you have to consider doing so, or at least disguising the fact that you don’t. One way to do that is to have separate websites for each practice area.

How much do they charge? More than you, less, about the same? Most attorneys compete for the bottom eighty percent of the marketplace. The most successful attorneys target the upper ten or twenty percent, which obviously includes people with money.

How do they bill? Hourly? Flat fees? Blended? How big of a retainer do they get? What do they do to make it easier for their clients to pay?

Look at their website. What elements do they have that you don’t? Can you do something similar? How can you improve on what they have done? What are you doing on your website that they don’t do that might be hurting instead of helping you?

Valuable information, yes?

Also look at what you are doing. Look at the better clients you have attracted over the last year or two (the ones who have money). Where did they come from? If they came from referrals from your other clients, for example, figure out what you did that precipitated those referrals and do more of it.

In addition, look at what your better clients have in common. Industry, occupation, ethnicity? Where can you find more like them?

Also look at the people who are contacting you who can’t afford you. Where are they coming from? Whatever it is that you are doing to attract them, stop doing that. And screen them out before they come to see you. For example, you might quote your minimum fee package on the phone or on your website. This way, if they can’t afford this, they won’t call or come to see you.

I don’t know what you’re doing now to market your services but whatever it is, there are always other things you can try. It might be helpful to get out a piece of paper, draw a line down the middle, and on the left side of the page, write down everything you are doing that could be considered marketing. On the right side, write down things you aren’t doing, including things you used to do but abandoned. Keep adding to the list on the right and try some new things. Create a simple marketing plan.

In addition, look for ways to improve what you are doing. If you are networking, for example, consider finding a different group and/or working on your follow-up.

Finally, seek some perspective on your current situation. You say you’re having a bad month but everyone has bad months. Next month could be great. If it is, don’t rest on your laurels. The best time to ramp up your marketing is when you’re busy, not when you’re in a slump.

If things continue to be bad, don’t panic. It’s nothing five new (paying) clients can’t fix. You can turn things around quickly. Cut overhead to give yourself some breathing room and get busy with marketing. You have the time for it, right? That’s one of the advantages of a slump–less work means more time for marketing.

Think about getting some help. Get a workout partner. Hire someone to point you in the right direction and/or coach you.

Whatever you do, don’t dwell on the bad. Think about where you are going, not where you have been.

If you need help with your marketing, contact me and let’s talk. 

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Filed Under: Increase your income, Marketing legal services, Marketing Plan, Mentors & Coaches, Online Marketing, Specializing Tagged With: ,

Thinking outside the box: what it means and why we need to do it

November 11, 2013 by
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Human beings live inside a box, the walls of which are comprised of our beliefs and habits. (For the record, lawyers live inside two boxes. In case one breaks.)

Our beliefs and habits protect us from harm. They help us avoid dangerous situations and make decisions that mitigate risk. They also make our lives more productive and less chaotic. Once we have found the love of our life, for example, our belief in monogamy keeps us from looking elsewhere. (Okay, we may look but we don’t touch.)

Our beliefs and habits our foundational to how we govern our lives and by and large, they serve us well. But if they are too rigid, they keep us from growing. In the context of marketing legal services, for example, our old beliefs can cause us to fall behind our younger, less constrained competition.

The world is constantly changing. We must be aware of, and responsive to, those changes. We must be prepared to try new things and learn new skills, and update the old ones.

But how? How do we get outside of our comfort zone?

With some things, we just do it. We pick up the phone and make the call. We show up at the meeting. We write the report.

With other things, we need some preparation. So we read about them and talk to people who are doing them. We make notes and jot down ideas. And then, we try something.

We start with something small and easy. We dip our toes into the cold water. Once we get used to it, we jump in. Or, if it’s harder than we imagined, we wade in. Eventually, what was once scary and difficult is familiar and easy. What was once firmly outside of our comfort zone is now comfortably inside.

But there are some things that are so far outside of the box we can’t imagine ourselves doing them. They are too difficult, too risky, or too far away. What then?

The first rule of change is having the desire to change. If you’re happy where you are and don’t want to try anything new, despite the possible rewards, then be okay with not trying. You can’t change if you don’t want to change. But if want something better, admit that you do.

Second, you must be willing to do the work associated with that change. That means being willing to invest time, physical effort, and money, in new things. Of course that means you will probably have to re-allocate resources from things you’re currently doing. There are only so many hours in a day and you only have so much energy.

Finally, and most importantly, you have to be willing to undergo the emotional transformation that takes place by thinking and doing things that challenge your existing habits and beliefs. That’s the hardest part of thinking outside the box, and why most people don’t do it.

Change is emotionally difficult. Giving up old beliefs and ingrained habits, learning new philosophies and methodologies, are the very essence of personal growth. This is the hardest part of the journey. And it takes place outside of the box.

Do your clients pay you on time and in full? If not, you should learn how to Get the Check.

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Filed Under: Career satisfaction, Increase your income, Marketing legal services, Personal development Tagged With: , , ,

Why you need to think outside the box

October 31, 2013 by
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Your Uncle died. It’s sad, but he was 102 and lived a good life. In his Will, he left you $1,000,000, but there is one condition. You only get the money if you spend it all on advertising your law practice.

You can spend it on any kind of advertising you want. Magazines, newspapers, direct mail, TV, online banner ads–whatever you want. You can spend it all at once or set up a monthly budget. But you must spend all of it in one year or less. (This is starting to sound like a movie.)

If you already advertise, or you have always wanted to, you’re probably dancing around the room right now. Imagine how much business you could bring in with that kind of ad budget!

If you don’t advertise, and have never seriously considered it, would you consider it now?

It’s free money! This could be a life changing opportunity for you. A million dollars, spent wisely, might bring you five million dollars in business.

(If advertising isn’t permitted in your jurisdiction, pretend that it is.)

So, what do you say? Would you say, “No, advertising isn’t appropriate for my practice. I’ll have to pass”? Or would you figure out a way to do it that was appropriate?

If you would figure out a way to do it, if you would spend your Uncle’s million dollars on advertising and you have never considered advertising before, I’d like to know why. Why would you spend someone else’s money but not your own?

Too risky? You don’t know how to do it? You don’t have the money?

You may not have a million dollars to spend on advertising, but do you have $1,000? One or two good ads might bring you $10,000 in new business. So, why haven’t you tried advertising before, or even considered it?

Okay, I’m not trying to talk you into advertising. My point is to get you to think outside the box about marketing your services. Ask yourself, “what am I not doing that might work for me?”

Marketing (anything) is about trying lots of things and seeing what works. You get rid of what doesn’t work and do more of what does.

If you don’t know how to do it, find out. Read, hire someone, or find other attorneys who are doing it and model them. If you don’t have the time, get some help. If there is cost involved, test it on a small scale.

And. . . don’t give up on something the first time it doesn’t work. You may have to do it longer before it does. Study, practice, and try again.

You are a better attorney today than you were the day you were sworn in, aren’t you? Marketing works the same way.

Need a marketing plan? You get one free with The Attorney Marketing Formula.

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Filed Under: Increase your income, Marketing legal services, Marketing Plan, Personal development
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