Search Results for: getting things done

What to do when a client says they can’t afford your fee

November 10, 2016 by
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What do you do when a prospective client tells you they can’t afford you? You have three options:

(1) Help them to see the light

Many clients who say they can’t afford you have the money, they just don’t want to spend it. Others can borrow the money, liquidate a retirement account, sell something, or otherwise find the money to pay you and they will do that, but only if they want to.

Point out the greater expense and/or dire consequences that may arise if they don’t hire you, or the immense benefits they will get if they do. Help them to see that hiring you isn’t an expense, it is an investment in their better future.

You can also show them that while you may be more expensive than other lawyers, you’re worth it. You have more experience, offer something others don’t offer, and provide more value and better “customer service” than other lawyers.

Most of this can be done before you speak to them, that is, via articles and posts on your website and in your marketing documents.

(2) Offer to “work with them”

That is, suggest that they hire you for part of the work today and the rest at a later date. You can make things more attractive for them by allowing them to “lock in” the fee they would have paid had they hired you for everything at once. You can also allow them to use a credit card or other financing options.

(3) Let them go

Tell them, in essence, “I’m sorry, let me know when things change for you”. When they want what you offer enough, they’ll find a way to pay for it. Stay in touch with them and remind them that you can still help them.

You can also offer to refer them to another attorney who charges less, which often helps them to decide that no, they really want you.

What you shouldn’t do is cut your fee.

Quoting fees (and getting them) starts with an unshakeable belief in the value of what you do. You can’t possibly expect clients to see this value if you don’t see it yourself.

Remember, there will always be people who can’t afford you and people who can. Target those who can and you won’t have to worry about the ones who can’t.

How to quote fees, invoice properly, and get paid. Go here

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Filed Under: Closing the sale, Fees and Billing, Salesmanship

The best way to get more referrals

October 20, 2016 by
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The best way to get more referrals is to ask for referrals.

Hold on, I know you don’t want to do that. I know the idea makes you uncomfortable. Asking for referrals makes you sound needy. Sales-y. Unprofessional. You’ve tried it but your mouth went dry and you stumbled over the words. So you don’t do it or you don’t do it much.

I can help.

I can show you ways to ask for referrals in a way that won’t make you uncomfortable. I can also show you how to ask for referrals without actually asking.

Without asking? Yes. You won’t have to say a word.

How is this possible? As I describe in my two referral marketing courses, Maximum Referrals (about getting referrals from clients and prospects) and Lawyer to Lawyer Referrals (about getting referrals from lawyers and other professional contacts) you do it with a “referral letter”.

Your referral letter spells out how you can help people who might need your services. It shows the reader how to recognize people who would make a good referral for you. And it shows them the best way to make the referral to you.

Have you ever wondered why people who could send you referrals don’t do it? One reason is that they don’t know how.

Do they give the client your card? Do they send them to your website? Do they call you themselves and give you the referral’s information?

Your referral letter solves this problem by spelling out the simplest and easiest way to connect you with referrals. When you make it easier for people to send you referrals, more people will send you referrals.

Once your referral letter is written, most of your work is done. From that point forward, your job is to make sure that every client and former client, every professional contact and potential referral source, receives a copy of your referral letter.

Distributing your referral letter to clients is simple. Just send it. Have extra copies printed to include in your new client welcome kit and to give clients when they are in the office.

Distributing your referral letter to attorneys you know is equally simple, but a little different. You can mail them (or email them) but there are other things you can do to make it more likely that they will not only read your letter, they will act on it.

You can also send your referral letter to attorneys you don’t know. That’s where things get interesting. That’s where you can expand your list of referral sources manifold, for just the price of a stamp.

If you want referrals, get a referral letter written and get it out into the world. There is no simpler way to ask for (and get) referrals than to let a letter do the asking for you.

To get more referrals from clients, get this

To get more referrals from other lawyers, get this

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Filed Under: Referrals Tagged With: ,

Making the case for doing what you feel like doing

August 23, 2016 by
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Grab your task management system, your calendar, and whatever else you use to manage your lists.

Next, put aside anything that has a due date or deadline or is associated with an upcoming appointment.

What you’re left with should be a large quantity of optional tasks and possible projects. Your “somedays” and “maybes” and ideas.

If you’re like me, you’ve got a boatload. Good ideas, dumb ideas, things you’ve already done, and things that make you wonder, “What was I thinking when I wrote this?”

Now, maybe you’re a good boy or girl and do weekly reviews and regularly clean up and prioritize your lists, in which case you have already decided which tasks to do next and which ones you’ll do after that.

Forget all that. Lump everything together (temporarily) into one big pile. We’re going to take a different approach and see if we like it better. C’mon, it’ll be fun.

Remember, if there’s a deadline or due date, put it aside. This is for everything else.

Alrighty. You have a big list of tasks and projects. What do you do with it?

Break up your list into groups of 25 to 35 items. Take one group and read through the list quickly, then come back to the beginning and read it again slowly, thinking about each item on the list. Put a mark next to any item that stands out to you and that you feel ready to do today.

Don’t try to prioritize them based solely on what you think you “should” do. Let your intuition guide you. Then go through the next group of 25 to 35 items and do the same thing.

When you’re done, you should have a short list of tasks you are ready to do today. They may not be things you previously thought you would do next, but they will be important and they will be things you will actually do because unlike other things on your list, you’re ready to do them.

If you are familiar with Mark Forster’s Autofocus system (aka, “The Final Version”) you will recognize this process. I’ve been reading about it and there are aspects of it that appeal to me.

The essence of his system is balancing the rational and intuitive parts of our brain. Forster says, “It’s very difficult to focus on what is important with one’s rational mind alone, because what your conscious mind thinks is important may not be what your subconscious mind thinks is important.”

There’s a lot more to the system but one thing to note is that it doesn’t rely on elaborate tagging or detailed prioritization methods. It’s based on repeatedly reading through your list and doing what you feel ready to do.

The result, says Forster, is a greatly increased volume of work getting done, and done faster. “This seems to be mainly due to the fact that there is very little friction in the way of resistance or procrastination.”

Have you used the Autofocus system? Does it sound like something you’d like to know more about? If you tried it, how did it work for you?

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Filed Under: Productivity Tagged With: , ,

It’s cheaper to keep a client than to find a new one

July 22, 2016 by
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Before you invest another dollar or another minute looking for new clients, do yourself a favor and invest in retaining the ones you already have.

It’s cheaper.

They already know you and trust you. They already know what you do and they’ve seen you do it. You don’t have to go looking for them and woo them. You don’t have to do much to get them to hire you again.

Make sense?

So how do you retain clients? For starters, make sure you don’t chase them away.

A recent survey revealed that 23% of “customer complaints” are about rudeness or bad attitude. Hey, that’s an easy one to fix. Be nice, and if you’re already nice, find ways to be nicer.

Next on the list: don’t ignore them. Clients may run away from a rude lawyer, but most clients drift away from the lawyer who doesn’t pay attention to them.

If you ignore your clients, they may forget your name or the reasons they hired you and be easily seduced by the next lawyer who comes along.

That’s also easy to fix. Stay in touch with your clients.

What’s that? You’ve already done the work for them and they are unlikely to need your services again?

Silly boy. Have you forgotten about the referrals they could send you? Have you forgotten that those referrals are  easier to sign up than prospects who hear about you through an ad or online search?

Are you forgetting that if they refer you a client with a legal matter you don’t handle, you can refer them to another lawyer and earn their referrals in return?

Are you ignoring the other ways clients can help you like sending traffic to your website or telling their friends about your free report?

You worked hard to attract prospective clients. Once they hire you, you don’t have to do nearly as much (or spend nearly as much) to retain them.

Is there more to client retention than this? Sure. There are affirmative things you can do to strengthen your relationships and make your clients an advocate for your practice.

But let’s start with being nice and staying in touch.

Your clients want to send you referrals. Here’s how to help them do it

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Filed Under: Client loyalty, Client relations Tagged With:

Do you keep a reading list?

May 24, 2016 by
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I download Kindle books nearly every day. Some for research, some for fun, and some on subjects I later ask myself, “What were you thinking?”

What can I tell you, I like books.

Most of these books were free but I also buy a fair number. Right now, there are 4663 books in my account, and that doesn’t include the ones I’ve read and deleted.

Is that a library in your pocket or are you happy to see me?

Sometimes I go to read a book only to discover I’ve already read it. Many of these are books that offered no value and I tell myself I need to delete them. But that requires logging into my account and finding the book through the search mechanism and doing that one at a time is not a good use of my time.

So, I’ve started keeping a text file on my desktop: “Kindle books to delete”. When the list has five or ten titles on it, I log in and do the deed. I hope that one day Amazon gives us another way to delete a book (not just remove it from the device we’re using to read it). Until then, my system will have to do.

Now, what about books we’d like to read? A reading list of books we’ve heard good things about but haven’t had time to buy or look into?

For that, Amazon gives us an easy solution: wish lists. We can use them to identify products we’re interested in, including books. I use a wish list as my reading list.

But that’s too simple for many people. This morning I saw an article about the many ways people keep their reading lists. Some use a text file, some use a spreadsheet, and some use apps like Trello or Evernote. And there are many other options.

The article describes how some people organize their lists, update them, and add notes and other meta data. Too complicated, if you ask me. How much time do these folks spend organizing their lists?

I feel the same way about to-do lists.

Some people spend more time making and organizing lists than they do getting things done (or read).

When I hear about a book I want to read, I either buy it or put it on my Amazon wishlist to consider at a later time.

As Sgt. Rick Hunter (Fred Dryer) on the 80’s detective show “Hunter” used to say, “Works for me”.

How I use Evernote to organize my work

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Filed Under: Productivity Tagged With: , , ,

If I could save time in a bottle

April 25, 2016 by
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You know the wisdom of putting money into a saving account or retirement account each month, and not touching it. In five or ten years, or twenty, you’ll have a sizable nest egg.

If you’re not doing this already, the easiest way to start is to have your bank automatically deduct a certain amount each month and move it to a savings account. When it’s done automatically, you don’t think about it.

It’s a simple way to “pay yourself first”.

Start small if you must, with an amount you won’t miss. Even $25 or $50. You can increase the amount down the road.

Saving money isn’t difficult when you pay yourself first. You just have to start.

Now if it were only possible to do the same thing with time.

What if you could put away an hour or two each month, to be used at a later date? You wouldn’t miss those hours, and in five or ten years, you’d have enough time saved up to be able to take major vacations, retire early or spend time with someone you love.

Okay, that’s not possible. But you could do the next best thing.

What if every month you invested a few hours in yourself? It’s called personal development. The more you do, the more valuable you become. If you do it regularly, in a few years you may be good enough to earn fifty times what you earn now. A few years more and you may have enough money and passive income to be able to do whatever you want with your time.

If you do it regularly, in a few years you may be good enough to earn twenty times what you earn now. A few years more and you may have enough money and passive income to be able to do whatever you want with your time.

But first, you need to invest time to work on yourself. The easiest way to do that? Automatically.

Use your calendar to schedule time for personal development. You can schedule 15 minutes a day, or an hour a week, but whatever you do, you should do it regularly and automatically.

Without thinking about it.

If you calendar an hour every Friday at 4pm for personal development, you must keep that appointment with yourself.

Read, watch training videos, learn something new. Spend time with people who can teach you things about business and life. Learn from them and observe them so you can model their attitudes and behaviors.

If you do this regularly, the time you invest in personal development will have a tremendous payoff down the road. Five years from now, you’ll look back at the person you were when you began your journey and you’ll be glad you decided to pay yourself first.

Get good at getting referrals

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Filed Under: Personal development

When should you do it yourself?

February 15, 2016 by
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I’ve got some Kindle books I need to convert to paperback. I could hire someone to do it for me but I decided to learn how to do it myself. I did the same thing learning how to format the manuscripts for Kindle.

Short term, it makes sense to hire someone to do these things for me. Long term, having these skills means I won’t have to hire anyone or wait for them to do it. So, by investing a few hours reading books and blog posts and watching YouTube videos, I can now do these things myself.

I will always have the option to hire people to do these things for me. But now, I will be better able to diagnose problems and make sure my outsourcers do what I want.

On the other hand, there are some skills I know I’ll never tackle.

I outsource book covers and graphics, for example, because I don’t have artistic talent and because apps like Photoshop have a very steep learning curve. It might be fun taking classes and getting to the point where I could do a decent job of creating graphics in house, and “fun” isn’t irrelevant, but for me, the return on investment isn’t worth it.

Ultimately, ROI must be the primary factor in deciding which skills we learn and which skills we outsource. Few of us have the luxury of learning how to do everything ourselves, let alone the time to actually do it.

But we have to be flexible. We have to evolve.

In my practice, before computers, it made sense for me to dictate letters and documents to a secretary, along with instructions on what I wanted done. After computers, it was often quicker to type things myself.

You know that I’m a big proponent of delegating as much as possible. You’ve heard me say that my objective is “to do only those things that only I could do” and delegate everything else. But in a complex and ever-changing world, this isn’t an absolute.

If it were, I would still be dictating everything and I wouldn’t have fun learning new things.

How to get good at delegating

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Filed Under: Productivity Tagged With: ,

Careful, don’t choke on that frog

January 20, 2016 by
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Brian Tracy’s best selling book, “Eat That Frog,” champions the well-known productivity principle of doing the most important task of your day first.

Tracy says we should swallow the frog whole. As nasty as that might be, if you do the biggest, most difficult and most important task first, you will make great progress towards your goals, even if the rest of the day you don’t accomplish that much.

So if you’ve got a trial coming up next week, prepare for it this morning. If you’ve got a lot of research to do on a file, do it first thing. This makes sense, of course, because if you wait until later in the day or put it off for a few days, you might not have enough time to do them. You might not start, let along finish, your most important tasks.

But you need to be flexible. At least I do. Apparently, some scientific types agree.

I’ve written about this before. I said that much as I would like to, I’m usually not ready to eat that frog first thing. If something takes a lot of time and energy, I usually need to sneak up on it, especially since I’m not a morning person.

I usually get other things out of the way first.

I sort through my blog reader and save articles to read later. I check email, delete most of them, respond to short messages, and star those that require more time. I write my blog post. And take care of other reasonably short tasks that need to get done.

Then I’ve got the rest of the day to work on my big project.

When I was practicing, if I had court in the morning, that’s what I focused on. When I got back to the office, appointments were next. Once those were taken care of, I dove into the files on my desk. I would usually go through them from top to bottom. Dictate, make notes, review.

In the afternoon, my staff would have letters for me to sign and more documents to review and bless. And then I had more appointments. Somewhere in between all that, I was on the phone.

Most days, I got the most important tasks done, or made progress on them, and I got a lot of other things done, too. My desk was usually clean before I left for the day.

And the only tool or “system” I used was a calendar.

In fact, when I was practicing, I can’t recall ever looking for a better system. I was busy doing work.

Besides, before computers, there weren’t a lot of options for getting organized and being more productive, other than trying out a new calendar or paper planner.

When we started using computers, they helped with a lot of basic functions but didn’t give us the multitude of options (and complexities) we have today.

I’m not pining for simpler days. I love and use technology all day, every day. And it does make me more productive. The point is we all have to find what works best for us.

Some depend on a complex workflow and a panoply of tools. Others use little more than a calendar and eat frogs when they get around to it.

The last time I wrote about this, I said as much. Do what works for you and don’t worry about finding the perfect system. Eat that frog first, or save it for later, maybe with some fava beans and a nice chianti.

Other than my calendar, Evernote is still my most valuable productivity tool

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Filed Under: Personal development, Productivity, Time Management

Apparently, I don’t know when to shut up

January 19, 2016 by
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I’d rather be sitting on the sofa all day, listening to the Eagles and thinking about the 70’s. But with so many music legends leaving us lately, I am reminded that I’m not getting any younger and I need to be grateful for every day I wake up and I’m still alive.

So instead, I’ll tell you about a conference call I did last night where I was interviewed about reaching a big milestone in my network marketing business.

As usual for these kinds of things, the host first asked about how I got started. And as usual with these kinds of things, before long I turned the call into a training.

My Spidey sense, and the fact that I’ve done a lot of these kind of calls before, told me a few things you might want to note for when you do an interview or presentation.

  • Although there were hundreds of people on the call, most were only half-listening. Trust me on this. Even though I am the most fascinating person I know and deliver many nuggets of gold, people get on these calls while they are doing other things, making dinner, putting the kids to bed, and probably also watching TV, and they don’t pay a lot of attention. On top of that. . .
  • Most people don’t care about me and my success. They may be inspired by my story, but only for a few seconds. They want to know how they can do what I did, and that’s what I told them, however. . .
  • Most people don’t take notes. Despite having been repeatedly told that a “short pencil is more valuable than a long memory” or however that goes, they don’t write anything down. Fascinating. On top of that. . .
  • Most people don’t want to hear about things like “hard work” and “long term”. They want shortcuts and immediate results, and they’re not going to have it any other way. That’s why some people are successful and others play the lottery. But. . .
  • Some people will take my advice and run with it. That’s cool. That makes it all worthwhile. Most won’t, some will, and that’s okay because I was only talking to the few. Finally. . .
  • Hells, bells I sure can talk up a storm. I had no idea how long I had been speaking until the host told me we were already over the scheduled time. Note to self: learn how to STFU.

Okay, well I hope that helps. Not so much? Not even the last point? C’mon, you’re a lawyer. You flap your lips for a living, just like me. And just like me, I’m guessing you have never been accused of not saying enough.

Yes or yes?

Now if we can just figure out a way to get paid by the word.

I take notes in Evernote, how about you?

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Filed Under: Communication, Inspiration, Personal development, Presentations

Sorry, I can’t finish your case, I have lawyer’s block

December 29, 2015 by
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You think you have writer’s block. You don’t. It’s an excuse for something else:

You don’t know what to write about. You don’t think you’re good enough. You don’t know enough about the subject.

The solution? Write anyway. Anything. Badly. Just get something on paper for now and fix it later.

Write quickly, without stopping to think. Get it all out of your head, no matter how cringe-worthy it might sound.

You can re-write it, as many times as you want. You can do more research. You can take a terrible page and make it better.

But you can’t edit a blank page.

There have many times in my career when I have had issues completing a writing project. I’ve had issues with starting, too. The solution has always been to do it anyway, promising myself that I didn’t have to show it anyone until I was happy with it.

When I gave myself permission to write badly and get a first draft done, I almost always found that I had more to say than I thought I did and I had actually done a pretty good job of saying it.

Writer’s block is no more a thing than lawyer’s block. You may not like your client or their case. You may not know the best tactics. You may think you’re in over your head. But you move forward anyway and you figure it out.

Get help if you need it. Confer with another attorney or hire an editor. But move forward, because you must, and because there’s no such thing as writer’s block.

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Filed Under: Personal development, Productivity, Writing Tagged With:
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