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Are You Using Invisible Marketing?

Written by Allan Colman on . Posted in Attorney Marketing, Conversion Rate Optimization, Law Firm Marketing.

Is your law firm business development effort using invisible marketing as a tool for new business development? For example, if you ask a client or prospect to review an article you are writing, it’s a compliment to them and an invisible marketing opportunity for you. Or ask them to co-author an article or share a panel presentation at an upcoming conference. The one tactic that generates the most leads is also the most underutilized, talking with your clients.

Explain that you want to ensure that you are providing the service that they want and need. Let them know that their honest, open feedback is needed. As a result of these discussions, your firm should be coming up with lots of new ideas.

The key here is that you are not selling; you are asking for their advice to improve your law firm’s services. Yet it is an excellent indirect marketing opportunity – invisible marketing.

Why Isn’t Your UPS Bringing In New Business?

Written by Allan Colman on . Posted in Conversion Rate Optimization, Law Firm Marketing, Strategic Planning.

Why isn’t your UPS, Unique Positioning Statement, bringing in new business? Perhaps your team does not understand that a Unique Positioning Statement is much like an elevator message. What would you say in 20 seconds that succinctly capture the essence, strengths and uniqueness of your firm?

Here are some examples of what I mean:

“Look Ma, no cavities!” Crest Toothpaste

“When you care to send the very best.” Hallmark.

Putting it simply, a UPS is a written statement that explains why you get new clients, why your current clients stay with you and why your clients keep on coming back for more and refer new business to you.

If you would like a complimentary copy of our Unique Positioning Statement Questionnaire, “Contact Us.”

Is Your Marketing GPS Really Working?

Written by Allan Colman on . Posted in Attorney Marketing, Conversion Rate Optimization, Law Firm Marketing, Uncategorized.

Is your marketing GPS really working? Do you use tissue, or Kleenex? Do you pack a lunch in plastic storage bags or Ziplocks? See where this is going? All successful law firm marketing – and I mean all – requires properly identifying your firm with a brand. When clients such as in-house counsel, insurance company claims directors, human resource directors, etc. hear the name of your firm, what adjectives come to mind? How are you and your partners known throughout the communities you deal in?

Hopefully,the adjectives you hear to describe your firm are positive, helping to differentiate you from your competitors. Look for common themes in how your peers and clients describe you and the firm. How do you do this — ask them. And then use those themes to create and communicate who you are in every aspect of your marketing and business development. And “encourage” every member of your firm to use this brand description. [source of material from OWN THE ZONE, Allan Colman, Made For Success Publishing Co.]

What Do You Do With Low Hanging Fruit?

Written by Allan Colman on . Posted in Uncategorized.

What do you do with low hanging fruit to increase law firm closers-group-low-hanging-fruitrevenue? It certainly does not happen overnight. Clients won’t become your greatest fans if you are hit and miss with your efforts. Keep up the momentum, energy and your follow-through 100% of the time.

Do this and a bumper crop may be happening in your not-so-distant future!

How Much Revenue Is Your Firm Losing?

Written by Allan Colman on . Posted in Law Firm Leadership, Managing Partners, Strategic Planning.

How much revenue is your firm losing without an exit strategy for Senior Partners? Advance planning of exit strategies is critical to long term sustainable revenue. Failure to deal with this is a common million dollar blind spot for the typical law firm.

Success requires law firm executive committees taking a proactive role by understanding the “lifetime value” of a client from the present into the future.

* Evaluate the “identity capital” of senior attorneys.
* Build a client service team long before retirement.
* Develop a CLIENT RETENTION PLAN to advise, coach and direct individual exit strategies.

What’s Missing In Law Firm Revenue Growth?

Written by Allan Colman on . Posted in Law Firm Leadership, Leadership, Managing Partners.

What’s missing in law firm revenue growth is leadership.
Clarity, focus and execution start with a firm’s leadership. The key to transform sustainable revenue to productive revenue lies with the firm’s leaders who address critical impact areas.

Developing customized 90 day strategic implementation maps are needed to identify action details, timing, resources needed and leadership assignments. Leaders will emerge to help others overcome obstacles and challenges resulting in:

* More revenue * More clients * More open doors.

What Are 90% of Attorneys Missing?

Written by Allan Colman on . Posted in Attorney Marketing, Law Firm Marketing.

We were stunned to learn that 90% of attorneys are missing a major key to new business development – asking for referrals. This observation came from Marketing Directors in last year’s U.S. and Canada survey on client retention. And when attorneys themselves responded, 10% said “none” asked for referrals and 78% were “not sure.”

What the survey unfortunately demonstrates is the enormous loss of new business opportunities. Just because they haven’t been to see you or called you in a while does not mean clients are unhappy, but what if they were? You would only find out if you spoke with them. And if you lose track of them, it is your own fault if they begin using another firm.

So stay in touch and ask for referrals.

Don’t Let Business Slip Through Your Fingers

Written by Allan Colman on . Posted in Content Marketing, Law Firm Marketing, Strategic Planning.

You can avoid letting new business slip through your fingers by using our powerful, highly interactive workshops and strategic business road-mapping. As a business development consultant and advisor, these work.

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT WORKSHOPS AND COACHING
Your competitors are asking for the business. Are you?
• Are you bringing in new business from clients and prospects?
• Are you selling, but not seeing the results?
• Where are your opportunities? How do you expand them?
• Do you know how to communicate effectively with your prospects?
During these powerful, highly interactive workshops, you are focused on building lasting relationships, asking for business and customizing your action plan

STRATEGIC BUSINESS ROAD MAPPING
Within 30 days, our RAPID ASSESSMENT will identify what’s missing from your business development program and identify for you:
• Missed opportunities
• Underperforming investments
• Prospect segmentation and targeting
• Issues with internal collaboration and cross marketing
• Underutilized assets
If our STRATEGIC BUSINESS ROADMAP approach sounds straightforward, it is. It serves as the first step toward lead generation, providing a platform from which clients grow, with tools to measure progress and success. Many of the groups we have advised over the past eight years have more than doubled their books of new business.

7 Ways to Overcome Objections

Written by Allan Colman on . Posted in Business Strategy, Content Marketing, Law Firm Marketing.

In offering proposals for new client work, we often need to overcome objections. In a recent conversation with Rick Justus, CEO of 36ixty, he outlined 7 ways to overcome negative reactions to your business development proposals:

* Choose your words carefully;
* Avoid talking about costs and fees too soon;
* Ask if money was not the issue, would we be selected?
* Do you see the value of our solution?
* Sustain a peer relationships;
* Don’t lower the proposed fee without changing the deliverables;
* Be certain you are dealing with the economic decision maker.

Having a client or prospect adapt your values to their needs is one of the best way to build new business.