Your car fuel tank is leaking – what do you do first?
If you walk back to your car and see a puddle of liquid beneath your car, your first thought would be to check what it is, wouldn’t it?
If you dip your finger in the puddle and smell petrol or diesel I imagine that you will get yourself to a garage as quickly as possible.
Now imagine that you turn up at that garage, explain the problem to the mechanic and he suggests that he gets your car up on the ramp and he or she will take a look at it for you.
What do you think his reaction would be if you said:
“No, I don’t want you to do that, just put more fuel in it.”
I imagine he or she might reply with: “I can’t do that. It will just spill out again. Not only will it be a waste of your money, it will be dangerous on my forecourt. I have to fix the leak first.”
You might be wondering where I am going with this, but let me promise you it highlights a very serious issue when it comes to winning more clients for your law firm.
Why is this?
Well, quite simply, every solicitor that I meet has a leaking fuel tank.
Every single solicitor.
Not one solicitor that I first start working with has no leaks, so I always start with the leaks because I know that that is the way to get the best results for them. When I say best results, what I mean is the fastest, cheapest, most effective way for them to win new clients.
I have been marketing legal services since 1991 inside a law firm and since 2003 full time through my consultancy.
I always thought that it would be the next new, shiny marketing tactic that would transform the success of the firms that I worked with into very profitable law firms, but it isn’t.
It is improving their new client conversion process.
If I fix the leaks in their ‘client conversion’ strategy: – the process that they follow (consciously or sub consciously) to turn their new client enquiries into new client instructions, their law firm becomes more profitable and their life becomes an awful lot better.
Law firms always have a lot of leaks in their new client conversion process. These leaks are usually peppered throughout every part of the process.
Some of the leaky parts of the process include:
- How quickly the firm answers the telephone or whether they answer it at all;
- How quickly the new prospect is transfered to the fee earner (or the new client acquisition team – smart move that one);
- Whether the fee earner can be ‘bothered’ to speak with the new prospect or is too busy so will call them back (in this instant age in which we live – really?);
- Whether the fee earner has a ‘Meaningful Conversation’ with the client or simply spurts out what they always say to prove what a legal genius they are without taking any time to listen to what the client actually wants from the transaction; and
- How quickly they confirm the costs of their service or the first part of it.
If any part of this process is faulty or missing then the chances of receiving the instruction are substantially reduced.
Let me spell out what a difference a complete process has:
Many of my clients have trebled the number of new client files that they open each month by filling the leaks in their fuel tanks and their buckets – WITHOUT SPENDING ANY MORE MONEY ON MARKETING.
More instructions without spending money on marketing: – isn’t that the holy grail for law firms?
Which is why it always puzzles me that I get so much push back on this process.
I used to allow this push back, but now if a client fights me on this point I tell the solicitor they must improve their process or I can no longer work with them. Why? Because in this case I am the doctor and they are my patient and I need them to take the medicine or I know that they will never get better.
This is why Blueprint 2 is the most important document in the 250 plus resources that are available online as soon as you join Marketing4Solicitors.
It is why this process has a whole chapter to itself in The Law Firm Growth Formula book, soon to be published in print and on Kindle.
It is why I am developing software to allow solicitors to track every new enquiry into their firm and to see their conversion rates, because ‘what gets measured gets better’.
Once they know how well (or badly) they currently convert new enquiries into instructions they can work on improving this process. It will reward them handsomely.
Can you tell me now, instantly, how many enquiries you had last month, how many turned into new client instructions, what the conversion percentage was, who your best fee earner is at converting, who your best non fee earner is at converting and whether the figures are better or worse than the previous month?
If not, you are leaving clients behind who would otherwise instruct you. You have a leaking fuel tank. You are leaving profit costs on the table.
Fix this before your law firm goes up in flames!
You can access The Meaningful Conversation Blueprint 2 here: //www.marketing4solicitors.co.uk/
You can sign up to be notified when my book is available to buy by clicking here: //www.samsonconsulting.co.uk/blog/law-firm-growth-formula-book-coming-soon/
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