Audi Garages And Marketing Law Firms

I used to take my car to a garage where the man on reception used to smoke cigarettes at the counter while serving me. There were a couple of dirty, oily chairs that you did not dare to sit on and generally I could not get out of there quickly enough. You were not allowed anywhere near the mechanical areas as the pits were dangerous and generally there was debris everywhere.

Fast forward a few years later and I now sit in a ‘state of the art’ Audi garage that is more like a show house. You can see from the picture above how clean the working area is for the mechanics. Gone are the pits, now replaced with hydraulic lifts for the cars (probably many lawyers fault for suing following falling in etc). The floors look like you could eat your dinner from them. You are served fresh coffee and biscuits while you wait. It is now a pleasant experience to go to have your car serviced (and good for me as the comfortable desks allow me to have some uninterrupted writing time which I always enjoy).

The same ‘radical’ change has happened in many other industries; it is true in cinemas where uncomfortable chairs having been replaced with luxurious seating. Even if Jaws from James Bond decides to sit in front of you (as he usually does just as the film was about to start), you still now have good visibility due to better design.

Corner shops which used to keep limited opening hours have been largely replaced by 24hour supermarket giants with an abundance of choice. Opticians who used to charge a premium have been replaced with High Street chains that offer ‘two for one’ deals.

Even the legal profession we are all well aware of changes, as seen by the likes of Quality Solicitors providing a nationwide ‘brand’. Whether they can actually create a brand with so many different equity owners who want to do their own thing remains to be seen, but the point is that they and the firms that have joined them realise that the times are indeed a changing. That being said, I still think there is an excellent future for independent law firms, and I certainly wouldn’t be rushing to join Quality Solicitors if I was an independent law firm. If you are thinking of this, spend three hours with me and let me show you your alternative, brighter future.

Back to change, my suggestion for you is to think how you can offer radical change before the Market dictates that you provide it. When it comes to commercial work I firmly believe that this includes much more fixed fee or legal expenses backed work. In terms of the traditional High Street practice I believe this means a much more complete service, tying the delivery of your service in with other businesses for example in the field of conveyancing this might mean linking your service with removal companies, estate agents and financial advisers rather than providing only the legal services element. The important point is that you must keep control of the client as it is this power which will make you useful not only to the client but all of the other service providers who become dependent upon you.

What else will change? What about these aspects of your service (to set your mind thinking):

  • Extended opening hours
  • Work from home staff giving you national coverage without national overheads
  • Those same staff being paid based on a percentage of the fees that they generate allowing you to share the risks and the rewards with them
  • More use of technology to host meetings online
  • Annual sales of your services at traditionally quiet times of the year
  • A free wash and blow dry with every Will (just playing)..

These are just meant to start you thinking. What I would urge you to do (if you have not yet done so) is spend at least one day a month/quarter away from your office asking these types of questions to ensure that you stay ahead of the chasing pack. You know that you must do more unlike many of your competitors who still keep doing what they have always done hoping it will be enough (which it no longer is).

The times they are a changing; we all have to keep adapting and changing with them.

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Legal Marketing

Case Study

Beating the big boys whilst spending a fraction of their budget

We focus on accident claims, and it’s vital for us to have a strong web presence, which we didn’t have before Nick got involved.

As a result we had to buy in leads from other sources, reducing our profit margins and making us reliant on other companies to generate revenue.

We did have a company working on our Adwords and website, but the truth of the matter is that they weren’t getting the results we needed them to get – we only had a handful of clients coming in from those efforts, making us highly reliant on buying in the leads from elsewhere.

And then I came across one of Nick’s books, was impressed by what I read and got in touch with him.

The rest – as they say – is history.

We started working together with a clear brief: Nick’s job was to help us bring in more self-generated work, so we could stop relying on buying leads.

He started by working on our website, making it more accessible and easier to navigate.

Next he overhauled our Google Adwords, which the previous company had been running fairly unsuccessfully.

Adwords is hugely challenging in our sector, with some very big players bidding on some of the most common keywords, making it very difficult for any smaller firms to get a look in, and I’ve got to be honest and say that I didn’t know how Nick was going to make it work.

But he did, by analysing very closely what people were looking for and tailoring our Adwords efforts towards them.

It worked! We were competing with the big boys whilst spending a fraction of their budget, and the amount of work we got in was tremendous – we jumped from just a handful of leads and clients a month to 500 leads and 150 clients, every single month, all from our online efforts.

Nick didn’t just work on the lead generation side of things either – he helped us with the client conversion process too, training our team, making our sales calls better and improving our onboarding process to avoid drop-offs due to ‘cooling off’.

Now we don’t buy in any work at all, our pay-per-click efforts do a sterling job, and the large client database that Nick has helped us build has allowed us to increase the amount of work we do by a factor of ten, in just three years.

I’m one extremely satisfied client, and despite the dramatic differences Nick has been able to make in the time we’ve been working together, things are still improving thanks to his guidance and support.