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Is A Friend Sabotaging The Marketing Of Your Law Firm?
I worked with a solicitor two years ago who had a fantastic niche legal practice. It is successful and could be even more so but for one problem.
When I worked with him I saw a huge opportunity to dramatically improve his website. It had some good content but the design was just absolutely dreadful. I KNEW beyond any doubt from working with hundreds of other solicitors that just by a simple redesign of his website he would be able to generate many more enquiries for his practice (and in turn increase his profits every month forward from the date of his new website going live). This was a guaranteed method for winning new instructions for a very modest investment.
Now I was not touting for the work, I could have done it for him at the time but I just wanted him to get his new legal website up and running and to follow my advice.
Then he introduced his problem. His ‘friend’ did his law firm website for him and he did not want to upset his friend.
Friend?
Honestly if you saw this website you would think his worst enemy created his website for him; it was hideous and it was only because he was in such a niche area of law that he was attracting any enquiries at all. I explained this to him (as gently as I could) but he was simply not prepared to tell his friend that the website wasn’t up to scratch, and too scared of upsetting him by taking the website away from him.
Fast forward two years and sadly I receive a call from him to say business is not as good as it was and he really wants my help to kick things into action. I quickly look online and see the same website looking back at me (two years on it does not look any worse – it could not). I explain that I am not surprised as he still has the same website and again meet the same problems. He is still to scared of upsetting his ‘friend’. You might think I was making this up, I really wish that I was. But sadly I see the same or a very similar problem time and time again, in many different law firms. In another firm one of their fee earners like to ‘play with websites’ so he was the culprit that ruined their prospects of winning new clients from their website. In yet another firm it was the ‘senior partner’ who liked to ‘play with websites’, so he ruined their prospects of success. In most other firms I meet it is the website designer who ignores the client’s request and creates a website for their law firm which simply will never produce any new business for them!
Whereas the obvious answer is to sack the person who is causing the problems, the business owner is too scared of hurting their feelings. The trouble is that as business owners we sometimes have to make hard decisions for the good of our business. (Some say that you can judge the success of a business by the number of difficult decisions the owner has to make in the course of a day).
What I often find is that, surprisingly, when the difficult conversation does finally take place the ‘friend’ is relieved as they were not happy with the relationship any more either. They have either moved on and the work is not their priority any longer or they simply do not need or value the work they are receiving so are happy to let it go.
Are you letting a friend, staff member, partner or supplier damage your business? If you are, I urge you to make a decision about removing their control of your website (or other marketing) project so that you can finally generate the new instructions you want and need for your law firm!
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Now I’ve got eight staff and two offices, and we’ve never been busier.
I’ve been working with Nick for the last six years, and in that time he’s had a significant impact on my business.
We first start working together when I worked at an employment law practice, and when I left there to set up on my own, Nick was one of the first people I called.
I knew that one of the key pieces to get right was the website – in this day and age it’s impossible to run a successful firm without one – and with Nick’s advice, help and guidance, we created our own marketing-focused site that has proven to be the backbone of all the sales and marketing that has followed.
But a good website means nothing unless people see it, and that’s why we turned to Nick to run our Google Adwords, which quickly became a primary source of leads.
In addition to running the traffic, Nick held our hand through every element of the client attraction process, from how to communicate with leads, to how to close sales, and the impact that had on our business cannot be understated.
And that’s why I will always recommend Nick to anyone who needs help with marketing – particularly legal firms: his breadth of knowledge about everything to do with sales and marketing means that he can (and does) help with every part of the picture, resulting in a stronger business than you could have imagined.
Since we’ve been working with Nick, we’ve grown quickly – back in 2013 it was just myself and my wife, and she was part-time.
Now I’ve got eight staff and two offices, and we’ve never been busier.
And if our lead numbers are anything to go by, it’s only going to get better – 2015-2016 saw us get 800 good quality leads in employment law, and that figure more than doubled last year. I can only look forward to more exciting times, working hand-in-hand with Nick to grow my practice and enjoy the fruits that come with that growth.
I’d always had a retirement date in mind, but before I started working with Nick, I didn’t imagine there was any chance that I’d achieve it
Whether you’re a sole practitioner or a large firm, you’ll get huge value from working with Nick, of that I have no doubt.
It was five years ago that I first came across Nick Jervis, and my only regret is that I didn’t start working with him earlier.
I was a sole practitioner, and for years I’d been advertising in the Yellow Pages and getting decent results.
But as time went on, the response diminished, I was struggling to get as many clients as I needed, and to top it all off, the Yellow Pages still kept pushing the price up.
Eventually, enough was enough – something had to change, otherwise my business was going to be in trouble.
I’d been aware of this guy, Nick Jervis, for a while, and as far as I could tell he was pulling up trees in the solicitor industry with new, sophisticated marketing.
But something had held me back – maybe it was a fear of the new or the unknown.
Whatever it was, I eventually overcame it, hopped on a train to Nailsea, and spent an enthralling day with Nick, where he explained exactly where I was going wrong, and what he’d be doing to fix it.
He certainly wasn’t all talk either, because he went about fixing it with quite some speed.
He got to work constructing a website that would actually convert clients, and then focused on getting me to the top of Google Adwords.
And once he’d done that, the response was spectacular – a few months earlier I’d been scratching around for leads, and now I was getting 3-4 qualified Probate or conveyancing leads direct to my email inbox every single day.
As a result, the turnover increased considerably, and with more breathing space, Nick and I were able to get everything working smoothly.
I was getting more leads, gaining more instructions and making more money than I ever had before.
I’d always had a retirement date in mind, but before I started working with Nick, I didn’t imagine there was any chance that I’d achieve it – the income just wasn’t there.
But with Nick’s help, things changed quickly and significantly, to the point where I was able to reach my retirement date – I’d been at it for 42 years and I decided enough was enough!
Thanks to Nick, I stopped doing Probate and conveyancing, and stepped into semi-retirement as a notary public, which gives me just enough to do to ensure I’m out from beneath my partner’s feet – needless to say, Nick still helps me get work via Google Adwords.
I can’t overstate this enough – Nick changed my life, and for that I will always be grateful. Where I was struggling, Nick stepped in, transformed things and ensured I met my personal and professional goals.
Whether you’re a sole practitioner or a large firm, you’ll get huge value from working with Nick, of that I have no doubt.
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.
From biggest fee earner to no fee earning whilst doubling turnover
I’d been looking for somebody to help me with marketing for a while, and I came across Nick on Google.
That was three years ago, and in that time it’s fair to say that he’s had a massive impact on my business, and my life as a result.
In the early days, my goal was simple and specific: increase the turnover of the business so that I could take more money out of the business.
I had an amount in mind, and I expected it to take years to get there, but when I achieved it in just six months, it began to dawn on me that this guy really knew what he was talking about.
As a result of that early success, and with Nick’s help, I realised that my expectations were too low, and what I could actually achieve, with the right thinking and guidance, was far beyond what I’d ever imagined.
What Nick saw – and what he made me see – was that my business had fantastic potential, but to realise that potential, things needed to change.
Even before Nick got involved, we were getting a decent volume of leads, but it was what was happening to the leads that was the problem.
We weren’t tracking them, there was no process in place and to top it all off, we didn’t have a clear pricing structure, which meant that we were nowhere near as profitable as we could be.
And that’s where Nick came into his own. He built us a bespoke lead generation and sales process, and the results were staggering.
We pretty much doubled our turnover, allowing me to build a four-person sales and marketing team that gets us more leads and more sales.
Of course, Nick’s Google Adwords expertise has been a key part of our growth, and today it’s a hugely profitable marketing pillar for us.
But regardless of the medias or mechanisms we’ve used to grow over the last three years, it’s been Nick’s rock solid marketing plan that underpins it all.
He’s stopped me trying this and that, and got me to focus on the things that’ll have the biggest impact on the business.
And I think there’s a lot more to come – we still haven’t implemented everything that Nick has given us to do, and when we do, I reckon we’ve got around another £250,000 of revenue per year to add to our figures.
And it’s not just the business that’s seen a transformation – it’s been a personal transformation too.
When Nick first got involved, I was the biggest fee earner, and consequently I was reluctant to stop getting involved in cases.
Nick eventually made me see that if I was serious about growing this business, that needed to change and as time has gone on I’ve taken on less and less work – now I don’t do any of it.
And I only wish I’d done it earlier, because the result has been me having more time to build the business, and spending time with the people that are important to me.
Not only that, but the business is stronger, because it’s much less dependent on me.
Nick was right about that one, as he has been about pretty much everything else – it pains me to say it, but it’s true!
One Partner Law Firm Changes Direction
We’ve been working with Nick about 10 years and throughout this time I have always valued his expertise.
When we first made contact with Nick we had been recommended to get in touch with him by another solicitor to “give us a hand with marketing”.
At that time we were focusing on personal injury work, but we had already decided to enter the medical negligence market.
Obviously breaking into a new market takes time and we still needed the income that came from the personal injury work to finance this going forward.
Nick put together a high conversion website which meant we had all the personal injury work that we needed allowing us to build the medical negligence side of things up gradually.
Now we specialise exclusively in medical negligence. Nick has been part of that growth in terms of strategy and the use of Google Adwords to generate good quality leads.
As part of that, he helped us with the entire website build, making it very marketing focused and it has worked extremely well.
As a result our firm has gone from strength to strength, more than doubling fee earing staff and turnover.
A straightforward approach with a genuine expertise, providing you with a proven plan of exactly what you need to do to grow your firm.
I first stumbled across Nick when searching on Amazon for help growing a firm in the legal sector.
Straight away I was struck by his no-nonsense approach, so after checking out a preview of his book, I bought it on Kindle and started devouring it straight away.
What was immediately apparent was that Nick really does know what he’s talking about, which was hugely refreshing in an industry with plenty of bluffers and chancers.
I found the fact that Nick has actually been there and done it in the legal world very compelling indeed, and after finishing the book, I knew there was plenty he still had to teach me.
I booked a free call, which contained plenty of value, but what became clear is that if I was really going to get Nick’s personalised help to grow my firm, I needed to do it properly, so after speaking to a couple of Nick’s clients to reassure myself I was making the right decision, I took the plunge, and booked the Steady Stream of New Clients meeting.
And I’m so glad I did.
From the moment my wife Rachael and I arrived, Nick put us at complete ease and we quickly built up a strong rapport, and thanks to the pre-meeting preparation put in by all parties, we were able to wring a huge amount of value out of it, because most of the fact-finding had already been completed before the meeting began.
Consequently, the meeting was chockfull of useful, actionable information, and most importantly, that information was grounded on what actually works in the real world – no theory in sight.
When we left Bristol, we were hugely energised and excited; but more than that, we also had clarity, and three days later, things were even clearer, thanks to the report Nick prepared for us detailing exactly what marketing we needed to be doing AND how to make sure that that marketing was actually implemented.
Having used a consultant in the past, my biggest fear was that there’d be a lot of talking around the issues, and a whole lot more questions than answers, but that simply isn’t how Nick works.
Instead, he calls a spade a spade, and fuses that straightforward approach with a genuine expertise, providing you with a proven plan of exactly what you need to do to grow your firm.
If you’re considering booking one of Nick’s Steady Stream of New Clients meetings, I would say, unhesitatingly, that you need to go for it”
Bill Ward, Ward Trademarks
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