Charging More For Conveyancing Services

Charging more for conveyancing services is a perennial question, issue or challenge it seems. I know many solicitors that still charge an incredibly reasonable fee for their services yet I also come across many others that are constantly lowering their price simply to secure the instructions.

If you look outside of the legal world you can see many examples where pricing is not the determining factor. I could buy my food from Waitrose and pay a premium or I could shop at Asda, Lidl or Aldi. The food will be largely the same but the price paid will be significantly different. Food is the largest commodity so if a food retailer can manage to charge a higher price than other food retailers then why should it be any different for solicitors?

If I want to buy a car I could buy a Smart car or I could buy a top of the range Mercedes. Both cars do exactly the same job of transporting me from A to B, however, one of them does so in far more comfort and probably a lot faster. Should it not be the same with conveyancing? If I decide to buy purely on price you and I know that the conveyancer charging the lowest price will have to take on 5 or 10 times more files each month to make the same profit as a conveyancer charging a reasonable fee and handling half the number of cases.

On the flip side of this, the fee-earner charging more will have more time to spend on my file and therefore is less likely to make mistakes. With insurance premiums always on the rise this is a good thing for the practice overall. I have worked with conveyancers that charge a low fee and have rarely been impressed with their client relationship management skills. However, someone who is sufficiently confident to charge a decent fee for their services normally is far more assured and relaxed and more prepared to spend time with their clients. They are able to offer the Mercedes or Waitrose service because they are charging a premium for the privilege. The solicitor and the client both win. Isn’t this better for all concerned?

It is even easier to charge a premium for your service if your are regularly selling your service to returning clients or recommended clients. You are far more likely to have returning and recommended clients if you go out of your way to provide an exceptional service. Of course there will always be the “tyre kickers” who only want to buy on price, but let them go to your competitor. In my experience both in the legal profession and since leaving, those that are prepared to pay a reasonable price for my service are normally the best clients. Those that always try and bargain on price or time turn out to cause the most headaches. I have seen this enough times and spoken to enough solicitors to know that this is a recurring theme. Therefore, if someone is bartering your price and does not appreciate any value to your service let them go to your competitors and let your competitors have the headaches.

Summary

You can choose whether you want to be a low price conveyancing service provider or a high price conveyancing service provider. I firmly believe the second option is the right choice but also accept that this takes time to achieve. However, if you simply give in and charge the lowest prices you will never have a profitable business in the long term. You simply will not be able to compete with the bulk providers such as Halifax or Co-Op Law and they will be able to beat you on price and delivery of service. In my opinion, the only option for the smaller firm is to charge a good price and provide an outstanding service. You will then have more job satisfaction, more clients and more profits in the bank.

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Law Firm Marketing

Case Study

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!

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