If your firm is not exactly where you want it to be right now, I have a question for you, what is stopping you from creating your dream law firm?
What Is Stopping You?
I have been helping to grow law firms since 1991, from inside them at first, and since 2003 working with law firm owners to grow their businesses, and it really frustrates me when I see solicitors not achieving their full potential.
I know from experience that you can have the law firm of your dreams as I work with a lot of solicitors and I help them to achieve it, and you must see others doing it and notice that they are achieving what they want, so why not you too?
So I ponder. I lie awake. I sometimes throw my Google beach ball at the wall or the window if I really hit a fit of pique.
So here are some of the reasons that I hear or hear solicitors using as reasons for them not yet having their dream law firm.
You Don’t Know How To Achieve This?
If you really do not know where to start but are keen to grow your turnover, your profits and your time off, then there is one easy solution for you.
I am deliberately a one man law firm growth consultant. I have no desire to run a huge, impersonal agency. My satisfaction comes from working one on one with a law firm owner to create their dream law firm.
However, with over 10,000 law firms, I realised that I could not help them all personally, so I wrote a book so that anyone can access my methodology for a very modest sum and set about growing their law firm.
You can buy the Amazon best seller here: The Law Firm Growth Formula: How smart solicitors attract more of the right clients at the right price to grow their law firm quickly:>>
You Don’t Have Time
It can’t be this one, can it?
You can only use this argument if you never check your emails before 4pm every day, you delegate everything and anything which isn’t going to grow or quickly develop your practice to someone else and you never watch television; ever.
You can’t also use this one if you regularly check social media, allow your staff to wonder in and out of your office whenever they feel like it and you don’t allow yourself any focused ‘growing the business time’ – the first 30 minutes of each and every day is a good place to start.
So it can’t be this one either now, can it?
You Don’t Believe That You Can Do It
This one is OK too. I promise that you can do it. If you are at level D and you want to get to level C, you can do it.
Unless you are at £500,000 turnover and you want to hit £10 million within three months with no more staff, you can probably achieve whatever your current goal is, which leads me onto the next one.
You don’t know where you want to be/ you don’t set goals.
Successful business owners set goals. You must have goals. Once you have goals, you can measure your performance against these goals.
You can see how far short you are going to come up against these goals by the end of any given 12 month period (quarterly goals can be even more useful) and then you can see how many new files you will need to open to reach them.
From thereon in, it is easy.
You just need to put in place some AUTOMATED marketing processes to make the telephone ring and generate more client instructions.
A goal is a good start, but a goal with additional processes in place is dreamy, and this article is all about dreams!
You Don’t Have The Money
There are many, many, many ways to generate more client instructions without spending money.
Here are just a few:
- Optimise your client conversion process. Even though we haven’t yet met, I can promise you that you are not answering your telephone as quickly or as efficiently as you should be. How do I know this? I have mystery shopped hundreds of law firms and it is always the case. Usually the phone rings for many times (the busy receptionist doesn’t get to it, the ring around gets left as ‘someone else will pick it up’ and the fee earners are above picking up the phone. So put in place a system to answer the phone better, or engage some call answering services for solicitors.
- Improve your website. Sew in client reviews to every page of your website (don’t make your visitors go hunting for them) and ensure that every single page provides your visitor with a telephone number, link to an enquiry form and live chat to grow your volume of enquiries from people already visiting your website.
- Add a PS to all of your outbound emails, asking your readers a question about whether they have a LPA, Will, or are moving house.
- Send a “Client Revival Email” to generate referrals or recommendations. Ask me if you would like the template.
- Send an email to existing clients listing the other services you can offer them and inviting them to reply if they would like to discover more.
You Don’t Have The Energy To Create Your Dream Law Firm
I understand this one. I appreciate that as a law firm owner a lot falls on your shoulders.
You have to spin many plates to keep everything going and sometimes this just seems so hard.
I sometimes feel this too in my business.
Allow yourself some downtime, then come back to your law firm and do not check any emails or social media before spending at least 30 minutes plotting your attack (use this page and my free book below as a starting point).
IT IS ALL YOUR FAULT.
After some friendly advice, now for the tough love….
Wherever you are right now with your practice, it is down to you and no one else.
If this statement annoys you, stop and think for a moment.
If I am right in this statement (and I am by the way) what does this mean?
It means freedom, that’s what; in that if it is all your fault that you are in a position that you do not want to be in, it is entirely within your power to get yourself out of it too.
You just have to start doing something else.
As Einstein said, if you want different results, it would be insanity to keep doing what you have always done…
Please, take a moment now to picture your firm exactly where you want it to be in three or six months’ time. What will it feel like to have the turnover and profits where you want them to be or well on their way?
What will it enable you to do, both whilst at work and at home and at play?
Are there holidays that you haven’t yet taken that you will be able to take?
Clothes, gadgets or whatever floats your boat (boats float mine funnily enough) which could just be more time to garden, read or relax.
How will that feel for you?
Now, what are you going to do DIFFERENTLY to start to make that happen?
Downloading my free book wouldn’t be a bad start, would it?