How has your performance been this term?
My daughter’s school report was better than my sons. She is a conscientious girl, he is a boy. That is not to say he is not doing well, he just has that comment written which we all remember well from our school reports: “Could do better”.
So when it comes to your law firm, how is your performance? Are you a ‘could do better’ or have you done all that you can to get your firm where you want it to be?
If your target is to double your turnover this year, are you at least a third of the way to that target?
Have you added one or two more automated marketing tactics to your already proven methods to bring in the extra clients required to allow you to achieve your objectives?
I find it easiest to work backwards from your goals to work out exactly what you need to do.
Let’s say that you have three fee earners and you are running your firm full time (the best thing you can do if you are serious about growing your law firm). You decide that you want to double your turnover from a modest £360,000 to £720,000, which you can do without adding new staff so mostly it will drop to your bottom line.
So you want to produce an extra £360,000 in revenue.
Let’s say your average fee for each of your fee earners is £1,000 per instruction. Each new fee earner needs to bill an additional £10,000 per month and to take on 10 new clients each month.
Yes, they might have to work a bit harder, but you can give them a bonus for doing so – you will have more profit available after all. Let’s say that you agree to give them a £10,000 bonus if they hit their new £20,000 a month target. So your fee earners have a reason to work that much harder, and you still have your reason, namely to make some more profit to enable you to enjoy running your law firm that little bit more.
So you now know that your objective is to acquire 30 additional new instructions each month. What are you going to do differently to attract these clients?
If you have never produced a volume of new clients from your website, this could be your starting point.
If you have never tried direct mail, it could be time to test this.
Perhaps you will find new referrers for your business.
But think about this in the appropriate way.
If you are now going to make an additional £360,000 in income, but £330,000 in profit after bonuses, how much would you be prepared to spend to acquire these clients?
If you can handle this work with your existing staff, it could be as much as £165,000 could it not?
You would still then clear £165,000, minus some additional costs of looking after these clients, but that still leaves you with a substantial increase in your profits.
The good news is that you will not have to spend that much, but what if you give yourself a real chance of achieving your goals and, for example, set aside £20 – £30,000?
I know that some of you reading this will shudder at that thought, but if you want to make the profit you have to invest in your business. It is simple business maths.
I have some clients that spend £30,000 a month regularly because they know that it will produce much more in profits for them. I have other clients that spend £1,000 a month. The ONLY thing that matters when it comes to marketing your legal services is that every penny you spend on your marketing has to pay you back with instructions and profit costs.
When you realise that marketing is just a numbers game, the choice of how big your law firm becomes and how much profit it makes is entirely up to you. It is not down to the Government, or the economy. The work is out there, you just have to spend your money more wisely to acquire it.
So, back to the start, how was your performance been this term?
If it was not good enough, what changes are you going to make to ensure that next term is better?
If you need some input from me, book a slot for a More Clients Strategy Call with me, just like these wise people did:
Feedback for More Clients Now Strategy Calls
"I felt that Nick was very helpful and explained everything in simple terms."
Simon Jenkins – Curtis Legal
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Davina Kimiki – Wellsprings Solicitors
It was awesome, thanks.
Anon
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Please call 0117 290 8555 to arrange a mutually convenient time for a telephone discussion, Email me or complete a Free Online Enquiry. There is no cost or obligation. We will have a chat about where you are and where you would like to be and I will suggest some things you can do to get there quickly.
