I doubt it. Yet, most lawyers and law firm really have no idea how they get clients, or their ideas are simply wrong. As a result, many seem to discount referral marketing. In doing so they fail to work effectively on what is really working for them.
Here is the problem. You get phone calls from potential clients and they do not come from a particular source. Often times they cannot remember the source that sent them on their way to you, or maybe you do not ask. As a result, you do not see the success in your referral marketing efforts. But honestly ask yourself, "how are these people or companies or issues finding me"? Believe me it is not just because of the great aura you exude.
Here is how I repeatedly learned this lesson. I use to operate a rather large bankruptcy law firm. We represented thousands of people and companies a year. We spent an absolute ton of money on advertising and direct marketing in order to maintain those numbers, and it appeared that the advertising was the primary source of most all of the firm's clients and cases. But, it would never fail, very time I would show up to a creditors meeting to represent a group of clients, other attorneys, trustee's staff, and even creditors would say something like -- "Oh good, I see that you are representing Mr. and Mrs. Smith. I sent them over to you."
This was in the paper days, so I would tell the referral source thank you, then sneak off into a corner, open the file and look at the clients' referral sheet. No referral name was listed. They would check off that they had seen our TV ads, or our mailings, or our newspaper inserts, or yellow book ads. Then after the meeting, I would politely ask them if they knew Mr. or Mrs. So-in-so. Sometimes I would point them out in the room. I would usually get a smile and they would say yes, or say something like, "He told us to come see you because he could not take our case." Sometimes, they would remember the person but not the name. Sometimes they would not remember either, but knew some attorney they spoke with over the telephone told them to call me.
Had the client seen my firm's advertising barrage? You bet they had. How in the heck could they miss it. It was at saturation levels. Nothing escaped that drag net. But, that was not really the reason client called, came in to see or retained my law firm. They knew of the advertising but they were oblivious to that. They came simply because somebody told them to do so. That is a referral plain and simple.
I forget the exact statistics back them, but there use to be studies that show that something like 40% of all people with legal issues relied on TV or other advertising as their primary source for locating and retaining a lawyer. That is a big chunk and my law firm was determined to get everyone one of those 40%, and I think we came close. But, that statistic is shocking in that it suggest that 60% of those with legal needs could care less about your advertising and marketing. That is not how they go about finding a lawyer. Further, because the advertising was so great these referral clients were nearly indistinguishable from those motivated toward my firm as a result of advertising.
It is funny really when you think about it. Those that chose lawyers based upon referrals is bigger than those that rely on advertising, and yet the cheapest way you can get clients is not through advertising, in any of its forms, but by referral marketing. And, it is funnier still because it means that my advertising and direct marketing, and yours too, is not nearly as successful or profitable as you think it is because it can pollute the data or the reasons that people are actually motivated to retain you in the first place.
Our mistake is that we tend to evaluate our success of client generation against the abstract standard of repeatability. For example, so many ads or TV spots reaching so many potential clients with in a certain time frame with a certain degree of repeatability. This ignores, however, that each referral or client you wish to retain has a unique story, or some fact situation that cannot be repeated by an ad or a spot. The misconception for us advertising lawyers is that we focus on the referral or potential client him or herself, rather than on the relationship that produced the referral.
Some writers have said that referral marketing, if done systematically, is a lot like fishing with a net. You can chose a likely spot to throw in your net and, with some effort, when you pull the net out you will likely find a number of fish. You can eventually get a feel for the number of fish you will catch if you throw in the net a number of times overall, but you do not know what kind of fish or which individual fish you are going to end up with in your net. In other words, you concentrate on casting the net and not on the individual path of one of the fish.
But, because you are tossing the net out there, or powwowing with potential referral sources, what later seems like coincidental client contacts are not so coincidental.
As attorneys we are never much taught and we do not much understand that building effective and profitable relationships is really a system we cannot ignore if we want to succeed in the most cost effective manner. So, we concentrate on the case law, client services and direct marketing (such as phone book ads, etc.). We just go about our business, meeting people, and casually making introductions, believing that is just part of being a decent person in an amongst our other activities and marketing efforts. Then when we receive a referral, we are unaware of our actions that caused it, so we are merely thankful for the good luck and we go about doing whatever non-referral, client retention we are working on at the time.
But, that is the point, is it not? When it comes to networking and when it comes to referrals, luck is where persistence meets opportunity. It is not a coincidence even if it appears as such.
Unlike the advertising market maker, the referral attorney does not concentrate on the client he is likely to receive, but on the process for getting others to refer people, companies or cases. In doing so the referral attorney will come to eventually expect the process will bring him clients and cases, he or she just does not know who they will likely be or what route they will take to get to his or her law firm.
Sure referral marketing for an attorney is a bit messy and random, and it certainly does not have the counting and tracking systems that some traditional advertising pretends to have. As a result, it appears to be a bit to coincidental some times. But, referral marketing can work well as a system to ferret out unpredictable, hidden, complex connections that exists between people in everyday life and business that simply eludes 60% of the advertised market. And, it does so with the least amount of costs.
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