Chuck Newton

What Is The Basis Of Good Referral-Based Services?

Do you want to slowly but consistently grow your client referrals base?

It goes beyond just good client services or asking those that refer for business for ore of it. Just because people, groups and organizations know who you are does not mean they will send you any business. It takes a little consistent and continuous work.

You have to build loyalty with those that refer. Of course they do not want to find themselves apologizing to someone they referred to you, so a good client experience is important. But, it is not the end all. It does not in and of itself build loyalty. And, referral loyalty is what you need.

Here are some of the things you need to keep in mind when recruiting referrals from others:

1.  Attentiveness. Short and simple, you need to be attentive to the needs, questions and help needed by your potential referral sources. You need to be there and you need to be ready. You need to be the go to guy or gal.

2.  Recognition. It is more than telling someone good morning or asking how are they are doing. Make sure you know enough about your referral source to compliment them on things they have done or are doing.

3.  Personalization. People have preferences. It is great to send out email and fax blasts as it helps keep you top of the mind, but you need to make personal contact with your referral sources as well. Call them on the phone. Drop by their offices. Invite them to lunch. Make sure you go out of your way to greet them at events, seminars and organizational meetings.

5.  Consideration. And no, I am not talking about paying them money, although this sometimes helps if the referral source is an attorney who is allowed to share fees. Are you respectful to the referral source?  Do you remember their family, birthdays, anniversaries, etc? Do you go out of your way to help when asked, and do you do so without argument or delay?

6.  Appreciation. There is a lot of ways you can express your appreciation to a referral source, but the best way is to make sure you know who referred a client and make sure you write, call, email a thank you. A call is best. Never forget when you run into your referral source to remember your cases and thank them specifically for whatever case they sent over on which you are working.

Another Example Of Using Shipping Containers To Create An Office

I am a big fan of using shipping containers to build a modest law office in a way that is cheap, innovative, green, quick and useful. People what to work at or near their home. Lawyers want some personal or dedicated space to do this. Although the studio of an artist and DJ, such things can also represent law office space.  Enjoy the video below.

(Video) Carolyn Elefant On Outsourcing

What Carolyn Elefant does in this video is outline the combination of core competencies that will make a solo or small law firm great -- maybe not immediately, but eventually. The presentation is short, but it is really to the point. It is worth your attention. The bottom line for me, in regard to the old line law practice, is that you have got to ditch it, niche it and pitch it.

Sincere Or Desperate?

I know it is hard to believe, but I have made mistakes over my long career in law concerning how to obtain clients. But, I have also learned a few lessons even if those lessons came the hard way.

One I would like to share with you is that, from the perception of the potential client, there is a big difference between sincere and desperate.

Years ago when my law firm was advertising aggressively for clients, I became concerned about people who would not show up for appointments, would not retain the firm when they showed up, or did not get back to us quickly. So, I devised a system to try and get on top of the situation. Through a series of phone calls, voicemail messages and letters, my firm would descend on these potential clients with pleas and offers and advice to encourage them get their butts in my office, get retained, and get on with the process.

You see, part of the problem with high volume law firms is that they depend on numbers to justify the tons of money spent on advertising. That was true for my firm as well. It was one thing if the advertising was not working and calls were not coming into the switchboard, but it was quite another thing if we had contact and we were not scoring.

But, what I found out with this process is that our retain rate actually went down over time despite the fact we were seeing more people.

How confounding is that?

The difference between advertisement-based clients and referral clients is that they tend to use initial interviews or consults to obtain information to use to make up their minds, and they are appreciative of this fact. That does not mean, however, that they intend to immediately retain your services. It also does not mean that somewhere down the road that they will not retain your services, provided that they are comfortable with you. I learned that this is something with which you have to live.

What we fail to recognize sometimes is that law consumers are smart, and they can tell the difference between sincerity and desperation. Nobody wants to be the client of a lawyer that is desperate.

When the client would call the information lines to get information, or call to make a free appointment, or visit the office for a personal review of the law to their situation, the uncertainty was their's.  However, they appreciated the free information and believed that the lawyers and law firm were sincere in their quest to help. It endured them to the firm, should they decide to obtain such services - later.

But, the relentless pestering to get on top of these decision delays simply came across as being desperate. Clients want to be clients because they need your services, and not necessarily because you have to have them (or their money). Nobody likes to be pestered. Ask yourself, who likes someone trying to sell them? The answer is nobody.

Therefore, when we started pressuring potential clients, who might or might not have retained us in the future, we convinced them not to retain us in the future if they felt the need for our services. This is simply counterproductive.

A law firm can focus on generosity by sharing knowledge and expertise willingly, and that is good. It builds goodwill. Forcing it down the potential client's throat is not good and it destroys the sincerity and generosity established.

At some point a lawyers needs to focus on building relationships, making themselves available, and letting the process take care of itself in time. I guess that is called faith and a lot of us have a hard time accepting this.

Maybe It Is Time To Strive Like Mad For Me

I am coming to the conclusion that most self-employed lawyers should do so, especially those in collaborative relationships with other attorneys.

I know. I know. Salaries and overhead are what I do not like about traditional law practices. But, what happens too often with us self-employed types is that we cover what we have to and then live off the rest.  

That, in and of itself, is a nice concept. However, what I have discovered about myself over the years is that I am good, even if it is a little frustrating, in meeting my monthly, weekly, yearly, or whatever time frame earning goals -- but not much else.

So, what I think I might try is instead of figuring out what it takes to make ends meet and then living off of whatever is left, I will calculate in a salary or sorts that I also need to meet. I make more, well then I get a bonus.

If you had an employee, you would strive like mad to meet that requirement, would you not? Not having employees is liberating to say the least. It is what I live for. But, now I am thinking I need to strive like mad for me.

Lawyers just have to know their income cycle, payables and receivables, and know what it takes to make ends meet. I know this is somewhat subjective, but if I pay myself those understandings are better clarified.

And, the key is not really to increase my lifestyle overhead. That is dangerous and that is what not drawing a salary helps control. It keeps lawyers realistic and humble. That is actually a good thing.

When you try to determine, however, how profitable is the law practice, what are the cash flow needs of the practice, and emergency funding issues, that is really hard to gage if you do not include a salary.

It might help, as well, to look into a PEO to segregate out the income, taxes, health benefits and the like from your other office overhead.

Just a thought.

Buzz Worthy Web Presence

There was a time when we talked about blogging as a better alternative than a static websites, but with the advent of social media sites, apps, smart phones and more advanced search engines we moved on to other topics. I am thinking we need to revisit the issue of blogging for a moment or two because it is not irrelevant but, in fact, a good blog is more relevant than ever for lawyers and law firms.

I do not seek to denigrate the other online resources, as I use most of them. I just tend to believe that developing a great blog as a hub to which you can drive traffic from these other sources is best. At least this seems to work best for me.

I do not have a lot of love for static websites because I just believe it is harder for such sites to do the job everybody wants done. Static websites are easier. They tend to be like Ron Popeli's Rotisserie Oven, where "set it and forget it".

The problem is that with law firm marketing of any kind I have never found where you can set up some form of advertising and marketing and just forget about.  At least you cannot expect it to consistently bring new clients or cases in your front door.  A web presence does not need to represent a full time job, but it is one that requires constant tinkering and consistent changes and oversight to work well. Therefore, most law firms and lawyers fail at the web presence task.

A static website might be helpful to those that have already decided to look you up as the specific lawyer or law firm they have in mind. It is certainly better than the old fashion white pages in basic information it can provide. But most, sadly, can do, and do not do, any heavy lifting for the firm. In short, this kind of online presence might help those who have already decided to go with a particular firm, but it is of little help in bring others to your site. By and large a static website is not marketing in this day and age. It represents mainly law firm information much like a glorified business card.

Marketing requires a buzz worthy web presence, and the backbone of this still is a blog site. Now, just because you have a blog does not mean it will work as you want. Like a good farmer you are not going to bring in a crop if you do not plant and nurture the seeds, but it is better than a static web presence.

Now there are a lot of companies out there that are willing to help you design a web presence for a big fee. I am not saying not to use them. But, many of them talk in terms of the need for "eye candy" or the packaging (look and feel) of the website or blog. No doubt designers are better promoters of these services than those that are more technologically minded, but I am not sure they are good for you. This is because we all like pretty pictures. We like to look at the packaging ourselves. But, this attitude is what stops most attorneys from developing and promoting their own web presence. They do not see themselves as delivering good eye candy.

I personally think packaging and eye candy is overrated on the web. Sure your web presence does not need to be a train wreck. It probably needs to be a little more than a overused template, but think about most successful web locations. They are pretty minimal. Google, Facebook, Myspace, for example, are all pretty bland. They are, however, comfortable to read and follow.

Eye candy, I would argue in fact, probably detracts or scares off most consumers. So, I am not sure you want to be too pretty or slick. It can make you look prohibitively expensive or hard to get.

What you want to be able to accomplish is to hold someone's attention once they click on your site. You need a good user experience. You do this by anticipating your visitors' needs. But, you do not do this using slick stock photos arranged in a particular order. You do this with content, and content takes time and thought. Content really takes blogging.

What you want is compelling, original content that people want to follow, on which they want to comment, and which is buzz worthy. The operative word here, I believe, is "original". Unlike many social media sites that tend to be just aggregators of stuff (I would not call most of it news) or fleeting off the hand comments, you need to blog about what is important to you, in your practice area or subject matter in long form, free of legalese and you need to cover the practical aspects of the law as opposed to technical stuff.

Then what about the other social media sites such as YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Linkedin, Twitter, Digg and the like? They are all good in their own way, but a blog is the place to bring all of these pieces together in a way to promote the lawyer and law firm. Each can help drive traffic to your site. Just because you peak someone's interest on a social media site does not mean they do not need a place to find you and meet you free of all of the other distractions.

Stuff

I know of what I speak. I have been fighting against my tendency to clutter all of my life. I think it might be in our DNA. It certainly represents our mind's eye. My mind is still a very cluttered place. I have come to accept my cluttered mind, but I have reached the point where I seek to avoid the chains of the cluttered World. We really have to resist because in the Third Wave there is no reason to hoard.

We now talk in terms of being untethered or wireless. But, the truth of the matter is that stuff is now what binds us to a place, a time, a way of thought. It is what makes us inflexible. It is what makes drives us broke.

It binds because we need offices and storage places for our stuff, and transportation to move and get to our stuff, and people to manage our stuff, and management of the people that manage our stuff, and all of this cost money.

When I started practicing law in in 1986 I had a problem as to where to keep all of my stuff organized on my desk. We did not have computers on every desk and no fax machine. So, I had a huge wrap around desk built that took up nearly the entire room. And, everything stayed on that desk (or on the floor next to that desk, or in the chairs around the desk, or ... you get the point). That desk bound me to that place and time. I had to be at that location and behind that desk to get anything accomplished. My staff had to be close to that desk. I was impressed with my desk. My staff (the people hired to help me keep up with my stuff) referred to it, however, as the "black hole".

I still walk into law offices all of the time to see the equivalent of my 1986 office. Oh, maybe the desk is not as large, but there are still books and papers, and little used gadgets laying around, space leased to keep it all central, and people around just to manage it. I think what a waste.

And, although maybe not in an office environment, clutter and hoarding shows are all the rage on TV these days. Sure, they reflect the worst among us, but it is so pervasive we all recognize it in ourselves. That is the reason that shows such as Clean House, Clean Sweep, Hoarding: Buried Alive, and Hoarders are currently so popular.  Time, Salon, and the New York Times have covered the worst of the situation of late.

There are lawyers that I work with who cannot get me information and documents I need until they are "back at their office" where they are not. Their personal offices look like a frat house. And, I suspect, they feel a need to get away from their offices to avoid the confines of the clutter, the staff, the walls, the bills ... the stuff. The one point that I took away form the book Stuff recently is this: People who clutter are trapped by the concept of potential. They see possibility. They see information they can use. They see ideas they might forget. They do not wish to see opportunity pass.

The point I want to leave with everyone is that where this might have been true in the past (in the age of my "black hole" of a desk), it has the opposite effect today. Where clutter and hoarding, especially files, documents and papers, might have represented potential in the past, it represents paralysis today. It represents the squandering of resources.

It also is the reason that many of us just cannot make the transition to the more virtual world. We just have to hold something, print something off, or store something least we forget it. We have paper files or electronic files trapped on a particular machine. We just need places to put things. We attack the reliability of the cloud. We complain we cannot move our offices home because of lack of room. But, that is the point really. It takes no room in this day and age and we are stuck where we are because we are stuck on our stuff.

We are trained to see beauty and promise in stuff, instead of recognizing the beauty and promise in not having it and being free from it all, having our information available to us via Google. legal research sites, and the cloud, and conducting ourselves accordingly.

Is it not time to get rid of the stuff.