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RJon Robins

How To Avoid the Most Costly Legal Marketing Mistakes

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How can I avoid the most expensive legal marketing mistakes? First of all, you have to identify what these mistakes are. If you can identify them, you can avoid them. The first mistake and one of the most costly ones is not having a plan. This means you don’t know the right client, the right time to bring in the right clients and your message is not compelling. If you don’t have this information and a compelling message, you won’t be able to prescreen clients. This leaves you with all the wrong clients and then business suffers.

One way to avoid the most costly marketing mistakes is by getting a projection. You know you want to generate whether it is $20,000 a month or $80,000 a month. By knowing these figures, you can decipher how many cases or matters you need to bring in per month to reach these goals. With this in mind, you can better identify:

  • A client
  • B client
  • C client
  • D client
  • F client

By identifying these clients you can  build your marketing message so that it appeals powerfully to the right clients. Even if you get less people walking in through your door, you are now getting the right clients, which are the ones you need.

Don’t waste time with the wrong clients. Not only your time but their time as well. Don’t waste time, energy and money meeting with someone only to discover they’re the wrong clients for you. That is another costly marketing mistake. Marketing to the wrong clients burns up your time, burns up your energy, burns up your staff’s patience with you and, wastes the prospective clients time. Good marketing aimed to the wrong client sinks you.

How to Become a Happy Lawyer and Make A Profit in the Process

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How to become a happy lawyer and make more money in the process?  Why do we say happy lawyers make more money?  Well, happy lawyers do make more money. Once you understand what it is that causes us as lawyers to be happy, it’ll be pretty obvious to you why the net effect helps you make more money. You need to understand that once you do the things that make you happy, then the law firm becomes more profitable. It doesn’t work the other way around. You don’t spend five or ten years of your life doing work that you’re miserable with for clients, make a bunch of money and then wake up one day and say, wow, now I’m happy! No, that’s not the way it works.

The way it works is you build a business. There are seven main parts of every law firm.  First part, is having a business plan.  You would never do business with someone if you knew they didn’t have a business plan. You’d never get on an airplane with someone that didn’t have a flight plan. You’d never let a doctor operate on you if he or she didn’t have a plan for how they were going to do the things that they do, right?  Same goes for a business. You need to have a business plan that addresses your marketing, your sales, your factory, your physical plan, your people, your money and your metrics, your financial controls and, of course, your mindset. Those are your goals.

Once you get those things working in your favor, your law firm has a predictable consistent flow of prospective new clients. This way you never have to be tempted to take business from someone you shouldn’t be taking business from.

You have to create a systematic reliable predictable way of converting prospective clients into paying clients at the right fee. If you do this, you won’t have to be strapped for cash and make risky decisions. At this point, you can get your factory working. Your factory creates a workflow that will deliver  to the clients predictably and reliably. The best part is you don’t have to be a slave to your firm! The factory has got to make sure that the right work gets done by the right people in the right way.

The fourth part is the physical plant.  You’ve got to make sure that all of the people that are working on your team, whether they’re in-house full time or part-time or virtual have everything they need. They need the right resources, the right surroundings,the right instructions, etc. A big part of the physical plant are your policies and procedures, your written instructions for how you want things done. When you’ve got that in place now your factory is under control which leads to the people. Every law firm, your law firm, my law firm (when I had one), has a receptionist, a secretary, a paralegal, an associate, a (rainmaker), a manager, a chief operating officer, a chief financial officer, and an owner. Every law firm has these positions on staff even though sometimes some of these positions go vacant.

If you’re all by yourself then you’re doing all of these jobs and you are all of these people. You’ve got to make sure that the right job is being done by the right person. If you get to the end of the week and you realize your cash flow sucks and you’re miserable, you need to take a closer look. What you’ll probably find is that you spent 20 hours that week doing the job a secretary could have done for you. That’s got to get fixed by adding people to your team. Yes, this leads to the financials, the budget, the budget variance report, the cash flow projections but it also brings predictability and control to your law firm. You should know where your revenues are coming from and what your expenses are going to be every week for about the next six weeks. Last but not least is the mindset, the goals. What are your financial goals? What are your personal goals? What are your professional goals?  Get all seven of these main parts of your law firm under control and you’ll have more fun, you’ll make more money, you’ll have more control over your time and you’ll be able to be more confident in making decisions. Not only will you be a happier lawyer but your firm will be a lot more profitable.

Three Reasons Most Solo Lawyers Never Create a Plan for their Small Law Firm (And Why This is a Recipe for Disaster)

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Running a law firm – or any business – without a business plan is setting yourself up for disaster. Sure, you might have “always done it that way.” And you might be making money, even without a plan. But operating your law firm without a strategic plan is likely to lead to any or all of these problems… and plenty more that we don’t have time to list in this blog entry:

You’re broke – you are consistently NOT making enough money, so you’re making lifestyle sacrifices.

You’re stuck in a boom or bust cycle. Some months are great, some are terrible. And you don’t feel like you have any control in the matter.

You’re miserable. You’re making money, but only because you are doing work that you hate, or for clients that you hate.

Any of these sound familiar? The good news is that creating a plan for your law firm can change all that. We’ve personally seen hundreds of lawyers create consistently profitable law businesses which allow them to spend their time doing work that they LOVE… or even better, spending their time golfing, traveling, or having fun with their family.

So why doesn’t EVERY owner of a solo or small law firm have a written plan?

Here are three common reasons we’ve encountered. What’s holding you back?

1) Ignorance. No one ever taught us anything about the business of how to manage a small law firm, back in law school.

The people who decide which CLE programs to offer are usually coming from the same school of thought as those who decided to send you out into the world without teaching you about how the heck a law firm actually operates.

“Just be a great lawyer and the magic law firm management elves will absolve you of your responsibilities as a business owner.” This is HORRIBLE business advice and a losing strategy.

2) Embarrassment. Probably 99% of the lawyers you will ever meet at a bar function have no written plan for how their firm is supposed to work.

Do this test and prove it to yourself: Ask the next 100 lawyers you meet, if they can explain to you in plain English how their law firm works. Then decide if that’s a business you’d feel comfortable with one of  your own clients investing in.

If you do this test with 10,000 lawyers, as we have, you will prove to yourself that 99% of the small law firms in this Country (and it’s the same in other Countries too) are drifting aimlessly with no strategic direction. But rather than face reality, most lawyers concoct stories about how the business of a strategic law firm marketing plan is somehow exempt from reality.

As if marketing, sales, staffing, financial controls, budgeting, and cash flow projections apply to every single OTHER kind of business on the Planet…but not law firms!

“We can evade reality but we cannot avoid the consequences of evading reality.” ~ Ayn Rand

Embrace reality… even if that means admitting that you don’t know everything about everything yet!

3) Compromise. At some point, many lawyers just give up. Maybe they didn’t go to law school with the intention of making a million dollars a year. But few people go to law school with the intention of working long hours, missing out on important family activities, doing the work of their own receptionist or secretary and having to scrape by, struggle or compromise on important “stuff” in their life.

Life isn’t all about driving a nice car, living in a beautiful home, taking luxurious vacations, eating at great restaurants, and being able to give your family the finer things in life.

But what if, by taking the time to create a strategic plan for your law firm, you could actually help more clients AND enjoy more material comforts too?

Your law firm needs a business plan. How long will ignorance, embarrassment, or compromise hold you back? Please contact us today to learn more!

What do you care what other lawyers do?

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This was posted on our private discussion forum.  I thought it would be a pretty good way for you to start your week…

  • Other lawyers who are just “interested” will give-up when things become inconvenient.
  • Other lawyers who don’t really enjoy the way their law firm works will allow themselves to be distracted too-easily and too-often to ever make any real progress with their business.
  • Other lawyers who don’t value them-self enough to make self-improvement a priority will find their own priorities reflected back to them in every interaction with prospective clients.
  • Other lawyers who lack the vision to see what’s possible will find every obstacle along the way.

Remember: No plan, no strategy, no skills, no experience, no credentials and no amount of money can compare to the person who just won’t stop.

->Where do you stop?

–>>Why do you stop there?

—>>>What would your life be like if you didn’t?

Have a great week-ahead.   And be sure make your plans today so you can join us in Dallas April 19th for a one day workshop “How To Build A Million Dollar Solo Law Firm (in 36 months or less)”.

~ RJON

Filed Under: you

The pattern. . .

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If you've been reading my emails, watching my videos or if you've been otherwise in my orbit for any length-of-time you've no doubt come to expect some “straight-talk”.

I don't beat around the bush.  I don't believe in allowing people to deceive themselves.  Self-honesty is the most important of all.  Because if you can't be – or won't be honest with yourself then what hope do you have for dealing with the real world?

So here's the pattern.  You've probably seen it a hundred times before with your own clients too…

1.) Where are you now Mr./Ms. Client?  (Answer: screwed)

2.) Where do you want to be in the future Mr./Ms. Client?  (Answer: in a better place).

3.) Why are you screwed and not on your way to a better place? (Answer: because I don't know how.)

4.) What's going to happen if you don't learn how?  (Answer: things will go from bad to worse – because after all, there is no such thing in the real world as “status quo”)

At which point you think the coast is clear to offer a solution to help the prospective client go from being screwed, detour around an even worse place and get safely on-course to the better place they profess to desire.

Not So Fast!

You forgot to take “safety” into account.  That is the insidious way the human mind equates what's familiar with what's safe. 

Even if what's familiar is pretty terrible.  And by all logical expectations likely to get worse.  Untenable situations tend to get worse not better if left-alone.  You already KNOW that. 

So then, why do so many untenable situations get left-alone for so long by otherwise intelligent people?

If you're seeing a pattern of prospective clients who don't hire you even though where they are now is bad, even though they have no way to make things better on their own and even though they acknowledge that things are likely to get worse not better without your help…

…if you're seeing this pattern the thing to do is probably to install some “pre-screening” into your marketing to educate prospective clients so they come to you in a better state of mind and prepared to let-go of what is familiar when offered the opportunity to replace that with something better.

Happy Monday,

~ RJON

p.s. If YOU are not where you want to be in terms of the financial, personal and/or the professional performance of your law firm and you're emotionally-prepared to consider letting-go of what's familiar in order to replace it with something materially-better then I invite you to schedule an appointment to speak with me this week or next.  After that my schedule is pretty full the following two weeks.

www.HowToMANAGEaSmallLawFirm.com/Appointment

 

Are you a Hunter or a Farmer?

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I’m probably good for about $10,000 per year to the restaurant I’ve been eating breakfast at the past couple of years.

But our business keeps growing and we’ve outgrown our home office. So I’m open to finding a new “regular place”.  Directly across the street from the new office is a restaurant that I was really excited about.  A real contender.  Until today.

First of all you have to picture it, the new office is actually a ground-floor commercial condo in an amazing 4 story building in the middle of Coconut Grove just on the border between the business and the residential district.  Directly aross the street from the front door of the new office is this very homey, outdoor restaurant with a big covered patio wi-fi and a decent breakfast menu.

So you can figure I’d be eating breakfast there maybe 4 days-a-week X $12.00= $2,304/year.

Plus a $50 lunch once or twice-a-week for me & whoever I’m meeting with (if we’re not discussing anything confidential) = $2,500

Plus $100 for dinner for me & my staff maybe 3 times-a-month = $3,600

Plus the occasional slurge, introducing friends to this place etc. and we could easily be talking about my value as a customer being closer to  $20,000 per year.

Other than the fact that I eat breakfast-out more often than most people I don’t think my value as a new customer is all that unusual for a decent restaurant.

In a few months when we get to the subject of how & when to hire, train & manage staff so you can make a profit from having staff.  For now I’ll just say it’s best to “hire slow & fire fast”.  Which, whenever I don’t follow my own advice about this, I always regret it.    So I’m “interviewing” this restaurant before I get too vested in adjusting my routine to eat there and make it my new place.

Today they blew it.  I’ll be happy to share the details if anyone is interested.  But the details are quite beside-the-point.

THE POINT: Today the owner of that restaurant let a $10,000 customer walk out the door because of the ego of his or her manager.  And what’s worse there’s no way for that owner to even know where all his or her profits are going?  He or she is probably busy blaming “the economy”!

When you don’t have marketing & management systems & procedures in-place that’s what happens… Staff runs-amok.  So you say to yourself it’s easier in the short-term not to have staff.  But without staff your entire business is balanced on your back.  Or if you do have staff, without proper systems you’re at their mercy!

HOMEWORK:

1.) Figure out the lifetime value of your average client.  Not just the transactional value.

2.) Identify three things your systems do for you to distinguish between your low-value and your high-value clients. Between aggressive and passive.

3.) Send me back an email and tell me one of the things you do as the owner of your business to be sure your best clients are happy with their experience with your law firm so that you can maximze the value of your best clients and protect these important relationships.  Depending when you reply to this it may take me awhile but I will respond to you!

~ RJON

p.s. Whatever you do, PLEASE DON’T TELL ME YOU JUST DO GREAT WORK.  Don’t you think that’s sort of the bare-minimum?

p.p.s. Hunters have to hunt or die.  Farmers live long & prosper.  You cannot sell your hunting prowess.  You can sell your farm, and if you manage it right there will be plenty of takers whenever you’re ready.  Hunting cultures always die-out.  Farming gave us the chance for leisure which lead to invention.  Lawyers who depend only on new clients, new clients, new clients burn out.  Lawyers who learn how to build a business tend to be happier and consequently, make more money.

HUNTER OR FARMER: WHICH DO YOU WANT TO BE?

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