It’s time for you to make a substantial shift in the way you’ve been thinking about what you have to offer prospects and clients.

To generate more leads, get more prospects to YES and increase your fees in a time of price-slashing and economic hardship, it’s time for you to begin focusing on VALUE and OUTCOMES instead of the specifics of your legal service.

It goes back to a point I made in last week’s article about how you can raise your fees, even in a tough economy.  If you give your prospects no other reason to choose you outside of price, you’ll wind up being price-shopped right out of business.

But, there is another way.

When you begin focusing on the VALUE you provide and the OUTCOME client’s will experience when working with you, there is no shopping around .

Let me give you a simple example of what selling OUTCOMES, as opposed to legal services would look like for the small/micro business owner market:

Prospect:      I can form my LLC online for $150 or with a lawyer who charges much less than you do; why would I pay you more than   the guy down the street?

You:     Yes, you can absolutely form your LLC online for $150 or with that guy down the street for a few hundred bucks, but I’ll ask you two questions: 1) are you sure you really need an LLC?   In many cases, forming an LLC is the wrong choice and could cost you thousands of dollars.  And 2) do you really want to put your business in the hands of a cut-rate lawyer?

Where and how you incorporate your business entity is just the first of many choices you’ll have to make if you want to grow a business that will fulfill on its mission and support your family without putting your personal assets at risk.   When you go online or with a lawyer who doesn’t do anything more than complete form documents for you, are you going to have somewhere to turn when you have questions or when things come up in your business?  Or are you going to make decisions that could turn costly because you didn’t have the guidance of someone you trust?

When you work with me, I’ll make sure you ask all the right questions and get the answers you need to build a profitable and sustainable business.   That’s not something you are going to get from an online document service or a guy who completes some documents for you and sends you on your way.

You don’t really know what you need and what you don’t need and the cost of overlooking things you don’t even know about will be far higher than the fees you’ll pay to work with me.

As your lawyer for the life of your business, you’ll never have to worry that you are paying too much in taxes or for insurance you don’t need or that you have to sign an agreement without getting it reviewed because you are concerned about what it will cost you to contact me.

You get the point.

We have shifted the discussion away from legal documents or even pricing to instead talk about the outcome.

In fact, this is so important that I’m going to hold a contest.

Post in the comments below regarding what you see as the outcome(s) we are selling and will be basing pricing on in the above script.

Everyone who comments and gets the right answer will be entered into a drawing for my Client Attraction System, which we just sold for $997.

I’ll be discussing more about selling outcome instead of focusing on legal services and price as it relates to serving the small business community on Thursday, March 18th at 10 am PST/ 1 pm EST.  Join me.  I’ll also be giving you information on how to join our Creative Business Lawyer program.  Our beta class is already getting inquiries from entrepreneurs looking for a Creative Business Lawyer for their business.  For more information and registration details, please visit: http//www.lawbusinessrevoluton.com/cblcall

If you’ve been reading my Law Business Revolution Briefing Memorandum for any amount of time, you’ll know that I’m NOT a fan of hourly billing or you selling yourself short in the name of a “sluggish economy” or for any other reason.

I just had a laser coaching session with a lawyer last week who told me she didn’t want to build the kind of practice I had because she wanted to keep her fees low.  After talking with me though, she was able to see that not valuing the services she provides isn’t going to help her help more people, it’s going to run her into bankruptcy.

It’s heartbreaking to watch so many lawyers go out of business or not bring home enough bacon simply because they get trapped into thinking about their pricing the wrong way.

When you differentiate yourself based on price, you simply cannot provide value.  You end up competing on the wrong basis.

While price competitors have been in operation since beginning of time, it’s important to understand that if YOU want to build a sustainable, scalable and one day SALEable law business, a core foundational piece of that puzzle is that you are charging enough.

Is that possible in this economy?  Absolutely.

Let me shift your thinking outside the legal world and into the business world for a moment.  Stores that offer super low prices like Wal-Mart and Target are thriving in this economy.  So with that logic, you’d expect high-end stores like Nordstrom or Sacks 5th Avenue to be out of business right now…but they’re not.  In fact, Nordstrom’s profits more than doubled in the quarter ending Jan. 30 according to the WSJ.  Luxury cars like Mercedes and BMW also reported profits last year despite the fact that “no one has money to spend.”

And lawyers doing things the PFL Way are thriving, while charging much higher fees than their “competitors”. How can that be?
It’s simple, really.  People DO have money to spend… you’re simply not doing a good enough job showing them that your law firm is the best place to spend it.

You see, it’s all about the value.  And I’d suspect that you are not clear enough on the value you provide to convey it to your prospects.

This isn’t “blind theory” or Alexis Martin Neely’s random thoughts on life either.  I’ve done it, our Personal Family Lawyers® and Creative Business Lawyers™ are DOING it and so are millions of other small business owners/ entrepreneurs in this country right now.

So how are they doing it?  Here are some things you can do right now:

1. Stop Acting Like a Commodity.

Your prospects have no way to know if you are the best lawyer for them.  To regular folks, all lawyers are the same.  So when you compete on price, you’ll get price shoppers galore who see you as just like everyone else.   But, you are not like all the other lawyers, are you?

So, what makes you different?  And how do you show that to the marketplace?  That’s what you need to focus on and show the world.

2. Identify the Value of the Outcome You Provide.

Why can Nordstrom’s charge higher prices for products found elsewhere (i.e. cars, purses, ties, shoes)?  It’s because of the VALUE they’ve attached to their brand (i.e. social prestige, enhanced customer service, increased self-esteem).   They’ve moved themselves out of the commodity market and into the heart, emotion and primal urges of their clients.   You need to do the same thing in your law firm.  Yes, Mr. Customer can get an estate plan for $399 or set up their LLC for $750 or a bankruptcy for $1125 down the street, but what are they NOT getting when they work with that other firm or even worse go online to do it themselves?

3. Move Beyond the Billable Hour

There are only so many hours in a day and you’ll reach an income plateau very quickly when you are billing by the hour. Not to mention that you have to start every month over at zero and there’s absolutely no stability in that.  No matter what practice area you are in (with the exception of contested matters), you can begin billing on a flat-fee/value basis.   If you’re scared to shift, just think of the VALUE your customers will experience having an attorney using flat fee billing.  They won’t be nickel and dimed for every phone call, email and fax that comes through the office.  They can communicate with you as they wish without fear and they can pick their price point of choice if you have membership options.  And believe me, people are willing to pay more for certainty every time.  It’s a win-win for them– and it’s very much a win-win for the health/sustainability of your law firm.

Remember this:  People still have money to spend… even in this economy.  And they NEED your services.  It’s up to you to convey the intrinsic value of working with you (even at a higher price point) to command the income level you want…and rightfully deserve…this year.

PS- If you serve small business owners and want more information after reading this article on how you can participate in our Creative Business Lawyer Program and serve the entrepreneurial/business owner market using flat-fee, membership-based billing and differentiate yourself from all the other business lawyers out there, mark your calendar for March 18th at 12pm PT/3pm ET.  More details coming soon!

Over the past few weeks, I’ve talked to you a lot about “mindset” and that you’ve got to start thinking about your law firm as a business if you want to enjoy the freedom that inspired you to start your business in the first place.

There’s one major place small firm and solo attorneys get hung up that will keep you running a practice instead of owning a business –and that’s investing in the support staff you need to take some of the heavy administrative and marketing burdens off your plate.

I hear so many excuses from lawyers who desperately need help but sabotage themselves with “I can’t afford it” or “I can’t trust anyone else to do the work” or “It’s easier to just do it myself or “I don’t have space for an assistant” thinking.

If you don’t make the investment in key support staff to assist you in the operations of your firm, you’ll never grow beyond your current earning capacity and you won’t be able to serve your clients as well as you possibly could.

At the same time, you don’t want to get into a situation where you have too much support, which will result in bloated overhead and you keeping very little of your money.

These days, I do as much as possible with virtual support instead of having people in-house.  And in my best years in the law firm it was the same.

My worst years from an emotional perspective were when I had 7 staff members and a $70,000 per month overhead.  Talk about stress!

Fortunately, the following year after that one, I figured out how to keep my revenue the same with only three full time employees and outsourcing the rest.

So, how do you know if you have too much, too little or just the right amount?

For one week do the following:

1. Write down every single thing you do on a daily basis as it relates to your business.   Track your time down to minute and be sure to include seemingly minute tasks such as, “called the courier and arranged pick up of my court documents” to “ordered coffee for the office”.  Have every person on your team do the same.

2.  At the end of the week, circle everything on your list that could have been done by someone else.  And closely examine what your team members were doing.

3.  Make adjustments once you see how your time and your team are really operating.  It can be hard to see what’s really going on, but it’s always worth it.  Add up the number of hours you spent on the items you circles in step 2 and calculate how much more revenue you could have brought in if you had spent that time in revenue generating (or marketing) activities instead.

Once you see what’s really going on, you can make decisions with knowledge instead of remaining in the dark about your business.

One of the single most important things you can learn how to do as a business owner is how to bounce back from failures.

How you handle failure is the key to whether you will succeed. Here’s how some of the most successful people of all time have handled what would have stopped most of us dead in our tracks.

* Thomas Edison failed 10,000(!) times before finally inventing the light bulb

* Henry Ford started many businesses and ended up completely broke FIVE times before he founded Ford Motor Company

* Harland Sanders and his famous Kentucky Fried Chicken recipe was rejected 1,009 times before he finally heard a yes.

* Oprah Winfrey was fired and rejected as a TV reporter.  Her bosses called her “unfit for TV.”

* R.H. Macy started SEVEN failed businesses before his department store Macy’s became a huge global success.

Maybe you too are experiencing failure at this very moment.  Maybe you’re drowning in a sea of debt and can’t fathom how you and your firm can possibly come out alive.

Maybe you feel like a failure as a parent…or a husband or a wife because your law firm steals all of your time and forces you to neglect the things or people you love the most.

Perhaps you’ve lost a string of cases that’s shattered your self-confidence and you’re now questioning your ability in the legal field all together.

To you I say: Don’t give up!

Each of these failures is a stepping stone to your ultimate success.  Instead, see them as tests to see how serious you really are about succeeding in business and life.

Here are the things that help me bounce back and get back on the horse each time I fall off:

1. Find the lesson. Every failure is merely an opportunity to learn how to do better next time.  When you see failure that way, you discover that not only is failure not something to be afraid of, but something to embrace because it brings you one step closer to what you need to learn to get where you want to go.

2.  Don’t blame. Blame blocks your lesson.  Instead, if you take 100% personal responsibility for your part of every failure, you can learn the lessons you need to turn the failure into a huge success.

3.  Move out of why and into what. Many of us spend our time WHYning constantly.  Oh why me, why did this happen. Why, why, why, why, why????  Why doesn’t matter.  All that matters is what.  Accept the reality of whatever did happen and now ask yourself WHAT you are going to do to turn it around into the greatest opportunity of your life.

4.  Ask for help. Sometimes it’s hard to see the lessons in our own failures.  Emotion can get in the way.  So ask for help from someone who cares about you and is not emotionally invested in your outcome.  Even if you are a solo lawyer, that doesn’t mean you have to do it all alone.

If you want the support of an amazing group of lawyers who will help you turn every failure into the greatest opportunity for success, consider becoming a PFL.  I held a no-charge call on February 16th where I gave all the details of the program and opened the doors for our open enrollment happening this week. If you missed the call, you can download the replay here and still get your application in before tomorrow’s deadline.

The PFL program isn’t for everyone.  If what we offer doesn’t fit with your practice area or simply isn’t a business model you’d like to implement, keep searching until you find the one that is.  You really can have a life and business that you love being a lawyer and serving your clients in  a way that really matters.

Image courtesy of Flickr

Every now and then, I like to move away from teaching about the legal marketing/ law practice aspects of running a small or solo law firm and dive into something that’s rarely talked about in the legal field…which is your mindset.

Because here’s the truth, I can give you all the legal marketing and practice management tips in the world, but if your head isn’t in the right place, you’ll find a way to sabotage your efforts.

Conversely, you can be the worst marketer or business person, but if you have the right mindset, you’ll eventually find success.

Today, I want to talk about DRIVE and how it relates to the success of your life/business right now.

Take a moment and consider the following:

1. What drives me?

2. What is my purpose for being a lawyer?

3. What is my purpose in life?

4. Am I happy?

5. Why did I go to law school?

6. Am I making a difference in the world?

These can be hard questions to look at….especially in times of economic hardship. You may feel driven on pure survival. And you may find yourself enduring gruesome hours and complete misery all in the name of making money.

You may even be compromising your time and sanity by taking legal work that you don’t WANT or LIKE to do-just to get by.

Ultimately though, these actions don’t lead to more money. They lead to burnout, bitterness, depression, addictions and in extreme cases, suicide (which is sadly on the rise for lawyers these days).

There comes a point at which if you’re going to succeed in the business of law….and in the business of life, you need to get very clear on what drives you, why you wanted to practice law in the first place and whether you are really living the life you want.

I recently had a call with Dan Pink, the New York Times best-selling author of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, where we discussed this issue as it relates specifically to lawyers and the legal field.

What you may not know about Dan is that he’s got a JD from Yale. But, he never used his law degree to practice because he realized early on that his “drive” and motivation was not to be a lawyer.

Going to law school was, for him, just the next logical step for a bright kid with a top-notch college degree and a lack of clarity about what else to do.

And there’s many lawyers out there who went to law school for the same reason and are now incredibly unhappy in the actual practice of law…..not because they aren’t smart….but they aren’t aligned with that which drives them. (This may even be you.)

Dan also acknowledged there’s another group of lawyers….lawyers like me who went to law school with the DRIVE and purpose to really help people. If that’s you, you’re driven by the idea of making a real difference in the world and using the power of your law degree to some chief and definite aim.

And there’s many of us in this group who have lost sight of that drive. We take jobs in law firms that keep us stuck in the transactional rut or we get so desperate running a small or solo law firm that we take clients and cases that leave us miserable in practice.

If that’s you-I completely understand. I was there. It’s exactly what motivated me to leave the safety of my six-figure paycheck and set out to build my own law firm. And it’s also what motivated me to master the skills and create the systems I now teach in the Personal Family Lawyer Program.

I wanted to make a real difference in my client’s lives and I knew the old, broken business model just didn’t leave enough room for that. Not if I wanted to also enjoy my personal life.

Yes it was scary…..yes there were moments when I questioned my own sanity leaving the big check and investing hundreds of thousands of dollars reinventing the business model….but I had to get aligned with what drives me or face years of unhappiness and little quality time with my kids.

What I can tell you is that when I made the decision to get aligned with what was really important to me in life and my practice, the money, freedom and success ultimately followed.

So take a moment today and think about what drives you.

Why did you go to law school and are you living that desire?  A great start is downloading the call I did with Dan Pink and force yourself to identify any disconnect in your own life. I’ll show you how to work through it in the weeks to come.