Someone calls your office and schedules an appointment to meet with you, then what?

If you’re like most lawyers, nothing happens, that’s what.  Your secretary simply blocks the time on your calendar and you sit back and wait.  If that’s the case, you are missing a primo opportunity to pre-sell your prospects before they even ever sit down with you, making it far more likely they’ll write you a check when they do make it into your office.

What you want to do instead of nothing is send out a killer pre-meeting package (PMP) that will wow your prospects before they even step foot in your door.

Now, one thing to note – I personally only send out the PMP to people who have made an appointment to come into the office and meet with me.  There are lawyers who send their PMP out and then set the appointment.  This strategy did not work for me when I tried it.  I found myself sending out a lot of PMPs and not getting the appointments made.

The most difficult part of sending out a well-structured PMP is putting your very first one together.  So to make sure you’re doing things right, you’ll want your package to include the following:

1. A professional Linen Folder- Don’t settle for something cheap and flimsy to package your materials.  Understand that a good, quality folder shows the prospect that you really care about them and their relationship with your firm.  You can even go one step further and order a custom linen folder with your logo on the front for best results.

2. Credibility Boosters- You’ll want to stuff your folder with plenty of information designed to boost your credibility and convince your prospect that you are the absolute best person to work with them before they ever set foot in your firm.  Credibility may include articles that have been written about you, interviews on CD, press releases, a copy of your book or other “press materials” and if your State bar rules allow it, a sheet of testimonials by former happy clients. It’s likely you don’t have these things already, but everything I’ve listed can be easily created within three months from now, so get started.

3. Pre-Meeting Homework – Your package should include some form of interactive paperwork that your prospect must complete and return before their meeting.  Not only will this help you come to the meeting prepared to serve your prospects with the information they need to say yes to you, but by taking action before the meeting, your prospects are more likely to say yes when they make it in.

4. Firm Story- Your folder must include at least one document that conveys your firm story and why you are different from everyone else in town.  This is really the clincher of the PMP and something you should spend time getting right (and if you’re totally lost on how to develop a firm story, stay tuned because we’ll be covering this in the weeks to come).

5. Fee Information – This can be controversial, but you’ll absolutely want to provide some information about your fees and how they are determined.  No one likes surprises and most people don’t trust lawyers to begin with.  The more you can communicate directly and not hide the ball, the more prospects will trust you and make it in to their meeting.

6. Humanized bios of you and your staff- While it’s great to convey how just how smart you are and how many awards you’ve earned as a lawyer, you also want your bio to be personal so the prospect feels like they “know” you and your team on a much deeper level.  People do business with people they know, like and trust.  You have to convey who you are, not simply where you went to law school and the awards you won, for this to happen.

Finally, to finish things off, you’ll want to mail your PMP in a USPS priority mailer so it looks and feels “important” and doesn’t get tossed aside as junk mail. I can’t think of anyone that ignores a priority mailer sent to their house, so it’s in your best interest to spring for this final touch.

No matter what type of law you practice, make a commitment to design a PMP for your firm within the next 30 days.  Then, send this package out to every prospect who requests an appointment with you and continue to record your results. If done right, you should see a nice increase in your bottom line over the weeks and months to come!

It’s official.  Our economy is in a recession and so is the law industry.  And, there’s no question that it’s hitting law firms where it hurts.  The question will be how the impact is felt in your law firm and on your career.

If you are a solo or small firm lawyer, you have a lot of control over that, but only if you don’t allow the fear to put you into paralysis and instead get out there and take action now.

Here are four things you can do immediately to help ensure that your fortune is increased during this recession and not decimated as many of your competitors will be:

1.  Market Yourself Effectively & Efficiently

Now is the time to pick up your marketing in a big, bad kind of way.  While most of your competitors will be pulling back, you can double your marketing ROI by doing more.

The key though is to make your marketing consistent and diverse.

Consistent means you are doing the same set of things each and every month, without fail.

Diverse means that you are doing more than one thing.  Hopefully a lot more.

It means you’re using direct mail, advertising, and seminars to generate leads.  Plus, you’ve got a referral strategy in place that doesn’t involve you wasting time with pointless networking luncheons.  You aren’t relying on any one thing to bring in a more than 2-3 new clients per month, but instead a handful of things to bring in 2-3 clients each per month.

2.  Engage More Prospects at Higher Fees

If you can increase your engagement rate so that nearly 100% of the people who come into meet with you end up engaging your firm at higher fees, you will see a huge impact on your growth in the direction you want things to go.

I know it seems counter-intuitive to talk about raising your fees during a time when everyone’s worried about money.  But, that’s always been one of the secrets to my success.  Do the opposite of what everyone else is doing.

By raising your fees, you will actually become more in demand and you’ll need to see fewer clients and be able to provide more service to your clients.

Now, the key is that you’ve got to be engaging the prospects who call your office.  The key to that is to make sure that your intake staff is using a proven script designed to get the prospects into the office and that you are using a script that ensures you are engaging nearly 100% of the people who come in.

If you aren’t engaging nearly 100% of the people who make it into your office or if you are dealing with a boatload of cancellations each month, there is a solution.  We’ve got a whole system that teaches client engagement, check it out risk-free at www.clientengagementsystem.com.

3.  Focus Your Business On an Underserved Niche

No matter what your practice area is, you should consider focusing on a niche for all of your marketing efforts.  All of the best and brightest marketing gurus out there say that the more you can laser focus your marketing to a small subset of people, the more successful you will be.

In most cases, lawyers make the mistake of doing what all of their colleagues are doing and what happens is you begin to see a lot of activity in certain niche demographics and very little in others.

Here’s an example from the estate planning area, which you can extrapolate out into whichever practice area you are working in.

The vast majority of estate planning lawyers are either marketing to elderly people, the ultra-wealthy, or not niching their marketing at all.  This leads to a very crowded marketplace with most lawyers appearing exactly like the guy next door and not very much for prospects to differentiate one from the other except on price.

That’s how commodities are created.

I took a different track when I built my practice from scratch 5 years ago.

I niched my marketing and focused almost entirely on reaching families with young children, an extremely underserved market who is in need of estate planning services.

Here’s what was so interesting.  Once I committed to focus my marketing efforts on the niche of reaching young families, I began to attract all sorts of other prospects outside of my niche, including elderly folks and the uber-rich.

4.  Add On a Lucrative Practice Area

Some practice areas are suffering right now, while others are thriving.  Bankruptcies are on the rise, I’m sure divorces will be increasing as families crumble under financial pressures.  If you are in a practice area that is not currently thriving, consider branching out into something complementary that may be able to serve your already existing client base.

Estate planning is one of the best practice areas to add on to your practice because it’s easy to learn and everyone you know needs it, no matter what the economy is like.  The one thing you can’t avoid is death and taxes, but through a lifetime relationship with your estate planning lawyer, you can make both of them a lot less scary.

Here’s the key though, if you are going to add on a complementary practice area, make sure that you don’t delude yourself into thinking that this is going to save your business if you are blaming the slow down of your current business on the economy, but you aren’t marketing and haven’t already done all you can to expand your existing business.  Make sure you have a marketing plan in place to get the word out about your new offerings and how they can benefit your clients.

And, be sure that the practice area you are adding on to your business is easy to learn, systematizable, and has a proven system you can follow for maximum success as quickly as possible.

If you want to consider adding estate planning on as a complement to your already successful law practice, contact us by email at support@familywealthmatters.com as we have a proven, turn-key system that will allow you to quickly and easily get up and running to meet the estate planning needs of your existing clients and bring in a whole new base of fresh clients.

The best part about the estate planning practice area is that we teach you how to become your client’s primary, trusted advisor helping them to make a lifetime of smart financial and legal decisions.  It’ll help you get back to the reason you became a lawyer in the first place.

The long and the short of it is that if you are innovative, focused and creative, this recession can be just the opportunity you need to take your business to a whole new level of efficiency, effectiveness and profitability.  Things are changing anyway, why not make this an opportunity to become the lawyer you’ve always wanted to be?

Image courtesy of Flickr

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About the Law Business Revolution

The Law Business Revolution is a law firm marketing and training organization focused on helping attorneys attract quality clients, start and grow productive law firms, systematize their businesses and ultimately help lawyers attain more time and greater resources than ever before.

Training through the Law Business Revolution includes (but is not limited to), private and group coaching led by professionals that surpassed the 7-figure mark in their own firms and businesses, client engagement strategies, client attraction strategies, educational, relationship-based marketing techniques designed to get results, lead generation training, campaigns for consumers, referrals and prospects and systematizing a firm to run on autopilot.

Licensed attorneys are welcome to download over $22,500 of free practice building resources courtesy of the Law Business Revolution at http://www.lawbusinessrevolution.com .

What do people see when they come into your office? What do they hear when they call? How easy is it for them to get to you?

Today, it’s more important than ever.

And yet many of you are still making people travel through complicated parking garages, banks of elevators, and into high-rise office buildings only to step into a cold office manned by a surly receptionist or none at all.

Many of you are letting your phones go to voicemail or even worse having them answered by someone who barks “law offices.”

Why?

Because that’s the way you’ve always done it.

It’s time to stop doing it the way you’ve always done it and start doing it the way your customers want it.

What do they want?

* They want to feel warmth in the voice of the person answering your phone (who better not be you, by the way!).

* They want to feel welcomed as soon as they step into your office.

* They want to drive right up to your front door and park easily, as if they were coming to your home.

* They want to step into an inviting environment with soft music, a sign to greet them, soothing colors, flowers, and feel as if they are in your living room or joining you at your kitchen table.

* They want to see pictures of your family, your pets, and your clients.

* They want to get to know who you are before they share who they are.

What can you do today in your business to do more of what your customers want?

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About the Law Business Revolution

The Law Business Revolution is a legal marketing and training organization focused on helping attorneys attract quality clients, start and manage productive law firms, systematize their businesses and ultimately help lawyers attain more time and greater resources than ever before.

Training through the Law Business Revolution includes (but is not limited to), private and group coaching led by professionals that surpassed the 7-figure mark in their own firms and businesses, client engagement strategies, client attraction strategies, educational, relationship-based marketing techniques designed to get results, lead generation training, campaigns for consumers, referrals and prospects and systematizing a firm to run on autopilot.

Licensed attorneys are welcome to download over $22,500 of free practice building resources courtesy of the Law Business Revolution at http://www.lawbusinessrevolution.com .

If you have great testimonials, you don’t need to do very much selling or legal marketing. Your clients will sell for you.

If you don’t have testimonials, it could be because you are afraid of asking because you might get back complaints or no testimonials at all.   If you believe in what you are doing and what to be the best you can, don’t be afraid.  Welcome whatever comes back and know that if you don’t hear what you want, that you will do whatever is necessary to improve and you will have learned extremely important information you can now act on.

It will be the first step to a steady flow of clients that stream in effortlessly.