In last week’s Law Business Revolution Briefing Memorandum, we talked about the seasons of marketing.

As I mentioned, NOW is the time for you to be gearing up for the Fall Marketing season that begins in September and runs through November.

This will fill your practice.

Lawyers in our Personal Family Lawyer program are booking new appointments 8 weeks out. Yes, you read that right, 8 weeks and their prospects are thrilled to wait for them.

So, what do you need to do now to fill your practice this fall?

Here’s a list:

1. Line up speaking engagements, at least 6 this fall will fill your practice IF you are speaking intentionally with a strong call to action at the end of your talk.

   We provide presentations to reach divorce lawyers, families with young children, real estate investors and agents, and wealthy/elderly families to our lawyers — let us know if you would like us to help you with speaking to sell your services.

2. Get your marketing campaigns lined up so you are running at least one campaign a month — September is a great month for back to school, October is a great month for Halloween type promotions, and of course giving thanks in November.

   We provide custom marketing campaigns to our lawyers each month. Want to use ours instead of reinventing the wheel? Just hit reply and let us know.

3. Send out your weekly email newsletter and monthly newsletter by mail, stay at the top of the mind of your referral sources and prospects and your schedule will fill up.

   We can create all of this for you, so you can actually get it done and stay focused on serving your clients.

I’d love for you to hit it out of the park and fill your practice this Fall Marketing Season — start planning now and you will be on track to have your phone ringning with hungry prospects all fall long.

Alexis

PS – don’t forget, contact us a support@familywealthmatters.com if we can help you to get your marketing systems set up on auto-pilot so you can be the lawyer you love to be.

I’ve seen a lot of lawyers struggling to market effectively and wonder why it’s not working.

I’ve also heard a lot of lawyers say things like “it’s the summer” so I am not doing any marketing because no one shows up in the summer.

Or, I’ve also heard …

“Summer is so slow, no one is doing anything in the summer.”

Hm, that may be right for your colleagues, but for many people the world keeps on going throughout every season.

And if you keep your marketing consistent throughout the summer, it will pay off for you big time.

I like to break up the year into 3 marketing seasons -

• Fall Marketing Season (mid-Sept-mid-November)
• Spring Marketing Season (Feb-May)
• Summer Marketing Season (June-August)

When I was in practice I would plan my marketing for each season in the season before.

That means now would be the time to begin planning for the fall marketing season.

In next week’s law business revolution briefing memorandum I’ll share with you how you can plan for the fall marketing season so you stay booked with new business through the whole season and beyond.

Until then … keep building your business.

Alexis

PS — I’m excited to welcome our new Personal Family and Creative Business Lawyers — if you would like all of your marketing done for you so you have a steady stream of business every season, inquire as to when we will open membership again.

Before your parents (or your best friend) explained the birds and the bees, you probably had no idea where babies come from.

Perhaps you thought it was the stork or getting married or sleeping in the same bed that made a baby.

Of course, no matter how many people you married or slept in bed with or storks flew over, you cannot make a baby without something very specific taking place and if you do not know what that specific thing is, you are out of luck. No baby no matter how hard you try.

Well it’s the same with clients.

If you do not know where clients come from or you are slightly off on how to reach them, your marketing simply will not work.

And unfortunately, I see a whole lot of lawyers doing the kind of marketing that would be the equivalent of trying to make a baby by praying for the stork to drop one off.

Fortunately, it’s pretty easy to learn the birds and the bees of marketing so you can start bringing in clients more consistently.

Watch this space over the next couple of weeks because I’m going to be sharing with you what our Personal Family Lawyers and Creative Business Lawyers are doing to market and have a steady flow of new business, even with all this craziness in the economy.

That way you can get down to business and finally be the lawyer you have always wanted to be.

Got questions? Hit reply and let me know. I’m here to help you put in place consistent, reliable, predictable systems for attracting, engaging, serving and retaining your client for life.

Alexis

Law Business Revolution

PS: if you have wondered about how you can be a PFL or CBL, our next enrollment call is on June 22. Details to come

Alexis here with this week’s Law Business Revolution Briefing memo and I’m answering a question asked by a few subscribers over the years, that you may also wonder about from time to time as you receive emails about my million dollar law practice.

Here’s the most honest answer I can give you:

I no longer practice law because once I got the system down for how to attract the right clients, engage them just about every time and serve them with streamlined systems that turned them into raving fans, frankly I got bored.

Once I got the systems developed and in place in my office, I got antsy and restless.

It began to dawn on me that it was not my destiny to serve clients on a one to one basis, or keep running the systems I had created while other lawyers in my firm did the work.

I’m the kind of gal who thrives on challenge and change and trying new things.

And I also knew that I didn’t invest thousands of hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars in creating those systems and marketing campaigns just so I could be the only one to use them.

That would have felt wasteful.

So in late 2006, I took a risk and began teaching my systems to other lawyers.

Today, hundreds of lawyers are benefitting from my willingness to share what I learned and created. Now you do not have to reinvent the wheel and take all the risks like I did.

Instead, I can do what I do best – guide lawyers to use my systems, write books and appear on tv to educate the public, and create effective marketing campaigns or lawyers to reach more clients.

As an example, the lawyers in our Personal Family Lawyer program are raving about our recent Mother’s Day campaign, which is getting their phones ringing and new clients in the door.

So that’s why I no longer practice law. I believe we are all here for a specific purpose and part of mine is to help those of you who love to serve more clients, with more heart and don’t want to have to take the risk and time and effort to build the system from scratch.

I welcome all of your questions. All you need to do is leave a question below, if this or anything else I have said leaves you scratching your head.

All my best,

Alexis

In case you hadn’t heard…

Today is your last day to join both the Personal Family Lawyer and Creative Business Lawyer programs for one low, low, low investment.

Join us here now:

http://www.PersonalFamilyLawyer.com/order

OR

http://www.CreativeBusinessLawyer.com/order

If you want to join later this week, you can, but you will pay $200 per month more to be a member of both of our programs.

Stay with us just one year and save $2,400 of your membership fees. Stay with us 10 years and that $200/mo savings translates into a $24,000 savings.

And if the program is a fit for you, you will want to stay 10 years because we have created systems and structures for reaching the clients you want to serve that you could not replicate on your own for any less than what we are providing them for.

Plus, they will provide you with a steady flow of clients that just keep on coming, which means you are able to have a sustainable, predictable, consistent source of new business, revenue and cash flow.

Imagine that for a moment, and then join us here now:

http://www.PersonalFamilyLawyer.com/order

OR

http://www.CreativeBusinessLawyer.com/order

If you want to join later this year, you may be able to or you may have to wait until next year (we are not sure when we will open the program again) and you will likely pay hundreds more per month for just one of our programs.

When you join now, you lock in your investment forever. It can never go up, but it can and will go down after you have been a member for a year.

When you join our program, we are confident you will stay in because again, you could not replicate the resources we give you on your own less expensively because of our economies of scale.

(see the results and experiences of a few of our lawyers here)

Marketing campaigns, presentations, and lead-generation resources for reaching families and small business owners, such as books, kits, training programs and more that you would invest tens upon tens of thousands to create on your own.

We give it all to you for one low investment that will only get lower the longer you are with us and the more lawyers we serve over time.

But, it starts with one month – join us now and you are under no commitment to stay for any length of time. (We only want you with us as long as the benefits greatly outweigh the costs of your membership not because we have forced you to stay with a penalty for leaving.)

So join us now here:

http://www.PersonalFamilyLawyer.com/order

OR

http://www.CreativeBusinessLawyer.com/order
And if you have any questions at all or you are not sure if this is right for you, ask us for support by emailing us at support(at)FamilyWealthMatters.com &  letting us know where you are feeling stuck or uncertain. We can help, but you have to ask.

I hope to see you lock in these savings and get on the road to predictable, consistent revenue you can count on using systems your clients will love.

Alexis

It’s been over a year since I opened the Personal Family Lawyer and Creative Business Lawyer programs to new members.

In that time, our lawyers have been thriving more than ever.

You can read some of their stories here:
http://lawbusinessrevolution.com/resultsmatter

I’ve spent the past year retooling both programs, making them WAY MORE AFFORDABLE and accessible, and making it so we can help you even more.

And this could be the last time this year we open the programs.

Join us on Thursday to hear all about it:
http://lawbusinessrevolution.com/pflcall

I’ll be taking your questions live on the call so do try to be there live if at all possible.

The other reason you want to be there live, if you can, is because there is so much demand for these programs that we have already had lawyers ask us to hold their spot in the program for them without knowing any of the details.

We now have less than 30 slots available when we open the doors and this email is going out to thousands of lawyers.

So be on the call live. Register here:
http://lawbusinessrevolution.com/pflcall

When I first started out in practice, I used to think
that marketing my law firm meant figuring out the one
thing I could do that would bring me in all the clients
I needed.

I spent at least a year trying to figure out what
that one thing was.

I searched google for law firm marketing, marketing for
lawyers, marketing for attorneys, build my law firm,
how can I get more clients …

I’m sure you know what I mean.  If you are here it’s
because you’ve been searching for all of that too.

You want more clients.

You want the answer on how to get more clients. And
perhaps, like me, you think there is some secret to
getting more clients for your law firm that has eluded
you.

I read all the white papers, websites, forums and blog
posts on marketing for lawyers, law firm marketing,
marketing for attorneys, etc.,etc.

I found that most of what was out there wasn’t from
other small and solo practice law firm owners who had
found success, but from law firm marketing consultants
who were trying to sell me on their services.

Most of them weren’t lawyers at all. They were consultants.
They hadn’t actually done it in their own law practices.

So, long story short, I decided to try some of the law
firm marketing strategies they suggested.

Some of it worked, some of it didn’t.

Ultimately, I was able to get my phone ringing.  Not by
implementing one lawyer marketing strategy, but by
putting in place several strategies to market my law
practice and to get those strategies on an automated
system that would run continuously even when I got
busy or distracted with running my law practice and
serving my clients.

But here’s the most important thing I found out – I
was doing it all backwards.

You see, no one told me that it isn’t law firm
marketing strategies or even marketing at all that
will make the biggest difference …
it’s about what happens once the phone does ring.

You see, I got my phone ringing, but then I found
I was only converting a very small percentage of those
phone calls into appointments and I was only converting
a very small percentage of those appointments into
clients.

I was wasting my time and money on marketing my law firm
when I wasn’t really ready for the phone to ring at all.

What no one told me (and I really do believe it’s because
they didn’t know) is that the first place to focus is
not on marketing your law firm.

The place to start is on getting a system in place for
what happens once your phone rings.

What exactly do you say when someone calls to inquire about
your services?

What exactly do you say when they show up in your office
so they go from interested prospect to paying client?

What exactly should they see when they get to your website?

How do you bring someone from hearing you speak and being
interested in what you offer to coming into your office
and hiring you?

Those are the most important questions. If you invest time,
money and energy in marketing your law firm before you have
a solid process in place for engaging clients, you are
wasting your time and money.

If you want the very best marketing for your law practice,
begin by creating a solid client engagement system and process.

Once you know you can convert every qualified website hit
and phone call into an appointment and then at least 75% of
those appointments into client, then invest your money
in marketing your law practice.

Until then … build the system for engaging clients.

This is how I ended up building a million dollar law firm
and it would have happened much faster if I would have started
with figuring out  how to engage clients first and only marketing
my law firm after that.

If you’d like a huge shortcut to building your law firm, I’ve
got a gift for you – I never want to see another lawyer reinventing
the wheel like I had to.

Download over $22,500 of practice building resources on everything
from law firm marketing, to pricing and packaging your services,
setting your fees, collecting your fees, and having happy clients
who are thrilled to pay your fees at http://www.LawBusinessRevolution.com

I created these resources for my own law firm and I’m sharing them
with you absolutely free because I want to help you reinvent your
law business on a new model that is sustainable for you and your
clients.

If you want to be loved by your clients, command higher fees, and become absolutely indispensable, it all comes down to this…

You have to stop seeing yourself as a litigator or transactional lawyer.  Litigation leaves clients miserable and legal documents on their own are virtually worthless.

When my father-in-law died, after spending a few thousand dollars on a set of estate planning documents with his personal lawyer, I thought that lawyer must have committed malpractice because the documents didn’t work.

Why didn’t they work?

Because the lawyer completed the transaction (legal docs) for my father-in-law and never followed up with my father-in-law to make sure his assets were owned properly or that he’s legal documents stayed up to date with the changes in his life.

Divorce lawyers finalize their client’s divorces and never make sure their estate planning documents are updated.

Business lawyers put in place LLCs and S-Corporations and never make sure share certificates are issued, agreements are put in place with vendors or team members, or that the client has the right insurance in place.

Are we really helping our clients when we see them as a transaction, a case, or a matter?

No, we aren’t offering anything more than our clients would get if they went online.

So my question for you is what will you do when they realize they don’t need you?  Or has it already begun?

Please don’t tell me that you’ll deal with this by decreasing your costs and becoming a virtual law office providing unbundled legal services as seems to be the trend these days – that’s a recipe for failure unless you do it so that you are creating a killer experience for your clients that they cannot simply replicate by going online and doing it themselves.

So many lawyers are trying to compete with online companies providing “buy them as you need them” document preparation services.  But unbundled legal services, deep discounts and doing nothing but turning out reams of paper do nothing to build relationships with your clients.

It’s a one shot deal at best and doesn’t provide an ongoing revenue stream for your business.  That’s a recipe for misery and a Going Out Of Business sign (as many law businesses, even large ones, are learning).

As I learned in building my own practice to more than $1 million in revenue, the best way to keep your clients coming to you (and referring their friends and family) are to follow these 5 tips:

1.    Give away the legal documents for free. Yes, free. You’re not selling the paper – you’re selling the client YOU, your energy, your counsel, your advice.  Clients call lawyers because they need help. They want you to take care of them, to love them, to make it easy for them.  The documents are merely the by-product of the relationship.

2.    Give away free legal documents on your website to generate leads you can then build a relationship with and convert into lifetime counseling clients. As an example, we do this at http://www.KidsProtectionPlan.com where we let people name guardians for their kids for free because we know that many of those people will need a fully counseled estate plan once we develop a relationship with them.

3.    Narrow your niche.  Stop trying to serve everyone who calls or walks in your door.  It devalues your service and who you are.  Decide who you love to serve and who you do your best work for and build your business around deeply serving these most perfect clients.

4.    Create a billing structure that encourages your clients to communicate with you without fear of the cost. Most of the time, clients don’t want to talk to you because they know they’ll get a big fat bill at the end of the month.  This can keep them from telling you about significant changes in their lives or businesses.

5.    Learn to love your clients again.  Stop seeing them as cases, transactions, and matters and return to the reason you went to law school.  Connect at a heart level, whether you do it virtually or in-person.  In this new economy, it’s the only path to your success.

I’ve been having some very interesting conversations with well-known lawyers throughout our industry about the future – where we’re going and what lawyers need to do to be prepared.

I’ll be interviewing several of them who I believe have the answers for you as part of a telesummit I’m hosting in September.

In the meantime, I want to make sure you don’t have to wait to see how you may be putting yourself and your clients at risk so you can do something about it now.

If you are still seeing yourself as a transactional lawyer or a litigator, you are likely screwing yourself and your clients.

You are neither of these things and it’s time to stop thinking of yourself in this way.

If you see yourself as a litigator, every case that comes in is ripe for litigation.  That is NOT what is best for your clients.

In some cases, litigation may be appropriate, but in my experience litigation almost always means that even if someone wins, they lose.

If you see yourself as a transactional lawyer, you probably don’t have any sort of a real relationship with your clients. They are a transaction, a matter, a one and done.

That’s the old, outdated model that will put you out of business.

It incentives conflict escalation and a constant focus on the next new retainer.

It’s time for lawyers to begin seeing their clients not as cases or transactions or matters, but as people with a lifetime of issues they need resolved.

It’s time for you to become the trusted advisor for your clients – the person they turn to for objective guidance about hard decisions in their lives and businesses.

To do this, you need to start seeing yourself differently and help your clients do the same.

When you successfully make this transition from transactional lawyer/litigator to counselor, you will stop leaving money on the table and start knowing  you are really making a difference for your clients.

Isn’t that what you really want?

It’s certainly what your clients want and it’s only a  matter of time before they no longer need you.

Are you ready to really do it?  More to come soon.

The financial success of your business depends on your profit – the amount you keep at the end of the day after paying all your expenses.

In the beginning of your business, you are pretty much entirely focused on revenue because you are already spending as little as you possibly can.

Once you’ve got revenue going, you’ll start to notice that your expenses slowly start to creep up.

And it might feel like for every dollar of revenue you bring in, you add another two dollars of expenses.

That is not a winning proposition.

So, today I’m going to share with you three sure-fire ways to increase your revenue without adding any more overhead.

Way #1: Engage More Prospects

One of your biggest expenses is very likely to be marketing.  You are either spending a lot of money on it or a lot of time on it or both.  If you are marketing and not engaging at least 75% of the prospects calling your office, you are losing a whole lot of profit because getting your phone to ring is where all the cost is.

You’ll increase your revenue without increasing overhead if you just start hearing yes from more prospects.

Way #2:  Offer More (Expensive) Services to Your Clients

You can add more revenue to your office without adding any additional overhead by offering those clients who do say yes additional complementary services.

I did this with the Kids Protection Plan  – adding a more comprehensive form of planning for parents with minor children at home added $1,000 to my fees.

And then I found other services I could provide that my clients wanted and were happy to pay me for.

Once I figured this out, I was collecting an additional $1,000-$3,000 on each engagement with no additional overhead.

Way #3:  Get More Referrals

Every time one of my clients sent me a client, I was increasing my revenue without adding any overhead.

So, I built systems into my office that resulted in more referrals.

I always made sure my clients knew how valuable referrals were to me because I worked that into my client engagement process.  I developed a system in which I could comfortably ask for the referral without feeling strange.  And I was always publicly thankful for all referrals – whether they turned into clients or not – by acknowledging the referrer with thanks in my monthly newsletter.

Try one or all three of these and let me know how much additional revenue you make without increasing your overhead.