If you do not have a collaborative relationship with complimentary professionals in your town or community, you are missing out on the best way I know of to reduce your marketing investment (of time and money) and increase your return substantially.

It’s time for you to put together your own local marketing mastermind collaborative.

The key to making this work is choosing the right people for your collaborative.

As attorneys, we tend to get stuck in the traditional “referral networks” that consist of financial planners, CPA’s and insurance salesmen. Consider looking for more unconventional professionals who may be more excited about outside the box opportunities to market.

Begin by thinking long and hard about WHO your ideal client is. For what group of people are you what I call “Best in Class?”

You may not be able to be THE best lawyer in the whole world, but you can certainly be the best for a specific class. Who are they?

Once you know that, you can brainstorm other professionals who market their services to that exact same demographic.

For example, my ideal client as an estate planning attorney was parents with small children in California’s South Bay Area. So I talked to local fitness instructors that help moms get back in shape, daycares, pediatricians, the owner of a children’s clothing boutique, etc. when setting up my mastermind collaborative.

Or maybe you’re like my friend who is a criminal defense lawyer in New Jersey that specializes in DWI. For her, complimentary professionals would include bail bondsman, counselors and therapists that specialize in substance abuse and even insurance agents who work with high-risk drivers.

Now, the single most important thing about who is in your group is that at least one person must be grounded in the fundamentals of marketing, developing a campaign and carrying it out.

Join us on our call on Friday when we discuss all the specifics of how to set up your own local marketing mastermind collaborative and make it pay off for you and all the other participants quickly. Here’s the link: http://www.lawbusinessrevolution.com/coop

I’ve talked a lot about systematizing your processes so you can set your client expectations and turn them into raving fans.  But it’s possible that I haven’t explained precisely why raving fans are the key to your business freedom.  Having raving fans isn’t simply an ego boost (though it does feel good), it makes a huge difference to your bottom line and ultimately the time you have to put into your business.

Here’s a few of the reasons you want raving fans:

1. They insist that all their friends and family use your services.  This saves you huge marketing time, energy and money.

2. They will butt into the conversations of a strangers asking for legal advice to say they must contact you, and only you, because of their incredible experience.  This kind of a referral makes engaging the client a piece of cake for you.

3. They become walking advertisements for months or even YEARS down the road-giving you a greater marketing ROI than any magazine ad or direct response marketing campaign could ever touch.  Plus, they are more likely to use more of your future services, which means more bottom line revenue for your business.

Today, it’s about high-concept, high-touch, relationship-based service.  It’s what’s bringing in the clients and keeps them so they stay, pay and refer.  And that means more happiness for you.

You already know times are tight and that means the same old, same old is simply not going to do it. People have lots of choices among lawyers and will not spend their hard earned money on just anyone.  Revamping your client service process to create a high-concept, high-touch experience without much additional expense will put you light years ahead of the competition struggling to figure out what this shift means-and how to operate under it in their business.

Think about this for a moment.

What do people think of when they think about lawyers?  Non-responsive, dodging phone calls and foot-dragging. They come into the relationship expecting to have to stay on your tail and call your office every couple days to check on their progress. They expect you to treat them poorly.  It’s sad, isn’t it?

Imagine their surprise then when your firm treats them completely differently. Now, you are proactively communicating with your clients. You’re still giving red-carpet treatment-even after you’ve won their business and cashed the check.

That is what creates a raving fan for life of your firm-not to mention, a raving fan who will call you whenever she needs a “trusted advisor” down the road.

So now that you know WHY client service systems (aka the automated process of how things are handled after a client says yes and gives you a check) is so important, I invite you to learn HOW to set up a client service system that works by joining me for a preview call on Thursday, November 19^th at 3 EST / 12 pm PST during which I’ll lay out my Client Service System and what you can learn from it.

I’ll be sending you the registration link on Monday, so be sure to block this date on your calendar and we’ll discuss this in more detail next week!

PS. Here’s an example of what happens when you create raving fans. They send you unsolicited testimonials like this one:

“This past Monday, the day after I listened to the CDs over the weekend, I had a couple of client meetings that resulted in $3k of additional revenue b/c I asked 4 “$1,000 questions” and got yes answers on 3 of them.  So the system paid for itself the day I started using some of the ideas – Pretty cool!”

-Pete Sisson – Boise, Idaho

Two weeks ago , I introduced you to the first of three ways to build additional streams of revenue into your law firm and covered why it’s so critical for the financial success of your business to do this.

Today, we’re talking about how you can be providing additional services across several practice areas to increase your attractiveness to a broader market without coming across as a jack of all trades and master of none.

Most lawyers who are doing this completely and totally wrong. I don’t want you to be, so let’s begin by talking about what I mean by providing additional services.

The way most lawyers do this is to take any kind of matter that walks in the door because they are desperate for business.

Do not do this. Being a generalist is death for your business because you will not be able to systematize your business if you don’t narrow your specialty, you will not be able to effectively market and you will not be seen as a trusted resource.

Instead, focus in on the person you want to reach and then become the trusted advisor to that person.  It’s far, far, far easier and less expensive to provide additional lucrative services to your existing clients than to find new clients.

So, let’s say you have decided you are going to become known as the Probate Genius like Kevin Roy. He’s niching his marketing to finding probate cases in his community. That’s great, but once a family comes to him for probate services and he develops a relationship with them, it would be a huge waste of his marketing dollars and his energy if he did not have additional legal services in different practice areas to offer these clients.

What we teach our Personal Family Lawyers is to become THE trusted advisor to their clients and to train their clients to come to them before making any legal or financial decisions for their business or their family.

In fact, the Personal Family Lawyers put their clients on a membership program and their clients pay for the privilege of calling their lawyer for additional guidance!

Now, I’m sure you’re saying to yourself, but I don’t know how to do any practice areas other than my own and don’t want to learn new practice areas.

Of course you don’t!  And, the good news is you don’t have to.

What you can do is create co-counsel relationships with lawyers you trust in your community who provide complementary services.

Here’s an example:

Perhaps, you are a business lawyer and don’t want to add estate planning services to your menu (although I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t!), but let’s just say you don’t.  In that case, you could do one of two things:

1.  You could find an estate planning lawyer in your community who will take your clients on a referral basis and pay you a referral fee (15-25% is a normal range)

OR

2.  You could learn how to counsel your business clients about basic estate planning matters and then find an experienced estate planning lawyer in your community to handle the back office work associated with the estate plans you counsel, like drafting documents, transferring assets, etc.  

In my office, though I was an experienced estate planning lawyer and had handled many, many ultra high net worth cases when I was in a big law firm, once I was in my own law firm, I actually co-counseled on all of my high net worth/asset protection matters because I wasn’t doing enough of them in my own firm to trust I wouldn’t miss anything important.

The benefit for my clients was that I was their legal concierge, their trusted advisor, the person they turned to whenever a legal issue came up and I’d either handle it for them (if it was within my practice area) or find the very best resource for them, whether it was a personal injury, a divorce, an asset protection case, charitable planning, or any other legal matter.  

I’d then either refer them out and receive a referral fee (or pass on the referral fee to the client if they were on my membership program) or if it was a matter closely related to my practiced, I’d co-counsel and receive part of the fee for my counseling.

No matter what practice are you are in, you can become your client’s trusted legal advisor.

Do it today!

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’ve been racking your brain about marketing your law firm and how to bring in more business from referral sources other than your clients in 2010, here’s my very best recommendation:

Create a local marketing mastermind collaborative or mastermind group with 1-3 other professionals in your community.

This kind of a local marketing mastermind may very well be the most exciting addition to your marketing plans in years because it will expand your reach by many times and decrease your marketing costs (both time and money) at the same time.

Here are a few things for you to know to make this strategy work right for you:

1.  Choose other professionals who serve the same target market you do.

This strategy is going to make the most sense if your marketing mastermind collaborative is made up of professionals serving the exact same target market as you are – so, before you choose who to invite, think of who you want to focus your 2010 marketing efforts on as tightly as possible.  And then go even more narrow.

2.  Think outside the box about who you choose.

Once you narrow your market, get creative about who you invite to join your collaborative. Consider other attorneys who serve the same market, but do something different than you do. Move beyond the traditional financial advisors and CPAs (although those would be great choices for estate planning, business planning, and divorce lawyers to choose) and think about doctors, dentists, chiropractors, coaches, consultants, and even spa owners, massage therapists, and yoga teachers, if you‘ve got a market that would make sense for.

The key is to know the people you want to reach and then think as broad and wide as you can about the other service providers they would use.  A great way to do this is to pick up local magazines that would be read by your target market and see who is advertising in those publications.

3.  Create a series of campaigns you can work on and implement jointly.

Once you decide who to invite, hold a meeting to discuss your plans for 2010 and how you see the collaborative working together.  Set regular monthly (or even twice monthly or weekly) marketing mastermind meetings in which you will come together and first create your marketing calendar for the year and then implement it together.

4.  Don’t do it alone.

You don’t have to do this alone. We are here to help.

Kick off your local marketing mastermind collaborative by inviting a few of your ideal mastermind collaborators to your office for two days – January 29 and 30, 2010 – during which time we will be hosting our VIRTUAL Client Attraction Retreat and you can kick off your 2010 Marketing Mastermind Collaborative by getting the foundation you‘ll need in place to make this work.

We’ve set up the virtual retreat so that when you purchase your ticket, you can have up to 3 additional guests (your marketing mastermind collaborative partners) attend with you at NO ADDITIONAL CHARGE!

During this intense, two-day virtual marketing boot camp, you and your referral sources will not only learn the fundamentals of authentic direct response marketing (both online and offline), but you will begin to create all of the marketing pieces you‘ll need throughout 2010 and put them togeher into a unified campaign and system that your whole marketing collaborative will benefit from.

If you already have a tight-knit marketing collaborative, ask your collaborators to split the price of the virtual retreat with you.  If you don’t, pay for it yourself and invite your potential collaborators to the event and show them that you mean business about building your business (and theirs) in this coming year.

I know without a doubt that 2010 is about community and collaboration. This economic shift has shown us that we cannot do it all alone.

When you create your own local marketing mastermind collaborative you get all of the power of the mastermind in which 1 + 1 doesn’t equal 2, but many, many, many times more than that plus the benefit of a group of people in your local community that who can share the costs and burden of marketing with you.

Unlike other marketing conferences in which you leave with a lot of great ideas and things to think about, you will complete our 2-day virtual conference with a concrete plan for IMPLEMENTATION and ACTION and with a whole lot of the work already done….all without having to leave the comfort of your office or waste money on hotels  and airfare!

Check out the full curriculum for our two-day event.  We have made it affordable for you to attend, less expensive than a single break out session at a marketing conference (you know, the ones you pay extra for and leave more confused than when you first came in) or a tiny, ineffective ad in the yellow pages.

Regardless of how you are doing your marketing (speaking, yellow pages, online directory services, networking or direct mail), our authentic direct response marketing approach will supercharge your efforts and get them working for you so you can get off the cash flow roller coaster once and for all and have the peace of mind of knowing you‘ve got a pipeline full of prospects waiting to say yes to your services.

So be sure to join us with your 3 best referral sources on the 29th and 30th!  It’s the perfect way to jumpstart 2010 with more than just ideas but a full blown two day intensive implementation bootcamp & get started with the formation of a business building mastermind group with your top referral sources that can continue throughout the year.

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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 .

Image courtesy of Berhard Lehn