2012 First Quarter Gone – How Did You Do?
Looking in the rear view mirror, 25% of 2012 is gone. How have you made out in honoring your commitments to yourself in planning and executing on a marketing action plan to propel your practice development goals forward?
If you haven’t checked off the list of initiatives you intended, now is a good time to stop and evaluate what happened so you can course correct and maximize the remaining 75% of the year.
Consider this:
- Did you manage your time efficiently to get out of the office at least once per week to grab coffee or lunch to cultivate a business relationship and grow your referral network? Is not, why not? What’s holding you back?
- Are you fishing where the fish are? Do you know for sure that your chosen networking venues are the most targeted given the spheres of influence you are seeking to penetrate?
- How are you advancing your personal brand? Are you talking so others listen?
- Look at your goals and compare where you are to where you thought you would be at this point. How are you doing? What needs to be changed at this point?
- Examine the tactics supporting your goals. Have you executed well and what has been left undone? What can you double down on in the second quarter to get back on track?
With the best of intentions, often life gets in the way. Many of our clients find that having an accountability partner or coach can be a very productive relationship to forge. Having a partner to brainstorm and troubleshoot with can provide helpful and objective insights from someone who has “been there, done that”. It is through this working relationship that you can develop a targeted action plan and specific steps to take to help you accomplish your 2012 marketing goals. Do you even have a written plan? If not, why not? A professional coach can help you in this process and then guide you through the process to produce measurable results.
Challenge yourself to make 2012 a “go for the gold” kind of year that you can be proud of. Commit yourself to the process of developing a solid practice for greater career fulfillment and autonomy, and financial security. It’s certainly within your reach, if you start today.
Successful Rainmakers Stay the Course
Taking proactive and consistent steps to build and strengthen professional relationships is imperative to developing a solid practice. In fact, research teaches us that in order to even appear on prospects’ mental radar, one must make contact with them at least 7-10 times in a calendar year. Yet when some lawyers sense they are not yielding the results they expect, they often become frustrated and simply give up. To that I say: “stay the course!”
One of the distinguishing characteristics between lawyers who become frustrated and give up on their client development activities and successful rainmakers is committing to stay the course despite lackluster short-term gains. We all intellectually understand that there is no substitute or short cut to building solid professional relationships than thoughtful efforts targeted to getting in front of qualified prospects on a regular and consistent basis over a certain amount of time. Despite that simple truth, lawyers (especially those who do not have and/or execute an integrated marketing plan) frequently employ a gunshot approach which renders few or no meaningful results.
Though I am not the biggest of sports fans, I do know that in baseball if a batter hits 30 home runs in a full season of about 500-600 at bats, he will most likely be named an All Star and receive a hefty salary increase. For a professional baseball homerun hitter, therefore, success may only occur 5% of the time at bat. Likewise, to implement a focused approach to building professional relationships which are likely to result in increased client retentions, you must be prepared to strike out on occasion. Do not be dissuaded.
Successful rainmakers understand this concept thoroughly and embrace it. They build relationships constantly with clients, referral sources, and prospects by being helpful to others, by making connections, for others and other means in recognition that to build a relationship is to stay top of mind when business and legal issues arise.
They also know that generating work means taking calculated risks and that only 20% of their activity will yield direct results. They also know that while it is critical to be strategic about where to invest their time and energy, it is impossible to know in advance which of the 80% of their activity will not be fruitful.
In many ways, direct rejection is easiest to accept. “Our company has decided to hire firm Y because they have more experience handling securities fraud” does not leave much room for ambiguity. You will not be retained. However, you can leave the door open for other types of work (e.g. perhaps the client will retain your services when they have matters in which you do have extensive experience); but it’s clear when you receive this feedback, it is time to move on.
Another matter altogether, though, is the unanswered phone call or email. This is much more challenging and presents some of the greatest obstacles for lawyers working diligently to build a practice. As we all struggle to effectively manage our communications, everyone has a preference in how they want to communicate. In light of that and the sheer volume, many folks simply do not respond or even acknowledge all of their messages.
It is frustrating when someone does not respond to a message that we have sent via e-mail, left on voice mail or with a secretary. It looks like rejection. When two or three messages go unanswered, most will give up. To save our bruised egos any further indignity, we simply stop trying. However, to do so, we leave opportunity on the table.
Here is the good news: Silence is not ‘no’; it can merely be the temporary absence of ‘yes’.
Until a prospect tells you directly that she or he is not interested, you have no idea why they are not responding; and if the individual is someone with whom you really want to do business, you should keep trying.
Using a “multimedia” approach can also be helpful (send an e-mail first, then call and leave voice mail followed by checking with a secretary third and then possibly even send a letter – mix up your approach). Be sure your targeted prospects are on your frequent contact list to receive articles and updates, etc.
In some ways, it is vain to perceive that a lack of response has anything to do with you. There are many reasons why someone may not return your call, respond to your email or other communication. Coaching lawyers over many years, I have heard countless anecdotes along the theme “I met this potential client nearly 2 years ago, hadn’t connected in months and out of the blue, I receive a call that he has a matter he wants me to handle.” Who hasn’t experienced or at least heard a similar story?
In most cases, my clients were eventually retained and the new clients apologized for being so unavailable for a time. In these scenarios, the potential clients’ unresponsiveness had nothing to do with my clients and they would have forfeited a new client had they not persisted.
The bottom line is this: Building a healthy practice requires you to forge on despite immediate circumstances. If you have a strategic plan of action, are targeting qualified prospects in a meaningful way in a consistent and persistent manner, you will ultimately develop the business you are working for and your professional satisfaction will grow as a result of it.
What is the Goal of Goal Setting for a Prosperous Law Practice?
Part 1 of 2
As a lawyer, you would not have made it this far without effective goal setting. The very exercise of identifying a goal, determining key incremental steps to take to reach that goal requires a very deliberative process of mostly linear thinking. Why, then, are so many lawyers unable (or unwilling) to attain the goals they set in building their practice through leveraging strategic marketing tactics?
Goal setting is a crucial factor in any effective business development and marketing plan. The goal is typically along the lines of “build a healthy practice”; “get more clients” (as if they may be “gotten”); “generate more visibility for myself and my firm”, and so on.
While all of these goals are very possible when supported by concrete marketing tactics, so many lawyers fail to attain their goals. What gives?
So many times, we hear “I’m so busy” or “I’m not rewarded for non-billable time” and I just shake my head.
Unquestionably, client obligations and commitments must be met, but if effective time management techniques are employed, it should not be to the exclusion of executing action steps to build and grow your law practice.
By setting goals at the beginning of a marketing planning process, you decide what you want to achieve and then move step-by-step towards achieving these goals. Whether it is setting guidelines for yourself around how you want to proactively expand your network in a six-to-twelve month timeframe or develop more work from select clients in 2012, you will need to set goals to help keep you on track.
Goals provide long-term vision and short-term motivation, and help you to organize your time and resources so that you can maximize your concrete action steps. The following information will help you get started in your goal setting.
Why Set Goals?
Quoting the great American industrialist Henry Ford, “Whether you think you can or whether you think you can’t, you’re right.” Studies show us that setting goals is a significant contributor to success in personal and professional life. Goals provide direction and purpose to our lives. Not only is having goals important to success, but setting achievable goals is important to reach your potential.
We find that the clearer we are about what our goals are, the faster we will be to achieve them. And in doing so, the generally more happy and more successful we will be. To that end, your very health can depend upon setting and achieving your goals.
How to Set Goals
Before jumping ahead to tactics (the specific action steps you will undertake to accomplish your goals), the question “what do I really want to achieve” must be answered. The answer to that question is largely dependent upon at what stage of your practice you are. Whatever that may be, put a stake in the ground by declaring your goals, exercising a degree of realism at the same time.
While we advise that goals be realistic and attainable, you want to challenge and stretch yourself in the process. Be willing to extend a bit beyond your comfort zone. It does you no good to set goals which are beyond your realistic grasp, even with aggressive action steps to take you there.
The most productive way to state your goals is to actually write them down. Literally. Nothing like a good old piece of paper and a pen…or, a keyboard and a monitor, whatever the case may be.
What Next?
After honing in on your most important goals, the next step is to create a list of what steps you need to take to achieve them. This is the proverbial “where the rubber meets the road”.
By breaking down the goal, “expand my network”, you may want to consider the following action steps:
- Qualify who specifically I need in my network to increase my client base
- Research to what business/professional organizations these individuals belong (think industry groups)
- Research local chapters of those targeted groups in your area and check event calendars
- Schedule event dates in business calendar and attend.
That is but one sliver of a “what next” action step. To outline a series of action steps to take in achieving a goal, continue to ask the “what next” question until you broken each action steps into manageable tasks with a deadline by which you plan to have completed the individual task. By following this simple step-by-step process, you are well on your way to achieving your goals.
Stay on Track By Prioritizing
To make your action steps more achievable, outline a time frame, a way to track your steps further into smaller increments. For instance, instead of embarking on a yearly marketing plan, set smaller 90-day goals which may be broken down into monthly and even weekly goals.
As a lawyer coach, I am delighted when my clients approach their marketing plan execution in this manner by sending me their monthly goals and then updating me as they accomplish the steps needed to benchmark the goal. By these deliberative steps, I know they are committed to reaching their overall goals and our work together is valuable and worthwhile.
Sadly, many lawyers I’ve worked with over the years readily plan their billable work but do not take the same definitive steps to plan their non-billable work. To paraphrase Harvard professor and business management advisor David Maister: “What you do with your billable hours determine your income, what you do with your non-billable hours determines your future. Think of those non-billable hours as investment time.” Seriously.
In the second installment of this article, I will outline how to efficiently balance billable with non-billable hours and how to keep on track with the incremental step-by-step action steps to attain your business development goals.
