By: James Mitchell Brown, Esq.
Do you know how clients find you? When someone tells me they get most of their clients through referrals made by current and former clients I give them the 80/20 rule. That is typically 80% of client referrals come from no more than 20% of your clients.
In reality, I have found that it is about 88/12. That means 88% of the people you have represented won’t refer you a client. That means you are doing something wrong. Right now it is time to look at the clients that you have signed up in the last 12 months to see how they found you. Ideally, your information technology (IT) software or program will allow you to generate a report easily, right from your computer. If not, that is step one. Create a field in your intake software for inputting how the client got to your office. You should include the following choices:
- Television ad, specifically what they were watching when they saw it.
- Client referral, Name of Client.
- Physician referral, Name of Doctor
- Yellow Pages, which Yellow Pages they were looking in.
- Other
If it was a client referral, don’t just put “client” in the field. Enter the name of the individual who referred the client to you. If it was a physician, don’t just enter “doctor”. Include the name of the referring physician. By entering the name, you can generate a report at the end of each quarter or the year to determine how many cases were referred to your firm by any individual, advertising campaign, organization, etc. Next, create a field for who the client was referred to. In that way, you will be able to determine who in your office is generating the most amount of new clients. In other words, it isn’t sufficient to say referred by Dr. Smith. It has to say “referred by Dr. Smith to Mary Jones” who happens to be one of your case managers. That may be a factor to consider in deciding if an associate is partner material. If it was a referral from the Yellow Pages, try to determine which one if you advertise in multiple phone books. If the client saw your television ad, ask them if they remember which television show they were watching. Now that you know how your clients have found you it will be possible to determine how much each client costs. If you are spending $250,000 per year on television advertising and generating 500 cases from those ads, television is costing $500 per client. This is easy to determine on paid advertising. It gets a little more complicated when you get second generation referrals. Your computer program should also be able to generate a report to determine how many clients were referred to you by clients who originally found you through the television ads or any other source. These are second generation referrals. It is important to use a different toll free phone number for television ads than for your general office use. I recommend using a different toll free number for each television spot, Web page, radio ad and every other marketing tool you use. Doing so lets you evaluate the effectiveness of each marketing activity. When running television ads, it is essential to evaluate the telephone bill. If an ad ran on the noon news, a certain amount of calls may have been generated from it. If there are consistently no calls from the same television show, it is a signal to pull your ads from that spot and run it elsewhere. Doing this allows you to constantly fine tune the placement of your advertisements. A good advertising executive will do this for you. Some Attorneys think of client referrals as free. They aren’t. It takes proper case management, effective client communication, a well run office, well compensated support staff and management that leads effectively to create an atmosphere in which clients want to refer their family and friends to you. The cost is involved but not nearly as much as running TV ads, buying internet leads, being on billboards or purchasing signs at bus stops. Enough on figuring out the costs of getting clients. Not yet! So you know how much you spend to get clients from each source. Is it worth it? The next thing to do is figure out the fees you received from each source. When the fees come in, a ledger should be kept breaking down the fees by source of referral. If the client came to you from the Yellow Pages, enter the fee in that column. If the fee came from XYC Television advertising enter in that column. It is important to determine, not only the cost to harvest the client, but also the net fee from each source. One source may cost twice as much as another but it may generate fees that are five times as great. This information helps determine where to spend your marketing budget. You now know where your clients have been coming from. You have an idea about what they have been costing you. you know how much the fees are from each source. Now we’ll start getting ready to explore new ways to find clients for you. About The Author:James Mitchell Brown is the nation’s leading consultant for contingency fee law firms. He consults on marketing plans; crisis management; business plans; office efficiency; buying and selling practices; retirement planing and most other issues regarding a practice. You can contact him at jim@attorneyconsultant.com.
Attorneys – Check it Out!! LET STEVEN HEISLER, “THE INJURY LAWYER”, AND THE LAW OFFICES OF STEVEN H. HEISLER BE YOUR GO TO INJURY ATTORNEYS IN THE STATE OF MARYLAND. If you have a client who has been in an accident, job injury, or any other type of injury in Maryland, don’t hesitate to call or email Steve personally to discuss.Steve has received referrals from numerous attorneys throughout the United States and will gladly provide references. sheisler@injurylawyermd.com410-625-4878 (HURT)877-228-4878 (HURT)www.theinjurylawyermd.comCell- 443-854-2471
Quick Tip By: David M. Ward, Esq.
You want your clients to send you referrals, promote your events, share your content, provide positive reviews, and otherwise help you expand your reach and grow your practice.
You deliver good results and treat your clients with respect, and because you do, some of your clients will advocate on your behalf simply because they like you and want to help you and the people they know.
If you want more clients to do that, however, and do it more often, make it easier for them to do it.
One thing you can do is provide them with tools (hash tags, review templates, sample language for social media posts, emails they can forward to friends, etc.) so they can share their experiences with you.
Another thing you can do is make it easier for them to recognize your ideal client by providing them with a description.
Teach them what a good referral looks like, what they should tell them about you, and the best way to make the referral.
The more you inform and equip your clients to advocate for you, the more likely it is that they will do that.About the Author:David M. Ward, Esq is an attorney and marketing consultant to attorneys. His website is The Attorney Marketing Center where he offers a free newsletter about marketing, productivity, and personal development. You can check out his websitehttps://www.attorneymarketing.com/
That’s it for this week. I’ll have a brand new issue for you this time next week. Also, if you have any questions or comments about the content in this newsletter please email me at sheisler@injurylawyermd.com ~SHH
