On October 2015, for the first time, a legal marketing seminar took place in Israel. During the seminar a law-firm-business-development “guru”, came all the way from Great Britain in order to share his wisdom
The event was planned and executed by our office – Robus Legal Marketing, together with the international organization PSMG that is a leading name in the legal marketing field
In the lobby outside the big hall of ZOA convention center, gathered many attorneys and accountants of all sectors; Israelis and foreign, from big offices, boutique offices and independent ones as well as most of the legal marketing community in Israel, business and marketing development managers of Israeli law firms
The audience had two main goals: first, acquiring tools to improve their marketing abilities in order to attract new customers and preserving the existing ones, and secondly – of course, networking among the Israeli legal community with some light appetizers to spice things up
The opening speech was given by adv. Zohar Fisher (founder of Robus Legal Marketing) that was glad to announce that over 150 lawyers and accountants arrived to the seminar. The respected presence highlights mostly the hunger of the various firms to enlarge their business within and outside of Israel. Zohar continued by saying: I am really happy that those times are already here, in Israel. That the legal marketing profession is here – and here to stay
The main speaker of the venue was Mr. Paul Matthews, a partner in Pace, a world known British company that works in the business development arena for over twenty years. Matthews, who is considered a “guru” in the business development field, gave a two-part lecture: (1) recruiting new clients and (2) preserving and investing in existing clients
**********************************************************
The first lecture – “creating” new clients
In the base of Paul’s lecture one can find the axiom that: all of us, no matter if we are a big or a small firm, are limited on three things: time, resources and abilities. The main task is to juggle with those three ‘balls’ when we must make sure that they will stay in motion and always in progress. In the moment one ball falls, the entire business can collapse
Paul carries years of legal consulting experience with him, during which, he was exposed to beneficial methods and non-beneficial ones. Moreover, Paul mentioned that there are moves made by firms that are being made as a habit – but these methods can be a tactic mistake that doesn’t lead us to our goal
The first and most curtail mistake is setting goals that do not match the three existing limitations (time, resources and abilities). It is a “classic mistake” that Paul ran into more than once. In addition, there’s a phenomenon that is called S.A.W, a situation in which offices Sit And Wait for their phone to ring and clients would try to reach them. While in some cases (the minority of them) the phone will eventually ring, this is not the right way to enlarge your clients’ pool according to Paul
Another mistake is rowing the boat forward while looking backwards: instead of exploring the paths we should take, we test the improvement comparing to the past and eventually progressing slower than our potential pace
After Paul shared his wisdom, he turned to the participants and asked: “Who of you, without raising your hands of course, does one or more of the mistakes above?” with that being said, the room was silent, perhaps due to embarrassment, perhaps due to realization that this is the way their office works without noticing
Luckily for the participants, Paul arrived equipped with efficient solutions, spiced up with a British accent that can help growing a business, either a big one or a small one. Along the years, Paul and his colleagues at PACE created a few mechanisms that can guarantee a consistent flow of clients and a continuous grow of the business – under the triple limitation of time, resources and abilities – as an assumption
During the lecture Paul revealed quite a few methods to enlarge the pool of existing clients, along with tools for business development while bringing into consideration the realistic goals we’ve set, under the limitations mentioned above
The main method of the lecture is called The PACE Pipeline Model
The Pipeline Model gives a general work process for firms that aspire to enlarge their client pool, and as a result – increasing their incomes, which leads to the growth of the firm entirely. The Pipeline Model may have a circular shape but one can cross the outlines in any moment in order to save… you guessed right – time, resources and abilities
A. The first step: Prospecting – name the clients you would like to win and organize them in one list
B. The second step: Promoting – listing the clients that you are currently communicating with in various level (a first email can be considered as promoting
C. The third step: Projecting – listing the clients you are currently in dialogue with about future cooperation
D. The fourth step: Protecting – existing clients that consistently consume your services. This part of the circle is protected by a wall, that’s because these are clients we’re interested in keeping: customer retention – the second part of the seminar
E. The fifth step: Pruning – at the end of the day we aspire to work solely with ideal clients. Thus, we shall test the client circle and ask to track those clients: clients who pay on time, clients that bring in a fair income to our business
F. It’s worth mentioning, that more than once we will seek for clients that are none ideal for our business, because they consume our precious time, resources and abilities
This list should be updated on a regular basis. Every step taken should be documented and will allow us to track the firm’s growth. Paul then mentioned that recruiting new customers takes a while and we shall not expect instant results. Steps like creating new relationships, either business or personal ones, as well as mingling, requires patience along with developed interpersonal skills
A moment our break, the Robus team asked to remind the participants that: one of this seminar’s goals is creating new relationships. There are a lot more than 100 lawyers and accountants here, and each one can help you develop your firm. Leave your smart phones, raise your head from the screen, and start talking to each other. Mingling is one of the best ways to develop your business
**********************************************************
The second lecture – customers retention and caring
After a break filled with networking and light snacks, with an emphasis of an energetic business cards replacement, it was time for the second part of the seminar
The second part was started by Paul with a reminder: “enlarging our business is a superior and very important goal, but we should not forget that we must preserve our existing clients. If we choose to neglect them, they will look for a different firm that will not do so.” As done on the first part, Paul first mentioned the common mistakes, this time the list was even longer
Most firms believe that the fact they provide good legal service should be enough. That is, in fact, the first and most common mistake. Your customers wants, needs and expects more from you
If this is the case, what should we do? There are many things that can be done but the first and basic steps are
a. Due to vital yet limited resources discussed so far, we should strongly consider where we invest those resources. The recommended way is dividing your clients to key clients and preferred clients, when obviously we will prefer investing our efforts in keeping our key clients
b. We must make sure we appoint people from our office that will be in touch continually with people from the key customer’s side
c. The professionalism and service-giving aspects are “goes without saying”. Of course we should give the optimal service we can to each and every client. There are no compromises when it comes to these aspects
So what do we do in order to preserve existing clients
This is actually the reason we’re here, PACE invested a great time in order to find an efficient solution to this problem. At this point Paul revealed PACE’s Bowtie model
As mentioned, Mr. Paul Matthews works with many firms around the world. One of the main problems in the aspect of customer retention is that in most cases we appoint one employee on our side – to one employee that was appointed on the client’s side- both appear in red in the illustration
In most cases, this relationship becomes tight as well as personal. A strong personal bond might lead to a strong bond between the bodies which they represent. So far, this appears to be the right way to act. But actually, this method has a critical, central weak point: the situation of leaving
What happens when one of those representatives (either from our side / the customers) leaves the firm or the company? The bonds between the bodies will be harmed immediately, and it will take a long time to recreate them. There is an even more severe scenario – what happens when a representative from our side leaves and takes the client with him to another firm. In this case we lose both the employee and the customer
In order to avoid clients leaving and to maintain strong, close relationships, we must make sure there is more than one person that keeps in touch with the client’s side on a regular basis- the blue dots in the illustration
The more overlapping points we will have between our employees and the customer’s, the interpersonal and hopefully the business bonds will become stronger
After a short pause for some air and water Paul looked at the participants and said: I know you like lists, so I have a list for you of things you must do in order to keep your existing clients
A. You must fully understand the client’s requirements – understand what you’re expected to do and where your client needs help. Even a client that runs back for over twenty years with you, you must test his needs and know if anything changed
B. You should fulfill the tasks you were required – in this seminar we won’t go into this subject, but remember that your clients pay a lot of money in order to get an excellent service and nothing less than that. It is your job to make sure they get the level of service they paid for
C. Ask your client for feedback – this step is critical and many firms do not do so. After providing our service fully, ask your client for feedback, either in writing or a verbal one. In Paul’s opinion it is highly beneficial to set a face to face feedback- in a meeting you can sense the person in front of you, hear his voice and explore his behavior
D. Constant drawing of conclusions – after receiving feedback, we must think what to do with the information we collected. There is no point in collecting feedback only to file it in one of the many binders in our office. We must learn the feedback, translate it into conclusions, to recognize what we did well and more important: where we can improve
Finally, Paul said that- The customer retention theme is significant, many of the clients I mentored thought they are doing a great job in customer preservation and so they focused their time and resources on recruiting new customers. On the short run, the business did, in fact, grow, but after several months, the veteran clients left the office, feeling neglected and non-prioritized
We all left the second part with one main understanding: no matter how much we invest in growing our business, and how many resources we will dedicate into marketing, keeping a strong core of clients is the key for being a successful firm
**********************************************************
The Robus team, together with PSMG organization and PACE, would like to thank the many participants that arrived the seminar. See you on our next event
