Fast Forward: Prepare Now to Make Money Later

Lawyers are often so head-down on substantive work that they spend very little time considering their ‘sales cycle’, which every business has.  Whereas software companies consider metrics like ‘cost of acquisition’, law firms merely send out cadres of attorneys to network, with the fervent hope that that activity generates business, at some undetermined point in the future.

I remember having a conversation with a lawyer who told me that his marketing goal was to have lunch with another business professional every day.  I asked him to track how many referrals he got from that.  A month later, I asked him how things were going, and he said, ‘Well, I guess I was just having lunch.’

The point is that, while marketing seems inscrutable, the results of your efforts are predictable, to a large degree.  If you track your intake, you too can figure out your own cost of acquisition, best sources for referrals and ‘net promoter score’, among other things.  You’ll also be able to figure out how long it takes you to convert a client, from initial contact to placing their signature on a fee agreement.  In that way, you’ll be able to effectively predict your revenue going forward, with a truer sense of what your efforts in July mean for your law firm’s bottom line in September or January.

You’ll also be able to determine when and how you lose a potential client.  Once you know that, you can act against it happening, by adding engagement options, becoming more responsive and locking down new clients before they forget about you, or your forget about them.

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If you want to start leveraging marketing data, contact us today!

The Wyoming State Bar offers free law practice management consulting services through Red Cave Law Firm Consulting.  To request a consult, visit the Wyoming State Bar’s law practice management page, and start running your law firm like a business.

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