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Kick Ass In 2009 – Six Resolutions That Really Mean Something

Start the new year out right with these six resolutions to help you achieve your goals in 2009.

With the start of a new year upon us, it is a good time to take stock of what you have accomplished in 2008, and then start thinking about what you want to accomplish and how you plan to do it in the coming year.

Here are six New Year Resolutions to help:

1. Resolve to define the things you want to accomplish in 2009 – Most people never define what they want in life, and that may be why so many people are miserable. They don’t know what they want in life and end up directionless.

Avoid this by taking the time think about what you really want to accomplish in the next 12 months. After you have developed a list of desired goals, discuss these with your family. Ask your spouse to think about what he/she wants to accomplish in the coming year. Then develop mutual goals that can be measured, and discuss ways you can reach those goals as a family team working together.

Be sure to put your goals in writing. Seeing the goals in print will help you understand your general desires and wants, and that can help you refine your goals as you work toward them.

2. Resolve to develop and pursue a ‘template of success’ strategy to reach your goals – Defining goals is an important first step. The next step is to formulate and then pursue a strategy that gives you a realistic chance of reaching your goals.

The best way to do this is to find a ‘model of success’. Find others that have accomplished what you wish to accomplish, and look closely at how they did it. Develop a template of success based on what has worked for others.

Your templage of success strategy should list the steps needed to reach specific goals, include a methodology and time-table to accomplish each goal, and a way to check your progress during the year.

Creating a strategy to reach your goals will help you understand that in most cases, goals are achieved via small but continuous steps in the right direction.

3. Resolve to be ready to adapt to changing conditions – One thing we all learned last year is that life is full of unexpected surprises – some pleasant and some unpleasant. In many cases, these ’surprises’ can have a dramatic impact on the strategy you may have laid out to reach your goals.

Understand that change is constant and that success almost always requires you to be flexible and adaptable.

Go into the year expecting the unexpected, with a willingness to change strategies, to learn new skills, and to adapt to a changing environment when necessary.

4. Resolve to think about the long term – As you develop skills, projects, and goals for the coming year, think about how these will help you out over the long haul. Your career as a professional will probably span many years, even decades, and the skills you pick up with each new client project add to your ability to continue to prosper in this business. Review the skills you are lacking, and resolve to improve those skills…especially marketing…the ability to sell yourself is the most valuable asset that you can ever have.

5. Resolve to specialize in something and make yourself unique – Those people who are specialists in something — a skill, a trade, a method, a tool — almost always have more opportunities before them than people without special skills. Find a skill that you would like to specialize in, and then learn to use that skill to create products and opportunities for yourself.

6. Resolve to understand life is for living – Life is not about the pursuit of money and possessions. Life is about quality time spent with family and loved ones. Life is about being and staying healthy. Life is about helping others. Life is about being in control of how you spend your time.

Don’t let the pursuit of money or possessions cause you to lose your family, your health, or your personal freedom. You can always figure out a way to make money if you’re entreprenurial, but you can’t always figure out ways to regain lost relationships, good health, or personal freedom.

Eight “Dirt Cheap” Tips To Combat The Current Economic Crisis

Given the events of the past few weeks there is little doubt that we’re now in a recession (unless you think a $600 Billion current deficit and a $10 Trillion overall deficit is going to”perk” things up around here real soon.)

Even gloomier…it’s expected that the worst downturn since the 1930’s is expected to last 18-24 months!

Here are eight “dirt cheap” things you can do RIGHT NOW to get your marketing ready for what is looking like a very bleak 2009:

1. Develop a “deep” understanding of your client including what they “need”…not what they “want” RIGHT now.

2. Narrow your focus to your most profitable niche markets and then CONCENTRATE MASSIVE marketing firepower at those markets. Drop the “Mother of All Bombs”  (MOAB) marketing wise on your selected targets.

3. Develop s series of Powerful marketing messages that target the “massive” pain in your selected marketplace. Ten well written articles can change the entire course of your professional career.

4. Position yourself as the “Obvious Expert” in your niche. The fastest way to do this is to publish your ten articles on a blog. Blogs conver credibility today much like being a published author did 20 years ago.

5. Create a Referral Network. Referrals are NOT Word of Mouth Marketing. Word of Mouth Marketing is generally a code word for “bullshit” and it really says that you don’t know anything about REAL marketing and sales activities. See my post on this topic here.

6. Create an electronic newsletter. Your clients are like a herd of cattle…newsletters that are regular and frequent create a “corral” around your herd and protects them from predators (i.e. your competition.)

7.  Never eat alone and NEVER eat with the person in the office next to yours. How much business are you going to do with people from your own office? reach out and touch someone. Marketing is a contact sport.

8. Educate yourself and find out what you don’t know about marketing. Learn new tactics and approaches. Find out what REALLY works and doesn’t work.

Remember: If you don’t learn to promote yourself and your business, you are DOOMED to mediocrity.

Until next time.

Seven Reasons Word of Mouth Marketing Isn’t Working For You

A recent poll found that 82 percent of small businesses use word of mouth to grow their business, and that 15 percent rely almost exclusively on word of mouth.

Word of mouth is the “Holy Grail” of professional service firm marketing. There is no other better client referral than the enthusiastic  recommendation of your firm by an impassioned existing client to another potential client.

Let’s face it…word of mouth referrals are like cocaine.  Doesn’t your pride  and your chest swell when a new client comes through the door and specifically wants YOU on the case and they want YOU specifically because one of the client’s most trusted friends, associate, advisor etc. has recommended you? Doesn’t this validate your expertise, your charm, your skill? Doesn’t it prove that your firm is on the right track?

Plus…word of mouth is inexpensive, convenient, easy to do (i.e. you do nothing but HOPE that some word of mouth gets around) and it doesn’t require ANY kind of thinking on your part.

Perfect isn’t it?

Then why aren’t you getting all the new business you’d like to have?

Relying on word of mouth marketing is a tactic that is loved by small and large law firms alike. Relying on word of mouth (the way you are probably doing it anyway) is a guaranteed way for a small to mid sized practice to stay small or mid sized.

Here’s why:

1. Word of mouth is eratic. You cannot control when someone will make a recommendation about your firm. If you can’t control frequency…you can’t control or predict when new business is going to come walking through the door.

2. Word of mouth is limited in scope. Your existing clients can only refer you to their limited circle of friends, acquantances and business associates. If your current specialty is IT business structuring and you want to move into biotechnology patents your current ” word of mouth ” network is probably going to leave you and your kids pretty hungy!

3.  Word of mouth is easy to “screw” with. Your competitors (especially) if you’re operating in a cut throat environment are busy out there generating their own NEGATIVE word of mouth campaign about you through their own networks.

4.  Word of mouth is non-scalable. By that I mean…you have one partner in your firm who is “Miss Personality.” Your other partners and staff are “Tomatos.” Miss Personality brings all the new business through word of mouth. How do you teach everyone else in your firm to develop “likeable” dispositions EXACTLY like Miss Personailty’s?

5.  Word of mouth is subjective in nature. The person referring you obviously “likes” you. In a B2B environment “like” is not a quantifiable metric. It’s important to be sure…but…at some point in the sales cycle you have to be able to “talk the talk and walk the walk.” You probably can’t! Word of mouth marketers tend to get lazy and forget that there’s more to business than glad handing and backslapping. Can you still make presentations on par with the “hungriest” firms in the neighbourhood?

6. Word of mouth gives control of your business to your clients.  When you’re hot and everything you touch turns to gold your clients are enthusiastic and you can do no wrong. Referrals flood in! What happens when something changes in the business environment that negatively impacts what you do? Simple example: You were the genius mortgage lawyer who got your clients into that million dollar home that they couldn’t really afford 6 years ago. They were going to get rich on leverage and appreciation. Now they have negative equity, are facing foreclosure and personal bankruptcy.

How’s your word of mouth network going to look now after a hundred or so of your past clients tell the entire universe about your overly “aggressive” tendencies?

You didn’t “pay” anything for your word of mouth network. If you didn’t “pay” anything…you can’t control the message that comes out of the network.

7. Word of mouth is not a SYSTEM. To me a system means that if you do “A”….”B” will result EVERYTIME.

It’s predictable, controllable, replicable and repeatable.

It may or MAY NOT be inexpensive.

Inexpensive is a relative term. If I spend five million dollars to make a return of five hundred million dollars…the five million was inexpensive.

If I spend NOTHING to make NOTHING…well…that was the most expensive “nothing” in your business because you’re not acquiring new billings at the rate you could be.

In business you want to control as many of the variables as you possibly can.

Word of mouth is the LEAST controllable marketing approach you can adopt.

Maybe that’s why it’s the CHEAPEST!

Individual Attorney Marketing Plans and Total Confusion

Chances are that when you sit down to work on your law firm marketing plan or your individual attorney marketing plan there are great long periods of well…confusion.

Total confusion as to what marketing activities you personally should be doing, total confusion as to what marketing activities your firm should be doing and…great, great, great uncertainty as to what marketing activities will bring you the most “bang” for your valuable time and financial investment.

I’ve been working on materials for a new webinar that I’m delivering next week and I thought I’d share a graphic that I’ve developed for the class with all of you.

Simply click on the image at the top left to bring up a full size printable PDF file of the “Attorney Marketing Chart” I’ve designed.

The chart lists in (no particular order) the various marketing activities that you could be doing at any given moment on any given day.

Right now there are ninety seven possible things you could be doing to get clients and the list is not totally complete by any means!

I think you’ll agree…this is “utterly ridiculous.”

When do you have time for all of this “stuff?” How do make sense of all of this “stuff?” When are you ever going to implement even a fraction of all of this “stuff?”

A picture is worth a thousand words. If you want to succeed in your attorney marketing efforts you must do four things:

1. Undertake a marketing education and learn what advantages/disadvantages these various activities bring to your firm and clients marketing communication wise.

2. Learn which 8-10 of these activities are the MOST effective in generating new business.

3. Simplify your plan and concentrate on those 8-10 activities.

4. Execute relentlessly on those 8-10 activities that are proven to work.

If you have lots of time and/or lots of staff take a look at doing some of the other 90 or so “nice to have” activities.

The point is this…do a few things EXCEEDINGLY well rather than doing a bunch of “stuff” superficially and without depth.

Good marketing needs depth and time before it will show you results.

Now…put up that chart on your wall and start thinking!

Does Your Law Firm Marketing Plan Actually Kick Some Ass?

Okay you’ve just finished your law firm marketing plan or individual attorney marketing plan.

Depending on how complex you like to make things it’s either scribbled on the back of an envelope (the “entrepreneur’s way) or it’s a “mental barfing exercise” running to several hundred pages (the “Big Law” way.)

No matter how you’ve put it together or when you put together, there’s one BIG question you have to ask yourself:

“What now????”

In spite of what I’ve said in previous articles here’s the number one reason that law firm marketing plans fail…lack of EXECUTION.

Successful law firm marketing requires that you build credibility in your marketplace. Building credibility takes time. Building credibility takes massive ACTION.

How do you translate nebulous marketing plan goals like “increase biotech legal advisory service billings by 12% this year” or “get 10 new clients in the next 3 months” into reality?

Grinders sit in their offices…Rainmakers take MASSIVE action.

Here are 12 action steps that will give your law firm marketing plan a “kick in the ass”:

1. Understand your client’s DEEP pain. Tap your knowledge of your niche markets and write down the top 5 things that cause your clients GREAT and MASSIVE pain. Pain they are willing to PAY you to remove from their lives. Do this on your lunch hour TODAY.

2. Pull out all of your existing marketing materials TODAY and review them to see if they address your clients massive pain in a POWERFUL way. If they don’t throw them out and redo them within the next seven days.

3. Look at what your competitors are doing. Can you present yourself in a differentiated way or offer something that they don’t? Get this analysis done this week on ONE sheet of paper.

4. Create a POWERFUL positioning package for your firm that describes in detail your history, your mission, your personnel, your philosophy, your alliances, your process for working with clients and your fees. Also highlight what makes you the “go to EXPERT” in your niche market. Get this done within 14 days. Make sure every existing, new and prospective client gets this package. Get this done within 21 days.

5. Get a web site that works. Visit 10 web sites within your niche and then design something that CLEARLY showcases your expertise. Get a blog up and running and put 10 keyword rich  articles on it. Get this done in 90 days.

6. Find out what your clients read (i.e. what trade magazines, association newsletters etc.) and what associations they belong to. Get your articles from your blog published or discussed at association meetings by calling editors or association heads and FINDING OUT what they want to see from contributors. Target 90 days for this also.

7. Create an email newsletter that is MARKETING driven and send it out regularly to your captive “herd.” Your herd includes current clients, prospective clients and referral sources. You can easily automate all this crap and get your first one in 14 days.

8. Deliver small breakfast seminars to your best referral sources and prospects once a month. Invite 7-10 people max and base them on your blog articles. Better yet…use the Internet and deliver the whole thing as web cast. You can get one of these up and running by next week.

9. Write 4 white papers per year and distribute them to clients and put them up on your web site. Make a BIG DEAL out of each white paper released in your newsletter, seminars and other contacts with your marketplace. Do your first one in the next 90 days.

10. Write and publish or self-publish a book. Books make you the ULTIMATE perceived go to expert in your field. Plan on taking 6-12 months to pull this one off.

11. Get your handsome face on TV or your great voice on radio. Call your local stations and offer to speak on a topic that will interest their target audiences. You could start on this one in the next 5 minutes…simply pick up the phone.

12. Go to lunch twice a week with someone who isn’t a client or a coworker (your coworkers aren’t going buy anything from you but they will drink beer with you.) Next time you see an interesting business article in the newspaper about a local success story…phone them up and ask to meet them…NOT with a view to selling them anything…simply to learn something about them and their businesses. The largest client I ever acquired in my professional career came from just such a phone call and subsequent lunch.

Show a POSITIVE and GENUINE interest in what other people are doing and you’ll have more meetings, more fun and make more money than you EVER thought you would.

Rainmakers “kick ass…any ass” and they learn something from each experience…grinders do massive analysis followed by…NOTHING.

Next time you find yourself saying: “I don’t where to start with my marketing activities;” refer back to this list.

Remember…your law firm marketing plan will NEVER kick any ass until you decide to get up and off of your ass.

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