*What is New in Client Development Tactics?*
Why Aren't You Deservedly More Popular?
As a Franchise Lawyer, you may consult with small businesses to help them franchise their business. You may advocate on behalf of large multi-units, associations or individuals. You may draft disclosure documents. You do these things well, and you enjoy your craft.
So why do clients pick another attorney, sometimes not even a franchise attorney, over you? Why are those other attorneys and their firms popular with clients? Your craftsmanship is just as good, and sometimes even better than the large firms. So what are they doing that you aren't? Why aren't you deservedly more popular?
Well, maybe that attorney was recommended. Or, maybe that attorney met the client at some social networking function you don't attend.
Or, just maybe their clients appreciate the regular and useful information that attorney has been sending them using the IAFD publishing platform. Their clients just like that attorney's writing style and enjoy the attention. Why aren't you doing that? Why aren't your clients deserving of more attention?
(Also, that attorney knows a secret: the IAFD platform is a bargain for helping them establish rapport with future clients for only $29.00 a month. Why don't you act upon that offer?)
There only three reasons you aren't establishing rapport. It costs time, money and it is hard to follow up.
But, nuturing leads and creating rapport really isn't hard - after all that other firm is doing it. You need the right system. The IAFD has the right publishing solution for you. It just plain works. It matches readers with attorneys to create interested audiences. It is simple, elegant and graceful.
I know, you are focussed on those three big barriers: time, money and follow-up. You see these barriers because you are a professional, and are required to be skeptical. Like me, skepticism may be buried in your very nature. But, take some time with me and let's review your objections together - to see what is really behind them. Find a solution together.
First, you are probably very busy with your legal practice or resting up after being very busy! The legal business cycle makes it hard to find the time to market on a consistent basis. Once you miss a publishing date for your monthly law firm newsletter, the unravelling begins. Soon, no articles are going out consistently. Finally, the whole newsletter idea is scrapped, only to be revived some months later. In franchising, we call this "churning". Something to be avoided.
Second, you may not know what value of a new client is, and are unclear what a new referral is worth. This makes it hard to budget sensibly. So you overpay for nice looking websites, while listening to promises of "optimized traffic for targetted keywords." That is not marketing, either. You are simply paying.
Third, sales is a different process from law. Most of the time in sales, you will hear "maybe, but not now." Marketing means you need to follow up on those maybes. It generally takes about 8 to 10 follow-ups, not 1 or 2, for a complex product like legal services. Those follow-ups need to span 2 years, according to industry experts. That is a lot of consistency to ask for from a busy professional, like yourself.
In sum, you see three tough problems: find the time, spend the right amount of money, and how to follow-up consistently.
But, here is the good news.
Lawyers are good, and some are excellent, at distilling stories from complex fact patterns. Stories attract people's interest. And the internet is a story teller's paradise.
All you need is a system to turn the attention your stories deserve into referrals, and that is where the IAFD platform comes in.
The IAFD publishing platform matches up author's stories with interested readers.
As you roam the internet, you find interesting examples of franchising which you likely make notes on. You are an attorney, you write notes about everything. That is how you got through law school and the grind of being an associate. You are a note taker- let's make that work for you.
The IAFD publishing platform allows you to publish those ideas with ease of with a click of a button on your browser toolbar. Like the Amazon one-click button. Click and find out who is interested in what interests you.
If your published notes attracts a critical mass, then you have an interested audience. If not, you didn't expend a lot of energy - you made the notes that you already do, as a matter of procedure. You clicked a button to share them with an interested audience. You will have a lot of publishing experiments which go nowhere, and then one or two ideas that attract a large crowd- you and your ideas will be deservedly popular.
We take those popular pieces and then pubish them to our newsletter audience of some 12,000 particpants in the franchise industry, to gain more readers for you. They share them, and you get more readers. Soon, you are deservedly popular - for $30..00 a month, and a couple hours a month taking notes.
You may be not so great at measuring, budgeting, and publishing but we are. With our newsletter, you never miss a deadline because there aren't any deadlines for you -only for us. We send out informative and useful articles from all types of authors weekly. When you are ready, we will add yours to the mix.
(Too busy to read further, then jump straight to our pitch for you.)
How to Find the Time To Publish
Remember, you aren't writing for a legal journal. You are simply commiting to paper the words you use every day when speaking with a new client describing what their problem is and how you can help. A problem you already saw and made notes on.
You do this all the time with new clients. So, publish these notes. Take your time.
You don't need, at first, to get a full article from your notes any more than once a quarter. But as you get better, your audience will want more. We can handle that too.
How to Budget for Client Development
1. How much is a good new client worth? You don't have to be dead on precise. Is a new client worth more than $15,000, $10,000 or even $100,000? Are they worth more than $199.00/month? Or is more like $29.00/month?
2. How much money will you invest to get a new client? How much did you spend last year in print advertising, SEO, PPC, or other marketing activities such as conferences and conventions? How much of that advertising budget can you put towards client development budget, 2%, 5%, or 7.5%?
3. How long are you prepared to wait for the client development process to work? Can you keep at it for 18 months, 24 months? Or can you keep writing and revising your stories for a lifetime? How long have you been taking notes?
How to Measure the Interest in Your Legal Stories
A legal story is easy. You are putting down on paper the words you use every day when speaking with a new client when you describe what their legal problem is and how you can help. You are so used to this process, you don't think of it as a story. But every time you talk with a client, explaining how the law will see their situation, you are storytelling. Write those stories down. It is not hard.
Here are the 3 simple steps the IAFD uses to measure interest in your stories.
You write a story, we publish it in our newsletter, an audience of around 9,000 US and 3,000 Canadians, in the franchise industry, and then we:
1. Help you measure your audience, based on the click throughs in our email newsletter. You need market intelligence and not SEO traffic. But, we also provide you with some back linking strategies and suggestions based on these measures.
2. The IAFD measures click throughs in a newsletter because that tells us exactly who read your article. Improve your marketing content, based on what the IAFD knows about the individuals who read the article and their franchising problems. So, the next article can be tailored to a more specific audience.
3. Repeat the process, once a quarter, providing you with objective analytics and 45 minutes to an hour of feedback on your audience, if you need it.
If your new client is worth more than $360/year, to you, and have the patience to market for 2 years, with 8 short stories, or 1 stories a quarter, then can we invoice you for a two year subsciption to the IAFD's digital client development program for attorneys -$30.00 per month? You also get a full modern website, a directory listing, so you can publish as many articles as you like.