PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER - HOW TO MAKE IT ALL HAPPEN!
January 2010
Let me ask you a seemingly ridiculous question that has nothing to do with marketing private client services. There are three birds sitting on a fence, two of them decide to fly away; how many are left? The answer is three. Deciding to fly away is not the same as actually doing it! For more than two decades, I have heard many private client practitioners talk enthusiastically about the steps they decided to take. Telling me about their intentions, however, is not the same as actually putting them into practice.
Let me give you a few practical and psychological tools that will help move things forward.
Create some ‘have to’ targets
Let me explain what I mean. Think of a time when you were under pressure to get something done or achieve a particular outcome. Maybe you were going on holiday and you had to get something out of the way before you left, or you had to get fit enough to participate in a particular event or know enough to take a specific exam.
Is it not the case that, in most of those situations, you either met your deadline and targets and achieved your outcome, or if not, you came pretty close to it?
Don’t ask me how or why. We all seem to have some sort of built in mechanism that enables us to stretch much further and achieve more, once we ‘HAVE TO’!
The problem with marketing our departmental work is that in most cases, we do not set ourselves any ‘have to’ targets. In fact, most practitioners trying to market their various specialist services don’t set any targets whatsoever. They simply set off with the best of intentions and good faith with various marketing initiatives, hoping for the best.
I am going to give you some achievable ‘have to’ targets now, for which you can aim and around which you can build your strategy and action.
Relating these targets to marketing to private clients, your ‘have to’ target over the next 12 months is as follows:-
- increase the conversion rate of new enquiries into business by 10 per cent.;
- increase the volume of business you get from other departments in the firm by 10 per cent.;
- increase the number of recommendations you get from existing clients by 10 per cent.; and
- increase the number of new enquiries coming into the firm by 10 per cent.
Achieve these very possible targets separately, and the financial benefits will be huge!
Don’t try to do everything at once!
Many of you are perhaps overwhelmed by the amount that needs to be done. My advice is not to try to do it all at once.
You will note that there are four ‘have to’ bullet points. I strongly recommend that you divide your time and resources up so that you devote three months to each, in the order they appear.
Thus, for example, you need not worry about the existing clients issue until you have what it takes over the next three months to increase your conversion rates of enquiries into business.
Ian Cooper is Britain’s most experienced specialist marketing consultant and skills trainer for the legal profession. He is the author of 12 books including the Law Society Probate Section ‘Marketing To Private Clients … a Fast and Effective Guide’.
MORE ARTICLES BY IAN COOPER
MORE ARTICLES IN PRACTICE MANAGEMENT
ARTICLE RESOURCES
Share this article
Email article
Print article
