3 Ways to Increase Repeat Business at your Small Firm

Increasing the number of clients at your small firm that utilize your services two, three, or even more times can have a significant impact on your bottom line. The reality is that you’ll find it much easier to convert a former client (assuming he or she was happy with your service) than a total stranger.

But it’s interesting how many firms don’t even bother to reach out to their former clients in any meaningful or intentional way. Continue reading below for a quick summary of some of the best ways to turn former clients into repeat business.

Meaningful Communication

If you’re a regular reader of this site you’ll know that the theme of this month’s blog posts is “communication.” Regular communication with former, current, and future clients of your firm is a necessity for successfully operating a small legal enterprise.

But beyond being regular, your communications have to be meaningful. They must speak to the individual you’re engaging and offer value of some kind. One-size-fits-all email blasts to all sorts of different clients will likely not be of much value to the individual recipients.

Use what you know about your individual clients to personalize your communication with them and provide information you expect they’ll value instead.

Remembering and Communicating Details

Do you know why dentists send you birthday cards? Because they know that people value those who remember the little things. And while it can seem tacky, sending your former clients a quick birthday greeting or “happy holidays” email serves to keep you at the front of their minds. If it just so happens that they need another matter dealt with around that same time you might be the one they call.

Even better than birthdays and holidays are the little details that relate to their matter. Is it the anniversary of their incorporation? Send that small business a little gift to help them celebrate the occasion. Has it been five years since they bought their first home? Send them an email and ask them how the experience has been.

Making Each Communication Count

Just as important as communicating in a meaningful way that’s personal to the client is knowing when not to send a communication. You don’t need to email them every week with an update about your firm because, truth be told, they probably don’t care. And you definitely don’t need to phone them at home on a random evening to remind them about some promotion at your firm.

Instead, each time you communicate with a client you should have a clear goal in mind. Whether it’s to tell him or her about a useful service you learned about, a strategy they may wish to consider, or a service you offer that they might want to utilize, the fact that you’ve reached out to them should signal that you’ve got something important and valuable to say.

Final Thoughts

Staying in touch with your clients in a way that doesn’t annoy them and adds to the value of the relationship is an art and a science. And it’s well worth your time to develop a talent for it.

3 Ways To Boost The Lifetime Value of Clients

Recruiting more clients isn’t the only way you can increase the revenue flowing into your firm. You can also boost the amount of money you get paid by each individual client. Learn how to boost the lifetime value (LTV) of the clients of your small firm in three simple ways.

Regular Communication

If you’re a regular reader of my blog, you know that last week we discussed the benefits of continually communicating with current and former clients. Those benefits included the fact that you can boost the lifetime value of each client by regularly engaging them after you have rendered your services.

I strongly suggest you make use of email automation software in order to do this. A simple “keep in touch” email every quarter can do wonders for keeping your firm at the forefront of your former client’s mind when it comes time for them to deal with another matter.

Email communication requires some subtlety and tact so you don’t want to bombard your former clients with annoying messages the moment their matter is complete. Instead, try to use occasional emails to deliver further value to the client and point out where you might be of use to them in the future.

Targeted Marketing

Properly targeting your emails and other communications is hugely important when trying to achieve results from your campaigns. Remember that your small corporate client for whom you handled a transactional matter likely does not need or want the same information or services that a personal real estate client does.

Segment your client list and customize communications for each segment. How you go about segmenting these groups is up to you. You may even wish to make use of a marketing professional or growth hacker to assist you in this endeavor.

Bundling Services

Thousands of law firms across the country are making use of alternative fee arrangements that clients like a lot more than the billable hour. Some firms are even implementing bundled services in order to provide more value to their business and individual clients.

Bundled services can be particularly useful for small business clients, who may wish to make use of a variety of services over the course of the business’ lifecycle but value the predictability and certainty of prepaid, bundled service packages.

While you may find the idea of discounted, bundled services to be tacky, the fact of the matter is that these strategies can be an effective way to get clients to buy more services in a shorter amount of time than they otherwise would.

Final Thoughts

Increasing the LTV of your typical client can have dramatic effects on both top-line revenue and bottom-line profit. Rather than spend your money and time tracking down and converting new clients, that same money and time can often be better spent increasing the value you deliver to existing clients and, at the same time, increasing the value they represent to your firm.

3 Benefits of Regularly Communicating With Clients

Maybe you’re wondering why your clients aren’t paying you on time. Or maybe you can’t figure out why you get all kinds of business, except for repeat business.

Your problem may lie with communication or, rather, the lack of it. Failing to communicate regularly with clients can lead to problems with everything from getting people to pay their bills to maintaining a healthy client base. Successful client communication, however, can create surpluses of goodwill that resonate throughout your firm. Continue reading below to find out how stellar client communication can help your small firm succeed.

Timely Bill Payment

Getting clients to pay on time can be a significant challenge. Even when you rely on prepayment into a trust account you still need to actually get the client to transfer the money on a timely basis before you can start working on the matter.

It’s a mistake to rely simply on a single phone conversation or meeting to prompt a client to pay his or her bill. Instead, consider automating your payment reminders or invoices using email list software like Mailchimp or Constant Contact. You can even set up email reminders within Quickbooks.

If you like, you can also create a small incentive to pay early by way of instituting a small discount. Combine that with a small disincentive to pay late by imposing a small late payment fee and you’ll be twice as likely to get that client to pay their tab. Just be sure to make these terms extremely clear on the invoice and in your discussions with the client.

Repeat Customers

Continuing a relationship with the client after their matter has been dealt with is a key component of ensuring those same clients come back with future business. This can be as easy as sending them an email once per month or once per quarter with a quick update.

In order to make it more likely that they’ll actually read the update and refrain from unsubscribing, do your best to personalize the email and make it relevant to their industry. So, for example, try segmenting your clients into industries or fields and sending each segment a custom email that they’ll find interesting.

Higher Lifetime Value Clients

In addition to encouraging more repeat business, continual customer communication allows you to increase the lifetime value (LTV) of your clients. By reminding them that you exist, and gently prompting them with ideas about where they might need the assistance of counsel, you can increase the number of times that your clients return to you for further matters.

Final Thoughts

Client communication isn’t about bombarding your clients with emails the minute they’ve left the office. It’s about leveraging technology and the psychology of nudging to encourage clients to engage in behaviors that are beneficial to your firm, whether that’s paying their bills on time or coming back to you for repeat business. Learning the ins and outs of productive client engagement will pay significant dividends in the long run and is well worth the effort.

Don’t Give Up

Things are tough right now. At the time of this writing, Covid-19 is wreaking havoc with local and national economies everywhere. Businesses, including law firms, are struggling to stay afloat. In short, things look bleak.

But we’re optimistic. We think there are a lot of good reasons not to throw in the towel and give up. Continue reading below to find out why we’re still looking on the bright side!

Things May Get Worse, But They’ll Get Better Afterwards

Yes, things are looking bad at the moment. And yes, things may get worse. But we have every reason to believe that circumstances will improve in the long run. Just as the last 150 years have represented an almost uninterrupted climb up the ladder of human productivity and wellbeing, we expect that the next decade will be no exception.

The fundamentals of the American economy are strong. People are educated, relatively wealthy, and productive. We’ll get through this crisis like we’ve gotten through every other crisis: with grace and efficiency.

Your Clients Need You

Now more than ever, your clients need you. People don’t go to lawyers for the company (although you do make fantastic company). They come to you because you can solve their problems. Whether you’re a personal injury lawyer seeking justice for an injured driver or a solicitor trying to help a client through a complicated contract of purchase and sale, your clients need you now.

The last thing your clients want is for their lawyers to become unavailable at a time when the world seems to be grinding to a halt. It’s in times of trouble and crisis that people rely the most on the professionals to help them with. You can’t let them down.

Your Employees Need You

While it would sometimes be nice to simply hit pause on everything in your professional life it doesn’t work that way. From your support staff to the lawyers who work with you to the people in the court office, all of us are interconnected and rely on one another to get us through the month. We need one another to help us pay the bills, rent, and to support our children.

It’s almost certain that you want to be able to step up and support your employees and colleagues through these difficult times. The sooner and faster you can get things back to “normal” at your firm, the sooner your people will be able to stabilize their lives.

Final Thoughts

Not only do we have good reason to be optimistic about the ability of the world to recover from this shock, but we also have good reason to believe that you have every incentive to help that happen. People depend on you and your firm to deliver results, solve problems, and put your people to work. Believe it or not, but before you know it you’ll be doing these things like never before. The country, your firm, and you are stronger than you’ve ever known.

How To Endure Financial Downturns

Covid-19 has brought with it a whole host of financial difficulties. For a lot of law firms, new client flows are drying up while existing clients aren’t conducting business. As a result, there just isn’t a lot of work to go around.

For many firms, this means struggling to stay afloat. And while, in the midst of a crisis, there may not be a lot we can do other than try to survive, there are things we can do to blunt the impact of the next downturn in business.

Continue reading below to see our favorite tips for how to prepare for difficult financial times.

Stay Lean

One of the best ways to ensure that you’re able to endure financial downturns when they occur is to run a lean operation. Minimal staff, minimal overhead, and minimal costs should be the name of the game. Luckily, this is easier than ever to do. Modern technology allows for efficient firms to operate with very little overhead. 

The secret to maintaining a lean operation is to manage your workflows. It will come as no surprise to lawyers who have been in practice for more than five minutes that work tends to follow predictable patterns. From marketing to client intake to file prep, maintenance, work, and payment usually follow the same steps. For example, real estate clients will almost always follow a familiar pattern.

For those firms that are on top of their workflows, automation through software can be a huge help. It increases the quality of client service and reduces errors while improving efficiency.

Stay Flexible

Flexibility is key to surviving an economic downturn. So while you want to be as lean as possible, you don’t want to eliminate any possibility of making significant changes quickly should the need arise.

Backup and contingency plans are key to making this work. If key support staff fall ill or an extended power outage affects your area, you should have backup plans in place for how to deal with these eventualities.

Plan Ahead

Similar to backup and contingency planning, you should have concrete, written plans for what to do in the event of an economic downturn. Budgeting and business planning should usually include a worst, usual, and best-case scenario. (In fact, the best-case scenario probably isn’t necessary since it's usually just an exercise in wish fulfillment.)

Those firms that have set plans for what to do in the event of an economic emergency typically perform much better than those firms that don’t have anything written down and are forced to wing it.

Final Thoughts

The next few months are going to be tough. Covid-19 has taken a huge toll on the ability of the average person to conduct business, which is having huge knock-on effects on law firms everywhere. But with a little bit of planning and strategy, you can make sure that the next disruption doesn’t knock you on your butt.