Attracting clients in difficult times

Client-Attraction Secrets for Lawyers: How to attract your ideal clients even in difficult economic times

By Michelle Peters (The Business Instructor)

Right now, we’re in the middle of a ‘perfect storm’ of factors that are making it harder than ever to get clients:

• Theinevitableimpacton theeconomy from theCOVID-19 outbreak, meaning clientsarereluctanttospend moneyon thingstheydon’tconsider‘essential’; • changesin thelegal marketplace (increased competition, downward pressureon legal fees, and it’sharder than evertostand outfrom theotherlegal providers); and • advancementsin technology(meaning in manycasesclientscan chooselegal providersbased virtuallyanywhere, and it’seasierthan everto‘shop around’ or even totryDIY);

3 critical shifts to get more clients To overcome these challenges, three critical shifts are needed:

1. Make sure your marketing stands out from your competitors and that it contains the right message to attract your ideal clients

This means changing the content of your marketing to help prospective clients know why they need your help and why they should choose you. This one simple change will be enough to set you streets ahead of your competitors.

Telling them why starts with explaining the benefits they’ll gain from using your services.

Once a prospective client is convinced of the benefits of your service, their next question will be “Are you the right person to provide it?” so you need to answer that in your marketing as well.

If you fail to explain why a prospective client should choose you (rather than one of your competitors), the chances are that many of them won’t. 2. Understand that gaining clients is about attracting more enquiries and converting these into paying clients like employment or corporate, because I hadn’t had the same level of training or experience.

Many of the law firms I work with are already spending a lot of time and money on marketing. But attracting more enquiries is only one element of winning clients. The other – equally important – element is being able to convert those enquiries into paying clients at the minimum cost.

It costs time and money to attract new enquiries, so how successful you are at converting enquiries into paying clients will have a direct impact on your profitability.

If, for example, your current success rate with non-referred enquiries is 1 in 3 but you increase that to 2 in 3, your number of new clients will double without any additional marketing or time spent on meeting prospective clients.

What would that mean for your practice?

A word of warning here: although many firms proudly tell me that their conversion rate is very high, a measurement of (say) 90% is often not the real picture because they may be lowering their fees to get a ‘yes’ from clients or only calculating conversion rate based on percentage of initial consultations converted into clients (not percentage of enquiries converted into clients).

3. Be clear about your area of expertise – where it is, and where it isn’t

As a lawyer, you probably have a specific area of expertise; or maybe you have several. But are you a specialist in all areas of law – from matrimonial to commercial property? Or from business sales to employment tribunal cases? Probably not.

In my case, I specialised in intellectual property for seven years. I didn’t have the same level of knowledge in other areas, So why do some lawyers feel they should be expert in practice growth strategies and skills – particularly without any training or help?

If you want to attract more clients and grow your practice, then it’s important to identify where you need to improve your skills in areas such as attracting enquiries and converting more of these into paying clients. Increasing your skills will mean getting better results in less time – meaning you not only grow your client based but have more time available to do the feeearning work that your new clients provide.

About the Author Michelle Peters (The Business Instructor) is a former practicing solicitor and the creator of the Profitable Practice Programme for lawyers who want more clients and to increase their profits without working more hours.

You can discover more about the secrets to attracting and converting more of your ideal clients, and get step-by-step worksheets to help you take action, in Michelle’s new book ‘The Client Magnet Strategy for Lawyers: how to attract and convert more of your ideal clients’.

Download the first four chapters of the book (and receive an invitation to a free online training on how to put the book’s strategies into practice) at: www.thebusinessinstructor.com/freechapters

Michelle is also running a 1 day workshop in Norwich on 11 June for the owners of small legal firms, sole practitioners, or consultants building their own practice, to help them get more clients and increase profits without working more hours.