How Much Is It Worth To Hire The Right Marketing Consultant?

If you ask about legal marketing before a group of lawyers, a large percentage will state the following:

• They feel uncomfortable with legal marketing since it’s unprofessional to sell their services.
• Hard sell legal marketing is a good approach.
• They are highly trained professionals, and they’re not running a business.
• They have no interest in meaningless time wasters.

Many lawyers recognize the importance of legal marketing. Some have tried direct mail letters that include a fridge magnet. Their targets included potential foreclosure clients, those facing foreclosure, accident and liability victims.

This approach doesn’t work and it offends many people. As we explained to one law firm, no one will save a magnet and wait for an accident. It will probably be viewed as bad luck.

What Does Work With Legal Marketing

For those tempted to try DIY…don’t. It makes no more sense than untrained individuals representing themselves in court.

The ideal marketing agency will schedule an intake session. Any type of existing sensational cases might be of interest to the media.

The agency needs all of the details to prepare press releases. If the senior account people determine that the case will draw the media to a press conference, you don’t have to spend the money to rent a hotel ballroom. Your conference room and a few refreshments when the conference is finished will do nicely.

Make sure someone greets the media as they arrive, Don’t let them throw their coats on the floor because that’s what many of them are used to except for major news reporters.

This approach should generate valuable coverage that you and your agency can share. It’s also a wise move to frame major media coverage for your offices. Your agency should use this to generate more media.

 

With Love & Best Wishes Always!

Making the Most of Your Time with Time Blocking

Time blocking means you establish specific blocks of time each week that you are going to do specific business activities. You communicate time blocks to everyone on your team and everyone you work with. And you all stick with this schedule.

You May Encounter Resistance

Itʼs really easy to slip back into the routine of just stopping what youʼre doing for every interruption, every call, every question. By stopping and handling every “fire” as it occurs, you may initially feel like youʼre controlling the situation, but the situation is really controlling you. If you find yourself wanting to slip back into that old habit, stop and remind yourself how much more efficient and in control you will be if you just stick with the system until it too becomes habit.

 

Establishing Time Blocks

• Work On Your Business Day: On this day no calls are scheduled other than calls with your team. No client work is scheduled either.
  • This is the day you work on meeting with your entire team as well as individual meetings with each team member.
  • Marketing Meeting
    • Review your marketing for the coming week and month
  • Financial Meeting
    • Review your weekly and monthly financial reports.
  • Days for New Client Meetings (2 days a week)
    • Potential Client Meetings should all be scheduled on the same 2 days for each week.
    • Make only very limited exceptions for this rule for emergencies.
    • Scheduled at least 1 hour for each potential new client meeting.
  • Days/ Times to Return Phone Calls (4 days a week)
    • Block out time each day of the week (except Work On Your Business Day) to return phone calls
    • You should block between 1-3 hours a day
    • Make sure that your scheduling assistant is clear on about how long to schedule for different types of return calls:
      • Existing Clients 30-60 minutes depending on the matter
      • Prospective Clients scheduled on the New Client Meeting Days –unless they MUST speak to the lawyer first 20 minute call
      • Referral Sources 30 minutes

** You should be able to complete almost every call in the time that has been blocked as long as your scheduling assistant is clear with the caller about how much time is being blocked for the call, and that if more time is needed another call will be scheduled.

 

Have your scheduling assistant set up a shared calendar so you can implement time blocking as easily and quickly as possible.

With Love & Best Wishes Always!

Make the Most of the Time You Have

 

You can manage time better by finding lost time. Lost time is that which you didn’t even realize you were wasting in the first place. It’s almost like keeping change in a piggy bank and one day you realize it’s totaled over $100!

Don’t waste the time that most people do.

There are ways to find time that’s often overlooked because people tend to think of time management as being large blocks of time available. But you can do a lot with just ten or fifteen minutes.

Don’t waste the time you have while waiting in a doctor’s office or while exercising. If you like to use a treadmill, you can get one that has a desk so that you can take care of something that has to be dealt with.

Realize that not everything that seems important is.

It only seems that way. Look at your life and stop doing the things that aren’t important that drain your time. If something isn’t a matter of you being happy and succeeding personally or professionally, then it’s not important.

Run ahead, not behind.

When you get behind schedule, it can make you feel a lot of pressure and it adds stress to your life. Try to get things done ahead of time because this gives you a buffer in time management.

Delegating is a great way to help with time management.

Most people like to do things themselves because they know then that the job is done correctly. But if you do the things that others can do, it’s draining your time. For example, some time drains are things like mowing the grass or cleaning the house, scheduling meetings, handling social media updates, blog posts.

What you can do is to look at how much it costs you do the tasks that you do. If someone else can do them, then you’re not only losing time – you’re losing money.

If you earn $200 per hour, then an hour of mowing the grass costs you $200. But if you pay someone $50 to mow the grass, then you saved an hour and $150 because you gained time.

Deal with emails the right way.

Handling email causes more people to get off track than any other online task beside social media and online games. Manage your time wisely with email by setting aside a specific time to deal with email and setting a time limit on how long you’ll take responding to the messages.

If they’re not important, don’t save them to look at later because they’ll only pile up in your inbox. If your life allows you to, hire an assistant to deal with handling your email.

With Love & Best Wishes Always!

Do You Lead By Example

 

 

 

All good leaders know, you must lead by example. Through their actions, which are aligned with what they say, they become a person others want to follow. When leaders say one thing but do another, they erode trust, a critical element of productive leadership.

Here are 10 of the dozens of ways to lead by example.

1. Take responsibility. Blame costs you your credibility, keeps team members on the defensive and ultimately sabotages real growth. Make sure that the buck stops here.
2. Be truthful. Inaccurate representation affects everyone. Show that honesty really IS the best policy.
3. Be courageous. Walk through fire (a crisis) first. Take calculated risks that demonstrate commitment to a larger purpose.
4. Acknowledge failure. It makes it OK for your team to do the same and defines failure as part of the process of becoming extraordinary.
5. Be persistent. Try, try again. Go over, under or around any hurdles to show that obstacles don’t define your company or team.
6. Create solutions. Don’t dwell on problems; instead be the first to offer solutions and then ask your team for more.
7. Listen. Ask questions. Seek to understand. You’ll receive valuable insights and set a tone that encourages healthy dialogue.
8. Delegate liberally. Encourage an atmosphere in which people can focus on their core strengths.
9. Take care of yourself. Exercise, don’t overwork, take a break. A balanced team, mentally and physically, is a successful team. Model it, encourage it, support it!
10. Roll up your sleeves. Like Alexander the Great leading his men into battle, you’ll inspire greatness in your company.

 

I would love to hear the ways in which you lead by example.

With Love & Best Wishes Always!