Larry Bodine Law Marketing Blog : Law firm marketing, legal editor, legal marketing, attorney marketing, business development, marketing consultant, legal consultant, business development

Marketing master Bill Flannery and I will present our Webinar, "Strategic Business Development for Higher Profits" on Thursday, October 7. The first time we broadcast it in July there were more than 50 professional firms -- including one from London -- attending. Visit http://www.lawmarketing.com/index.html to register.
When we polled the audience in July, we discovered some interesting facts:

• Very few firms know what their client's total legal (or accounting or consulting) budget is. This is a real shortcoming if you're trying to increase your "share of the client's wallet." You can have a practice that is billing more hours, making more revenue, but decreasing in client share. The only way to find out is to ask the client but their professional services budget is. If you are a trusted advisor, they'll tell you.
• Many firms are starting to form formal client teams. I was very heartened to see this becuase it is such an effective marketing approach. Informal teams may exist too, and Bill calls these "shadow conspiracies to commit marketing." The formal teams focus on the client's latent needs (the firm is already working on the express needs) because this is where the new business is to be found.

We also got some important marketing points across --

1. 60% of client teams will fail because the most greedy, dysfunctional partner will assume the leader role. 10% will succeed because a leader who serves the team
2. The best team leader is like Henry Fonda in the movie "Twelve Angry Men," where he tried to understand the viewpoint of other members of the jury and he didn't seek power for himself.
3. Only 2-3% of clients use all the practices of a professional firm. Most cherry pick individual practices from a variety of firms. This means that somebody else is getting work that you could be doing.
4. Only 42% of law firms have conducted a formal client satisfaction survey in the last two years, according to a 2003 BTI Consulting survey. If you don't know what your clients want or are planning, you're missing out on a lot of potential revenue.
5. An aggressive goal for forming client teams is 10-12 in a year. About five per year is reasonable.
6. Partners should take their CMO or marketing director along on new business calls. Otherwise the marketer has no real idea of how to direct the firm's promotions. Also, the marketer will be able to see if the partners are totally mucking up their presentations by talking about themselves, by speaking instead of listening and by failing to hear client needs.

We'll be presenting the program again on Thursday, October 7. Visit http://www.lawmarketing.com/index.html to register.