Categories
Customer Service

Client Attraction Pitfalls: 3 Mistakes to Avoid to Create Your Best First Impression

Article Contributed by Alexis Neely

In a recent post, I shared why you absolutely MUST have a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system in place. And you were so enthusiastic about it, you went right out and implemented one! Yeah! You’re up and running—inviting your ideal clients to connect and stay connected with you because you have an awesome law business and people love you!  But just as important to the process of attracting your ideal clients is the first impression they receive of you and your business when they do reach out to you for your service.

Following are three common mistakes attorneys often make that can have negative effects on your ability to move these wonderful people you have started building relationships with into paying clients:

  1. Offering free consultations.

A common client attraction tactic many law firms incorporate into their system is the “Free Initial Consultation.” Once considered a fantastic way to entice potential clients, they’re now offered by virtually every lawyer and law office around. Prospects don’t value them, they cancel at the last minute and are more often than not use the free initial consultation to shop around for the best deal.

It’s time to drop the free initial consultation and instead offer something of value that will educate your prospects about why you are the right lawyer for them or send them on their way before they ever get into a one on one meeting with you if they are not the right fit.

Instead, offer a meeting that has a name, a value and a purpose. Our Personal Family Lawyers® offer a Family Wealth Planning Session to educate prospects about what would happen to their family/assets if anything happens to them and it’s worth $750.  Creative Business Lawyers™ offer a LIFT Foundation Audit to identify any holes in their prospects business and recommend ways to fill those holes. It’s worth $1250.

What will you replace your free initial consultation with? 

  1. Answering your phones.

This simple adjustment can transform your practice: stop answering your own phones! Many attorneys make this mistake, or they employ a receptionist who works for a shared office space, and growls “law office” into the phone whenever it rings.

The first interaction your prospective clients have with your practice should exude friendliness, calmness, openness and service. Have your phones answered by someone with a smile on his/her face, whose friendly nature helps differentiate you and your firm from your competition. Remember, people want to hire someone they feel a bond with, and a first impression is often the one that sticks. If you want to see for yourself, call four or five of your competitors and hear how their phones are answered. Which ones feel inviting, and which make you want to run the other way?

And why shouldn’t you answer your own phones? See number 3! 

  1. Appearing available. 

As counter-intuitive as it may seem, your potential client doesn’t want to speak with you directly the first time s/he calls. S/he expects to make an appointment to speak to her/his attorney. Have all calls scheduled for you and establish immediate credibility by NOT answering your phone.

If you’re sitting by the phone desperately waiting for that next call, your potential clients will sense it. They will wonder WHY you aren’t busy, and assume it’s because you aren’t as good as your competitors. So, let them sense your busyness: you have other clients and are focused on serving them. They will expect you to do the same for them once you are available.

By creating a delicate balance of “attractive unavailability,”   your potential clients will value your time and know that when you are working with them, you will be fully present and fully serving. They can feel more relaxed and grounded in your presence, and will be more inclined to trust and invest in your services. Establish a protocol for getting time with you that helps people sense that you have the integrity, experience and expertise they need, so they feel safe and reassured from the start.

What client attraction practices do you use? In what ways do you work to develop your customer relationships? Let us hear your ideas for developing better relationships with your leads and attracting more of your ideal clients, or tell us about some that didn’t work out so well!

About the Author

Alexis Neely started her own law practice in 2003 after only three years in practice at the law firm of Munger, Tolles & Olson. Despite knowing nothing about business, she built that law practice into a million dollar a year revenue generator by creating a new law business model that her clients (and her family) absolutely loved.  Alexis wrote the bestselling book on legal planning for parents and has appeared on all the top television shows – from the Today Show to Good Morning America – teaching the American public about proactive family and business legal planning and new paradigm conflict resolution.  Today, Alexis is a Law Business Mentor and guides lawyers to reclaim their role as trusted advisors for their clients while building sustainable, fulfilling, money-making practices so you can love being a lawyer again. For more information about Alexis, visit www.lawbusinessmentors.com

Categories
Customer Service

Grow Your Practice, the Easy Way: Automate Your Marketing with a CRM

Article Contributed by Alexis Neely

When you generate a lead or interact with a potential client, what systems do you have in place to maintain your connection with someone who expressed interest, but wasn’t quite ready to make a hiring decision? What about your existing clients? How are you building those relationships to turn them into lifelong raving fans?

You may be surprised to learn that only 20% of sales are made within the first 4 times you make contact with a lead. Only 20%! This means a whopping 80% of your prospects need to hear from you upwards of 5-6 (or MORE) times to invest in your services! How on earth are you going to reach people that many times, when you already have five plans to draft, two signings, and a home visit in the next week?!?

You aren’t, unless you are using a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to automate your communications with prospects and clients so you can regularly connect with lots of people and have each one of them feel as if you are making personal contact. If you are not reaching out to your prospects, clients and referral sources regularly, you are losing thousands of dollars per month in revenue.

You must communicate with your house list (clients, prospects and referral sources) on a regular basis.   And here’s the kicker that most lawyers will either never get or not be willing to do  …

… you must get personal with the people on your list.

I don’t mean email or call each person individually.  What I mean is share your personal stories, photos, insights and experiences with the people on your list.

Make sure that your CRM personalizes each email you send with the first name of the person you are talking to and when you write, write as if you are writing to one single person.  That’s how the best copywriters do it.

And the best part? With the right CRM, you can not only automate your entire communication campaign, but each client and prospect will feel as if you are talking just to them.

What Is a CRM? 

A CRM system is a software program that manages your clients’ contact information AND automates your marketing, increasing the lifetime value of your client relationships.

Implementing a CRM allows you to input potential and existing clients into a system where they receive a customized, automated sequence of communications unique to their needs and level of interest.

Leverage technology to free yourself up so you can get back to doing the kind of work that inspired you to go to law school in the first place.

And take some of that time to get out of the office, and enjoy yourself! After all, that’s why you wanted to be an entrepreneur, isn’t it? To have control over your life and your business? Automating your communications is a giant leap in that direction!

I’m curious: what kind of communications do you currently send to your contact list? What ways are you staying in touch with leads right now that could be automated with a CRM? How many of you already use a CRM? Let us hear your thoughts and ideas!

About the Author

Alexis Neely started her own law practice in 2003 after only three years in practice at the law firm of Munger, Tolles & Olson. Despite knowing nothing about business, she built that law practice into a million dollar a year revenue generator by creating a new law business model that her clients (and her family) absolutely loved.  Alexis wrote the bestselling book on legal planning for parents and has appeared on all the top television shows – from the Today Show to Good Morning America – teaching the American public about proactive family and business legal planning and new paradigm conflict resolution.  Today, Alexis is a Law Business Mentor and guides lawyers to reclaim their role as trusted advisors for their clients while building sustainable, fulfilling, money-making practices so you can love being a lawyer again.  For more information about Alexis, visit www.lawbusinessmentors.com

Categories
Technology

Benefits of Integrated Business Management

Article Contributed by Penelope Edwards 

When a business starts out their software requirements are fairly limited, probably only needing to use basic office packages for word processing and accounting. As the business grows the need for more sophisticated inventory and order management systems arises and these are added into the IT mix. Later on still, the need to scale and grow means that the business expands into additional sales channels, each one requiring another software solution and further increasing the complexity of integration between business processes. All of a sudden the businesses IT systems are looking a bit like Frankenstein’s monster. All cobbled together from different disparate software packages that don’t quite fit together, absolutely riddled with inefficiencies.

Does this sound anything like your current setup? I know the prospect of unpicking this mess and changing systems is daunting to say the least. It’s easy to rest on your laurels and claim ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’. But you could be losing out on a huge amount of time, money and ultimately scalability, due to badly architected systems that have organically evolved on the basis of short term thinking.

Here are four problems that might kick-start you into taking the plunge into the efficiencies and longer term scalabilities that come from implementing an integrated business management software solution.

1) Buying, maintaining, and upgrading multiple different software packages is not cheap.

You’ll need to shell out for multiple licences, as well as pay someone with the experience and skills to work will all of these different packages.  Add in the cost of integrating them so that they can share data and whoa nelly things are starting to look pretty pricey. Any integration will need maintenance too; possibly every time one of the software vendors releases an update. This IT resource could be used elsewhere to improve productivity or just eliminated to save cost and improve your bottom line.

2) Often you won’t be able to fully join together different software packages as they will be too dissimilar to make integration possible.

This means that your staff will need to waste valuable time re-entering information into multiple packages. The likelihood of human error is also increased meaning all your data is more inaccurate. This re-entry of data takes your staff away from using this time in more beneficial ways for your business, such as generating more income. Look at it this way if 5 people save 30 minutes per day, and there are roughly 252 working days in a year, then you’re wasting a whopping 630 hours annually that could be put to more productive use.

3) Waiting for data to be passed between numerous separate systems, which is both an error-prone and time-intensive process, results in critical decision making being slow and choices being made on the basis of inaccurate analytics.

Important business decisions are therefore often too late to have the most effective impact or could actually be detrimental to your business.

4) A lack of quick and efficient processes will affect customer satisfaction as well.

If you have poor integration and lengthy transfer processes between your software systems you are unlikely to be able to gain instant access to the information you need to service them well. Order information, inventory levels, order status, billing history and more will not be easily accessible. This leads to a poorer customer experience so they won’t buy from you again and even might be prompted to about you negatively to others.

The best time to get an integrated system in place and avoid the issues of managing multiple systems is now (or as soon as possible!). It’s never too late or early. Getting the right system will help you to scale as you’ll be more efficient and have more time to grow your business.

About the Author

Penelope Edwards works at Brightpearl – business management software for small businesses integrates inventory, accounting, CRM, order processing with sales channels. Run your website, physical shop and online marketplace listings from a single back end system. Sell more, and sell better.

Categories
Operations

Top 6 Credit Card Processing Tips

Article Contributed by Jessica Sanders

While there are a number of important aspects you’ll need to get in order as a new or current small business owner, one of the most important, though seemingly trivial, is credit card processing. You’ll need to choose the right merchant, work with the right vendors and make the process customer friendly.

There are 6 key components to keep in mind when considering how you’ll handle your credit card processing; from vendor to customer satisfaction.

1. Merchant Fees

Most companies will charge a fee per transaction – it’s a standard process that every business will have to budget into their overall finances. However, some charge a lower fee than others, and that will give you flexibility in credit payments. Look for a merchant that charges 2 – 2.5% or less. This will be ideal for you as it gives you more freedom to accept a variety of payments.

2. Funds Submission

If your customer makes a payment on Monday, they don’t want to wait a week to see the funds taken from their account. Often times, customers don’t are oblivious of this step, leading to over spending on their part. When that happens, your customers may blame you, at which time you turn to your merchant. Be sure to find a provider that has a fast fund submission process – you’ll want to read reviews and get references.

3.       Debit versus Credit

Some vendors will charge more for one or the other – usually giving precedence to debit, as funds need to be in the account for the original authorization to process. Many businesses combat this problem by offering convenience fees for customers who choose to use the least expensive method of payment.

4.       Customer Experience

This is your main source of interaction with the customer, thus you want the process to be quick, easy and seamless. While the process itself should be user friendly and non-labor intensive, security is a main aspect of the process, especially online. Be sure every transaction has verification steps to allow your customers the comfort of knowing they can purchase safely with you.

5.       Authorization Time

While most merchants will boast fast authorization times, 5 seconds or under, this isn’t always the case. It’s safe to assume your customers are busy, and want to get in and out. Long authorization times mean lower customer satisfaction and brand loyalty.

6.       Variety

Finally, your customers are diverse – while you may have a specific audience you target to, they won’t all be paying with Visa cards, and so it’s important that you cater to their specific needs. Whether you know the main vendor used by your customers or you choose to accept all cards, convenience is critical.

Credit card processing seems like a simple task in the grand scheme of things. However, it’s a main source of interaction between your business and your customer, thus it’s important that you place a priority on getting it right. Finding the right merchant and accepting the preferred vendors of your customers will go a long way for customer satisfaction and sales.

About the Author

Jessica Sanders is an avid small business writer touching on topics that range from social media to POS systems and accounting software. She is a professional blogger and web content writer for ResourceNation.com.

Categories
Entrepreneurs

3 Top Tips For Budding Entrepreneurs To Earn Profits And Eliminate Debt

Article Contributed by Kavin Matthews

At one point of time or the other, all businesses have to go through a phase of low cash flow. Whether you need loans for the expansion of your business or resisting bad business situations, debt is a legitimate business tool. For whatever reason it might be, debt could grow into a serious problem for any business. If your business has accrued a major amount of debt, you could opt for business debt consolidation. With a debt consolidation program, you can combine your high interest bills into a single reasonable payment.

When entrepreneurs start a business, they span an array of industries and dimensions depending on their profit targets and the amount of funds obtainable by them. Settle on your financial objectives and select a business idea that functions for the amount of funds available to you. Online start-up trades are very common among the youngsters. A number of tech-savvy teenagers are taking advantage of the countless opportunities that are available online. However, these youthful entrepreneurs have to face countless challenges while running their online business. Following are a few brilliant tips for budding entrepreneurs to help them earn profits and eliminate their debts.

1.Be prepared to face the challenges – Running a successful business is never unproblematic. Handling a business is very exhaustive with diverse clients to deal with and customers calling you at every hour of the day. Thus, before you start anything, think whether you actually want to be in the trade or not. You may have a technical bend of mind, but operating a successful business is a totally different thing. With college, work, and all in between, you might soon find yourself toiling 20 hours a day. Think about your goals in life, and take your decisions accordingly. For instance, if you are a member of sporting club, and you want to start a full-time business, you probably can’t manage them both.

2.Make use of all the resources – Often, budding entrepreneurs don’t possess a lot of funds but there are other resources available to them. For instance, if you need to hurriedly take on a photo shoot for a promotion campaign, you could take advantage of your parents’ garage. For few, taking help from friends or family could be a little awkward, but making use of the available resources would be very beneficial for you as a budding entrepreneur. With a bit of understanding and intelligence, a majority of your problems can be lessened by employing the resources available at your fingertips.

3.Build a professional communication network – When you are dealing with customers, you will have to work with established professionals who are placed high up in their individual business hierarchies. Convincing them to take you gravely is the complicated part. Your mantra should be to live locally but to function internationally. Take on the role of a grown-up business professional, and you might be treated like one. Prepare few startling speeches for the times when you need to function locally. Maintain a regular speech and make certain that you can deliver it unflinchingly when required.

About the Author

Kavin Matthews is a financial writer who simply loves to share his knowledge by writing articles. He has written several articles on debt related issues and personal budgeting. To know more, just click on http://www.debtconsolidationcare.com/calculator/