Referrals, Reviews and Retention
20 years ago law firms prided themselves on being the family lawyer, the ones on the high street that every member of the family from generation to generation has relied on, oh my how that has changed with the avalanche of the internet.
We’ve had the race to the bottom on conveyancing prices, the ambulance chasing, the free wills, all driven by the consumer now shopping around coupled with the closure of many high street practices and banks.
This has driven law firms to spend huge amounts on marketing activities both online and offline, but it doesn’t need to be this way, if law firms got their referral, reviews and retention policies in place, you should be able to drive a very high percentage of all the work you need.
Referrals
Sales is a disliked term in the legal sector, I often hear “We’re professionals we don’t do sales”, everybody sells, it’s part of life, getting your kids to eat broccoli is a sales process based on negotiation.
Asking for referrals is just the same, you’ve helped a client, now if you could ask them if they know somebody else who needs help, it should be a streamlined process, put it in an email at the end of the transaction.
If you did this on every transaction I wouldn’t be surprised if over 10% of clients recommended you to a friend.
Reviews
I help law firms with reviews and have got firms to over 1,000 reviews in just over 12 months, but the biggest barrier to reviews is fear. All the lawyers are scared of reviews, the fear of getting a bad review, what drives this fear - litigation, risk, rejection, but do you know what, from my experience it very rarely happens and how you deal with the 1 star review says a lot about you as a firm.
Reviews are crucial to your firms success to help convert new enquiries. Social proof (what’s said online about your firm) is of huge importance now, ask yourself do you ever buy anything without first looking for a review, I know I don’t, even down to a £10 phone case on Amazon.
You have to get reviews ingrained into the law firm, staff bought into the process to make their life easier in the long run. And if you do get lots of awful reviews right from the start then on the bonus side you know you have a problem that needs sorting out for the survival of the firm, but I’ve never come across this yet.
If you need help with reviews for your law firm let me know.
Retention
Every law firm mentions this phrase, the biggest buzz word going ‘ “cross sell”, i.e. referring clients from one department to another, does it happen, yes in some firms, but in most the lawyer is protective about their clients, they don’t want to hand them over in case they provide a poor service or heavens forbid they steal them.
How can you get cross selling and ultimately retention to happen in your law firm?
Retention is a big deal in the wills department, the whole business model is built on retention, but many law firms write the wil and then stick in the will bank until they die and the grieving family hopefully come back looking for the will. Come on don’t lie, this is how you do it.
What would happen if you just kept in touch with these clients on annual or bi-annual basis, just a quick call or email to check all was ok - would you get more work, would the client feel some loyalty towards you as a firm, I believe so, but how can you do this - I have a process if you’re interested please get in touch.
Most of the above has little cost to doing it but massively high returns, the return on investment will hugely outweigh the return on your marketing spend constantly trying to generate new clients - just focus on what you have and build from there, you have a gold mine already trusting your law firm, just learn how to work with it.
ACTION
Focus on your firms reviews - go to Google or Bing and type in your law firm name and then reviews and see what hits the first page and then remember this is what your prospective clients are doing.
5 TIPS
Make one volunteer in your dept the cross sell champion and get them to speak to the cross sell champion in every other dept at least once per week
Build a cross sell network and make all staff aware. It’s based on associated services like conveyancing and wills, contracts and employment
Find all your review sites and get reveiws taken down that are false (I can do this for you)
Get all your dept heads in a room and work out a policy for rewarding staff for introducing new clients
Automate 2 template emails to go to clients at the of their transaction
first one asking for a review
second one thanking them for their work, explaining what other services your firm provide and if they know anyone who needs help
Happy growing
See you next week
Chris
