Surely, the people who work at your law firm, know your business and law firm personality way better than any outsider marketing consultancy, right? These trusted people should be your golden nuggets when it comes to bringing in new business.
Firstly, not only could and should the staff be finding you more business, but they too should be a source of work, for their own needs and their families.
Partners should all be given a target to get a certain number of leads per month, and then a continuation of that is to give them a target percentage to convert those leads to clients.
Sure, super large firm have a marketing team and they rely on those people to do the lead generation, but not all law firms can afford a team of dedicated people. I would go as fas as to say that even if you have a marketing/PRO person, the partners should be adding to this pool of new business with their individual efforts.
You need to reward staff who bring in new business. I know there are rules against paying for business from a third party, but not sure how the rules are transgressed if a staff member who works for you brings in new business – it would be the same as paying your PRO person? Anyway, even if you cannot hand out commission, give them something that thanks them for their extra effort.
Make the generation of leads fun. Put up a new leads board in the general area/break room, then enter the leads brought in by each person. To make it lighter, you could even have a column that lists the number of people they told about the firm and offered services, even if it is not a lead. For example, around a braai, your staff member might have introduced themselves and the company – that way the pressure is off staff to get onto the board, as none of that is hard selling, it is just casual communication.
Use a central system people can add these new prospect details into, if your current practice management system does not cater for Customer Relationship Management (CRM), then use an online tool like inSightly.com – it is the one I use and it works well, even better as it is free 😉
This type of competition in-amongst the staff builds team work and great comradery, don’t make the staff feel they must deliver to have a place in the firm, but keep it light and entertaining to ensure everyone gets on board.
One of your marketing channels must be social media, so get a social media expert in to train the staff on social media marketing and how to use it for the maximum effect to promote the firm. Other training could be on things like elevator speeches etc. The training is twofold, it educates your staff, growing their personal skill-set and your law firm makes the most of the exposure your staff are generating.
It makes sense that the people who earn more from your more profitable business should play a part in finding new business.
