22
Jun

Create A Marketing Plan: Step 2 - Knowing Your Current and Past Clients

Posted by Krista

Your clients are a wealth of (usually untapped) information that can offer an outside perspective of your firm. Take them to lunch or send them a letter asking them to evaluate your performance and how satisfied they are with your service. After all, your clients know what your strengths and weaknesses are because they’ve worked with you and have seen your processes first hand. They can tell you areas where you excel and areas that need improvement. They can also give you insight on why they chose your firm initially. This is especially good to know when clients switch from other firms to yours. Happy clients don’t switch, so learning why they switched can give you real insight into your clients’ expectations.

Why Collect Client Feedback

Most firms don’t ask for client feedback during or after the project. This can be a mistake because often, how lawyers think clients perceive them is different from how they are actually perceived. If you ask for feedback up front, you’ll learn of problems well in advance and can do something to correct the matter. Collecting client feedback doesn’t mean looking solely for negative feedback. Positive feedback can help you understand your strengths and why future clients might buy from you.

A number of companies have conducted studies on client satisfaction and how that relates to retention. For instance, AT&T found that:

  1. only ‘very satisfied’ customers count (those that were just ’satisfied’ still left)
  2. other things besides price factor into customer thinking (like service and responsiveness)
  3. these scores must be relative to competitors

Similarly, research firm, BTI, conducted a survey in 2002 of 187 corporate counsel at Fortune 1000 corporations. They found that clients see superior client service, established relationships, and excellent responsiveness as the distinguishing characteristics of the best performing law firms. What that means is that ’satisfying’ clients is no longer enough. They have to be ‘very satisfied’ to remain loyal to you.

For more information on doing marketing research, check out the article I wrote on Conducting Consumer Research.

Who Were Your Last 5 Clients?

A helpful exercise you can to get a sense for your current marketing process is to evaluate your last 5 clients. This exercise is designed to get you thinking about the buying process of real people. Too often, firms approach marketing as a generality - “most clients want this or do that.” By focusing on real people with real problems and concerns, you can move past stereotypes and look at why these specific people hired you and how satisfied they were with your services. It’s helpful to pick at least 3 “good clients” - people you’d like to continue working with - and at least 1 or 2 clients” - people you hope never to work with again.

For each client, answer the following questions:

  • How did he/she find out about you?
  • Why did he/she need your services?
  • What was his/her role in making a decision to hire you? Who else was involved (ie boss, spouse, family member, coworkers, etc)?
  • What were his/her major concerns about hiring you?
  • How much education did he/she need before being able to make an informed decision to hire you? What kinds of questions did he/she ask you to explain?
  • How long did it take from initial contact to signing an agreement?
  • What was the best thing about working with this client?
  • Would you want to work with this client again? Why/why not?
  • Did any problems come up when you worked with him/her (ie not paying bills on time, not managing expectations, any arguments, etc) If so, what could you have done to avoid such problems?
  • Would this client refer others to you? Why/why not?
  • Has this client referred others to you?

Finally, if you’ve had any clients that you lost during the job, look into the reasons why and how you can improve your client relations in the future. This may be a change in their current needs (they decided they didn’t need legal services), a competitor offered a sweeter deal, they were referred to someone else, or they felt you weren’t responsive or accessible. If you can, find out why they left and work towards not repeating the same mistake.

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Category : Marketing Plan

Comments

Dr. Ian Bradley June 18, 2009

A great article that emphasizes a point that I stress in my executive coaching practice - get measurable feedback. All to often in my work with lawyers, I see an over-reliance upon billing as the sole metric for promotions, partnerships and corner offices. Billings are the ultimate outcome but focusing on client satisfaction is the best way to increase the bottom-line.

Routine satisfaction surveys, especially those tailored to the client and the attorney, can identify small problems before they become major issues leading to client loss. Satisfaction surveys, properly designed and executed, can also serve as the raw material for in-house training and development of junior lawyers.

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