Clearly defined objectives are the key to a law firm's success

The above is a quote from Alan Sugar, possibly the only quote of his that I would ever use, but it is a good one, so use it I will. Alan Sugar was the chairman of Tottenham Hotspur for a while, so it is perhaps worth carrying on the football analogy when talking about your law firm.

I would ask you to bear with me if you want to make 2012 the best year your firm has had for some time, as I know what I am going to share with you really can achieve that for you.

Caught offside

Imagine that there is no game of football for a moment (where would all that money go…). Suddenly someone comes up with the idea for the game. It is almost identical to the game of football that we know today. It is played on a grass pitch with the same markings as the current football pitches and it has two different teams, but with only 10 players on each side.

The main difference with this new game of football is that the object of the game is to keep possession longer than the other team. There are no goals; why do you need goals for this game? It is all about keeping the ball. There is a giant screen with each team’s colour on it and it shows the total length of time that each team has kept possession so the crowd know which team is winning at any given time.

At first the people who come to watch find it interesting. It is new and watching 20 men or women run around on a Saturday afternoon gives them something to do with their friends. However, after a while they become somewhat bored by the game. Players passing backwards and forwards with no apparent reason apart from keeping possession just seemed to be missing something.

Suddenly someone suggests placing two posts at each end of the pitch and to put a net behind the posts. They decide to introduce someone to stand in front of these posts to try and stop the ball going in, and change the object of the game to putting the ball in the back of the net. Now with this overriding purpose of getting the ball into the back of the net the game makes much more sense and becomes a huge hit.

My question for you is this: have you put some goals in place for your law firm? Many firms I meet tell me that they have a one-year, three-year and five-year plan, but that these are only in place because they feel they ought to have something or because the bank demanded it. So I am certainly not talking about these as goals.

What I am talking about are goals that if you achieved this year would make your practice more successful, more profitable, and allow you to enjoy your business that much more. It might be as simple as increasing income by £100,000, £300,000 or £1,000,000. The important point is that you need to know what the number is that you would like to achieve.

Pass and move

I have seen many of my clients increase profits over the last few years while many firms around them are losing income and even going out of business. One of the prime reasons for this is because they have set annual goals (and broken them down into smaller periods of time) and then have not stopped working until they have achieved their goals.

Your goals should roughly follow the SMART formula of being:

S – specific. What is it that you want to achieve?

M – measurable. How will you measure that you have achieved your goal (one of my stock sayings is that there is ‘no treasure without measure’).

A – attainable. Set it high, but not so high that it drags you down.

R – realistically resourced. This ‘r’ in the SMART acronym is usually called ‘realistic’ which to me is the same as attainable; I think they must have needed an ‘r’ otherwise you could not call it ‘SMART’, which of course is much more powerful. I prefer ‘resourced’; how much will you need to invest to achieve your goals?

T – time specific. You might set a goal for the first quarter and then a new one for the second, third and fourth quarters. You must put your goals in writing and then on a weekly and monthly basis review them and assess exactly how you are going to achieve them.

You do not need to struggle this year.

Many firms will struggle in 2012 and many will even go out of business. I know from my many years’ experience of marketing law firms that a key differentiator between successful and unsuccessful firms is setting goals, writing them down, monitoring them and ensuring that you do all you can to achieve them.

When you do, it feels very, very good. Here’s to a great 2012 for you and your goals.

Nick Jervis is a solicitor (non-practising) and the managing director of Samson Consulting, a law firm marketing consultancy. Download a free guide: 8 Ways To Instantly Attract New Clients from www.samsonconsulting.co.uk