Want to win new clients consistently? Nick Jervis reveals the secret formula

I would like you to imagine a river. Seeing as the Olympics are in full swing at the moment, let’s make it the River Thames. Now the River Thames, as we all know, is a big river. A quick search tells me that it has over 20 tributaries feeding into it as well as its source, and it is all of these factors that go into making it such a wide and fast-flowing river.

Imagine what would happen if someone diverted the source, and slowly, one by one, also started blocking off the tributaries feeding into it and diverting them into a different river. Slowly but surely the Thames would shrink, eventually disappearing to a trickle from run-off water.

Profit source

What has this got to do with your law firm and winning new clients? Well, quite a lot actually. You see your profits are the River Thames, and the tributaries and source that feed your profits are all of the marketing activities that you undertake to generate new client instructions.

In my experience, most solicitors rely on only one or two methods of winning new clients, so their river of profits always remains quite small and slow flowing. If you want to win more new clients and thereby to increase your profits, you need to increase the number of tributaries that you currently have in place.

I call this my Profit FlowCast model, and I know that if you take the time to understand it, a light bulb should suddenly switch on that makes you realise the secret to having as many new client instructions as you want and need for your law firm is to keep adding new marketing methods. This is best illustrated by a diagram, so let’s have a look at the common Profit FlowCast model I usually find in place when I meet a new law firm:

In this example you will see that there are only two methods in place to bring in new business to the practice. As a consequence the profits flowing from these new clients are not going to be substantial. While the types of tributaries will vary from firm to firm, I usually find that there are only one or two marketing methods being used regularly that are producing new client instructions.

Contrast this with the Profit FlowCast model below:

A firm that is undertaking all of these marketing methods is going to have substantially more new client instructions, and substantially more profits. You might look at some of the marketing methods above and think that they simply could not work for the type of legal service you provide (I am sure I could prove you wrong as I have many other solicitors but that is not the point here).

The point I want you to notice, and the one that I hope jumps off the page at you, is not the types of marketing, but the number of different methods in place generating new client instructions. Once you understand this, and realise that this is the secret to having as many new client instructions as you want and need, you realise that the only thing preventing you from being more successful is not getting to grips with implementing new marketing methods.

Drip feed

Now I am not suggesting you try and add 12 new tributaries at once; that will lead to a failure of all of them. What I do suggest is that you commit to adding new marketing methods to bring in new clients for your practice. Then decide which one you are going to implement first and set a deadline to bring each new method into place. For my Marketing4Solicitors members I recommend a 90-day implementation timeframe for each new method. This should allow you to bring them into place while still undertaking all of the other activities that you need to do to keep your practice running.

Nick Jervis is a solicitor (non-practising) and the managing director of Samson Consulting, a marketing consultancy for law firms. He offers a free guide “8 ways to win new clients” from his website www.samsonconsulting.co.uk. Email njervis@samsonconsulting.co.uk