How many clients will you add to your practice in the next quarter?
How much revenue and profit will that generate for your firm?
If you’re like most attorneys (or most business professionals for that matter) you will probably say “as many as possible” and “as much as possible”. And that’s a problem – because it is impossible to achieve “as many/much as possible”.
The most successful professionals and business owners have very specific targets for their sales and business development activities. These targets allow them to reverse engineer their activities with the specific intent of hitting their targets. When they hit them there is a reward – financially and otherwise.
This discipline – setting very specific targets for sales, profit, and many other business metrics – will work in your law practice. Even if you don’t hit your targets – you will be a better, faster, stronger, and more profitable firm. Here’s how to get started.
Get SMART
In business, we talk about setting SMART objectives and goals. SMART stands for:
- Specific – you know exactly where you are going and why.
- Measurable – you know how to measure your progress, and when you get there
- Actionable/Achievable – you can take concrete action to actually achieve it.
- Relevant – it makes sense for your broader business
- Time-Based – you have a deadline, and defined checkpoints.
Getting Started on Sales Goals
The sales discipline of businesses applies to your law practice. Follow these steps to get started.
1) Xray Past Sales. Those are the clients and the matters you’ve handled in the last 24 months. You’ll use that as your baseline so your targets are not simply a wish or a shot in the dark. How did they come to you? What was their journey to get to your door? Who was their guide? How many came, in what frequency?
2) Identify Patterns. What patterns or trends do you see in the data? Who are your top referral sources? What matter(s) are driving clients to you? Why? You’ll use these patterns to create a forecast for the coming two quarters. I know that COVID is going to impact the data since March – so you’ll have to adjust. Don’t make the mistake that you can’t create a forecast just because it’s complicated.
3) Make a SMART Sales Plan to take advantage of the patterns and trends with specific sales targets for the next couple of quarters, and the specific steps you need to take to cause that to happen. SMART is easier to understand than it is to implement. Even when you think a goal is SMART you can probably make it much SMARTer and more powerful.
Like most business principles, this is not a one-and-done. It is a process and a cycle that takes time to master. But you can’t master it unless you start.
The value in doing this work is both the plan you’ll need and what you learn about your practice along the way.
Don’t leave your future to luck or circumstance. Get SMART.
And if you’d like help with this or to learn more, just message me, like or share.
Doug Brown, Chief Learning Officer
[email protected]