Sales Renewal’s Strategic Consulting Service Helps Law Firm Pivot with New Business Model

Sales Renewal is often asked to help clients wrestling with challenging strategic decisions, whether it’s adjusting their business and marketing strategies to their new Covid realities (something that has unfortunately become way too common), reducing their time-to-first-dollar from prospects in their pipeline or devising a go-to-market strategy for a new product or service they’re considering.
This video, for example, discusses Sales Renewal’s work with Eno Martin Donahue & Roth LLP, a 130-year-old law firm with offices in MA and NH, that needed a go-to-market strategy for a new service idea that had three ambitious goals:

1. Changing the way small and midsize businesses think of, and engage with, their attorneys.
2. Growing the firm’s outside general counsel business (lawyers who perform the strategic & legal functions in-house attorneys do in bigger enterprises); a recurring revenue stream highly coveted in the transaction-heavy legal business.
3. Structuring the new service so that the attorneys did not have to “sell” it (which they loathe doing).

Many small business owners are not aware of the benefits that having a closer relationship with a business attorney can provide and the uncertainty around cost—and fear of a running meter—prevents most from ever reaching out.
Working closely with the partners at Eno Martin, Sales Renewal helped flesh out and shape their vision for a new subscription-based legal service for small and midsize businesses. The result, My Outside General Counsel (MOGC), is designed to make it easy & affordable for business owners to benefit from ongoing legal & business counsel, a strategic capability formerly limited to large enterprises.
With Sales Renewal’s help, MOGC was developed into a formal program with a variety of clearly defined benefits and costs, transparently laid out at MyOutsideGeneralCounsel.com. Four different tiers of service, each with increasing monthly benefits, allow business owners to choose a tier based on their legal needs and budget.
Unlike other legal services websites, MyOutsideGeneralCounsel.com is completely transparent about the program, how it works, what is included at each level and most importantly, its fees. By combining an abundance of information on the site and explaining how MOGC leverages the common and well-understood “freemium” web business model, prospects readily understand this new service, thereby shortening their time in the pipeline.
Since lawyers are, by nature, reluctant salespeople, the logical progression the model presents to simply slide to a different tier when it becomes clear that more work is needed, means clients don’t need a hard sell to recognize when they need to move up.
Listen to Keith Loris, President and CEO of Sales Renewal, talk with David Yas of Podcast617 to learn more about how Sales Renewal worked with our client to successfully develop MOGC, from concept through launch.

Webinar: Crafting Products and Services to Reduce Time-to-First-Dollar

The Problem: Prospects Sit In Your Pipeline Too Long

Many service providers often have a single, all-inclusive service that’s presented as a binary choice: hire us for the whole service or don’t hire us. Because these services are typically important and consequential (e.g., wealth managers help save for retirement, lawyers defend against lawsuits, architects design bridges, …) prospects are typically in no rush to make a decision. They like kicking the tires to be sure you are the right guy or gal and your firm is the best choice for such an important decision.
The end result is prospects sit in your pipeline too long.

Targeting & Reaching Your Fastest Prospects

Of course, one of the primary goals of marketing is to move prospects through the sales pipeline as quickly as possible and a tried and true marketing strategy that does this is to define, target and reach your fastest prospects: those who most need you, when they most need you (aka,  “lowest hanging fruit”).
Importantly, this focus on fastest prospects accelerates and improves the performance of all lead generation marketing tactics: advertising, email marketing, content marketing, networking, all of them perform better when targeting prospects at the precise moment they have the most critical need for your service.
For example, one of the fastest types of prospects for a wealth manager is middle class, middle-aged people who have just received an inheritance: they probably don’t have a current wealth manager, know much about investing and are highly motivated to put their new money to work for their retirement.
Employing Content Marketing and SEO tactics, you could (1) write a blog post titled “What to Do and Not Do with an Inheritance” (a subject that these prospects would probably be very interested in) and (2) work to have it rank well in search engines so that it’s easily findable and widely available.

Reevaluate Your Offerings

A more fundamental approach to reducing the time-to-first-dollar would be to take a fresh look at your services from a Product Marketing perspective (product marketers are responsible for designing, creating and managing profitable products and services):

Here are two proven product marketing strategies that minimize time-to-first-dollar for service businesses (and that product businesses use all the time):
New services for your fastest prospects: do your fastest prospects need different services than the ones you have now?  If you developed new ones specifically for them, would they buy even faster, pay more, be more loyal, etc.?
Unbundle your all-inclusive service to make it easier to become your customer: can you unbundle your service to create simpler, more focused services so there’s less of a barrier to doing business with you? These new entry point services should be less expensive and consequential and should ideally provide a natural upgrade path to the rest of your services.
For example, the first thing a wealth manager typically does with a new client is to create a financial plan. What if instead of insisting they sign on for all your wealth management services in order to get a financial plan, you spun out a new standalone, financial planning service?
There will be more prospects for this new entry point service and they will move much faster through your pipeline because: financial planning can be marketed using traditional lead generation techniques like advertising and is a lot less risky than investment management (the most you can lose with a bad financial plan is its fee, unlike bad investments which can ruin lives).
Importantly, financial planning creates many opportunities for a wealth manager to show off their skills, intelligence and trustworthiness and creates a natural upgrade path. If they’ve been suitably impressed with the development of their financial plan, they will turn to you to implement the plan.

Takeaways

1. Focus on targeting & reaching your “fastest” prospects: those who most need you when they most need you.
2. Develop new services for your “fastest” prospects
3. Unbundle your all-inclusive service to create tiered services with upgrade paths. The entry-point service should be less risky and require less commitment & dollars

Sales Renewal Can Help

Sales Renewal is working with all of our clients on refining their business and marketing strategies for the Covid era. Whether it’s shortening the “time-to-first-dollar”, implementing minimal contact sales and marketing programs, creating alternatives to traditional  face-to-face marketing, or revamping communications to earn trust, contact us to learn what we can do for you.

Thought Leadership Marketing for the Subject Matter Expert

But what does it actually mean to be a thought leader? Is it in fact a good marketing strategy for the professional services firm? The answers to these questions, and more, are what we will cover in this post.

Source: hingemarketing.com
As a specific strategy within the broader discipline of content marketing, thought leadership not only showcases particular expertise, it demonstrates new thinking that influences the development of the broader field and is used successfully by many professional service providers. Whether you’re a resident expert, know to those within your firm as the “go-to” on a particular subject matter, or an aspiring national or international expert recognized beyond your firm and industry boundaries, it’s important to develop your thought leadership strategy. From identifying your target audience, to narrowly defining your area of expertise, deciding on content and gaining visibility for your ideas, there’s a lot more to thought leadership than simply writing articles. Read more on how to develop your strategy, how to improve your content, and how to increase visibility if you or your firm is looking to use thought leadership to grow your brand.

What is Retargeting and How Can Professional Service Firms Utilize It?

A study stated that office workers are becoming more distracted at their desks and feel like they don’t have a space to be fully focused. Our company is fully remote and with project management and communication programs, our employees feel the same comradery between each other, and feel more productive and focused in their own environment. While offices continue to transform into spaces with more perks, like games and snack bars, employees could be prone to get more distracted. While many argue that the productivity between remote and office workers fully depends on people’s personalities, there are several key differences that can make an impression on one’s work performance.

Why Branding Is Important for Growing Professional Services Firms

A number of traditional marketing tactics do not easily translate to professional services firms, such as independent wealth managers, legal professionals, and others in highly regulated sectors. However, the fundamentals of brand- and trust-building apply across industries and should remain core aspects of your marketing mix.
What Good is Branding?
Because of the highly specialized nature of professional services, it’s fair to say many prospective clients are uncertain about how to evaluate your services. For that reason alone, your brand becomes an important way to establish credibility and trust. And, it’s important to note, regardless of how much – or how little – marketing you have done, you probably already have a brand, whether you know it or not.
Everyone has a brand.
The question is whether the market has defined you or if you are in control of your brand. Ideally, you want to control your message. To do so effectively requires planning, strategy, implementation and ongoing monitoring. In a market where people often lack the expertise to really know which provider is the best, and have more choices than they know what to do with, your brand makes it easier for them to narrow down and weigh their options. And, because potential clients typically conduct initial research online before deciding to hire you (or a competitor) it’s important to ensure first and foremost that they find something about you and your firm, and secondly, that what they do find reconfirms their initial impressions about your brand. This is equally true for your referral pipeline.
I would argue that branding is and should remain a key strategy for professional services firms, regardless of specialty, not only to stake your ground in an already crowded marketplace, but also to establish yourself in anticipation of more and new competitors or alternative solutions.
The stronger your brand and the more articulately and consistently it is communicated, the more likely it is that you will attract like-minded prospects, partners and referral sources. A solid brand also increases the likelihood that your clients will remain loyal and that they will become strong word of mouth advocates for you and your firm.
But Business isn’t Built on Brand Alone.
As important as it is to develop and promote your brand, branding alone does little if it is not paired with effective business development initiatives.
In short, marketing is about creating the demand, while business development is about closing business opportunities: both are necessary to grow your business. And in industries in which it takes a significant amount of time to build the level of trust and comfort necessary to sign a new client, the goal should be to develop a multi-faceted marketing campaign, including branding, as a powerful tool supporting your in-person efforts.
Below, some Brand Development activities I recommend for Professional Services providers.
Brand Development Activities for Professional Services Providers
Content Marketing
o Position and white papers, e-books and worksheets, calculators
o Blogging, content curation, social media presence and relationship building
Public Relations
o Establishing yourself as a SME (Subject Matter Expert)
o Public speaking and writing opportunities
Business Development activities that build on brand and fill the pipeline often include:
In-person Networking and Event Marketing
o Active membership in professional organizations
o Attending and maximizing personal interactions in public events
o Hosting or co-hosting live events
There are obvious overlaps between traditional marketing tactics and those best suited for professional services firms. Striking the right balance, and finding the time to understand and manage all of the elements of a professional services marketing strategy is difficult. It’s especially challenging for many professional services firms to market themselves effectively while also growing the firm, since closing any new business relies so heavily on the personal relationship between the professional and the prospect.
Helping our clients strike the right balance by taking on the marketing management role (freeing up their time) and helping to select the best tactics to most effectively market their business so they can not only grow, but continue to provide their clients with the appropriate level of service, has been very rewarding for me personally. If you have questions about Business Development activities, Public Relations, or Branding for your professional services firm, please get in touch.  I’d welcome the chance to discuss your firm’s marketing challenges and goals.

Liquid Capital Breakfast to Feature Presentation by Sales Renewal

Liquid Capital Associates is organizing a breakfast on Wednesday, April 27, during which Sales Renewal will provide participants with an overview of the marketing essentials every business needs to increase sales in 2016. The presentation cuts through the noise and offers an unbiased approach every business can use to quickly start growing their leads. Participants are introduced to the essential marketing programs all businesses need – SEO, content marketing, email marketing, local promotion, and more – and will learn how to create and deploy a big-picture plan that pulls these different programs together. Smaller firms might find these marketing essentials sufficient for their business, while larger firms will be able to use these essentials as a solid foundation upon which to build (or as a checklist to see if they’ve missed something essential).
The breakfast takes place at the Brae Burn Country Club, 326 Fuller Street, Newton, MA, starting at 7:30am. Please register in advance via Eventbrite.