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:
- Changing the way small and midsize businesses think of, and engage with, their attorneys.
- 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.
- 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.
Q2 2020 North American M&A Report | PitchBook
M&A activity in Q2 2020 continued to decline as COVID-19 remained an unrelenting problem in North America, and especially the US. Nevertheless, certain sectors are seeing pockets of stable dealmaking.
Source: pitchbook.com
M&A activity in the second quarter of 2020 continued to decline, with $336.8 billion over 2,025 transactions. This is a substantial decline from the record activity seen in recent years which the report calls “the canary in an M&A coalmine.” Quarter over quarter declines were 41.1% and 24.2% for deal value and count, respectively, compared to an already slow Q1 2020.
This Holiday Season, Be Thankful For A Great Customer Experience
Creating a positive experience for your customers is a powerful way to help them appreciate you and keep coming back. Make a good impression every time they interact with your business by mastering not just one area, like delivery, but by excelling in all of them from design and ordering, to service and sales. Customers will notice and return knowing that they can have an easy and trusted experience every time. Consider using these tips that will get your customers to say “Thank You.”
6 Ways To Attract More Clients To Your Business (That You May Have Overlooked)
Of course, the main goal of marketing is to attract more clients to your business, but how can you be sure you’ve covered all your bases to make sure none fall through the cracks? Ask yourself some tough questions, including: have I maximized my online presence? Have I reached out to past clients lately? Am I making use of in-person speaking opportunities? Do I have a content marketing strategy? Does the press know where to find me? Have I maximized my professional networks? If you think you don’t have the time or bandwidth to effectively execute every strategy in the marketing universe, consider asking for help – there are partners out there who can take the weight of management and execution off your shoulders – but make sure you’re employing all relevant strategies to increase your client base.
What Is Influencer Marketing and How Can It Help My Business?
Influencer marketing is a very powerful strategy when done right! This article explains the do’s and don’ts of effective influencer marketing and describes its impressive potential; 92% on consumers have made a purchase after reading about a product on a blog they follow. Read on to see how you can incorporate influencer marketing into your marketing mix.
Is Your Business Built for 24/7 Customer Relationships?
A seismic shift is under way that many businesses cannot ignore: thanks to new technologies, instead of waiting for customers to come to you, you can address your customers’ needs the moment they arise—and sometimes even earlier. It’s a win-win: customers get a dramatically improved experience, and companies boost operational efficiencies and lower costs.
Marketing New Year Resolutions
We’ve all said it, we’ve all done it …. New Year’s resolutions. But, the real question is, who is still looking at those resolutions we made months ago? Not many. A new calendar year symbolizes a new beginning. Many of you are probably thinking about personal resolutions, but how about establishing New Year’s resolutions for your business?
Small business owners are consistently pulled into many different directions. We spend so much of our time trying to make that next sale, keeping customers happy and product on the shelf, that many tasks fall by the wayside. What if you set just five or six manageable goals and looked at them on a weekly or even monthly basis? Consistency and keeping them top-of-mind is key. Write them down, don’t let them weigh you down.
We challenge you to think about these five marketing ideas in thinking about how to focus your 2019 business resolutions.
- What do your online and real-world footprints look like?
- Do you know who your customers are?
- What is your brand saying to your customers?
- Have you actually listened to your customers?
- Are you putting too many of your marketing eggs in one basket?
You might be asking yourself how to turn these into resolutions.
- Pick one real-world or digital channel each month, whether it’s Facebook, Google Search, Yelp, etc on the digital side or your collateral, trade show booth, business signage etc on the real-world side and dive deep and learn how your customers are reacting to your messaging across all the channels? Are you being consistent in your messaging? Are you leading with your competitive advantages?
- Make this the year, you will know who your customers are. Even if you cannot afford a fancy customer relation software, a simple excel spreadsheet will work to start.
- Details matter. Take one piece of marketing collateral – a sign, a brochure, one page on your website – and take a critical look, or better yet, ask someone in your professional network to take a look. Tell them what your goal of that piece is and ask them does it achieve it. Each month, pick a different piece of material.
- Words are powerful. Customers want to be heard. Picking up the phone, talking to a customer face-to-face in a store means you are connecting. In the days of heavy automation, that personal contact is lost. Set a goal. How many customers are you going to connect to this month? Make sure it’s realistic.
- Many companies try one marketing tactic; sometimes it goes well, but many times, it fails. There are many reasons for the failure, however the biggest is that just one print ad or one Facebook ad or one direct mail piece isn’t going to move the needle. Customers consume their information in a variety of different ways and you need a suite of integrated activities to help you move the marketing needle. What product or segment are you going to focus on?
Go ahead, write down those resolutions today and throughout this month, refine them until you have 2 or 3 achievable ones and 2 or 3 stretch ones and then make a plan. 2019 is the year of technology mixed with getting back to basics. Your customers are your success. If you have a solid actionable and results-oriented marketing plan, making that next sale will be easier and keeping your customer happy will take less time. Let us help you make your 2019 resolutions a reality!
The Most Common Small Business Marketing Problem: Missing the Forest for the Trees
Many small business owners know that successful marketing can play a huge role in their growth. It is very common for us to hear these owners have great ideas for what they want to do, but they all have the same issue: due to lack of people and resources, they fall into the trap of focusing on single marketing ideas or tactics, instead of an integrated marketing strategy that incorporates multiple tactics for reduced cost and increased performance.
There are a lot of marketing agencies out there who focus on specific marketing tactics such as direct mail, new websites, advertising, etc. Yet, for a business to have integrated marketing, they would need to hire multiple companies and have the time to manage and coordinate all of them to ensure they are helping the business grow.
We have worked with a client who has the yearly tradition of going to an important trade show that they once deemed perfect for their market. They make it a priority to go each year, with the same booth they’ve used for years, to get their business noticed, make good connections, and hopefully come back with buckets of leads.
Unfortunately, the buckets have been getting smaller each year and they’re not sure if it’s the show (Is it still the best show for them? Are there newer, better ones now?) or them (is the booth the best it can be? Should we do any marketing before the show to drive up booth attendance?)..
Worse, the effort this trade show requires held them back from doing other marketing. Trade shows, take up a lot of time, dollars and stress, so often doing just this will feel like enough to a small business owner. Who could blame them when they don’t have the time or resources for more?
Fortunately, since working with Sales Renewal, we have been able to work with them to increase the return of their Trade Show investment while at the same time combining Trade Shows with a diverse set of other marketing tactics that complement each other nicely.
Want to learn what we may be able to do for your firm? Get in touch now.
Surveys, Complaints, and the Value of Regularly Scheduled Listening
Who doesn’t get excited about survey responses, right? Right?!
In case it’s not coming through on screen, that was written in a sarcastic tone. Creating and managing customer surveys online (or paper, or phone surveys) is rarely earthshaking. Survey response rates are often low, and responses tend to roll in rather slowly. But the insight from even a very small number of respondents can be invaluable to planning and executing your marketing and sales strategy.
Customer Surveys Are Worthwhile
Low response rates do not necessarily indicate failure. The voice of the customer always has value. An ongoing collection of input (and responding to that input) positions your company to be successful in several key areas.
Our advice? Keep asking questions. And even more important: Listen.
Of course there are things you can do to improve your customer surveys and response rates. See below for tips to improve your surveys and feedback forms. But remember, how you handle the process and what you do with the responses is every bit as important as the collection process. To put it simply, you need to make listening to the customer a habit.
Customer Stories = Marketing Gold
If you don’t already monitor your “listening” channels, make a list and check it twice (or more) in the coming year. A robust website should have several touchpoints or data collection tools. Consider how you use those on your website:
- RFP/RFQ Buttons
- Contact Forms
- Social Sharing icons
- Sign up for newsletters/promotional communications
- Thank you for shopping with us auto-responders
- Sale cancelled/abandoned cart follow-up emails with surveys
Employees, Vendors and Partners Have Stories Too
Speaking of the voice of the customer, one thing we hear repeatedly from our small business customers is how valuable it is to have regularly scheduled marketing meetings with a team of people – both internal staff (a cross-functional team is great) and in-sourced marketing experts. In monthly marketing meetings with our clients, we consider all customer reviews, complaints, survey results, anecdotes, and other input, and discuss it briefly in the opening few minutes of a monthly marketing meeting. That input informs not only marketing strategies but often, also the company’s overall business direction.
Hidden Value, Surprising Benefits of Using Surveys in Your Business
We say surveys are a marketing “gold mine” because surveys –
- Provide a mechanism to listen to customers
- Personalize your brand
- Strengthen your relationship with your customers. (Even if they don’t complete your survey, making one available creates a line of communication.)
Listen, and Share
While constantly running promotions and discounting your products is not recommended, listening all the time absolutely is. We’ll go so far as to call it a best practice. But, listening isn’t enough. Listening and using customer feedback to improve operations isn’t even enough. You have to share, too.
By the way, this is one of the reasons why we like Yext Ultimate Reviews so much – the powerful tool makes getting client reviews and adding them to your website easy and attractive – and because of its design, businesses that use it see increased natural search traffic to their sites. More on that in a future post.
Letting your customers and prospects know what you’ve learned from them is part of the process. People like to know that they’ve been heard; they’re interested in hearing what others think about the same thing; and they LOVE IT when a company makes changes based on their imput. So sharing on your website, newsletter, social channels, and in face to face marketing events (like trade shows or at point-of-purchase displays) is critically important to getting the best ROI on your survey program.
When you continually seeking feedback, ideas and other input from customers you’ll gain insight that will help you make good business decisions. You’ll also gain a reputation as a company that’s receptive, and easy to work with.
Not a bad way to start a New Year.
Regularly-scheduled meetings are a hallmark of the JointSourcing client relationship. We are committed to listening to our clients, and to their customers, in order to recognize and respond quickly and wisely to changing market demands and opportunities. Need a partner to help you listen and respond to your customers in order to grow your business? We’d love to help you start a conversation with your customers – and meet your sales growth goals.
Tips to Make Your Customer Surveys More Useful |
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Sales Renewal’s insight:
When you continually seeking feedback, ideas and other input from customers you’ll gain insight that will help you make good business decisions and develop a winning marketing strategy. You’ll also gain a reputation as a company that’s receptive, responsive, and easy to work with.
How User Reviews Can Drive Your Business
In 2013, we covered a The New York Times article looking at how online reviews and social connections are causing a shift in the balance of power from marketers to consumers. The article concludes that no longer do marketers have the ability to fully control their sales messages, as consumers are using online reviews and ratings to inform their purchase decisions.
The article, “There’s Power in All Those User Reviews, ” compared a study from pre-Internet days to a similar one just recently conducted.
The first study compared purchasing decisions by consumers presented with two priced options and by those presented with three.
(The study) “showed how marketers could manipulate consumers. Just by presenting three differently priced options, they could get consumers to gravitate to a midprice one from a less expensive one. This finding further led Dr. Simonson and other scholars to describe widespread “irrational” behavior by consumers who made decisions not based on a product’s actual value but on how the item was presented relative to other products.”
In the more recent study, conducted as part of an ongoing research project at Stanford Graduate School of Business:
“participants were asked which of three Canon cameras they’d like to buy. Before deciding, they were allowed to spend a few minutes reading user reviews and other information about these and other cameras on Amazon.com… That made a huge difference. When given three camera options, consumers didn’t gravitate en masse to the midprice version. Rather, the least expensive one kept its share and the middle one lost more to the most expensive one.”
The article summarizes the conclusions of Itamar Simonson, a Stanford marketing professor and the lead researcher of the study:
“The results suggest that companies should spend less money trying to shape consumer opinions in traditional ads… and more on understanding what and who are shaping those opinions.”
User Reviews, Quality Content and Being Social
Can we use these insights to shape our sales and marketing programs today? Do they change the way we do things? The conclusions drawn in the article reinforce our approach to the work we do on behalf of our clients in two ways:
- A commitment to producing quality online content, from a well-planned, well-written website that speaks to the needs and concerns of customers and prospects to a robust blogging program that demonstrates the company’s expertise and adds value for the readers; and
- A commitment to real online “engagement”, which means using your social media networks to find, understand and interact with your customers and prospects where they are online. It’s not sufficient to auto-post a sporadic blog post; rather, genuine interaction is necessary in order to advance your business; and
- A commitment to reviews management, to actively manage reviews, ratings and comments made about your business wherever they are made across the Web. The goal is to widely leverage positive comments (whether initially made on your site or third party sites, like Yelp) while increasing the satisfaction of customers making negative ones.
We’ve written before about the blurring of the line between SEO and other forms of marketing, and our emphasis on quality in our marketing programs. This article is further proof that today’s marketing requires an understanding of the power of the Internet and continual assessment of how to best use it to support your business message.
Originally published 12/3013; updated 6/2017
Sales Renewal’s insight:
A The New York Times article looks at how online reviews and social connections are causing a shift in the balance of power from marketers to consumers. It concludes that no longer do marketers have the ability to fully control their sales messages, as consumers are using online reviews and ratings to inform their purchase decisions.