The Importance of First Impressions: Eight Ways to Wow New Clients and Prospects

First impressions are all about conveying your professionalism and principles, so that there is no doubt that they will be in ‘safe hands’ with you. Here are eight ways to impress from the beginning of a relationship:

1. Keep a scrap book of testimonials in reception

The power of someone else’s endorsement over and above your own should not be underestimated, and yet many firms overlook the importance of getting testimonials in front of clients.

2. Keep a scrap book of client press clippings in reception, and post links on your website

Likewise, whenever a client’s case is reported in the press (local, national, or sector-specific), this provides you with a priceless (and free!) marketing opportunity.

3. Undertake a review of reception and other areas that come under scrutiny on first visits

This is your showcase area and must help to embody your service standards, to which you commit in your promotional and welcome material. Reception must convey an image of professionalism and care, should be staffed at all times, and staff must be trained in client care. You may also want to consider showing clients into a meeting room straight away, providing them with privacy rather than keeping them waiting in a busy reception area.

4. Treat your own people as you would expect to treat a valued client

You cannot successfully portray an image of client care if this image is not a true reflection of your firm’s principles. Therefore, you must take into account the needs of your people when it comes to designing your ‘showcase’ areas as well as your staff facilities.

5. Always introduce the client to the key team members

It is not particularly comforting to receive a call regarding your legal matters from someone whose name you have never even heard. This is also provides a reason to keep in regular contact with the client, obtain regular feedback and promote the firm’s other service offerings, which may be of interest.

6. Research yours client or prospect’s business

All it takes is a few minutes’ internet research on a semi-regular basis, or prior to a scheduled meeting or call, and you will come across as a consummate professional. Moreover, this again gives you the excuse to get in touch and flag up potential areas in which your firm could be of service. This is a habit that all professionals should be in.

7. Provide new clients with a ‘Welcome Pack’

This allows you to begin the relationship on the right foot – and on your terms. Here you can set out clearly what they can expect from you and, likewise, what you expect from them regarding availability, input and (not least!) payment.. You can also include an ‘Our Team’ section, easily compiled from your website profiles.

8. Give the client the option of methods of communication

Busy professionals and businesspeople will often like to be contacted by email, or on their mobile while on the go. Conversely, other clients may not have internet access or a mobile phone. Allowing the client to decide on the method of communication is a question both of client service and practicality, and further enhances your ‘client-centred approach’.

Keeping Clients Happy: Five areas where service counts

What many lawyers forget is that clients are often unable to establish what actually constitutes excellent legal representation. Therefore, at least as important in client retention is a firm’s client service standards. Here are five areas of client service which help to distinguish the outstanding from the ordinary:

1. Maintaining Contact

The most damaging image you can create in a client’s mind is one of disinterest or complacency. Conversely, keeping in regular contact demonstrates that you care. Allowing clients access to an online diary, so that they can easily make appointments, and providing web-enabled case tracking are examples of effective use of the internet. Appointing a dedicated Client Relationship Manager makes managing the whole process much smoother, and gives the client an immediate port of call for any questions or issues. A regular ‘bulletin’, providing primarily items of genuine interest to your client base, as well as information about the firm, helps to keep you in mind and shows that you share your clients’ priorities.

2. Flexibility and Service Standards

An important component of client care is to show a ‘client-centred’ approach. Examples include flexible working hours, ‘out of hours’ meetings for busy business clients or families, or holding meetings at the client’s premises or home where appropriate. Keeping clients regularly updated of progress, offering telephone and video conferencing where applicable, and hosting a dedicated client area on your website will underline your commitment to making the relationship as smooth as possible. Maintaining service standards is crucial, so the firm should require Heads of Department to continue to identify and consider possible new services for the firm.

3. Finance

The prospect of paying for legal services is something that often puts potential clients off, but there are ways you can help to make things easier. At first, offer fixed prices up front to help avoid worries about chargeable hours building up. Guarantees help to reassure clients, as does the option of 0% finance. Only if the firm has the capacity, bridging loans and interim finance can help the client to pay and to plan their finances. It is also a good idea to provide flexibility in billing and collection, allowing clients to view the accounts ledger online and make online payments, and updating them of the status of their account. Automated billing at certain key points in an engagement also help to smooth your own cash flow.

4. Promotion

Holding events with a ‘wow’ factor in the local community boost your profile and credibility. Your sense of Corporate Social Responsibility, demonstrated by promotion of your work with local community groups and charities, further enhances this image. A ‘green strategy’ is a crucial part of this profile. You can also maintain the ‘client-centred’ approach by holding networking events, which benefit both the firm and clients. This must all be geared towards portraying yourself as the premier firm in your area.

5. Feedback

The only way to achieve genuine service improvements is to gain honest feedback from the people who matter – clients. This is more than a question of asking clients to fill out a questionnaire, although this is generally a good place to start. It is often possible to go further, forming client ‘focus groups’ for feedback, and using a ‘mystery shopper’ to contact the firm for quotes, the client for feedback, and other firms to provide an idea of competitive positioning.

Managing the Bank

From all of our recent dealings with the banks, it has been clear that things are not as they once were – and that solicitors will quickly have to accept the new commercial reality.

Lawyers have traditionally been low-risk, profitable customers for banks, and this has allowed access to funding on extremely favourable terms, often with a minimum of security.

But the world has changed almost beyond recognition in the past eighteen months:

Law firms no longer constitute such an inherently highly profitable sector, and the risk of lending to them has been increased by the move from Joint and Several Liability to LLPs

The introductions they provide to other potential customers have lost some of their value as banks’ lending appetite has been limited by the ‘credit crunch’

Client account balances – which make law firms’ accounts most attractive to the bankers – have shrunk in line with the volume of property transactions.

The balance of the relationship between solicitors and their banks has changed, and attitudes must respond. Many bankers feel that they have been viewed as sources of “permanent” capital, rather than overdrafts being in place to deal with fluctuations in the business cycle. They also suggest that access to extra capital has been sought as a way of avoiding difficult conversations with partners or clients.

What the Banks Want

In the first place, bankers want solicitors to recognise that they are involved in a relationship, and that the bank is a ‘partner’ – not a mere ‘supplier’.

The most important thing has to be communication. Bankers want to work with united, coherent and committed partnerships, and more extensive probing about the personal financial affairs of the partners has (or will soon) become a fact of life.

The bank also needs to know that it is backing a winner. Times might be tough, but this only underlines the importance of financial management. You must be able to show the bank that the firm is financially sound and in a position to honour commitments. Having a Finance Director, or financially literate partner, with good communication skills handle the relationship is crucial.

In all dealings with the bank, preparation is key – which means sending regular copies of management information, and scheduling the annual review of facilities well in advance.

What the Banks Don’t Want

Clearly, bankers don’ want to feel that they’re being taken for granted. They certainly don’t want any surprises. Keeping the bank in the loop, even if things don’t go to plan, will pay great dividends, especially if facilities do need to be extended. Finally, Bankers do not want to be regarded as providers of ‘quasi-equity’ – permanent capital in the form of overdraft.

A Healthy Relationship

The basis of a sound relationship with the bank is to have a plan and to communicate it clearly, in their language. This means detailed cash flow forecasts, based on explicit realistic assumptions, as well as the Profit and Loss accounts plus balance sheet. It also means committing to meeting the projections, and being proactive within the firm. The bank can no longer be relied on as a ‘soft option’ in place of taking tough management decisions – the firm may need to be recapitalised at least partly by the partners themselves, jobs may need to be cut in unprofitable areas, and the firm’s business model may need to be fundamentally altered. This would all be painful, but in the absence of an alternative it may also be necessary.

If the above all fails, then it may be time to look elsewhere – but expect an ‘intrusive process’ and do not assume you will get more favourable terms. In many cases, the inconvenient truth will be that the bank has a point – and working closely with them will be vital for the firm’s future prosperity.

The Holy Grail of Cross-Selling 3: The Process

There is no right or wrong time for undertaking this exercise, and there is no right or wrong time period for expecting results to come in, as this is all client-dependent. However, it never harms to set down timescales, to set down service expectations and, most of all, it never hurts to set income targets. Our experience in, for example, assisting an office with an office budget, has shown that lines in the sand provide targets for people to aim at and measure their own performance. This gives them something to focus on, and an incentive to try and achieve it.

The Managing Partner, coupled with whoever is handling the marketing for the office, should set down a broad process for undertaking this exercise.

The first step is to identify the clear service expectations. For example, if the office has just carried out a piece of Residential Conveyancing work for a client, it is not unrealistic to expect that there may well be the further requirement for (new) Wills. It is also not unreasonable to expect your team to ask a couple of simple questions - for example, ‘are you married?’ – potentially highlighting a need for mirror Wills. ‘What other family do you have?’ - might identify further opportunities.

By undertaking this exercise, you can establish a set of expectations that you would realistically expect your service teams to have explored with the client. In my experience, it is often best to incorporate these as part of the initial client interview. It enables cross-selling to start from the very beginning of the relationship and forms a fundamental part of the client set-up process allowing fee earners to fully understand potential client needs.

This exercise can be broken down across an office, across a department, or even across teams that operate in the subsidiaries or divisions that the larger clients operate. The easiest way of doing this is to download from the firm’s practice management system the fee income across the firm for the last two years.

Incorporate this into an Excel spreadsheet and segment it by clients and then by work types. What you are very clearly looking for are those instances where there has been either a single or, in certain cases, only two work type sales to a client.

This means that there should in theory be opportunities for selling other services. For example, a limited company that owns property probably also has employees. If it has employees, it will have the need for all aspects of employment advice. It may have tenants so there may be leases or dilapidation litigation. All companies have a director. Do they have a will?

In cross-selling, usually it is simply a case of asking questions, identifying which opportunities exist and then within the client organisation, finding the right person to talk to. Again asking the question “Who would deal with this?” is usually the most direct and successful route.

I have seen that the key thing in achieving success is having undertaken the work type analysis to set up a co-ordinated tracking process. If the analysis was simply sent out to department heads and they were told to get on with it, it would appear too onerous a task - disappearing into an In Tray, never to re-appear. It is therefore in my view critical that there is one person who drives it and that person breaks down the opportunities into bite-sized segments.

For each potential opportunity an “account manager” should be appointed and a target of new sales set. I have reported earlier why I believe a line in the sand should be drawn which sets out the expectations of the management team when embarking on such exercises.

If these things are consistently done, then the ‘Holy Grail’ of cross-selling can become achievable for any firm . . .

The Holy Grail of Cross-Selling 2: The People Profile

It is a generally-held belief that any fee-earning member of a professional service firm is capable of initiating or identifying a cross-selling opportunity. Whilst I believe this is in principle true, the reality is that it comes much more naturally to some people than to others and, for a successful cross-selling campaign to have positive results and generate enthusiasm, it is important that the firm’s resources are put behind those most capable of delivering results.

So what is required to undertake this initiative?

Probably the most important thing is a change in the fee earners’ approach to clients. This is especially true with partners, and this change in mental approach involves a recognition that the client does not belong to any one individual, but is an asset of the firm, and that it is the responsibility of all members of the firm to look at identifying and serving the needs of their client, no matter what their size. This may well require the removal of some of the hidden barriers to co-operation, such as reward structures that focus on fee earners introducing clients to the firm, and bonuses for those who meet billing targets but do not encourage delegation and sharing of opportunities. This step can be quite a radical change for many firms, but the recognition that the economic imperative must override political niceties should allow managing partners to take action.

It is also my experience that during this stage of the assignment, the failings of a firm’s database come to light. When you have only done one piece of work for a client, you usually only know the person who commissioned that piece of work, so being able to cross-sell services across a corporate organisation remains difficult when your relationships with those who have authority and responsibility is very limited to isolated individuals.

As part of each exercise, everyone with whom you have a relationship at a particular client should be noted, and their position and influence also noted, as well as their ability to provide you with work. Like all things, keep your database simple. At this stage you do not necessarily want to know the name of the spouse and their interests. You are only interested in the actual work people.

I am often also asked who should be involved in a cross-selling exercise and what their role should be. The point of cross-selling is that it should be as inclusive as possible. Everyone at the office has an opportunity to cross-sell, as the majority of cross-selling is done by listening to what the client says. There is no need to divide out roles within a cross-selling initiative. Fundamentally, what is required is someone to act as a driver of the whole operation round the office or firm, and usually because of their seniority someone to account manage the relationship with the client. This is usually a partner, and also usually the partner who has made the first sale into the organisation. I believe this role should be challenged, especially if that partner is a hoarder of work and not an inclusive person. It is not a given that the account manager on a cross-selling scheme should be a partner, nor the partner who has done the work. It should be the best person to do the job.