Law Firm Marketing: How to Turn Current Clients Into Repeats & Referrals

I think we are all aware by now that it takes much less effort to keep a client than to get a new one. Yet how many of us fail to keep our current clients or make them satisfied enough to refer us to others?

Here are some surefire ways to tell if you are driving clients away:

Take on everyone. You should be measuring your success in terms of profit, not just revenue. If you are signing everyone who walks in your door or calls you on the phone, you are probably discovering that many are not your ideal client, and are wasting your precious time and resources  without hope of a satisfactory outcome.

Fail to set expectations. Most relationships with clients that go south do so because of unmet expectations. Be realistic about the services you provide and the outcome they can expect, and do it up-front.

Ignore clients after they become clients. You don’t mean to ignore them, but you’re busy and time slips by. If you had a process in place for communicating with them regularly, this wouldn’t be a problem.

Talk over their heads. Some attorneys have a very bad habit of making clients feel stupid by using too many legal terms in conversation. Stay on your client’s level and always make sure they understood what you were trying to communicate.

Be hard to reach. When clients need you, they don’t like to keep leaving voicemail messages....worse still is a full voicemail box. Offer your cell phone number or a way they can reach you when they need you.

Don’t listen. Most clients just want to be heard, especially by their own attorneys. This takes time on your part, as well as an effort to understand their point of pain and how to solve it. 

Give them the handoff. If you only make an appearance when money is on the table and then hand clients off to junior associates, you have just created a major disconnect in the loyalty chain.

If you do the opposite of everything I’ve mentioned above, you are going to keep your current clients happy enough to return and to refer you.