by Henry Harlow

Questions: What is the "manager's mantra"? How is that important to your lawyer marketing? How does it put money in your pocket? What is TOMA? What are the four lists? How do you use them to manage and build your referral network? This article will address these questions and more.

Lawyer marketing and the "manager's mantra" go together. Never heard the manager's mantra? The "manager's mantra" is an important variable in successful legal marketing. The manager's mantra is "If you can't measure it, you can't manage it." Well, that is nice Henry and how will that help me?

Most attorneys have some sort of referral network (if only a small one); however, attorneys often don't know how to manage their lawyer marketing so their referral network expands. The first step in this expansion is to know where you are. Then you can figure out how to get to where you want to go.

Yes, it is important to understand the geographics, demographics and psychographics of your referral sources/clients. And you need a lawyer marketing management system. By understanding more about how to manage your legal marketing referral sources, you can grow this referral network and boost your attorney marketing efforts with less work on your part.

What Your Expanded Lawyer Marketing Referral Base Delivers To You

What does having this lawyer marketing management system in place mean for you? If you are working your legal marketing referral sources well, you are building a base that will make a significant impact on your bottom line. You will be sent more business and be able to retain more quality business that will in turn send you more quality business. You will have an easier time saying no to mediocre or poor cases and holding out for top dollar cases. You can even pass on work that simply does not appeal to you personally if you know that your lawyer marketing referral base will consistently deliver.

Professional marketers know the process of wooing a referral base involves creating "know, like, trust, relationship, credibility, and top of mind awareness (TOMA)" with your legal marketing referral sources. I think you see the benefits clearly, so let's move on to giving you the management tool to make it a reality.

Measuring a Lawyer Marketing Referral Base

Lawyer marketing is not always an exact science. Still, that does not keep us from keeping statistics. The "game" of legal marketing will be improved, just like keeping statistics in baseball, football or hockey improves performance. The tool we will use consists of four basic lists to measure your legal marketing referral base as it now exists -- and see where your attorney marketing time needs to be focused, thus putting your resources into those referral sources with the potential for the most return.

The first list is called the "Top 20" List. If you have only a few lawyer marketing referral sources, it may be only the Top 10 or even the Top 2 List. But the first objective after listing your top lawyer marketing referral sources is to increase the list to 20 if it is not there already.

In order to qualify for the Top 20 List, a referral source must have sent you X amount of business in the past year and has hit that level consistently over the last three years. Depending on your practice area, X may be one, two or three very profitable cases.

For example, if you are a PI lawyer, you might consider X to equal the referral of at least one case that netted the practice over $25,000 in contingency fees (or set the benchmark higher or lower as you see fit). If you practice residential real estate, then X might equal someone who sent you a minimum of 3 closings per month (again, you can set this benchmark higher or lower depending on your current situation). Bottom line here is whether for PI, estate planning, family law or real estate legal marketing, you will know what level is appropriate for your Top 20 level of lawyer marketing attention.

The second list is the "Farm Team" List. Here we are using a baseball metaphor of your Top 20 being the "major leagues" and this second list being the farm team in training for moving up to the big leagues of the Top 20. Your Farm Team List consists of those legal marketing referral sources who are between having at least tried to send you someone -- up to whatever you have set the threshold of being a Top 20 list member. This trying to send you someone can be as casual as a friend asking if his or her neighbor called you after being given your card by your friend. We all know that lawyer marketing is sometimes this accidental.

The third list is the "Who You Know" List and is similar to any standard networking list. It includes everyone you know, even everyone your spouse knows, as well as those people known by your family and your staff. Take this one out as far as you like. The bigger it gets the better for lawyer marketing.

Finally, there is the lawyer marketing "Categories List". This is a list of professions and occupations in general that would have the capacity to refer business to you. There are no names on this list, only general occupations/professions. For example, a PI lawyer might list nurses, physical therapists, medical technicians, chiropractors, neurologists, plastic surgeons, orthopedists, and so on -- while a family lawyer might include psychologists, social workers, marriage counselors, CPAs, hairdressers and real estate lawyers.

Working a Lawyer Marketing Referral Base

Now that you have measured your lawyer marketing referral network, what do you do with that list? Just to be sure, I need to say that every lawyer has as their best referral source category other lawyers, so be sure to list on your categories list all the other practice areas that would have the ability to refer to your practice area.

Also, every lawyer marketing system needs to list "current clients" as a category and put those clients on the Top 20 and Farm Team lists as they move out of the Who You Know List, since clients should be on the Who You Know List. Also some of your clients are in the categories you have listed and they need particular attention first in legal marketing.

The way you use the list in lawyer marketing is to pay particular attention first to building and maintaining relationships with your Top 20 and Farm Team List members. As you deepen and develop those relationships they will send you more clients than ever before since you are building "know, like, trust, relationship, credibility, and top of mind awareness (TOMA)" with these people.

Ask the Top 20 and Farm Team members to introduce you to other people they know in the categories who have the ability to refer to you and they will. See if any of the Who You Know List members are in the categories you are seeking and cultivate those members. See if the Who You Know List members can introduce you to people on your categories list. You get the idea. Over time you will fill your Top 20 and Farm Team lists, thus having only enough time to devote to maintaining and building from them.

Henry Harlow

www.LawFirmMarketingCoach.com