RJon Robins

ANOTHER way to lose a client

November 22, 2006 by RJon Robins

I don’t know what’s been going on lately. Seems everywhere I go, I’m seeing more & more examples of stupid service. Last week it was my regular restaurant that sent me across the street to the competition, even after I told them exactly what it would take to keep me and offered to pay for it. This time it was my dentist whose staff basically came out and told me that they run the office for their convenience, not mine as a patient.

Short story. . . been seeing the same dentist for many years. Even though his prices are high, I have no complaints & keep going back because of the quality, familiarity, inertia, etc. This time there’s a sign on the bathroom door “Staff Only”. So I ask to use the “other bathroom”. I’m handed a key and given a set of complex direction to go out the front door, down the hall, around the corner. . .wait a second is the other bathroom out of order or something? Why can’t I use this one right here?

I’ll spare you the stupid answer and simply suggest you take a look around your law office to see if there are any “staff only” signs, posted or otherwise.

How To Lose A Client

November 14, 2006 by RJon Robins

As regular readers of this blog and my e-zine know, I often pick-up my laptop and work from a little restaurant around the corner from my office. I find that getting out of familiar surroundings where I have absolutely no responsibility for anything enables me to relax and be creative. Or maybe it’s the jolt of caffene. The bottom line is that I probably spend around $300/month eating out for breakfast and the restaurant likely enjoys at least another hundred or so because I sometimes meet clients and friends there too.

In case you’re wondering how this practice fits with my position about not taking clients to lunch etc. there is a difference. First of all I’m not talking about prospective new clients. Second of all when I do invite a client to meet me for breakfast, it’s only when we have something specific to discuss that won’t require us to handle documents and that isn’t going to be sensitive in nature – let’s brainstorm about how to reorganize your business so you can spend more time out on your boat vs. we need to analyze your financial statements, billing records and your weekly score cards to figure out which clients you need to fire. And last but not least, I have taken the precaution of converting my regular table into a sort of remote office where we have alot of privacy and the waitstaff has learned to leave us alone when I’m with someone.

Anyway, my regular restaurant recently taught me a valuable lesson about how to lose a client. Or in this case, a regular customer. I’ve said it before & apparently I’ll be saying it again that satisfied clients are dangerous to a law practice, or any business for that matter. They’re dangerous because there’s no real way to tell how satisfied they are. Maybe they’re just marginally satisfied and will jump ship for a relatively minor or unexpected reason that you would address if only they would complain. This is why you see some big law firms crashing & burning much more quickly than you’d expect, by the way. In case you are not aware, the legal industry is full of cautionary tales of 50 lawyer firms imploding into 25 lawyer firms practically overnight.

Ok, so the lesson. Well, it seems that for the past year I’ve been pirating a nearby internet signal which I had thought came from the restaurant. I learned this today when I couldn’t get online over my eggs & toast. When I discussed the “problem” with the manager, she declined to accomodate me by plugging in a wireless router to the internet connection in her office. So I offered to give her a wireless router. Still no interest in accomodating this formerly regular customer.

Bottom-line is that I’m now typing to you from my new regular place a block farther away.

LESSON FOR LAWYERS READING THIS: get into the habit of making sales calls on your current and former clients to proactively discover what they do/don’t like about your services before your competitors beat you to those discoveries and walk away with your clients.

How do YOU define success?

November 13, 2006 by RJon Robins

Any idiot can tell you to go out and attend a different networking event every week, pass out business cards by the handful, and pour thousands of dollars into advertising. And just by the law of big numbers, those kinds of activities will inveitably produce some business.

But in the end, you either make money or you make excuses so it’s important to measure the results of all that activity because too many would-be-rainmakers confuse being busy with being successful.

To me and my Rainmaking clients, being successful means making enough money to meet all of our financial goals – including affording a good disability policy to protect our current standard of living in case of tragedy or emergency. Success to us, also means not having to work like a plow-horse to earn that level of income. And we are also of the belief that at least some aspect of the work we do should be professionally rewarding.

I’m curious to know if any readers of this blog either agree or have a different definition or criteria that you use to define your success?

How To Avoid Getting Stiffed On A Bill

November 7, 2006 by RJon Robins

If you can bring yourself to accept the fact that every time a client stiffs you on a bill, it’s YOUR fault not theirs, you will be a much wealthier, healthier and happier lawyer as a result!

One of my favorite long-term Rainmaking clients is one of my role models and taught me this unique brand of healthy and profitable thinking. He also happens to gross $80,000 per month in his small practice and came to me last week to figure out how to cut his schedule down from 20 to only 10 hours in the office. So this may be some advice that’s worth thinking about. I know it’s helped me alot.

Anyway, there seems to be alot of good advice floating around on the subject of how to protect oneself from getting stiffed on a bill (get an evergreen retainer, create narrative bills that communicate value not just effort, bill regularly, review a/r each month, avoid discussing the “range” of costs in the beginning, etc.) So instead of repeating the most common and obvious of that advice I’ll just say this. . .It’s been the overwhelming experience of my Rainmaking clients in their many varieties of litigation practices and in my own work, that the amount of the up front retainer is a red herring.

Showing clients the various steps involved in a case has proven very effective for many of my clients who do litigation or any kinds of multi-step transactional work and is also a critical exercise to get control of your own cash flow and investment in a case. This exercise, along with having an evergreen clause in your fee agreement and implementing it, is a great idea that has also saved my clients alot of money & aggravation.

At the end of the day though, most collection problem begin long before they hit your a/r report with your client intake procedure. The good news is that bad accounts are easy to spot and potentially good clients can be turned into great clients with the same exact client intake procedure so you can have a more enjoyable and more profitable small law firm.

One More Good Reason NOT To Take Your Clients To Lunch!!!

November 5, 2006 by RJon Robins

As everyone knows who has heard the How To Market A Small Law Firm audio program, I’m a big advocate of NOT taking your clients and potential referral sources to lunch. In fact this bad advice is one of the biggest mistakes solos make when trying to make it rain for their law firms. I’ll spare you the details why – if you don’t know either download the free e-book or review your audio program.

This posting is to share yet another example of why public restaurants are BAD PLACES TO MAKE SALES CALLS! As I sit here on this beautiful Sunday morning, I’ve brought my laptop to the little restaurant around the corner where I often start my day – free internet access, someone to bring my coffee and eggs an electical outlet next to the table in the back where I always sit and the staff brings me “the regular” without me even having to say a word.

Anyway, the point is that as I sit here typing this to you I am busy eavesdropping on the whole campaign voter-management strategy for a local politician. From what I can gather, the morons sitting next to me include the campaign manager and her two lieutenants. And they’re happily (obliviously) planning out which polling locations to staff based on expected turnout, their limited resources and which of their candidates’ relatives will be able to fly into town to help at the polling location. His sister can make it. But his mother can’t be counted on because of her health.

They are going to go heavy at the library but the Senior Center will be left unsupervised because they think they have that demographic locked-up already.

They walked the (name deleted) neighborhood yesterday but they don’t have enough volunteers to hit it again between now and the day of the vote. One of the doors they knocked on was the de-facto neighborhood leader because of all the volunteer work she does and all the nice things she’s always doing for her neighbors, and her sons are both into water polo so they lieutenant thinks she bonded with her over that since the lieutenant’s own son played water polo. And they both have the same kind of dog – Huskies. I’m just typing this to you as sit here and listen. I’m just in total shock. I’m a total stranger sitting not three feet away listening to their whole strategy. They are going to make their after party a cash-bar because they’re out of money. If I knew the opponent I could easily impact the outcome of this election by sharing all of his opponent’s strategies. Now they’re talking about a bunch of households whose doors they knocked on in a different neighborhood with “split” votes. The wives are voting for their candidate, the husbands for their opponent for some reasons that have to do with the businesses those husbands are involved in.

I’m just speechless. I’ve been telling my Rainmaking Clients for years of all the reasons not to make sales calls in public places, and I’ve assembled a nice collection of cautionary tales. But nothing like this. Ohmygd- they just mentioned the name of their leading fundraiser and the fact that he’s currently out of work.

If you don’t get how huge this is, do yourself a favor and at least read the free e-book!

They’re going to hit the neighborhood around the elementary school early the day of the election and encourage the parents to take their kids to vote since apparently that’s given them a bump in the past. OK, I have to stop now because I may lose control and slap these idiots. . .make sales calls in your client’s office, or in your office. Don’t waste your time, money and potentially embarass yourself and your clients and referral sources by asking them to air their dirty laundy out in public.

The Golden Rule – when it comes to law firm management

October 31, 2006 by RJon Robins

I have been teaching lawyers for years, who want to leave jobs at
big firms to “fly solo” that being out on your own vs. flying solo
inside the establishment of a larger organization is mostly a state of
mind.

But just like Neo in The Matrix who took the red pill and suddenly
woke-up and could see clearly how everything really works, lawyers who
finally wake up and understand “The Golden Rule” when it comes to law
firm management, can adjust their own “M Theory” and set themselves
free to earn alot more money, have alot more free time, greater career
satisfaction and alot more fun!

And the results can even be kind of scary (in a good way), when lawyers who are already out on their own finally “get it”.

Large Law Firm Economics 101

Everyone knows I founded How To Make It Rain.com specifically to help solos and lawyers in small firms with five or fewer attorneys. I don’t like to speak of it often – and I like to think of it even less frequently – but I actually have a bit of experience consulting with larger firms too (20-70 lawyers). And there is an economic formula that gets discussed behind closed doors amongst decision-makers in large firms. I think it was Hildebrandt consulting that was the first to coin the phrase “The Rule Of Three”. It means that across a wide range of practice areas, in markets all over the country most law firms divvy-up the loot like this:

1/3 – Current Year Overhead

1/3 – Associate Salaries

1/3 – Profit For Equity Owners.

By applying “The Golden Rule” which I coined myself and states that “He or She who controls the clients in a law firm large or small, rules the law firm” to either the above formula or a similar economic formula for small firms (50/25/25) it becomes pretty clear that if you learn how to generate business you can get control over your destiny pretty quickly since there will always be associates who are only too happy to have work fed to them like housepets. But only a precious few who koow how to make it rain.

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