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People have different needs regarding the amount of attention they want to receive in a relationship. For some of your referral sources, getting together once a year might be fine. Other sources might want to meet every six months, or even once a month. If the referral source is providing you with plenty of profitable leads, track the frequency of your touches to ensure you’re meeting his or her needs.

You also want to track the goals of each touch. Is the meeting strategic and focused on future opportunities? Is it a joint workshop or presentation? Is it a review meeting designed to make sure the expectations of both parties are being met?

Tracking touches allows you to ensure your relationship is moving forward and that it’s on solid ground. Remember: You’re not the only attorney in town. The last thing you want is a competitor swooping in and “stealing” your referral source simply because you haven’t done enough to keep the relationship going. Finally, don’t underestimate the power of a hand-written thank you note. It may seem old-fashioned, but it works.

As your referral relationships evolve, you want to track a wide range of information. For instance, make sure you know how many referrals you’re getting from each source, together with the average fee and retention rate per referral received.

If one referral source is providing prospects that generally turn into long-term, high-fee clients, you obviously want to do everything in your power to keep that referral source happy (we’ll talk about how to do that later). Conversely, you might want to reconsider your relationship with a referral source whose clients only want, say, a basic will or a power of attorney, or whose decisions are based on your price rather than your value.

You also want to make sure you’re measuring expectations. If you hosted a joint event with your referral source, were both your and the allied professional’s expectations met? Do you even know what the expectations and goals are? If you do, are they being met consistently?

If your referral source expects you to provide referrals to him or her, be sure to track that. A word of caution: tit for tat relationships can become problematic. If it’s all about “who’s getting the better deal” the relationship might not be a healthy one.

This is not the relationship you want nor the type of relationship we have been describing.

Finally, whenever you discuss results with your referral source, be sure to talk about future opportunities to strengthen and grow the relationship.

Next time we’ll talk about another piece of information you should be tracking—touches.

Last time, we detailed the types of questions you need to ask to both demonstrate your value to the allied professional and to quickly determine if working with the professional will be of value to you. Now let’s discuss the latter topic a bit further. What are some of the red flags you should look for? That is, how can you determine whether the referral source in question is a “fit” or a “mis-fit?”

First and foremost, you need to know whether the professional is willing to meet again and follow specific actions you find helpful in generating a profitable relationship, such as attending one of your workshops. Similarly, you must know that the professional will tell his or her clients to contact your firm or attend a workshop. If they won’t follow your process, or don’t follow through with their commitments, the best course of action is to walk away. Or better yet, run away. How can you have a profitable relationship with a professional who is not interested in your needs or learning the basics of the services you have to offer?

As you meet with your target professional, you’ll also want to ask yourself the following question: Does this individual have the “heart of a teacher” or the “heart of a salesman?” You want to forge referral relationships with the former. Also, does the professional have poor communication skills, that is, does everything seem to be about him or her? This is another red flag.

The fact is, you only have so much time. Don’t make the mistake of believing that you can turn a prospective referral source around to your way of thinking. Maybe, with a great deal of time and effort, you can. However, your time is better spent on professionals with whom you have synergy and who can identify your value quickly!

One more thing: If all goes well during your meeting, be sure to specify exactly what the next steps in your relationship will be. “Great meeting you, I’ll be in touch” is not an effective way to end the meeting. Success depends on creating a plan for how to work together that produces results, not having a nice first meeting.

At Lawyers with Purpose, we strongly advocate for weekly team meetings.  Why?  Because they’re the perfect time to review key performance indicators (KPIs) and client satisfaction, as well as to make sure projects and goals are on track, and nothing is falling through the cracks.  Even if you are a solo attorney and are operating without a team, you should still set aside time to review your KPIs on a consistent basis.

An effective team meeting should review actual performance against pre-set goals.  By doing so, the chances of achieving any goal will be significantly higher, simply due to your commitment to managing your process and measuring results. 

Effective team meetings require adherence to a few simple rules:

1. Schedule your meeting on a consistent, recurring basis, and make it a priority.

2. Everyone attending the team meeting must be prepared, present, and paying attention.

3. Set a clear and precise agenda, and have a leader that manages time and moves through the agenda efficiently.

4. Set a time (suggested 1 hour), and don’t allow the meetings to go long.

5. No hijacking allowed! Anything requiring substantial conversation needs a separate meeting.

6. Measure your actual performance against pre-established goals and report the results.

Now that you know the rules, let’s review the elements of an effective agenda:

1. Start with wins, either personal or professional, or a thank you from the past week.

What better way to start a meeting than by being positive?  Positive thinking starts your meeting off on the right foot: Attendees look forward to having something to share, and the sharing brings attendees together, making everyone feel a part of a winning team.  Beyond team building, however, sharing wins has another critical function: they keep your team encouraged when a goal isn’t achieved.  While it’s good to aim high, missing goals without also reflecting on how far you’ve come along the way can be discouraging. 

2. Review Your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

LWP helps its member attorneys develop KPIs and metrics that define strategic success and act as a yardstick for areas that need improvement.

As part of your KPI review, be sure to analyze the number of new leads your firm is generating, know the source that is generating them, and your hire rate.  Are you getting the number of leads and referrals you need to reach your revenue goal?  Be sure to review your marketing processes, step by step, so you’re aware of any shortfalls in time to correct them.

3. Review Cash Flow, Client Matters, and Client Satisfaction

LWP advocates for utilizing a value-based billing process that will allow you to predict your cash flow weeks in advance and manage your appointments, making sure your firm has enough cash flow on the calendar. 

Reviewing client matters means you won’t get caught unprepared for a client meeting!  Canceling or rescheduling could have devastating effects on your client satisfaction as well as your cash flow. Review clients matters to ensure documents have been drafted, reviewed, approved, and are ready for the client.

Since client satisfaction is key to generating new business, be sure to review the comments from closing surveys that have been received, and allow the entire team to celebrate in the positive results or share in the discussion of what you can do better.  Similarly, work to resolve any open client issues or concerns that do not have a clear next action defined, as well as knowing who is responsible and by when. You should know the number of new matters you opened and the status of each client matter, especially if there is an issue

4. Review your Marketing Efforts and Results

It is important that you review results and share what marketing is doing so everyone can be on the same page.  Because a large promotional event or campaign could alter the time commitments of other team members, everyone in the firm should be aware of the wholesale, community, and retail marketing strategies that are being implemented.

5. Review Your Goals and Open Projects

At LWP, we advocate determining the main 4 or 5 goals that will have the greatest impact on your firm, increasing your practice proficiency.  Weekly team meetings are the perfect time to keep track of those goals and the specific project work that needs to be done each week to move that project closer to completion.

Effective teams have a shared vision, and they commit to their goals.  Renewing those commitments every week can help your team stay on track to achieving high quality firm-wide results.

Asking the right questions accomplishes several goals. It allows you to find ways to distinguish yourself from your competition and demonstrate the value you offer the allied professional and his or her clients. This can convince the professional to move forward with you. In addition, asking the right questions allows you to determine whether or not you want to forge a relationship with this particular professional. The key is understanding what type of questions to ask allied professionals—and why.

• Ask questions that help you understand what they do
• Ask questions to understand their experiences when working with attorneys, and what their clients have experienced working with attorneys
• Ask questions to understand where there is opportunity or challenges
• Ask questions to gain an understanding of what your services mean to them
• Ask if they think their clients are planning properly
• Ask questions to help you identify what to expect from this relationship
• Ask questions that let them discuss how they see your firm supporting them and their goals

As you can see, a professional’s answers to these types of questions will give you an opportunity to further demonstrate your value by addressing his or her greatest concerns and showing how the two of you can work effectively together. Equally important, the answers will help you determine whether you want to work with this professional. We’ll talk more about qualifying your referral sources next time.

Why should a professional refer his or her clients to you? For starters, the professional must know why and how your services will benefit his or her clients. The professional must also be confident that you will “do right” by his or her clients—basically, that you will provide effective legal representation.

Next, why should the professional refer clients to you rather than the firm down the street? How do you distinguish yourself and assure them that you will keep your promises? Perhaps it’s your process that sets you apart and addresses their initial concerns. Or the number of years you’ve focused on elder law and estate planning. Or the fact that you have plenty of recommendations from former and existing clients. Or maybe, what you have to say is something they have never heard before and they find extreme value in it.

Once you and the allied professional have agreed that there is value in your working together, you may find yourself thinking along the following lines: “This is going well, the professional really likes me, I’m going to get plenty of work from this person.”

Hold on. Remember, your goal isn’t just to have nice meetings. You want meetings that generate revenue. You need to know that this particular professional is someone you’re comfortable working with and a person who has the potential to actually deliver revenue-producing clients to you. In order to know that, you need to ask the right questions. We’ll cover the types of questions you need to ask in our next post.

To a large extent, your success is determined by how well you manage your leads and vital relationships, especially referral relationships with allied professionals. Unfortunately, forging and maintaining profitable referral relationships is one of the greatest challenges facing most law firms.

In the coming weeks, we’re going to discuss proven strategies for building a strong referral network. We’ll talk about how to get started on the right foot, the questions you need to ask to qualify your referral sources and properly set expectations, how to track your results, and more.

At the very least, we hope these emails help you understand the importance of the following two concepts:

Contrary to what some potential referral sources would have you believe, your value is not in the referrals you send back. Your value goes far beyond that.

Your goal is not simply to have good meetings with allied professionals. Rather, your goal is to turn meetings into revenue.

Logically enough, building profitable relationships with allied professionals begins with knowing precisely which professionals you should be meeting with. We’ll talk about that next time.

What is the greatest success you’ve had since joining LWP?

Time Management. Though it’s a work in progress and likely always will be, we have learned so much about how to be more efficient, better organize ourselves and our calendars, and become more productive.

What is your favorite LWP tool?

The focusers in general but definitely the Daily and Weekly Focuser!

How has being part of LWP impacted your team and your practice?

We value ourselves as a team rather than just individuals working independently of one another. We have learned about our communication styles and differences that have helped us communicate more efficiently.

Share something about yourself that most people don’t know about you.

Most people don’t know that Jessica loves to cook and is really quite good. And Val loves to eat all of Jessica’s food creations!

What is your favorite book and how did it impact your life?

Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. It has helped us learn how to interact with others in a more meaningful way. The most impactful habit we practice is to “seek first to understand, then to be understood.” In other words, learning how to listen empathetically in order to truly understand a person. All people are different, and you never truly know what they are going through.

Congratulations to you on your continued success!