A few years ago, a federal investigator subpoenaed one of my calendars to prove a local doctor had committed massive insurance fraud. The doctor ultimately lost his license and served prison time, based in large part on my calendar.
About that same time, I received a parking ticket in the mail, and was able through my calendar keeping, to prove that I had been in another city that day many miles away.
Using the Initial Contact Focuser may not help you fight a parking ticket or be used in a federal investigation, but the information it captures cannot be recreated after the fact. The ICF documents the number of prospects who have contacted your firm in any given time period, and perhaps most importantly, documents where those prospects came from. The ICF should guide and measure the results of every marketing decision you make.
When I hear that a law firm is not either using the ICF or capturing this information in some other way, it’s truly difficult for me to understand. That valuable information is forever lost. Putting contact information on a post-it or a phone pad is no way to run a business.
Long-term planning for growth and success can only be successful through systematically capturing, measuring and evaluating information.
A firm that I work closely with recently organized all their ICF information for the prior 12 months and was dismayed to see that a newspaper ad for which they had paid more than $400 per month for more than a year had not generated a single client.
Another firm created lunch & learn opportunities, cooking and paying for lunches at the local senior center for a number of months before reviewing their ICF data, and calculating that the ROI was negligible.
How can you measure the success of any of your professional relationships if the ICF is not carefully maintained?
This sample shows not only the results of professional relationships, but also documents a referral to another law firm.
This tool is available on the LWP members website in both Excel and Word formats and can be found by searching “5 Key.” This information can also be captured through most any database software.
Make reviewing the weekly ICF a part of your weekly team meeting – I promise you won’t regret it. If you need any support please let me know – ncatale@lawyerswithpurpose.com!
If you want to learn more about the systems and tools that Lawyers With Purpose has to offer, please consider joining us in Phoenix, October 22nd – 24th for our Practice With Purpose Program. Click the link to review the agenda and see all that you get in just 2.5 days! Click here to register now.
Nedra Catale – Coaching, Consulting & Implementation, Lawyers With Purpose
Add a Comment