If business is slowing, congratulations! You have more time to fine-tune your marketing efforts. Here are 10 tips to implement.

1. Fine-tune your marketing message to potential clients. Clients come to lawyers to get help with problems to be solved. “I need to get a divorce — can you help me?” “I blew it coming home from my class reunion and got pulled over for drunk driving — can you help me?” “I’m remarried and worried if anything happens to me, my husband’s grown kids will keep my own kids from getting any of my money — can you help me?” Your existing clients won’t tell their friends and colleagues unless they know how you can help people with problems. Don’t make clients and potential clients and referral sources have to translate your practice area label into a marketing message. “I do Dom Rel.” “I practice criminal law.” “I’m an estate planning attorney.”
   
   Instead, focus your marketing message on how you help people.
   “I help people needing to end a bad marriage.”
   “I help people who get into trouble with drinking and driving.”
   “I help people protect their families.”
2. Fine-tune your referral source lawyer network. Lawyers give other lawyers they have regular contact with new business. Do you stay in contact with lawyers from your former law firm? Do you stay in contact with lawyers from your former firm who have gone on to new firms? Do you stay in contact with lawyers from your former firm who have gone on to new firms and have now left to start their own firms? You get the idea. A very successful lawyer I know does this. Despite the recession, business is so good he is moving to a bigger office and hiring an associate. This is his number one marketing effort. How to stay in touch, read tip number 3.
3. Fine-tune your weekly marketing efforts. Yes, weekly. Don’t take a prairie dog approach to marketing. Popping up out of the hole and then disappearing back down again. Your marketing efforts must be sustained which means consistent. Cash a bit tight? You don’t need to take someone to lunch. They might eat their dinner early since you’re paying. Or they’re likely to be tied up until four weeks from now. Not so, with a marketing breakfast. 7:00 a.m. breakfasts are easy to fit into your busy referral source’s schedule and breakfast is the most affordable item on the menu. Make marketing an activity you enjoy and your referral sources enjoy. Put the cost into your marketing budget. How often? If busy, plan a marketing breakfast once weekly. If work is slow, plan a marketing breakfast three times a week. Stay in contact with those referral sources. Be the one they think of first.
4. Fine-tune your manners. You thank someone for a gift, don’t you? Don’t overlook thanking someone for a referral. A referral is a valuable gift. The giver is paying you a compliment and confirming a trust in you. Reciprocate with a handwritten thank you note. Does your referral source have a hobby or special interest? Maybe a nice book on fly-fishing will be a welcome surprise since the annual fly-fishing vacation is coming. Be creatively thoughtful.
5. Fine-tune your existing client relationships. Your clients are also being impacted by the tough recession. If you come across an article about your client’s business area, send it. Ask your client for a time you can visit his business for an off-the-clock meeting to check-in how business is going and take him out to lunch nearby. You are attorney and counselor: let your client know you are interested in him and the success of his business.
6. Fine-tune your new client’s perception. What does your new client go home with? A copy of the fee agreement? Get some new client folders put together. On the inside left, have a reprint of any press you’ve gotten that highlights something wonderful about you, your firm, and your staff. Did you win the Bar’s Pro Bono Challenge? Collect the most food for the local food bank? Did you participate in a Law Day event in your community? Something that says you are a nice person. They know you are competent or they wouldn’t have called. Let them know you are heads-and-shoulders above the rest. Shortly, you are going to take care of your client’s problem, but you are going to cost money that your client would rather not have to spend on a problem. Problems are aggravating. To have to spend a lot of money to fix the problem is worse. Your client will be happier handing over money to a nice person rather than to an icy professional who is just focused on the problem and not the person.
7. Fine-tune your focus on the person. What does it feel like to be your client? Is your client worried, highly stressed, suspicious, sad, grieving, angry, and worked-up? Feelings aren’t right or wrong they simply are. It’s the rare client that walks into your office not having feelings. Don’t just fix problems, comfort people with the problems. I recently had oral surgery. I was sent home with a pint of Haagen-Dazs®. Talk about comfort food and a feeling booster. The next day, the surgeon sent me a small bouquet of roses from her and her staff and the referring doctor. Do I think they got together to send flowers? No, but when I thank the referring doctor for the flowers and sending me to such a caring surgeon, you can bet he’s motivated to have her as the number one surgeon to send his patients. This is a brilliant marketing move on her part – two birds with one stone and all that. You have a client coming in to sign divorce papers? Send him or her home with a pint of Haagen-Dazs®. And don’t forget the flowers.
8. Fine-tune your reception room. It’s really a waiting room. What’s it like to wait there? Are those chairs comfortable? Has anyone ever told you how comfortable they were while waiting? Better change that. I once rented office space from a domestic relations attorney-- a very successful divorce maven. So busy, she only took a referral as a courtesy to the referring person. When she had a client come in, they were greeted and offered a menu of brewed special hot beverages in various blends and flavorings. She had one of those brew one cup machines. Coffee was brewed and served in an elegant china cup and saucer with matching creamer and sugar bowl, alongside a dish of fresh chocolate-dipped strawberries on a silver tray. She pampered her clients. They didn’t mind waiting. When she personally came out to greet them, they were happy clients because they were her clients. She sent gorgeous flowers to herself every week so her office always looked magnificent. Her desk was clean and large, conveying the workplace of a busy professional but not used as a barrier device to appear imposing to her clients. Instead, there was a small table with comfortable chairs where she would sit together with her clients and help them with their problems.
9. Fine-tune your email signature. Are you utilizing any of the social networks, like Linked-in, Facebook, or Twitter? Do you have a blog? Do you upload articles on your website? Capture this briefly on your email signature, give your blog and network addresses and link to recent articles you’ve written. Do you include a business card with your email so your recipient can save your information into their Microsoft Outlook or other email organizer program? Can you include your firm’s logo with your signature line?
10. Fine-tune your contacts’ information. All those contacts in your email program are potential referral sources. How do you change a contact to a referral source? Use the Notes field to capture personal information about your contact. Capture all those details you would otherwise forget: mother-in-law going in for surgery next month; youngest child going off to a semester abroad this spring; golf tournament in Sedona next week; gearing up for new product launch. Names of spouse, children and pets. Date it; detail it. Right click on the contact card, and create a follow up so you can call to see how the mother-in-law is doing or how the tournament went or how customers are responding to the new product. Whenever you are going to talk with your contact, review the card so you are reminded of family names and life events. Whether your contact is a busy CEO, land-use attorney, or retired grandmother, paying attention to the details shows you value your connection.