You’ve heard the old adage, “you reap what you sow.” The same is true in your law firm.

Many times, we’ll hear about a law firm with too many open spots on the calendar. “Revenue is down… I don’t understand it, things were so great for a while.”

If you want to explain the revenue, or lack thereof, pull your calendar out and look at what was going on 90 days ago. If you had back to back appointments, documents to produce and signing meetings to schedule… things looked and felt great! But what happened to your marketing while you were buried in all that great work?

Finding a way to plan, execute and track each thing you’re doing that will LEAD TO REVENUE is important. These efforts need to be calendared for the entire year. Calendared, as in a regular or recurring appointment on your calendar.

The problem with realizing too late that you dropped the marketing ball is that when you identify the problem, you’ve got to wait for the effort to pay off. If you’re in a revenue slump and you get busy doing all the little things that should have continued to be happening… you’re 60-90 days away from seeing those efforts turn into revenue.

What To Do:

In about August, we recommend the law firm owner and the marketing manager lock themselves in the conference room with all the YTD marketing data.
Identify all the POSSIBLE tools and approaches you could plan for the coming year.
- Client events
- Client review meetings
- Public seminars
- Endorsed seminars
  - CPAs
  - Financial Advisors
  - Church groups
  - and so on
- Printed newsletters with event information inserted
- Online newsletters
- Google Adwords
- Webinars
- … and so on
Get large calendars, each month is a page approximately 18″ x 24″ and grab some baby post it notes. Use some painters tape to put the entire year up across one or two of your walls
Start with the biggest events of the year, such as holidays, major sports events, public seminars. Then go back through the year for the next largest effort you want to plan for.
Put all the little efforts in. Use up all the tools and approaches that you previously identified.
Stand back and admire your work. Start moving the post it notes around.
When it’s final — put it into Outlook. Your recurring events will continue forever, you won’t need to plan those out again next year because they’ll continue.
Share the marketing calendar with everyone who has something to do on that calendar.
Stick to that calendar like glue.

Easy peasy.

Jennifer Price
Chief Operating Officer
American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys, Inc.
9444 Balboa Avenue, Suite 300
San Diego, California 92123
Phone: (858) 453-2128
www.aaepa.com