There will always be reasons NOT to start something. Can you relate to any of these?
- I will not invest in the time it takes to write a Strategic Marketing Plan to guide my business and my actions toward success because I don’t know where to start.
- I will not take the time to start a blog because I just don’t have the time.
- I will not get in to Social Media because I don’t have anything valuable to say.
- I will not schedule lunches with 3 top, middle & lower revenue-generating clients because I have too much else to do.
- I will not send someone out to conduct Client Satisfaction interviews with my clients because I already know what they think of me.
- I will not create a marketing budget that reflects the retention and growth my practice deserves because I’ve never created one, and don’t know where to start.
- I will not start that Referral Recognition Program I said I would start 3 years ago because referrals are coming in just fine.
However, will there ever be reasons that correspond to each of those that will cause you to start doing these practices?
- Will you ever know how to start creating a Strategic Marketing Plan that will help you say yes, no or maybe to marketing activities, tactics or events?
- Will you ever have the time to start writing blog posts in order to build, reinforce, strengthen and communicate your expertise, and to help guide where you would like to be positioned in the minds of your potential clients?
- Will you suddenly discover valuable things to say in Social Media when you realize your clients really are spending time there?
- Will your top, middle and lower revenue-generating clients have time to go to lunch with you when they’re busy with your competitors?
- Will you still be certain what your clients think of you when you suddenly discover they’re using another lawyer or firm for the work you used to do for them?
- Will you suddenly discover a pot of gold to fund marketing and business development activity that wasn’t there before?
- Will you start that Referral Recognition Program when you are mysteriously receiving only half the referrals you did before?
Bottom Line:
You can create your own list of activities you know or sense you should be doing if you had worked through the process of deciding what it might take to grow your practice. You also have a host of reasons for not getting to them just yet. Some of those are valid, and some are based on fear, procrastination, uncertainty, certainty, the feeling that you already know how to do them, the feeling that you don’t want anyone to know you don’t know how to do them….you name it.
But what I don’t want to see happen to you is that you’ve put off making very important marketing and business decisions for reasons that are not based in sound, practical, passionate, client-driven reality.
If it is important to you to grow your practice, to have clients to advise, to have referral sources who think of you first when someone in your area of expertise is needed, and to have focus to lead you in to investing in all the right places to grow, then you need to stop allowing yourself to make the excuses I shared in the early part of this post.
If a struggling economy is not the right time to start focusing on marketing and business development, when is the right time?
Many thanks to Cordelia Roberts for the image used above
