Blue-time

Manage Client Enrollment and Relationships in Blue Time

Blue-timeBlue time is the time you spend on lead generation and lead conversion (commonly referred to as marketing and sales). At Lawyers with Purpose, we call this Relationship Management and Client Enrollment.

Blue time involves all of the following:

  • Marketing to third party relationships (light blue)
  • Networking events (light blue)
  • Firm marketing time—strategy meetings, for example (light blue)
  • Enrolling prospects to become clients (dark blue)

To ensure your marketing and sales goals are met, you should be spending 40 percent of your week on blue time.

Yellow-time

Use Your Yellow Time Proactively to Make More Gold

Yellow-timeColor-coding allows you to efficiently track your weekly workload and quickly determine areas of your operation that need improvement.

Yellow time is the time you spend working on your law firm business. By “working on your law firm business” we do not mean creating a trust or crafting an asset protection plan for a client. Rather, we mean working on things that will help your firm, your business, move forward. You should devote 20 percent of your week to yellow time.

Yellow time can be broken down into Present Firm and Future Firm. Present Firm encompasses team meetings in which weekly progress is reviewed and discussed. This includes reviewing weekly reports, the firm’s marketing and sales efforts, work-in-progress, and firm revenue.

Future Firm involves working on what individuals and the team as a whole need to improve upon to ensure the firm’s revenue and other goals are met. Most firms do a rather poor job with respect to Future Firm. By working closely with your coach and implementation specialist, you can adopt a proactive approach to address unsatisfactory work performance before it becomes acute and detrimental to the firm.

Show-me-the-money

Show Me the Money: The Cash Flow Focuser

Show-me-the-moneyThis focuser measures how many money meetings the firm has on the books for a given month. It encompasses all the meetings where there is a check being collected for work completed. (Remember, the LWP process trains firms to collect 50 percent of the fee at the Design Meeting and the other 50 percent at the Signing Meeting.)

The Cash Flow Focuser tells you at a glance whether you are on track to meet your monthly revenue goal, and if not, how many more money meetings are necessary to achieve your goal. It also helps you balance your calendar.

Utilizing your LWP cloud-based workflows will help you keep your business on track and hold your team accountable. The more you work with these focusers, the better you will get at reading them and pinpointing the areas that need to be improved to achieve your goals.

Now let’s look at LWP’s Color-Coded Planning System and how using it in conjunction with your reports will help you make the most efficient use of your time.

Pipeline-results-focuser

Holding the Closer Accountable: The Pipeline Results Focuser

Pipeline-results-focuserThis focuser reveals an attorney’s hire rate. That is, it measures how many Vision Meetings or Initial Meetings an attorney had during a given week, how many of those meetings resulted in an engagement agreement being signed, and the dollar value of each engagement. It will also measure how many Vision Meetings and Initial Meetings resulted in a follow up call.

In essence, the Pipeline Results Focuser is a synopsis of what is happening in the conference room between an attorney and the prospective client. If the numbers are low, you need to figure out why. For example, let’s say several clients have mentioned during meetings that the firm on the other side of town offers a lower price for a foundational estate plan. If that’s the case, you’ll know your pricing structure needs adjustment.

Or perhaps prospects seem disengaged during meetings, or claim to be in a hurry and rush out without signing an engagement agreement. Then, when you follow up, they fail to respond. If scenarios like this happen frequently, you may need to examine your mindset before the meeting, or your approach during it.

Low numbers in the Pipeline Results Focuser let you, together with your coach and your implementation specialist, know there’s a problem and we must roll up our sleeves and solve it together. This is what makes the Pipeline Reports Focuser so valuable.

Pipeline-focuser

What are Your Chances of Getting Hired This Week? Just Ask the Pipeline Focuser

Pipeline-focuserThis focuser tells you at a glance the number of opportunities you will have to get hired in a particular week. How? By measuring all of the meetings on your weekly calendar that offer the possibility of a prospect signing and an engagement agreement.

If the numbers in the Pipeline Focuser are high, congratulations, you have a good chance of generating new revenue. If the numbers are low, marketing and client services need to do a better job of filling your week with meetings and, consequently, opportunities to convert more prospects to clients.

Workshop-results-focuser

Make Your Workshops Work Harder: The Workshop Results Focuser

Workshop-results-focuserThis focuser measures the outcome of your workshops. It will tell you exactly who attended a particular workshop, which of the attendees scheduled a Vision Meeting, and the outcome of follow up calls to prospects who attended the workshop but did not say yes to a Vision Meeting.

The Workshop Results Focuser allows you to determine the efficacy of your marketing and your workshops. For example, if very few people attend a workshop, your marketing strategy and/or materials must be modified.

Conversely, let’s say you get 31 attendees but only two of them agree to a Vision Meeting. In that case, you’ll know that either the person making the presentation needs to do better job or the presentation materials themselves are in need of improvement.

Finally, if very few of your follow up calls or emails lead to a Vision Meeting, you need to examine the messages being conveyed and your Clients Services Coordinator’s approach.

Given the importance of workshops in building your client roster, you need to make the most of them. The Workshop Results Focuser is an efficient way to do that.