Alastair Moyes's blogs

What you can’t see will hurt you

Alastair Moyes

Thursday, 16 February 2012

Here’s the problem, there’s a nagging uncertainty about ‘high street’ solicitors' firms. There is a lot going on but you haven’t quite seen a specific challenge or threat to your firm. Whatever the threats are, you can’t quite clarify the problem in terms of how you run your firm because there’s not enough hard evidence to base business management decisions on. Your firm is busy, you’re profitable and the client enquiries are coming in to keep the firm going. You, your partners, fee earners and staff work hard to deliver a high-quality service to your clients. You know change is happening (Solicitors Regulation Authority, Outcomes-focused regulation, Jackson, etc.) that means you have to make some alterations to the way you work and run your firm.

However there’s a whole mass of words and opinions in print and online about what’s happening but you just can’t see it as a specific risk to your firm with an achievable solution.

What is it that the new competition, in the form of the Co-operative, QualitySolicitors, banks, insurance companies and other branded organisations, are doing that you can’t see which will mean changing the way you run your solicitors' business? The answer is, they are using direct promotions, (often called direct marketing) targeted so tightly that you don’t see it unless you are in one of their target market groups. What we can see are these comments taken from the Gazette’s LinkedIn discussion group on the very popular topic of QS that gives a brief glimpse of what’s going on.

…the WHSmith Legal Access Points… …I can tell you that in Newport… …over 2,500 households have already signed up - in Smith's - to the QS Legal Privilege Card scheme and now have a credit card-sized membership card for the scheme. That is 2,500 households right from the outset that are now very much likely to use the local QS firm than any other in Newport whenever they need legal services - and that's before the major advertising campaign commences. (QS chief executive Craig Holt's comments on a LinkedIn discussion group.)

Whilst that is a link with less that 2% of the local population, I’d suggest it’s actively promoted links with 2,500 more households than any local solicitors' firm. QS are doing the same in many areas of the country. This is alongside the Co-op which has millions of members with a membership card and there are other schemes and businesses doing the same. The Co-op also sends out a popular magazine that has promotions for their legal services in both editorial and advertising items.

That is alongside the direct mailing of letters and leaflets to publicise their offering. There are many more examples of this expansion of promotional campaigns.

What’s needed is to turn the nagging uncertainty about the future of ‘high street’ firms into hard management marketing plans for your firm. What is it you can do to compete with these high-budget, closely targeted, mass promotional campaigns before the enquiries to your firm trickle away? The answers will depend on the size and services your firm offers and there is no easy solution. One thing to remember is that any promotion of legal services by the big brands will expand the market and your firm can prosper in a growing market as long as you tell current and past clients (and therefore future matters) the benefits of using your firm’s services.

All the marketing and promotional techniques used by the new competition are available to you too. Common themes are focusing on the client’s future needs and how to organise the firm to serve them profitably. That will take management time and thinking to make it work in your firm.

If there’s something you can’t see creeping up on you, be prepared for a shock when it’s fully revealed. Rocket Lawyer and Legal Zoom’s entry into the UK market is just another example of unknown market competition, in the same way Direct Line changed the insurance market. In the end the consumers will decide, but they need information to base their choices on. Make sure your firm is telling your clients why they should choose you.

Alastair Moyes is a director at Marketlaw and co-author of Marketing Legal Services, the current marketing handbook from Law Society Publishing.

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Pinch point

Alastair Moyes

Friday, 2 December 2011

The stark comparison between new legal service providers and traditional firms’ approach to clients’ contact shows a way forward for all firms. In many solicitors offices there is a pinch point that restricts the ability of a firm to grow, the traditional solicitors’ receptionist and switchboard operator.

In the past their job was to direct phone calls, greet visitors or send faxes. Essentially they turned people away, protected the fee earners and acted as ‘gatekeepers’ to the firm. That’s alongside some secretarial work that needed doing. Direct dial systems may have relieved them of some call handling, but in essence they have always been over stretched people with no time for anything else because the phone is ringing. Seen as a cost, occasionally difficult to manage or retain the right person, this front of house operation will become a significant problem as we move into a more competitive business environment.

From the client’s point of view, how easy is it for them to contact ‘their solicitor’ about the current or potential matter? It usually goes something like this: a person calls a firm, the call is answered but the receptionist has no time to talk to the client and mostly cannot put the client through to the fee earner because they are busy. Potential client rings off dissatisfied and has to try again later or calls another firm.

Reception has mostly been run on a ‘minimise costs’ approach because it doesn’t generate fees. Now there needs to be an alternative because clients won’t bother to call back or wait. Clients will pick the firm that engages them with a service that deals with them on their terms.

Depending on the size of the firm there needs to be three, four or five people, trained and ready to answer the phone, emails or greet visitors. Each person must have the ability to confidently present the benefits of all the services the firm has to offer and have time to discuss these with the potential client.

Whether you are a single branch firm or spread across a region your firm should have a separate client reception department that is responsible for delivering a satisfactory contact service with the firm. They need to be measured on and have targets for increasing the new matter instructions to the firm.

All that will be seen as increasing costs. However, there are two reasons why this is an imperative change needed for firms. First, many of the new services being offered focus on customer service and immediate engagement with the client. That is, providing the client with substantive assistance so they have no need to go anywhere else. Your firm needs to compete with this offering whatever the cost. The second point is that a new reception for clients relieves the fee earners of dealing with non-profitable communications. Fee earners can then spend more time concentrating on current clients and leave the qualification of enquiries to a well trained client receptionist.

And there is more. Once in place the client reception team provides a resource to take more non-fee earning task away from fee earners. They can follow-up costs quotes, make call backs for fee earners, make out-bound past client follow-ups and deal with promotional campaigns or advertising responses. All this adds up to capturing profitable enquiries, dealing effectively with no-matter enquiries, allowing fee earners to concentrate on current matters and a whole host of improved management measurement information.

It need not be a radical change. Firms already have most of this in their current set-up. What makes the difference is re-defining client engagement in a way that suits the client. While the details in each firm may be complicated, a new client reception can be achieved if the partners concentrate on the main issue; capture profitable matter enquiries before your competitors do.

Alastair Moyes is a director at Marketlaw and co-author of Marketing Legal Services, the current marketing handbook from Law Society Publishing.

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Quality, quantity or both?

Alastair Moyes

Thursday, 13 October 2011

With the announcement of another new legal services brand, ‘Simplify the Law’, firms are being presented with an increasing complex choice of partner organisations. Solicitors’ enquiry services can be a useful additional source of business, however firms need to correctly manage these services, choose them carefully and avoid a couple of common errors.

The approach to the consumer and SME markets varies widely, from QualitySolicitors or HighStreetLawyer.com at one end of the spectrum to rightsolicitor.co.uk and ContactLaw in one area or FreeIndex and Wigster.com off in another. Which one or what combination of these services is most cost effective for your firm? None are really exclusive of the others and all should be considered against a firm’s business objectives.

One of the common errors we see will be familiar to partners in personal injury departments. They become too reliant on one source of enquiries for a particular type of work. While it’s easy to drift into this situation it becomes increasingly hard work to extricate a department or whole firm from just one source.

The other common problem is managing those enquiries that come through external providers. PI partners are more used to this, however most firms don’t have the robust systems in place to measure the productivity of enquiry services or their profitability for the firm. This leads to partners having a ‘feeling’ of how good or not the enquiries received are but it’s often not backed-up by hard evidence.

Given that these services offer attractive benefits how should a firm judge each one on it’s merits? Client enquiries, brand development, national advertising and direct mail are some of the elements of promotions and marketing, being offered to firms through these outsourced suppliers. As partners or a marketing manager of a firm, it is becoming more difficult to gather together an overview of the market. The competition for the clients’ attention is increasing rapidly and will only continue to increase as ABS businesses start to promote their services.

We are often asked by firms which of these services is worth trying. The response is which one best fits your firm’s long-term objectives and is likely to generate profitable matters at a cost less that you would normally pay. To assist firms in choosing, Marketlaw conducted a research project to list all the available solicitor enquiry services alongside their response to a few basic questions (the report is available free from Marketlaw’s website).

The choice of which services to use is only half of the issues a firm needs to consider. In the same way as buying in any external service, it's how you use it that counts. This leads to a wider point for all solicitors firms. Given the introduction of outcomes-focused regulation that focuses on client satisfaction, all enquiries need to be handled in a way that maximises the potential of gaining a profitable matter and retaining the future work from that client. Overstretched receptionist, busy fee earners and secretaries means clients often finish contact with a firm without a satisfactory result. Whilst in the past the client may have just tried again, but now they have a plethora of alternatives being heavily promoted and your competitor are now just a call or a click away.

Handling client enquiries efficiently and effectively, whether from an external supplier or your own promotional activity is now an essential part of a successful firm. Organising your firm to profitably satisfy the needs of a client is a definition of what marketing means for a solicitors firm. It’s not just good business practice, now a requirement of your firm.

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Brands and the market share land grab

Alastair Moyes

Tuesday, 6 September 2011

As the holiday season comes to an end and we face the autumn of change in the legal services market it is worth having a brief review of the announcements that will affect how you plan your firm’s marketing.

These are key moves that will affect the consumers' view, understanding of and access to legal solutions and you will need to take them into account when planning your future marketing management.

There is a ‘land grab’ process underway for the attention of potential legal services users. Whether your firm is part of a group or brand, you will need to understand what these new consumer propositions mean for how your firm works.

Looking forward into 2012 there are two USA based businesses looking at launching in the UK, Rocket Lawyers and Legal Zoom. Both have been given significant investment capital and are looking at ABS in the UK.

Rocket Lawyers have backing from Google which apparently already provides access to their services via Google Docs. Legal Zoom are seen in the USA as the competition that every ‘Main Street’ lawyer fears the most. They are aiming to launch a version of their service in 2012.

From the clients’ perspective, they are already seeing a previously low profile legal services sector start to come out into the open market. QualitySolicitors in WH Smiths, Lawyers2you and other brand services in retail settings are offering solutions to legal issues that people didn’t think of ‘getting round to’ before.

The announcements that are closer to our current market situation will have a more immediate effect on how often your phone rings with enquiries.

The Co-op is expanding its initial pilot scheme, and as has been reported, CLS has recently been merged with the Co-op’s Life Planning service. This includes the funeral business, allowing it to capitalise on the opening up of the legal services market.

The Co-op’s statement on its website says this 'will provide an opportunity to enhance our combined partner propositions, optimise our third-party B2B relationships and enable us to cross-sell our products and services more effectively. We will be launching new distribution channels in the second half of the year and expect to continue our strong performance'.

Lawyers2you and CPP have both announced expansions of their legal service offerings that will have an additional impact on the consumers’ view of where they can access legal services.

All these new promotional initiatives are aimed at your firm’s past clients, which means that to maintain your market share you will need to present a meaningful alternative if you hope to retain their interest in your services and gain their future matters.

I would suggest that your firms’ September partners meeting should put marketing management at the top of the agenda. That is, above financial performance, staff issues and practice management affairs, so you focus on why your firm’s future clients should instruct you.

At that partners' meeting, ask yourselves these questions as a start.

What is it you are doing now to deal with this increase in competition for your future clients?
Is our IT database of past clients good enough to start a promotional campaign?
How much time, effort and expense will it take to be in a position to promote the benefits of the services we offer to the clients we want for our firm?
How do we re-organise how our firm works to ensure we can continue to provide excellent legal solutions to our clients?
What is stopping us from making the changes we need now?

These should be seen as tough questions with answers that need to be acted on. Firms that feel they have already got their marketing management right, will need to continue to use these questions to be sure they can continue to develop services that clients want.

The “consumers”, your past and future clients, will see more and more easy ways to get a solution to their legal problem and you will need to come up with more new ways to tell them you are still their best option.

Having answered the difficult questions within your own firm, you may find the answers easier.

The big brands and new legal service providers have no secret tricks or magic formulae they use to win business. They just use marketing management best practice to present the benefits of the services they offer to the client they want for their business. And you can do the same for you chosen target client groups, for the services you offer, in your chosen area of the country.

All the tools and techniques they use are available to your firm and with a little effort and thinking are not that difficult to use. To start with you must have a well-maintained database of past clients that you can use for promotions.

Your fee earners and staff will need to be able to confidently present the benefits of the services your firm offers and your firm must have a clear idea of who you want as clients in the future.

At your next partners meeting use this article as the basis for a debate on what you are really, actually doing to secure the future of your business.

Alastair Moyes is a director at Marketlaw and co-author of Marketing Legal Services, the current marketing handbook from Law Society Publishing

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Quality solicitors for all

Alastair Moyes

Sunday, 31 July 2011

Having followed the QualitySolicitors debate in the Gazette you may feel we have been in a type of ‘phoney war’ for the past couple of years. Now the battle for the domestic and SME legal services sectors has started with the launch of QS’s Legal Access Points in WHSmiths around the country. The ferocity of the debate around QS on these blogs clearly highlights the two sides of the arguments (see the comments after any blog that mentions QS).

However the battle analogy doesn’t help QS or non-QS firms think about their marketing and promotions. QS firms have made a strategic decision to use a third-party brand to convey the benefits of the services they offer. There are similar promotional initiatives like Blakemores’ ‘Lawyers2you’ in the Midlands or groups like highstreetlawyer.com and others. Some firms have retail outlets in city centres or choose to promote their services effectively and efficiently in other ways. However, QS’s is the biggest assault on the public’s consciousness of legal services as it will be backed by television advertising and a celebrity launch.

This is the start of clear, overt competition for the attention of the public and SMEs for their choice of where they go for legal services advice. There is an old ad agency truism that fits well in this situation that can help all firms look at their future position. It comes from the USA’s advertising competition in the 1950s over soap power advertising: 'if one business advertises their soap powder, all soap powder sales rise'.

The fight is not exclusively between providers of legal services. It’s more a battle to get the public and SMEs to think about where they buy their legal services. If our current £10bn (guesstimate) legal services market grows because of QS and other businesses promotions, then all firms can benefit. But only if they promote their services effectively and efficiently in their areas, as a viable alternative for potential clients. This competition between providers becomes a well-known commercial task of gaining (or losing) market share (think of the newspaper and magazine market’s competitiveness).

Marketing management offers many ways to analyse and plan a response to the new market conditions. You could compete head-on or use other promotional techniques to gain market share that suits your budget. One of the most important aspects of deciding which way to go is something we have been working on with both a QS firm and many non-QS firms.

Our experience shows that changing the internal organisation of a firm to focus on clients’ needs is the essential element of future competitiveness. A firm that evolves its services to quickly and satisfactorily deliver the benefits of legal services to their clients will remain a profitable business.

To achieve that firms need an accurate database of past clients and promotional materials that focus on the benefits of their services for identified target client groups. Capturing client inquiries and retaining them as future clients means ensuring your internal organisation allows easy client access into your firm and follows-up closed matters with relevant communications about further services.

QS is using a loyalty card scheme which is not a unique idea of solicitors but how would your firm match or compete with that in your local area?

All of this is about competition between solicitors firms with or without a brand. We’ve not mentioned the other competitors like the Co-op, Halifax, other banks, insurance companies and new entrants. These businesses are after your current and past clients and are ‘battle hardened’ marketing machines.

The raw commercial realities of winning and maintaining a competitive market share are here. Without a clear marketing management approach, firms are likely to be trampled underfoot in the charge towards the future profitable clients.

Alastair Moyes is a director at Marketlaw and co-author of Marketing Legal Services, the current marketing handbook from Law Society Publishing

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What you don’t know about your clients

Alastair Moyes

Monday, 4 July 2011

The Legal Services Board’s independent consumer panel has produced some good research in their recently published Tracker Survey 2011.

These results build on the ideas about how to use research in my blog post from February, ‘Consumer research: will it tell you all?’.

The FT and the Managing Partners Forum also published some research in the commercial sector that helps highlight the changes needed in a more competitive market.

Both pieces of research can be used to help firms plan for the future with a wider view of the market for their services.

From the inside of a solicitors firm it is often difficult to get a good understanding of the public and businesses’ use and views of solicitors and the service they offer.

The discussion between solicitors and in the legal sector talks about clients and services as an amorphous lump but this misses the distinct segmentation of the consumer market.

Understanding that segmentation is a vital part of successful marketing and promotions.

By marketing, I mean how you organise your firm to serve clients’ needs and promotion being the communications methods used to promote your services.

Focusing on the client, their needs or requirements and the competition or the alternatives a potential client can choose between makes the LSCP’s research useful.

It provides an understanding of how the market should be broken down into suitable segments for your firm to use.

This is necessary because of the entirely different approach in marketing terms for each segment.

Commercial versus domestic, personal injury versus probate, first-time home buyers versus elderly house sellers and so on, into every service type and client group in your firm.

One of the things we can do is gauge the levels of inputs in terms of time, effort and money, required for different clients groups across the services offered.

Sixty-70% of people choosing a solicitor went by some form of recommendation, therefore a similar proportion of the firms marketing effort should be towards re-enforcing recommendation.

Looking at the next level down in the details, just over half (56%) of the total was a personal recommendation and half of that was because they’d used the firm previously.

This is the evidence need to explain why your past clients should be the highest priority in promotional effort.

The research is less helpful in some areas where the terms used, like ‘reputation’, are too wide or undefined.

Reputation is the highest ‘choice factor’ when choosing a solicitor at 81% followed by ‘specialist in area’ (of law) 73%, ‘speed of delivery’ 72%, local office 71%, and price 70%.

What important here is the clients’ view of your firm and not the strict definition of each term.

We can use these results to check your firm’s promotional leaflets and website.

How does that promotional wording present the benefits of your firm’s services in the terms people or businesses want to see?

When reading about your firm’s services, how can a client understand that the reputation of your firm is a benefit to them?

Then repeat that question replacing ‘reputation’ with the other ‘choice factors’ listed in the survey.

If a potential client can’t easily see how the benefits of the services you offer fits with their situation you are likely to lose them to a competitor that does.

The Tracker Survey and other good research is an excellent way to get a non-solicitors’ view of legal services.

Use it to help your firm retain your current clients and gain new clients and matters.

Alastair Moyes, Marketlaw

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Branding with hot irons?

Alastair Moyes

Wednesday, 25 May 2011

‘Brand’ is a widely used description that covers many things in a lot of marketing areas and means many things to many people.

Focusing on your firm’s brand is one way (of many ways) to manage the marketing process within your firm.

From a marketing management point of view for solicitors there are several ideas we need to look at to understand how to use branding techniques for legal services.

Your firm’s ‘brand’ is a tool, like a vehicle for delivering the idea of potential benefits to carefully chosen target client groups.

The aim is to manage, influence or plant in the head of your target markets, a variable set of thoughts that ‘pop-up’ when a potential client arrives at a situation that should involve legal or associated advice.

The size of the potential market you want to influence will then dictate the media and promotional channels you will need to use.

Large markets means TV ads and other national media, like PI enquiries. Small markets mean using more targeted media like direct mail or other promotional methods.

A person thinks, ‘I should ask a solicitor about this…’ is the point that brands come into play.

How will that person, given their individual circumstances and the legal issue they have, choose the solicitor or alternative supplier to contact?

It depends on what they know already, based on the last legal brand they heard of, mixed with personal experience, recommendation and a whole host of other influencing factors.

National brands like Quality Solicitors, The CoOp or services like Wigster.com may be in with a chance since they promote themselves widely.

But if the person’s problem is with equine law in a rural area and they read Horse & Hound magazine, other firm’s brands may offer more fitting benefits.

Your firm, represented by a name or logo presents different benefits for each potential client that knows of you. Having the word ‘solicitor’ in your firm’s name is an essential part of your brand.

For brand and marketing purposes, you will need to divide potential future clients into meaningful groups.

Initially, consumer or commercial followed by all the sub-categories representing the service you offer.

Once in groups you can assess which future services they could be interested in and devise a communications plan that delivers the idea of the potential benefits of your services.

We would all like to do one to one promotions but it’s too costly. Using a brand, whether bought in or developed by your firm, becomes the potential clients ‘easy handle’ to put on your firm.

The collective marketing processes, alongside other promotional methods (advertising, direct mail, PR) all contribute to the perceived value of your firms services in the mind of each potential future client.

It’s important to remember the main value in your firm’s brand is delivering valuable legal service solutions to your current clients.

Using brand management techniques aims to maintain and enhance the past clients or potential new client’s view of the benefits you can deliver.

Recommendation is still by far the best way to gain profitable work and your previous clients are a valuable source of recommendations. Your firm’s reputation for delivering excellent legal services is one part of your brand presentation.

As we are all aware, there are other information sources not in your control (recommendation, gossip, web, media) that will have an influence on your firms brand in the minds of potential future clients.

The word ‘solicitor’ is a powerful brand but it is at the mercy of the media.

For brands bad publicity is bad publicity.

Branding is part of the marketing management approach for any commercial organisation.

Brand management can present tricky problems. What does ‘Halliwells’ stand for now as an extreme example.

The vital part of branding for a successful firm is to know who you want as future clients and what it is you want to say to them through all forms of marketing communications.

An essential part of that understanding of future clients is your firm’s database of past or potential future clients, it’s accuracy and usability for promotional purposes.

Without a good database you will be wasting a considerable proportion of your advertising budget on attempting to influence people who will never buy your services.

To use your firm’s brand effectively and efficiently really means looking carefully at what you want to say to potential clients and how you will communicate with them.

Get the marketing management right and your firms brand value will follow.

Start doing something about your firms marketing and brand now because there are many trusted and valued brands competing for your future matters now and more to come with ABS.

As an example, think about BT or M&S and the thoughts occur to you having heard their name.

Did it also occur to you to pop into M&S on the way home or did you decide to use a different retailer?

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Tools or techniques?

Alastair Moyes

Monday, 28 March 2011

When presented with the ‘next big thing’ in legal services marketing there is a good question to ask at the outset that will help you gain the best for your firm.

Is the latest idea a tool for marketing and promotions or a technique of marketing management?

This is an important distinction to make. In our work with firms we see a tendency for solicitors firms to buy in ‘tools’ for marketing and promotion but then fail use them fully or often ‘get hold of the wrong end’.

Marketing management involves the application of techniques that uses the appropriate tools to achieve the planned results in the same way as the accounting or IT systems contribute towards practice management.

Solicitor firms often go straight to the end product of the marketing management process, such as buying Yellow Pages advertising, renewing the website and wanting to achieve a ‘high profile for the firm’s brand’.

Doing things without a coherent strategy may get short-term limited results but it is putting the cart before the horse.

If the partner responsible for marketing starts with the questions ‘who are our clients?’ ‘what services do we offer to them profitably?’ and ‘where do we want our firm to be in 2 years time?’, then the analysis of ‘the next big thing’ becomes a lot easier.

‘Does this idea help us achieve our business aims?’ when considering a marketing tool then becomes the first criteria for consideration of it’s value to your firm.

In the current legal services market tools include services like Direct Law, Certainty and group brands.

Many are worth considering. but what makes the difference is how you integrate the tools into your firm.

Buying any tool is the start of a process.

Achieving a return on investment can only come with proper use.

There are a few examples from marketing and other areas in solicitors firms.

In the 1990’s the tools firm’s bought were IT based practice and case management systems. From 2000 or so firms bought websites.

I would suggest firms already have all the tools for running a successful business so why is everyone so worried about ‘Tesco law’ or, more realistically, the Co-Op’s Legal Services and other big brand offerings?

Two issues arise that can help you assess a new tool. First, control within a firm and second, the communications gap between firms and their clients.

On the first issue, ask who controls the tools is often an internal politics debate, a cost concern or lack of clear policy?

‘Should all our fee earners be using Linkedin, Facebook and Twitter?’ or ‘how can we train our fee earners and support staff to confidently promote the benefits of the services we offer?’.

In general, firms should have a system that allows the efficient and effective use of all promotional tools by anyone in the firm capable of using them properly.

The communications gap is a huge challenge for most firms. Potential clients aren’t aware of the benefits of the range of services your firm offers.

The current Big Brand Competition are rapidly filling the clients knowledge void with accessible and clearly priced services and the new ABS firms will only add to this promotional information stream.

If ‘the next big thing’ helps you fill-in the communications gap with promotions that bring clients to your firm then it’s worth considering the costs.

But remember that it will be an expensive adornment if you fail to allow everyone to use the tools purchased and make sure you’ve got hold of the right end and pointing it in the right direction.

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Where IT systems are failing

Alastair Moyes

Tuesday, 1 March 2011

It’s the Legal IT exhibition this week so I write this with some trepidation as I’m about to make a general criticism of a significant area of solicitors business practise.

I’ll get my mitigation in first. What I’m about to outline is our experience of solicitors’ IT systems and how they work with marketing management objectives.

I’m sure there are lots of firms that have great practice and case management systems that they have worked hard to perfect.

The problem is, the IT systems we come across mostly don’t work well when it comes to marketing management information and use for promotions.

It not just the software systems’ fault but a combination of the firm’s approach to using IT systems and the software suppliers ability to deliver a ‘complete solution’.

While practice and case management elements may deliver an increase in productivity and a reduction in management costs for firms in areas they fully understand, when it comes to marketing management the systems are not yet delivering the higher level of useful information that firm will need in the face of increased competition.

Solicitors IT solutions have been developed between what IT and software can deliver mixed with what solicitors have asked for.

Since most firms historically have not needed marketing management information, it has not been a central part of software systems.

Given that the approach of the new competition in the legal services market is centred on complex and highly evolved customer relationship management systems (CoOp, Halifax, Morethan insurance etc), solicitors will need to catch up quickly in order just to be able to maintain a meaningful relationship with their valued clients.

The situation we find ourselves in, and that most firms face, is the need for accurate client information and an easy way to use it for promotions.

All the systems I’ve come across suffer from two main problems.

The accuracy of the information in the database, which I considered before Christmas, and the ability to extract the information from the system in a usable form.

The first requires better client information gathering and storage by the fee earners.

The second needs to be addressed by the software suppliers.

The client and their future needs must become central to data records in a way that allows firms to easily understand their clients and promote their services to specific client groups accurately.

The solution to these problems need not be complicated or expensive.

We have found several ways to address these issues with training and minor IT system changes.

However the most difficult thing to achieve, like all change, is to get the people to change their working habits or at least understand why it’s important.

If you are at the exhibition this week or talking to your software vendor, ask them how they can help you improve the quality of your database.

Accurate and timely client records is the most important marketing asset and something the whole firm will benefit from given the SRAs move to OFR.

If you think your database is in good working order, get a printout of client contact records for the past year and see how reliable the name fields are.

Think if you would be happy to do a letter mailing to that list. How much additional time would it take to clean out all the duplications and extraneous inclusions?

IT systems can be a hugely valuable asset, far and above the case and practice management benefits, IF they are managed and used correctly.

IT businesses need to be better at delivering client focused system and solicitors firms need to focus more clearly on client contact records.

The new competition are already using these type of systems to tempt your clients away, start now to change your firms ways.

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Consumer research: will it tell you all?

Alastair Moyes

Tuesday, 8 February 2011

Recent consumer and market research, with the debates they foster, reminded me to be careful when looking at and using research findings. There are two quotes that are worth keeping in mind when looking at research data and reports; both are currently relevant to the legal services market.

Research that is well planned and uses a wide and large sample size can provide valuable tools for you to use in planning how you run your business.

Henry Ford is reported to have said: ‘If I’d have asked the customers, they’d have asked for a faster horse.’

The legal services market is changing with a driving force that is from the supply side. This is a distinction I have covered in previous articles but is worth repeating. The consumers of legal services are not asking for change and in general know little about it. What they do want is a solution to their legal problem.

To prosper in the new legal services market you need to tell the consumer what they can have. Good consumer research indicates how and why the consumer buys legal services. You can use that to see how your firm can change its services and promotions to meet that demand.

On the demand side, the buying behaviour of legal services consumers in the runup to alternative business structures has changed very little so far. The ‘faster horse’ versus a car fits with the choice your firm has: ‘Do we continue in the traditional manner or attempt to reinvent ourselves.’ I’d suggest you need to consider both approaches, depending on which set of clients you want to provide services for in the future.

If the clients want a faster horse or a new way of getting from point A to point B, it’s up to you to tell them the benefits of using your firm’s services in comparison to the alternative they can find.

How to use consumer research in your firm leads on to the second quote. David Ogilvy provides a good starting point. He is reported to have said: ‘Research, they use it as a drunkard uses a lamp post – for support, rather than for illumination.’

Much of the debate around research falls into a discussion polarised between ‘this supports our position’ to the ‘this is rubbish and we should ignore it’. But this doesn’t help you plan you business. Illumination is the key point for me: ‘What is it that our future clients want from us?’ As we head into the potentially darker days of increased competition and changing market needs, we can use reliable research to reveal a way forward.

What is it that our clients want from us or our competitors? Since this is a brave new world anything is possible, but can we use the research to plan for a profitable business?

If the research comes from an independent source with a large sample size and well-designed questions, it will provide that valuable illumination to make business decision by.

The discussions within your firm need to focus on the changing expectations or requirements of clients and how your services meet those needs alongside the alternative a consumer has to choose from.

I would suggest that the only wrong conclusion, as David Ogilvy suggests, is a ‘continue as we are’ strategy. The market on both supply and demand sides will continue to change rapidly – innovation and development must be seen as a continuous process, informed by good research evidence.

We should not dismiss other research information, but it’s worth looking closely at how the questions are worded and the sample size to understand any bias that might have crept in.

You may run your own client surveys that provide useful feedback on your services, but that is not consumer research since the sample is small and already biased towards the firm.

Both Henry Ford and David Ogilvy had a view of their business’s future and built profitable businesses on that by satisfying customer needs profitably. You know your current clients but where will the future clients come from if your services do not match their needs?

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