Sure, your consumer bankruptcy practice is probably chugging along nicely these days – foreclosures are up, the economy is in the tank, jobless numbers are piling up. So break out the bubbly, things are looking up for bankruptcy lawyers!
But wait a minute . . . are you growing your practice relative to your competition? Has your market share grown over the past few months, or are you still getting your piece of the pie?
Lately I’ve been seeing more and more new faces in bankruptcy court. Lawyers with one case to every ten that the established filers have. Not such a big problem, but come back next month and they’ve got 3 and the volume filer has 8. The month after that, the newbie’s got 5 and the volume filer has 6.
Best case scenario for many bankruptcy lawyers is that they hold onto the status quo, filing the same number of cases as last month. But all around them, new lawyers are starting a bankruptcy practice and taking all the new market gains.
No joke – this is happening in my local bankruptcy court. The market for bankruptcy lawyers is exploding and these well-known practitioners are doing worse than they did last year!
Business marketing blog After the Launch pointed me to a recent story by Michael Port that serves to highlight what you need to do.
A blind man is sitting on the steps of a building. By sit feet sits a hat and a sign that reads, “I am blind, please help.” The hat is empty save for a few stray nickels and dimes.
A marketer happens across the scene and stops to watch for a few minutes. Noticing the constant stream of people rushing past without stopping in front of the blind man, he silently (and without permission) picks up the sign and rewrites it. Then, still silent, he walks off.
That afternoon the marketer returned to the blind man and noticed that his hat was full of bills and coins.
The blind man recognized his footsteps and asked if it was he who had rewritten his sign and wanted to know what he had written on it.
The marketer responded, “Nothing that was not true. I just wrote the message a little differently.” He smiled and went on his way.
The new sign read: Today is Spring and I cannot see it.
The message is clear – you need to do something new, something different, in order to shake up your practice. Often we don’t do that for fear of losing what market share we have, but that’s a mistake – it denies us the ability to continue to evolve as consumer bankruptcy lawyers, to grow beyond the confines of our current limits.
You need to change your strategy if you want to get more from your practice. If we always do what we’ve always done, we’ll always get what we’ve always gotten.
Some ideas for change? Look at your online marketing and learn about how you can improve your search engine position.
Develop a tractor beam or two. Get people to opt into your list and market via email.
Hire a direct response graphic designer to punch up your Yellow Pages ad. Better yet, ditch the ad and start from scratch with something topical and geared towards providing information and value.
Have a friend pose as a potential client and figure out where your customer service holes can be patched. Make it easier for people to hire you.
Don’t be paralyzed with fear, take the opportunity. You’ll be glad you did.
Image courtesy of Ségozyme.
