Would you be willing to ignore thousands of prospective clients in exchange for an audience of hundreds of prospective “ideal” clients?

Yes? Good. You understand marketing.

You know that in a vast, undifferentiated mass market, you need to focus.

You know it’s foolish and expensive to try to appeal to everyone. And it’s smart and profitable to craft a finely-tailored message to a select group of prospective clients whom you have identified as ideal for you and your practice.

You know that “law” is not a specialty. You know that your ideal client prefers (and will seek out and pay more for) the lawyer who specializes. You also know that they favor the lawyer who specializes in their niche, industry, or demographic group.

You know they want to work with a lawyer who understands them and has experience with clients like them. Your ideal client doesn’t want a lawyer who does everything, for anyone. They want you.

Of course you also know that marketing is much easier when you focus on niche markets. You know your expenses are less, your results are bigger and come sooner, your clients pay more and argue less, and you get lots of word of mouth referrals.

That’s what makes ideal clients ideal.

But your lawyer friends don’t want to hear this. They’re afraid that if they focus, they’ll lose business. So they pretend it’s not true and continue to waive a giant flag that says “call us, we’re lawyers” and wonder why they can’t compete with lawyers who focus.

No, your lawyer friends don’t get this, but that’s okay. You do. And you can get rich while they stubbornly compete with thousands of new lawyers who enter their market each year and fight with them for clients who are anything but ideal.

Do them a solid. Tell them what I’ve told you and taught you. Send them to me and let me enlighten them. Most won’t listen. But hey, you can still be friends.

Here’s how to focus so you can earn more and work less

I played a lot of poker in college. I wasn’t necessarily a great player but I usually won because I got a few things right.

One thing I got good at was bluffing. Poker teaches you that you don’t have to have “the goods” (the best hand) to win the pot, as long as the other players think you do. In a law practice, we call that “faking it” until you make it.

You can get clients and win cases if you sound like you know what you’re doing, even when you don’t. But like poker, you can’t bluff all the time. If you do it too much, you’ll eventually get caught.

Do what you have to do as a new lawyer to get your practice started, but get some help when you’re in over your head. And whatever you do, make sure your clients don’t know how much you don’t know.

Poker also taught me that you don’t have to always win the big pots to win the game. You can do nicely by winning a preponderance of small to medium-size hands and letting the other players fight over the long shots. Some players in our game went hard after the biggest pots and while they sometimes won them, their net for the night was often a big loss.

By contrast, I almost always walked away from the table a winner. I did the same thing in my law career, focusing on small to medium-sized cases. They didn’t bring me many of the biggest pots, but I didn’t have any great losses, either.

The biggest thing poker taught me about marketing is that you don’t have to be a great player, you just have to be better than the other players at the table. Apparently, that’s how I was able to do so well.

In building a law practice, you may have a large number of competitors, but most of them aren’t very good at marketing. You can beat them by getting good at a few key marketing strategies. If you’re a little better at getting referrals, for example, you can become a “top player” in your market.

You can let others spend big on advertising and chase the big prizes while you consistently go home a winner.

The best way to get good at getting referrals

You’ve probably heard the expression, “Faster, better, cheaper–pick two”. No, it’s not advice for choosing a girlfriend, it comes from project management circles and is sometimes referred to as the “Iron Triangle”.

You can’t have all three benefits, the theory says, so pick the two you want most. You can have something done faster and better but it’s going to cost more. If you want it better and cheaper, it will take more time. You can get it done quickly and inexpensively but it won’t be as good.

This may be true in the engineering and project management world but is it true everywhere? Is it true with respect to legal services?

I say it’s not. I say a lawyer can deliver all three.

You can create good work product quickly. Actually, in my experience, doing the work quickly often produces a better work product. When I write or prepare for a talk, for example, working quickly usually leads to a better first draft.

In fact, lawyers should make “speed” a cornerstone of their proposition. Let your clients know that they can not only count on you to deliver high-quality work, you’ll deliver it expeditiously.

Isn’t that what clients want? Good results delivered quickly?

Quality and speed. That’s two of the three. What about cheap?

Don’t let that word throw you. The more accurate word is “value”. They get more value from you than from other lawyers.

Your services aren’t cheap. You don’t have the lowest fees. You don’t compete on “price”. You’re not a “discount lawyer”. Just the opposite. You are “a bit more expensive, but worth it”.

And that’s where the value comes in.

You deliver high-quality services quickly and your clients get more value from you than from other lawyers.

That’s your promise. That’s your challenge.

Faster. Better. Cheaper (more value). That’s the lawyers’ “Golden Triangle”.

Crafting your marketing plan and message: go here

I heard from the lawyer who prompted my first post about the costs of opening your own law office. He said he realizes he will likely always be low man on the totem pole at the firm that employs him and says “we all need to own our own shop”.

He offers this advice to the lawyer I wrote about yesterday who also wants to go out on his own: “View the job as a temporary gig–a placeholder until he gets some of his own clients. [C]lient development comes first. The job–the boss–comes second. That mentality and your advice have made a tremendous difference in my life.”

“Marketing is everything” has always been a plank in my law-practice-building platform and it is as true for employees as it is for the self-employed.

It is also a corollary of my position that we are all self-employed.

You may currently work for a firm but if you have the ability to attract clients, you have the power. You can take your marketing skills and those clients with you to another firm or open your own.

If you work for a firm, think about things from their perspective. They can always hire attorneys to do the legal work and if that’s all you do, no matter how well you do it, they can always replace you. What they can’t replace is your ability to bring in lots of clients and keep them happy.

You either do this or you do not. If you don’t, you shouldn’t expect your employer to pay you more than is required to keep you from quitting.

They’re not going to pay you more because they like you or you’ve been with them a long time. We still live in a capitalist society. There are no unions for lawyers. Your compensation is proportionate to the value you bring to the firm.

If you want to earn more and have other benefits afforded to the partners, you have to do more. If you do, and you still aren’t compensated at the level you deserve, pick up your marbles and go play somewhere else.

Because we are all self-employed.

Marketing is easier when you know The Formula