For example, at present, in one digital marketing class in DkIT, I have professionals from the following businesses:

Don Keating Wholesale – Art Supplies Wholesaler in Dundalk

Clarus Press – Irish Legal Publishers

McArdle & Company – Dundalk Solicitors

Ovelle Pharmaceuticals – Skincare Specialists

Acorn Financial – Financial Advisers Dundalk

Flaming Leprechaun – Irish Spirits

O’Connor Roofing – Commercial and Agricultural Roofing Supplies

Mia Mullen Jewellery – Irish Jeweller and Goldsmith

Ardee Sports Company – Online Gun and Outdoor Sports Store

IKO Ireland – Roofing, Waterproofing and Insulation

Cross Selling to Existing Clients

It’s an undisputed fact in marketing a professional service, that it is between eight and eleven times easier and less expensive to do more business with an existing client than it is to recruit a new client. This is just one reason why it is so important for solicitors, accountants, architects and other professionals to cross sell your services. If you are not cross selling your firm’s services to existing clients, you are missing a very big opportunity. We can show you some simple and inexpensive techniques to make it easier for clients to use your other services.

Doing More Business with Existing Clients

Understanding the situation from your client’s perspective
Making introductions easy
Making it easy for your client to use more services
Making sure your clients know what other services you provide

A virtuoso violin performance goes unnoticed in a D.C. metro station. What marketing lessons can we learn?

Joshua Bell is one of the best violinists of our time, celebrated at every performance in concert halls throughout the world. In America, where he was born and grew up, his fame is even bigger. He’s probably the most famous violinist in the US . Every one of Bell’s performances sells out, usually within a few hours and seats are very rarely available for less than $100. He started taking violin lessons at the age of four after his mother discovered her son had stretched rubber bands across the handles of his dresser drawers, and was plucking out classical melodies he’d heard her play on the piano, playing by ear and moving the drawers in and out to vary the pitch. He’s talented, there’s no doubt about it.

I want to use this story about Joshua Bell to illustrate the point I often make when I speak to groups of professionals like solicitors and accountants. The point I want to make is that, to your clients, your expertise is invisible. They’re not knowledgeable enough about your area of expertise to make an informed judgement about how well you do your work. This story raises a few other points too, but we’ll get to that shortly.

One morning at rush hour in 2007, Joshua Bell took his €3.5 million violin, called the Gibson ex Huberman, from its case. This violin was handcrafted in 1713 by Antonio Stradivari and is one of the finest instruments on earth. Bell was dressed in jeans, a long-sleeve t-shirt and a Washington Nationals baseball cap, and he was standing in a Metro station in the heart of the government district of Washington DC. Over the next 45 minutes, posing as a busker, he played his heart out to a passing crowd of 1,070 commuters, in one of the most highly educated working environments in the USA . In 45 minutes, only seven people stopped to listen, even for a minute.

The organisers, Washington Post,  were certain that in a cultured city like DC, many people would recognise Bell’s talent and stop to listen. They thought the biggest problem would be crowd control and had even made contingency plans to get Bell out of there if things got out of hand. Who would have guessed that a 45 minute performance by one of the greatest violin virtuosos on earth, playing pieces by Schubert, Bach, Ponce and Massanet on one of the finest instruments ever made would cause only seven individuals to stop and listen. Seven people stopped. Bell made €32 in three quarters of an hour. In total, 27 people gave money, including the only person who recognised Joshua Bell. She listened for a few minutes and put €20 in his violin case. Most of his tips were given on the run from people who tossed a dollar or a few quarters into his violin case as they passed by.

What does this tell us about marketing a professional service? What does it tell us about how professionals are perceived? It tells us a few things. The first thing is that it’s not enough to be good at what you do. Even being exceptional at your work is not enough. You need to frame your service offering in a context that allows your customers to see its quality. You need to package your service in away that allows its quality to shine. Packaging includes, websites, information leaflets, signage, your offices, etc. You have to help people to see your worth and the quality of your work. Most people simply aren’t qualified to judge it for themselves. If you dress a $50,000 performer in t-shirt and jeans, he’ll be treated like any other busker. If you present excellent, even visionary professional advice in poor branding, shabby offices and tired websites, you’ll be viewed as just another old hack, because no matter how good your advice is, that’s what your business looks like.

The second thing is that being cheaper than the alternatives doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to get more attention or more uptake from your service. Joshua Bell packaged his performance cheaply: metro station, jeans, t-shirt, baseball cap. The passers by took him up on the cues he offered and treated his performance cheaply too. Three days before he played at the metro station, Bell had packed out Boston’s impressive Symphony Hall, where seats cost a lot more than $100 each. He probably made close to $1,000 per minute at his Boston performance, yet he earned $32 dollars in 45 minutes in Washington. Same performer, same skills, same talent but a radically different response and outcome. A professional service firm should never compete on price. You should add value, differentiate your service and build loyalty, repeat business and referrals. It’s easy to do this, if you know how. Here’s a video clip of the performance from the Washington Post.

1. Set aside a definite time for marketing
Set aside a definite time period every week to get started on your marketing. It doesn’t have to be very long, in fact you’re better off keeping it short and to the point. Start with one hour before lunch every Tuesday, or 40 minutes on Tuesday morning, followed up with 30 minutes on Thursday afternoon. Stick to your chosen schedule and you’ll soon start to see real progress. By setting aside just one hour a week, you’ll go from doing no marketing at all to 4 – 5 hours a month. This will make a big difference. For most professionals, marketing is something that gets done every once in a while when they get around to it. If you make it a regular part of your week you’ll create and compound a significant advantage over your non-marketing competitors, week after week, month after month.

2. Decide what type of business you want to attract
If you’ve never had a real marketing plan and never outlined the type of business you want to attract this means you’ve always been doing what other people wanted you to do, not what you wanted to do yourself. Think about it. If you don’t define the type of business you want to bring in and the type of client you want to have, you’ve just been reacting to other people’s expectations of what type of work you should do every time the phone rings or someone walks into your office. If you’ve decided to start doing some marketing and actively seeking new business, make sure you’re bringing in the business that you want to have. Examine the work you do at present. Ask yourself which work you enjoy most and which is your strongest practice area. These are your core strengths. You should concentrate on these areas and aim to attract new clients and new business in these areas. For the moment, forget about your other practice areas. If you are making a conscious effort to find new business, I can’t over emphasise the importance of making sure that it’s the type of business you want to have. You’ll soon find out that marketing works, and you definitely don’t want to bring in more work that you don’t want to do.

3. Make a plan and set some objectives.
You need to have a plan with some defined objectives. Even if your goals are modest, it’s important to have goals. Determine what you want to achieve, make a plan that will help you reach that goal and stick to the plan. If you need some help making a marketing plan, save yourself some time and money by giving me a call on +353 87 231 3090. I’ll be happy to help.

Notwithstanding the fact that the marketing element of the seminar was intended as an introduction, I was still a bit surprised when, during my presentation, while talking about communication and availability, I asked for a show of hands from the delegates on the following question: “Considering that it is now around 7.45pm on a Wednesday evening, if I phoned your office right now, would I get any answer whatsoever, mechanical or human?” Fewer than 50% of the hands were raised. It’s difficult to believe that in 2011, a majority of solicitors’ practices haven’t even got an answering machine. Now, I know that, in general, nobody likes talking to an answering machine, but at 7.45 in the evening anyone calling your office will expect to get an answering machine and they just want to leave a message. Sometimes, when your client has had a busy day and they still have something at the bottom of their to-do list, all they want to do is get an item off their list and on to someone else’s list. Your list, to be specific. Isn’t that the type of message you’d be happy to have waiting for you when you get into the office in the morning?

You need an answering machine. Get one today.

I have a quick message for every solicitor or law firm that hasn’t got an answering machine, answering service or a call divert in operation. Do something about it TODAY. You’re handing files to your competitors and you don’t even realise it. If there isn’t a way of leaving an out-of-hours message at your office, you need to fix that straight away.

In 14 years of working with law firms, accountants and other professional service firms, I’ve seen the benefits of sending newsletters time and time again. Every single one of the big firms and the medium-sized firms send a newsletter, in some cases several newsletters from different departments. They do this because newsletters work and because they can see results.

It has to be said that it’s much easier for the large firms to put a newsletter together and to send it out, they have marketing departments with the skills and resources to do it for them. Smaller solicitor and accountant firm find it more difficult. We make it easy for any law firm or accountancy practice to have a newsletter. Over the years, I’ve seen quite a few firms who have managed to put one issue of a newsletter together and send it out. The first issue is the easy one, you have all the time in the world to research it, draft it, edit, proof, design and publish; that’s easy. However, once the first issue is out, the clock starts ticking on the next issue and the next. That’s when it gets tricky. That explains why, among all the small firms who have published one and two newsletters in-house, I could count on one hand the firms who have reached a third issue in any semblance of timeliness or order.

Our newsletters work. We produce a topical and interesting update on all the recent developments and brand it with your logos, your name and your photographs. If you wish, and at no extra cost, you can add your own news items on the back page and in the “welcome” section. You can add local news, your own practice news, you can explore a topic that is of sectoral interest, make a special offer, outline more of your services or even share the cost of the newsletter by showcasing a sponsor or partner.

Our newsletters are produced to a standard that is much higher than anything you could produce yourselves, we take away all the hassle and we do it at a fraction of the cost. If you’ve been thinking about sending a client newsletter, now is the time to take action.

Email me, Pat McArdle today at pat@mcardle.ie or contact me directly on +353 87 231 3090