Are you really doing everything you can to get more clients?

A guest blog by Hannah Perryman of Consortium More than Marketing

Most professionals will say that they want more clients or want to grow their business. Whether that means attracting bigger clients, moving into different sectors, expanding geographically or recruiting more key people, are they truly doing all they can to achieve this?

I expect the answer is no.

Solicitors usually have several barriers standing in the way of conducting business development and self-promotion. These obstacles are often chargeable time, billing targets, compliance and demanding clients. But there is another barrier, which is that selling themselves or marketing is out of their comfort zone. We are all guilty of putting off the tasks that don’t sit comfortably with us, so it's not a surprise that booking that coffee meeting, attending a networking event or posting on LinkedIn gets put on the back burner.

Professionals should be honest with themselves and consider if they are really doing everything they can to win more business.

• Have you joined a number of local networking events that you attend regularly?
• Are you writing blog posts for your website each week/month?
• Are you consistently posting, commenting and liking posts on LinkedIn daily?
• Have you connected with your local radio station and asked to be an expert speaker?
• Are you following up on new enquiries and leads from previous months?
• Do you send press releases to your local newspapers?
• Are you meeting with your key business referrers to stay ‘top of mind’?
• Are you networking with other departments within your business to upsell?
• Do you know where your advertising spend is going?

Getting the balance right between fee-earning time, your professional development, keeping clients happy and marketing yourself as an expert in your field can be a tricky one.

But when you work in an industry that relies on personal relationships it is important to ensure that you are putting yourself out there as the face of the business and the trusted individual who will be ‘doing the work’.

Raising your profile takes time. You cannot quickly ‘do some marketing’ to get yourself more clients. Instead, it must be a consistent and considered approach.

Bespoke Marketing Support & Training

With marketing activity often being left on the bottom of your ‘to-do’ list, instructing an agency is a good way to ensure that it becomes a priority - without the need to give up too much of your chargeable time.

After taking the time to understand your business plan and objectives, you can benefit from expert marketing advice and a bespoke plan that ensures your marketing activity doesn’t peak and trough throughout the year but provides you with a solid ground on which to raise your profile and in turn, win more clients.

Business Development for the Next Generation of Rain Makers

Business Development is key to the success of solicitors, but BD skills do not come naturally to everyone. This is why Consortium have developed a specialist BD Academy for those in the professional services industry.

The BD Academy is designed for the next generation of leaders in your business, to help them hone skills in networking, building relationships, presenting, cross-selling and marketing themselves online.

Often Partners and Directors simply do not have the time or specialist skills needed to mentor their younger or less senior staff. Yet of course they want to retain them, allow them to raise their profile, give them the resources they need to exceed targets and set them on the right track to thrive. Succession planning for professional services firms also needs to be prioritised, and the BD Academy is the ideal solution to tick all those boxes!

For more information on the BD Academy from Consortium please click here or call 01903530787