Are you a woman partner who is interested in growing her practice in 2010? Joining the Women Rainmakers Roundtable is a proven way to do it. The next Women Rainmakers Roundtable starts in March. For more information visit Roundtable

If you would like to be considered for membership in the Roundtable, please contact Danielle Donaldson at: donaldson@clientfocus.net

Start the New Year Off Right

If you're floundering as you make plans to develop more business in 2010, pick up a copy of my book, "Bringin' in the Rain," and let me help you put the pieces together. "Bringin' in the Rain" is available on Amazon.com, where it's rated as a five-star book.
 

What's Your Plan for Growing Your Business in the Year Ahead?

Want your business development efforts to be more successful in the year ahead? Take an hour or two during the next week to focus on how you want to build your business. Focusing on these four questions will help you avoid what I call "to do" list marketing -- random acts of lunch, conference attendance and speaking engagements. Your answers to the following questions will help you create a strategic road map for effective and efficient marketing in 2010.

1. What happened last year?

Before deciding what you want to accomplish in the year ahead, review what happened in the past year. Analyze where your new business came from. Did you receive the bulk of your work from existing clients or from referrals by one of your partners?

Consider the marketing activities you utilized in the last year -- the lunches hosted, articles written and networking functions attended. Which marketing activities resulted in business? Which didn't? Did work come from that speech you gave to a local industry group or from visiting with a client at his office? Which activities took relatively little time and resulted in work? Which ones were time-consuming and produced no work?

You may be surprised by what you'll learn.

When I asked a client to do this, she was surprised to discover that, despite all her external marketing efforts (and they were substantial), almost two- thirds of her business came from referrals from two of her partners. What's more, a few lunches with past clients produced better results than had all the hours she spent involved in bar activities.

2. What do you want to accomplish through your marketing in the coming year?

Do you want to get three new clients in the hospitality industry, develop two new referral sources from within the firm's real estate group or increase your originations by 15 percent?

Set one to two business development goals for the new year. Your goals should be as specific as possible and should typically include numbers and targets on which you'll focus.

3. Whom will you focus your marketing efforts on?

Who are the people that you need to be marketing to in order to achieve your goals? Come up with a list -- the more specific the targets, the better. Make sure you include past and current clients and people who have referred matters to you already. For most lawyers, these represent the best sources of new business. Don't even think about marketing to others until you consider these people first.

4. What activities will you engage in?

The marketing activities you pursue should be specifically tailored to the people you are marketing to. Do they need to know more about your expertise in handling construction-related disputes? Then schedule a lunch or office meeting to discuss this. Or send an article you wrote on the topic, with a personalized note indicating how the article is applicable to their business.

One-on-one relationship-building activities should be a key component of your plan. Activities that involve personal contact typically generate the "biggest bang" for your marketing efforts.

Make sure to commit to when you will do these activities. It's amazing how, despite the best of intentions, six months can slip by without your getting around to scheduling that lunch with a client. Calendar when you plan to do the activities you have chosen, and treat your commitment to develop your business as seriously as you treat the commitments you make to your clients.

Addressing these four questions in a systematic fashion can help you look for business in all the right places -- making your marketing easier and more effective in the coming year.

Here's to a very successful new year!