In October’s magazine, I focused on the first step of the 5-Step Plan for Building a Process Dependent Law Firm – creating the organization chart of your future business to use as a strategic growth tool. It’s the blueprint of your law firm in terms of its positions.
This month I am focusing on step #2, listing and organizing all of your firm’s procedures to create a blueprint of your business in terms of its processes.
In this step, you will IDENTIFY all of the processes of your firm. Don’t worry about documenting them at this point. At first, you need to understand the scope of the project ahead of you. What are all of the processes that need to be written?
• all of the sales and marketing processes,
• all of the client fulfillment and customer service processes,
• all of the financial and administrative processes, and
• all of the leadership and management procedures.
You’re about to create the ‘systemic infrastructure’ of your business – a blueprint or picture of your business in terms of its processes.
How to identify all of Your Business Processes
I want you to think about your business in a new way. I want you to rise above the landscape and think of your business as having four key functions
4 Key Functions:
Sales/Marketing
Strategy/Management
Finance/Administration
Operations
1. Getting the Business – all of your sales and marketing processes.
2. Doing the Business – all of your processes for delivering on the promise made during the sale; processes for client fulfillment, production and customer service. All of the processes that directly relate to what you do for your clients.
3. Running the Business – The processes that go on behind the scenes such as invoicing, paying your bills, collections, hiring and firing, preparing financial statements, budgeting, and cash fl ow projections. Essentially all of your financial, administrative, human resources and IT processes.
4. Guiding the Business – And finally, the strategic processes for leading, managing, and guiding your business from where you are today to where you want to get to.
In the simplest of terms, there are really only 4 core activities that can happen in a business. You’ve got to get the sales, deliver on the promise, collect and pay for the goods and services performed, and you’ve got to guide and manage things to get to where you want to go as described in your Strategic Vision.
Process Identification – GETTING the Business (Sales and Marketing)
You can start with any of the four key functions. I like to start with Sales and Marketing because that’s where business usually gets started. You’ve got to GET the business before you can start DOING the business.
Make a list of all the processes you use to attract, develop, and convert leads into long term loyal customers. Remember, we are only considering the processes that are part of your Sales and Marketing Key Function.
Organize your list into 3 categories or sub-functions:
1. Marketing Strategy
2. Advertising and Lead Generation Activities
3. Nurturing and Sales Conversion Activities
HINT: If you log into your TouchStone account, click on one of the four key functions, like GETTING the Business, and click on the [Library] button, you can view a list of sample processes for this key function.
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Marketing Strategy: This is a clear understanding of your ideal prospects or clients, who they are, how they think & behave and where they’re located. When you have a definitive understanding of who your best prospects are, you can create a message that will attract them to you in your Lead Generation activities. Marketing Strategy is all about creating that message as well as determining the proper channels where your prospects will see or hear that message. It also includes the development of your brand and the creation of a marketing plan to make it all happen.
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• What are all the processes you use for planning out and developing your brand and your advertising and sales strategies including understanding the demographics of your ideal clients?
• Do you research your competition?
• Do you do client surveys to understand why your clients chose your firm?
List everything you can think of.
Remember: All the activities listed should be the strategic activities of your selling process – the processes for developing your brand, including the words used in your advertising, and determining the appropriate channels where your ideal prospects will see those messages and graphics.
Advertising and Lead Generation: These are all the methods you use to get your marketing message out into the appropriate channels to develop an interest in your services. Examples of ‘marketing channels’ are billboard advertising, radio and television commercials, direct mail, word-of-mouth and referrals, sponsored search, organic search (often referred to as SEO), and other Internet and Social Media advertising. All of these are advertising or lead generation activities or processes.
What are all the methods that you use to generate leads? Think of things such as;
• word-of-mouth,
• referrals,
• telemarketing,
• direct mail or
• any type of advertising; radio, newspaper, signage for example.
Remember: All of the activities listed should be the activities used to generate leads. Once a lead is generated, the processes for qualifying, nurturing, and converting that lead into a client will be listed next.
Lead Nurturing and Sales Conversion: These are the processes for qualifying, nurturing, and converting the leads you generated into long-term loyal clients. The more effort you put into marketing strategy, advertising and lead generation, the easier it is to convert these qualified prospects and clients. Usually, when qualified prospects contact you, they’ve already made the subconscious decision to hire you. It is in the sales conversion process that you provide your prospect with the conscious justification to move forward with you, and not your competition.
Once a prospect is in contact with you;
• What do you do to get them to become a client?
• What are all of the methods you use to “close” or “convert” leads into new clients?
• Do you make a qualification call?
• Do you do free consults?
• Do you negotiate contracts?
Remember: All of the activities you list here should be the steps taken to nurture and convert a new lead into a long term, loyal client. If you’re finding that you have identified actions taken directly with existing clients, list them in the next section under Client Fulfillment.
For each of these sub-categories list everything you can think of. Use a separate line for each method or process identified. If you find yourself describing ‘how’ you do something, you may be providing too much detail at this point. You are only naming your processes in this stage – ‘What’ it is you do and not ‘How’ you do it:
To watch a great video on LifeCycle Marketing, go to this URL: http://bit.ly/SellingLifeCycle
Processes in this key function typically fall into a couple of different sub-functions:
1. Client Fulfillment
2. Customer Service
A moment ago, you identified the step in your firm that clearly identified that a ‘prospect’ had become a ‘client.’ In this KEY function, you are listing the processes that happen after that step.
Hint: If you log into your TouchStone account, click on the Key Function DOING the Business, and click on the [Library] button, you can view a list of sample processes for different types of Law Firms; including firms focusing on Personal Injury, Workers Compensation and Social Security. There is also a list of General Processes used in most businesses as well as a list of General Processes used in other types of law firms.
Client Fulfillment: These are the processes that you and your employees do every day to service your clients. These are the processes that are directly related to your clients in the fulfillment of the promises made during your selling process
Make a list of all the processes your firm uses to make sure everything is ‘On Time, Every Time, Exactly as Promised.’ Think of all the activities that are directly related to fulfilling the promise you made in the previous quadrant, Sales and Marketing – all the processes used by your firm to make sure you meet and exceed the expectations set during the sale.
- How do you make sure your service provides what you intended it to do, what you promised your new customer it would do?
- How do you know whether or not your company is performing to your client’s expectations?
- How do you innovate your services?
- What are the different processes you use to deliver your services to your clients? Do you meet in person or on the phone or both?
- How do you prepare or those meetings?
What is the agenda for each meeting?
Remember: All of the activities listed should be the processes used to deliver your services to meet or exceed your client’s expectations (the expectations that were set during the sales process).
Customer Service: This will be a list of all the processes that make sure your client receives the highest quality and the most consistent experience time and time again – the things you deliver to or do for your clients that go above and beyond what they expected.
• How do you know whether or not your clients are getting what they expected?
• What are the processes used to make sure the customer receives an experience which is above and beyond what they expected?
• What are your processes for handling customer complaints? Quality Assurance?
Again, list everything you can think of and, if you find yourself describing ‘how’ you do something, you may be providing too much detail at this point. You are only naming your processes in this stage – ‘What’ it is you do and not ‘How’ you do it.
Remember: All of the activities listed in this sub-function should be just the processes to ensure your clients receive the highest quality and the most consistent experience every time, exactly as promised.
Next month we will continue with Process Identification – Running the Business (Admin, Finance, HR and IT) and Guiding the Business (Strategy and Management). Creating your process list – PART 2 until next month, here’s to creating the firm you deserve! ◆
