Ever notice how what you think is true anecdotally, is the furthest from the truth in reality?
Let me give you an example of what I mean. If you are the person in your firm who randomly takes calls from prospects and are the one expected to make appointments, it may seem that when you ask how the prospect heard of your firm, every other prospect says, “The Yellow Pages.” Your conclusion is then that most of your leads come from the Yellow Pages.
However, when you pull reports for three months, you see that while the Yellow Pages is a good lead source , it’s not your leading lead source. There is nothing like true, real facts to tell the whole story.
Inspecting the data in your firm is vital. Each department head in your law firm should be able to rattle off numbers like these. But if it’s just you and a staff person, at the very least, you should know how and where you can access this information.
Why? The data will offer a powerful story to tell about your collections, the efficacy of your marketing efforts and the consistency of your leads. However, your number of “shows” also tells a story that could not only save you money but offer a huge opportunity to increase your revenue through more hires.
Take a look at it this way. If you can analyze your leads and know their origin, you can then drill down deeper and determine not only which lead sources produced more “shows” but also which lead sources produced more hires for your particular firm.
Consequently, armed with this kind of data and results, you may choose to invest more frequently in that lead source, invest fewer dollars in leads that do NOT produce winners and find additional lead sources with similar demographics of the leading lead source.
These data results also beg additional questions: Can we be doing something differently with this lead source to improve our results? Do we need to communicate with these leads more efficiently? Will this lead source’s leads respond better to direct mail? Without the data and results, questions such as these do not make any sense.
The bottom line is KNOW your leads and KNOW your results. The next move is to know which questions are the right questions to ask and finally, remembering to make the necessary adjustments to maximize your marketing dollars.
Find out how well YOUR firm is working. Click here to have a free analysis done for your firm today.
