Successful rainmakers have certain habits and characteristics in common that drive them to greater levels of success. These habits and characteristics manifest themselves as key behaviors and specific actions, and understanding how to implement these actions on a consistent basis will distinguish you from your competitors and increase your revenues.
1. Develop a Solid Personal Brand
For most attorneys, reputation is everything. It used to be that attorneys gained their reputations primarily through word-of-mouth and personal interaction. Today, building a reputation must contain an online element since this is where most people gather and interact.
A personal brand is the expression of your identity that answers the question of why clients should want to work with you. Having a niche is important in creating your personal brand. Plus, it is much easier to build your brand in a select niche than it is to stand out in a huge market like “attorneys”. Even online, it’s important for you to niche your practice in an area that can provide living, breathing clients for your practice.
2. Proactively Manage Digital Assets
What do prospects see when they type your name into a search engine? If it’s not much, that can often be as harmful as something negative. Here are some tips on managing your online reputation:
Update your website and social media profiles. Research shows that 76% of people searching for an attorney go online first, so your website and social media profiles are likely one of the first chances you will have to make a good first impression on a prospect. Be sure these are robust reflections of your expertise and the market you serve.
Create good, meaningful content. Wherever you are online – your law firm website, your blog, your social media networks – make sure you are creating and posting valuable and relevant content that your target prospects will find interesting and helpful.
Look and listen. Create a Google Alert for yourself and your firm so you can monitor what is being said. If you find something negative on a site that allows you to comment, do so professionally and unemotionally.
3. Aggressively Build Contacts
Having a great contact list is key to being an effective rainmaker. While you may not realize it, you probably have more contacts than you think. Not only do you have all the contact information of the people you have done business with, you can look at your email contact addresses and also get the email addresses of those individuals you are connected with on LinkedIn. Right off the bat this will give you a bigger database then you thought.
You can also begin to speak, attend networking events or create Free Reports that motivate people to give you their contact information in order to get valuable information back.
In addition, any time you meet someone or someone calls your office, get their contact information so you can begin to communicate with them on a regular basis in a meaningful way.
To succeed at building contacts, you need to err on side of inclusivity in all your interactions. Be clear on your follow-up systems, maintain a process for adding new contacts and regularly review contact lists for updates.
