5 More Errors and Blunders That Can Cripple Your Success
In a previous post I talked about 5 business errors you can make in your practice that can cripple its success and how you can avoid them. Most businesses fail, and you don’t want yours to be one of them! You want it to grow and thrive!
So to help you out even more, I have come up with 5 more errors and blunders that you can avoid in order to succeed.
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- Ineffective Marketing Strategies
You come up with a great idea for a page on your web site, ad in a publication, or e-mail to your list. You read about the strategy somewhere and it sounded great! We’ve all been there! But if you undertake any marketing strategy without clarity about the audience it is for and without a compelling and effective call to action, you can be wasting resources (time and money).
Before you undertake any marketing, you should be sure that you are targeting your efforts to your ideal, avatar clients for new business, referral or an upsell to another service. To do this, you should identify two or more of your most productive marketing campaigns for better ROI. You should ask yourself questions like:
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- Are you using AI to refine your marketing content?
- Have you raised prices?
- Are you speaking the right language of the customer at that level?
All of this can work to make your already successful marketing work harder for you and make you more money. By being strategic about your marketing, you should track the performance of everything, then do more of what works, and less of what doesn’t.
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- Overlooking Employee Training
Hiring someone, giving them rudimentary instructions in how to do their jobs, and then letting them loose is what a lot of businesses and practices do. Don’t let that be you! Well trained, skilled team members can amplify success many times over, while stagnant or underdeveloped and suboptimal employee skills hinder innovation.
The solution here is to have a robust onboarding program for new hires and to invest in ongoing training. Disney retrains its staff every 30 days! But do training (or let them attend training) that’s truly designed to give the team member in your firm an edge. Target that training to help them gain new or deeper knowledge or skills in specific areas of their jobs.
Set aside some time to develop a training plan that addresses key skill gaps in your team members.
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- Failing to Adapt to Market Changes
Things are changing constantly in the business world and in the legal industry. You need to be adaptable. This is the Red Queen Hypothesis which posits that you have to run as fast as you can in order to stay in one place. The problem is that sticking to old ways can lead to obsolescence while a hungry competitor keeps innovating and designing for the new reality and slowly dominating your market for your services.
You can avoid this mistake by staying flexible, monitoring trends and information in your marketplace and with your current and possible future clients, and being dogmatically but selectively responsive to trends. By being aware of the changes around you, you are in a better position to respond to those changes in a way that keeps your firm up to date.
By way of example, Netflix thrived by pivoting away from DVD rental by mail to streaming, while Blockbuster didn’t and failed. Also look at what happened to Blackberry, which refused to believe that people wanted touchscreens, and even when they grudgingly did, didn’t pivot effectively. It’s extinction from failing to adapt.
To avoid this mistake, you should look at what’s going on in your practice area every quarter. Check out your competitors and what they’re doing. How are their web sites? Social media presence? Are they doing something new? Then look for ways in which you can adapt.
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- Poor Project Management
Disorganization in the handling of legal matters in your practice can cause delays and increased costs, along with slowing down the velocity of your money. It can even lead to malpractice suits if you’re not careful!
To avoid making this blunder, you need to utilize effective project management or case management tools. Whether you use Asana or Monday.com, or industry specific platforms like Clio or MyCase, having systems and tools in place that help keep things moving in an organized and timely fashion, is critical.
Implement a case management tool, if you haven’t already, ASAP.
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- Not Securing Sufficient Capital To Survive and Thrive
Many businesses fail because of poor financial planning. They don’t adapt their cash flow to the known fast and slow times in the year. They also don’t have a game plan in place for an unexpected hit to their income. Lack of funds (when needed and for particular and remunerative purposes) restricts growth.
Plan and secure future capital proactively and create a forecast of your capital needs going forward.
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Do you want to be sure you avoid these errors and blunders, but don’t know where to start or exactly how to approach it? I can help! Just click on this link to schedule an initial, no obligation call with me to discuss your situation and what value I can bring to the table.
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