About The Bottom Line Consultancy

The founder of the Bottom line Consultancy, Ray Fox outlines the story behind the company, and our approach to marketing for the legal profession.

For seven years, I was the Legal Director and Company Secretary of Dun and Bradstreet. I left them in 1994 and have been working with law firms ever since. In simple terms, I help law firms gain new clients. To date The Bottom Line Consultancy has worked with over 175 different firms. These include well known firms and smaller provincial firms, geographically dispersed in from Morecambe to Jersey, Oxford to Edinburgh.

All of our clients have one common factor. They all want to increase their client base. We have introduce them to prospective commercial clients that match their parameters by size, geography, lines of business etc. We find the exact type of organisation that you would like to have as a client and then we introduce them to you.

I don't believe there are any hard and fast rules to marketing. Different organisations try different tactics. If there was a perfect system that worked every time, it would be patented, copyrighted and sold for billions. The only marketing system that works is one you look back on over 12 months and realised that something has worked - and that you have generated more in revenue from new clients than it cost you to do the marketing.

My view on legal marketing is very simple. Somewhere in your target market place are hundreds of potential clients. By definition, they must all need legal support at some time, so somebody is getting their legal work - but it isn't you. Now obviously you don't want all those hundreds of potential organisations as clients in one go. Probably what you want is a steady drip of new clients - say one every 6 or 8 weeks, maybe 8 or 10 per year.

There are only a couple of occasions when you are likely to be successful when targeting a potential new client. The first is when they are unhappy with their current solicitor today. The second is when they are unhappy with their current solicitor in the future. As part of what we do, we try to find out if clients are unhappy with their solicitor when we call and we can pass this on to you. I must be honest and say that this is a very tiny percentage. So the real exercise is to contact them when they are unhappy at some time in future.

The only time that a client will consider changing solicitor is when some sort of critical event happens to disturb the existing relationship. This could be something that happens at the incumbent law firm - a partner dies or leaves, the firm merges or their staff are rude and aggressive etc. Alternatively, something could happen at the client - the buyer of legal services dies or leaves, there is a new MD, a change of policy etc. In my own case at Dun + Bradstreet, I had a new Managing Director. He wanted to know why we were spending £250,000 with one city law firm. As a result of that single conversation, three local law firms in High Wycombe picked up Dun + Bradstreet as a client, gaining about £35,000 in fees each.

What you need is a legitimate, ethical introduction to the prospective client, so that you become the 'second choice' solicitor to the 'first choice' incumbent. You need to identify the organisation and the individual buyers of legal services in each organisation, and gently (and non aggressively) let them know who you are and what you can offer them using the style of letters and marketing support we provide to all of our clients free of charge.

If you target 500 organisations, over a 12 month period perhaps 35 - 50 of those 500 organisations are going to experience that critical event which prompts them to review their legal advisers. Unlike your competitors in the area, you have already established a relationship with these companies and have a clear advantage.

Of course this doesn't work every time; no marketing activity does. But you only want it to work ten times a year - the costs involved of 4 mail shots a year is small compared to the fees one client could bring in : £5,000 in a year and a lifetime residual revenue of £50,000. Just imagine what six or eight quality commercial clients would do for your firm's revenue.

You can contact Ray to discuss your legal marketing requirements or our other services for free.