Every lawyer in private practice should have an individual marketing plan, period. The plan should be short, specific, realistic and achievable. Think of legal marketing as your firm’s attorneys’ investments in themselves. Billable hours are important for today’s income, but what attorneys do with non-billable time determines their future…and your firm’s.

Individual marketing plans should set forth what each attorney will do over the next 12 months to build, enhance and maintain relationships with key clients. It should also include activities to enhance each attorney’s credentials as an expert in their chosen area of law.

To be effective, an individual-attorney marketing plan should…

• Define a niche…specialists command premium fees and practice law in the areas they find most challenging and fulfilling.

• Establish expertise…each attorney’s goal should be to become a recognized expert in their chosen area of the law.

• Focus on industries and related trade associations…innovative law firms are setting up industry practice groups and marketing their services to specific industries. Becoming active in one or two carefully targeted industry trade associations is key. Get clients’ input on which group to join, and conduct due diligence to make sure it’s the right one.

• Include a personal contact list… starting with existing clients and referral sources. Update and expand the list continually to include people the attorney knows or wants to know.

• Invest in key relationships…focus on 20 to 30 people on whom the attorney can spend the bulk of their “networking” time.

• Include regular visits to top clients… asking smart questions, listening, learning, and responding appropriately.

• Give first-year associates a head start…by encouraging them to hone their networking skills, finding their niche and learning the law that serves that niche. Pair first-years with senior rainmakers who can act as marketing mentors.

Remember, clients hire lawyers…not law firms…and they hire lawyers they know, like and trust. You want your firm’s attorneys to focus their time and energy as much as possible on activities that create, enhance and maintain relationships with individuals in a position to hire or refer you.

This article has been excerpted from “The Little Black Book on Law Firm Marketing & Business Development… Everything A Managing Partner Needs To Know.”

Starting a new business is an exciting venture, full of challenge, opportunity, and excitement.. Especially, if your entrepreneurial concept gains traction and generates growth. When it does, the next step is transitioning from an entrepreneurship to a professionally run business.

However, here is the irony. At this transition point—precisely the one you want to reach—is where many small businesses run into trouble. Because while the entrepreneurial skill set is great for creating and building new businesses, it is not as well suited to transforming fledgling businesses into long-term companies.

As a business grows beyond the startup stage, the ingredients that made for a winning start become a recipe for disaster. This is where entrepreneurs often make big mistakes. As Bill Gates observed, “Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose. ”

Smart people can lose. And many entrepreneurs do every day. The key is to understand the business lifecycle and how to move from one stage of the lifecycle to the next. Transition is a natural part of the process. A rapidly expanding company can quickly outgrow its infrastructure. Suddenly the informal management style that worked so well in the beginning no longer gets the job done. The organization’s existing infrastructure cannot support the next stage of growth, and the fallout is upheaval.

In truth, rapid growth and expansion place an incredible strain on resources. The gap between the infrastructure you will need and the infrastructure that has evolved becomes painfully evident. If your business is to succeed, you need systems and processes that will stabilize your company and support future growth. This is why a well-planned transition strategy is so important.

In most cases, with an entrepreneurially run business, management is more growth-and innovation-driven and less profit-driven. The emphasis is on creativity and innovation rather than structure or operations. Planning is haphazard rather than systematic. The organizational structure is loosely defined. Budgeting is implied. In essence, an entrepreneurially run business is an adolescent in the business lifecycle, pursuing growth, change, and opportunity but is desperately in need of stabilization.

On the other hand, a professionally managed organization is one with formal, thoughtfully-developed systems and processes and a disciplined, profit-oriented approach to doing business. In professionally managed organizations, management techniques have evolved beyond the spontaneous, reactive mentality typical of startups. Management styles are established. Professionally managed organizations are more democratic (typically consultative or participative). Professionally managed enterprises are based on clearly communicated objectives, expectations, and accountability.

To advance beyond an entrepreneurship business, the entrepreneur must take stock and implement systems, develop processes, and hire people who can steward the company into the future. This transition requires formal planning, meetings, systems, and clearly defined roles, responsibilities, and processes.

The first step in advancing from an entrepreneurship to that of a professionally run business is to recognize that the business has reached a new stage in its business lifecycle. The second step is to acknowledge that it is now time for change. The third step is to enlist the help of outside professional business advisors to assist you with the transition.

With a professional general business advisor, you obtain an accurate and an unbiased diagnosis of your entire business. Only then can you develop and implement an effective strategy to transition from entrepreneurship to a professionally run business. The professional general business advisor assists you with the development and implementation of the following:

• Assess your organizational infrastructure to determine how well existing systems, processes, and structure support future needs. • Know where you are headed so you can communicate to your employees the direction that your company will take in future developments.

• Draft a development plan that maps out how you will build the competencies you need for the next stage of development.

• Create or revisit your business plan and use it to guide and monitor your progress.

• Develop training and mentoring programs to cultivate the management team’s capabilities.

• Implement realistic systems for planning, organizing, managing, and increasing accountability. • Standardize the various processes for the best efficiency.

• Define the roles and responsibilities of each employee.

• Establish and communicate objectives, goals, measures, and rewards to your stakeholders.

• Let go, and let the experts do their jobs.

When companies transition from startups to professionally managed enterprises, founder/entrepreneurs often arrive at a crossroads. As the business owner, you need to consider if you should step back and hand the reins over to an experienced, professional management team? Or, should you stay and attempt to adopt a more structured management style?

The decision is yours. However, keep in mind, that the skills it takes to hatch a business concept … identify a market … develop a product or service …and assemble the resources and operations to bring it to market are not the same skills you need to shepherd a company into the future.

Copyright © 2007 Terry H. Hill

You may reprint this article free of charge in your newsletter, magazine, or on your website, provided that the article is unedited, and that the copyright, author’s bio, and contact information below appears with each article. Articles appearing on the web must provide a hyperlink to the author’s web site.

Small business PBX system is a powerful communication tool which can project a positive image of a growing company. Generally, the hosted PBX system service is provided to small businesses by an Application Service Provider (ASP).With hosted PBX system one can get all the functionalities of a high-end corporate phone without making any huge investments for purchasing or installing expensive switching equipments in the company premises. The service providers maintain all the hardware and software at their site and perform all the call routing and call handling tasks from their center. The calls are transferred to the appropriate person over a dedicated phone line or a high bandwidth internet connection. Auto attendant, caller ID, call screening, call forwarding, call transfer, voicemail, fax to email, web administration and music on hold are some of the features that come with a small business PBX system. One can program a list of phone numbers where he can be available in the PBX phone directory. The find me follow me call forwarding feature in the hosted PBX phone system utilizes this list of phone numbers provided by the person to trace him. Thus, when a call arrives at the users’ office extension number, it will be automatically redirected to the alternate phone numbers associated with that particular person. An extension is associated with a particular person and not with a phone in a hosted PBX system. As a result, a person can receive phone calls independent of his location.  Thus, with hosted PBX phone system one can manage his business from anywhere, home, hotel, office or even when on the move. Therefore, the small business PBX system can create the impression of a single office location for businesses having employees working from different geographical locations. Owing to the scalability of the virtual phone system, any number of extensions can be added to it in the future as per the phone requirements of the small business. Easy web administration enables the user to make the changes within a short period of time. Hence, PBX systems are definitely advantageous to small businesses.

Many marketing experts argue that marketing is a logical process with a natural structure that can be viewed primarily as a method of understanding the marketing environment; using the marketing mix; developing a marketing plan -based upon the use of the marketing mix; implementing a plan based on the selected strategy; and finally, using a control method to ensure that the strategy is adhered to. This marketing process is reviewed and evaluated regularly and modifications are made to the use of the marketing mix tactics in order to take into account any possible market change that might impact upon an organization’s competitiveness.
This view of marketing seems to suggest that many of the marketing theories employed by multinational enterprises are international in scope and have global consequences. The EU market constitutes a different marketplace if examined in terms of the various cultures that co-exist, the multiple levels of competition, and the organization strategies used in order to penetrate its markets. Although these differences and their implications interfere with business planning, the E.U. is considered as an opportunity by numerous companies that decide to expand to other markets by using the appropriate internationalization strategies and competing with major global players in terms of sales, profits, market shares and organizational momentum.
A core issue in marketing theory is the growth and importance of networking and interaction. According to experts, the way in which administrative units, companies, and non-profit organizations (NGOs) develop, is directly related with their type of interaction and consequently the networks formed to gain commercial advantage in domestic or foreign markets. These networks can use similar subcontractors or components, share research and development costs, or operate within the same governmental framework. Clearly the EU, a trading block with no internal barriers, creates its own elite sub-networks. Collaborations in aerospace, vehicle manufacturing or engineering have all sponsored the development of a European outlook, which is based upon each participant’s abilities and expertise. This recently adopted approach of networking and marketing interoperability between companies demonstrates how important it is today for any type of manager or project coordinator to know who takes the decisions in the E.U. level and who can be approached from the E.U. administrative units, in order for a specific network to adequately present its interests and work towards their accomplishment.
The E.U. is a rich, diverse market, with a vibrant and varied cultural heritage. This means that although there has been a harmonization process within the 25 member states as a result of the E.U.’s formation, great differences still exist and help shape everyday practices and processes. Rather than businesses being simpler as a result of this economic and trade union, it is recognized that due to heavy regulation and bureaucracy, the E.U. needs to communicate itself effectively to all, as a unique supranational player of our global village. The new E.U. profile has not yet been introduced successfully and due to the audiences’ diverse backgrounds, any attempt can prove to be highly complex. Especially if someone considers that Europeans tend, in general, to have their cultural differences recognized and most of their political and social networks are based on extremely important historical instances, the firms that recognize this challenge and adequately “package” their offer have a good chance of developing a successful marketing plan to meet the diverse E.U. citizens’ needs.

There has always been a question in the minds of budding entrepreneurship as to what the role of education is, especially if everything they do is something which they learn on the job. There have always been numerous fables where the budding entrepreneur has been a high school or a college dropout, and has then gone on to make an empire of the very nerds, geeks and other learned mortals that he left behind.

So the question is why does an entrepreneur need any education? The answer though highly debatable still lies largely in the fact that there is always a gray area that any flag bearer goes through. The techniques to surmount the insurmountable may be many, but it is always good to have some well-honed skills that are taught by the leading management course. After all, aren’t the entrepreneurs a jack of all trades and a master of 1?

Just to have a peek at what a management course could teach an entrepreneur, you can go through the syllabus of some of the leading management programs attuned towards entrepreneurship, let us see the subjects in general for one such course, but be ready to be surprised that normal management subjects like branding and macroeconomics take a backseat as compared to crucial subjects like Business Ethics, Leadership and change management, Social entrepreneurship, Enterprise establishment and management.

These unique subjects are unique and stand out, as an entrepreneur isn’t just another manager, he is more than that, he not only has to understand the concepts well, but also has to understand how his decisions affect the entire firm that he is running, it is as if a simple management degree will NOT be enough for ensuring that the entrepreneur will succeed.

Such niche courses are not many in our country, where entrepreneurs are still viewed to be people without proper jobs; this feeling in people is however slowly changing. More and more people are looking out for opportunities to be entrepreneurs, and education is one way to ensure that you learn from other’s mistakes first, and allow you to be more confident while you are running your own business.

Such courses are not just for budding entrepreneurs, such courses also form as a healthy breeding ground for people who believe they have it in them to start out afresh, and more importantly for second generation business men who are currently running a family run business. Such courses can help people to tread boldly in the grey areas where other mortals fear.

Good News for Small Businesses

An exciting new media service has recently launched, Jazel design. This web design company truly is different from the rest as it specialises in web design for small businesses. Their mission is plain and simple; they want to help small businesses grow by getting them online.

With the growing concerns over the credit crunch and the main government attention going to the big players in the world of commerce, it is essential that all small businesses support each other to survive this economic gloom. For those who acknowledge the impact the economic downturn can have Jazel Design may be the answer. They can take your business online and open up new business channels for you.

Traditional web design agencies have catered for all organisations large and small; however this web design agency understands that the requirements of a small business are substantially different from the requirements of a large organisation. With this in mind they provide a tailored service which accounts for small businesses budgets too.

Offering brochure sites at discount prices Jazel Design also offers services such as Flash animations to set your websites apart as well as blogging software for the more ambitious business owner.

If one requires a logo for their new website or offline business, Jazel design can do that too.

Jazel Design  is an expert web design company specialising in effective web design for small businesses. Contact today for your free affordable custom quote.