well.Then in 1992 I went out on my own. I doubled my income the second year I was inbusiness. Revenue increased every year, even in bad times. We had to makeadjustments, when good clients went under or had to signifcantly cut their legalservice budgets. But annual revenue never dropped in 16 years.In the mid-1990s I went from a five-company-client practice to one that providedservices to many people, as well as companies.Two mainstay clients filed Chapter 7 petitions and were gone within months. Ournumber one client's billings went from $200,000.00 to $250,000.00 annually to lessthan $!0,000.00.We had to scramble just to keep revenue from dropping. We tried everything,starting with the traditional, cultivating good old fashioned referrals fromattorneys and satisfied clients, and networking. Then, for the first time, wetried advertising, in the newspaper, the yellow pages, directory ads, TVcommercials, radio, and finally, on the internet.And guess what? Everything we did to market our services helped. It built thebrand.But even after we had established a reliable source of cases and clients, we stillhad not reached what was a closet goal of mine, at the time, to earn gross revenueof $1,000,000.00 a year in my one-man firm. I worked like crazy for a few years,but did not get close.Then I read a book by Brian Tracy, the well-known business author and professionalspeaker, that changed my life. He changed how I looked at my business. BrianTracy taught me that in order to succeed, it wasn't enough to be a master inmarketing. Something was still missing.Once I got business to the point where bringing the clients to contact me was nota problem, I noticed that we still had not reached my goal. I sat down andstudied Brian Tracy's books in detail. I learned that it is one thing to bring ina wealth of potential clients, but quite another to sell the client my services,and get the retainer.In going over our cases over a ten year period, I discovered that we were failingto convert, or sign the client up, in 40% of the cases in which I had personalcontact with the client. Not only was I wasting time with all those prospecftiveclients who could not make up their minds, in many cases I was often doing someoneelse's work for them.I knew the law well enough in some cases that I was able to print a copy of thelaw from a service, and show it to the client. In showing the client the law, Ithought I was wowing him or her with my knowledge. I would sometimes spend hourswith a client, only to lagter find out that the client was using the informationto speak to and negotiate with other attorneys for a better price. I wasted moretime on these kinds of clients.I remember one case where the client spent six hours with me over two days, got alot of good advice, and a commitment from me to a decently discounted retainer.Three days later, the client's new attorney, wrote and asked for all of thedocuments that the client gave to the attorney.I was sick. I later found out that the new attorney collected a larger retainerthan I had quoted.
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