Is Your Legal Practice a Purple Cow? | WorkflowMax

"Be the Purple Cow," Seth Godin tells us, "Be remarkable."

It makes sense right? You want your legal practice to stand out from the pack, you want to be noticed, you want customers bringing your website down with the number of hits you are taking. Your business should be what everyone is talking about, "Hey have you heard about the Purple Cow Lawyers?"

You do don't you?

If you wanted to cruise through the legal profession then you would have remained as a grey suit punching 6 minute blocks through until retirement. No, you are in business and you are reading this now because you have found your niche, you understand your customer’s needs and how you can help them. But to help you need to be successful, you want to be the Purple Cow, the Purple Cow that everyone reaches out for.

There are 1800 other law firms in your home town, just like you, with less than three fee earners. That is a lot of people competing for a slice of the same pie. How do you stand out? How do you be Remarkable? How do you differentiate yourself from the other 1800 practices out there?

Everyone is a specialist right? Well, dominate your specialty. Become the number one in Contract, Criminal and Intellectual Property Law, whatever your area of expertise is. Acquire more knowledge, write articles in legal publications, be the go-to-guy for everyone in your industry, let the media in, enhance your profile. Promote your knowledge, promote your business. Use the tools of this voyeuristic, self serving technological age by starting a blog, publicly comment on issues facing your area of expertise.

Okay, so everyone knows who you are now. Does this make you remarkable? Well it is a start. When Joe Blo needs some advice on a difficult area of contract law he remembers reading your article in the latest issue of Business Week and he looks for you. But having provided him advice is Joe going to tell his friends about you, is he going to remark on your business?

Getting people to find you is only half the story. You want Joe to keep coming back, to tell all of his friends, you want Joe to be part of your unpaid marketing team. To do that, you need to give Joe something worth talking about. That something doesn't need to affect your bottom line. When you start competing on price then you have begun to scrape the bottom of the barrel. You are going to give Joe value, exceptional value. Joe is going to feel like your only customer. But you aren't just going to give Joe incredible customer service. Joe is going to take something away with him, something that he can tell his friends about, something that is buzz worthy.

Small legal practices generally deal with the small to medium sized enterprises (SME's) of the world. There is one thing that SME's appreciate above all else - value. When you give Joe his final invoice don't just put a lump sum of $10,000 on it. Do something remarkable - break the invoice out into what you actually spent the time on, even include your timesheet notes on there. Joe will be blown away. In giving him transparency of your time, effort and process there are two things he is going to do.

Firstly he is going to pay his bill on time.

Secondly he is going to tell his friends that he found real value in your practice. The experience wasn't like going to the mechanics and getting charged an exorbitant fee for who knows what. He was delivered excellent service with a detailed account of where his money was actually spent.

Everyday you have the choice to make your service Remarkable. It doesn't have to be difficult or expensive. Become the Purple Cow Lawyers today!