By Rosalie Hamilton
BullsEye Newsletter: June 2008
Rosalie
Hamilton
Rosalie Hamilton, Founder and President of Expert Communications, creates customized marketing plans
for expert witnesses. Formerly the Expert Witness Marketing
Coordinator for Texas Lawyer (newspaper) and its parent
company, American Lawyer Media, she has over twenty years
of experience in sales, marketing, publishing and training,
and has given numerous presentations on the marketing
style appropriate for the legal field.
She is the author of “The Expert Witness Marketing
Book” and writes articles for numerous expert witness
newsletters and professional organization publications.
In response to several questions we've received from expert witnesses
and consultants in the recent weeks, we went to the leading authority
on expert witness marketing, Rosalie Hamilton. Below are ten tips
to help expert witnesses market themselves in an economic downturn
and stay prosperous. Some you may already know, some are more surprising,
but all are very practical and can increase your visibility.
Personally Conduct Marketing Daily
Even if you have a marketing assistant or a business development director,
dedicate time on a regular basis, preferably at least weekly, to pro-actively
promote your practice. Handwrite a thank-you note for a referral or for
a previous engagement. Call a client to find out the outcome of a case.
Offer to trade referrals with an associate, or call a client to request
referrals.
Maintain Your Advertising
If you advertise your expert witness practice, increase your advertising
budget or, at the least, maintain the existing level – don't cut
back on promotion. If you must cut costs, find something other than
advertising to cut back on.
Improve Your Closing Ratio
It stands to reason that if you raise your closing rate, you'll maintain
or even increase your total amount of business even if the number of inquiries
you receive goes down. Create a schedule for follow-up, and do not discontinue
calling at appropriate intervals until the case is dropped or settled,
or another expert is chosen.
Actively Network If you've cut back on networking activities
since achieving your successful practice, go back to active participation.
Attend meetings and conferences of your trade or professional associations
and also those of your client prospects. Remember the law of reciprocity – ask
others how you can be of help to them.
Contact Your Best Sources of Business
Repeat and referral business being the valuable commodity that it is,
the majority of marketing effort should be in the direction of previous
clients. Send professional announcements or other attention-getting communications
to people who already know you. Bonus: this promotional activity is less
costly than attracting new business.
Be Flexible For example, if you’ve been reluctant
to work through a search firm or referral services, be open to them.
As long as the contract you sign is not exclusive (other than in
regard to the particular client obtained), and is for a limited period
of time, there is no risk and no cost.
A referral service maintains a database of
experts on file, while search firms launch a search for specific
credentials when presented with a particular case. Many of the benefits
are the same for you as an expert. With either, you'll eliminate
upfront marketing costs, and with search firms, contracting, billing
and collecting will all be handled by the agency. Every experienced
expert knows these are some of the most tedious tasks associated
with expert consulting work.
Note: When working with a search firm or referral service, if you're
not the right person for the case, consider giving the representative
a suggestion of someone who might be. Networking being such an integral
part of the expert witness industry, your generosity will likely
put you top-of-mind with the firm and will increase your chances
of being called again.
Another example of flexibility has to do with accommodating your
attorney client’s particular needs. Without compromising your integrity
or the specific altitude of your positioning, you might consider
flexibility on fees, expenses, scheduling, or other factors to meet
your client’s
needs.
Tweak Your Advertising Review your directory listings for
proper expression of your attributes, as well as your choices of
indexes, categories and, on some sites, keywords. Look at the search
results on the directory site and compare your verbiage to that of
your competitors.
Call
your representative at your referral service and review the keywords
they're using to market you. One of my clients wasn’t getting the
engagements I thought he should. When I contacted the service I discovered
that the keywords the expert had provided (or the service had chosen)
were off the mark.
Beware of jumping ship on a publication or venue
that has worked well for a long time, but do consider shifting advertising
dollars to something you haven't used before.
If you have a website,
freshen it – revise content, appearance or
search engine optimization.
Think Creatively
What service could you offer that you are not currently providing?
To whom? Intellectual Property can require rather artistic trial
exhibits; the business services field often uses extensive charts
and graphs. If you work in one of these fields, you might market
your exhibit preparation services to other expert witnesses.
In our
industry, we all know attorneys would benefit from bringing the
expert witness into the case earlier than they usually do. Make
a good case for that policy, articulating the savings in litigation
costs, including fruitless “rabbit trails” of ill- or
un-advised trial theory, and overtly market the concept to previous
clients. At the very least, contacting your clients to offer
this cost-saving suggestion provides a reason for your contacting
them –-
the most important point of all.
Think, Act and Speak Success To pretend the economy
or even your area of work is peachy when it’s
not would portray unrealistic thinking, and by its foolishness, lull
you into conducting “business as usual.” Nonetheless,
the picture of success you paint to the world can have a real
effect. People like to associate themselves with winners; it
makes them feel better about their own situation. One of the
most debilitating effects of bad times is the out-of-control feeling
it engenders. When others sense that you have things under control,
it lessens their uneasy feeling.
In addition, whether or not you subscribe
to any of the many philosophies teaching that thoughts are self-fulfilling,
it's evident that a happy person accomplishes more than a depressed
one. Do all you can to keep your spirits up. Whether by a practice
of acknowledging gratitude, taking walks, playing music, or deliberately
placing yourself in the company of upbeat, cheerful people, take
responsibility for your emotional well-being. It can have a huge
effect on your actions -- and your business!
Make a Decision to Prosper
In your mind, speech
and actions, decide you'll be the one who weathers the storm and
comes out on the other side, not just having survived, but also
having prospered. We all know stories of people who became millionaires
during the Great Depression and similar tales from other tough times
and, sure enough, it does happen.
When I am consulted individually
on measures for an expert to take in challenging
times, I sometimes see not so much a lack of appropriate
measures being taken as a resigned feeling that nothing has worked,
and probably nothing will. That is the moment of
truth, when the expert (or anyone else facing tough
times) must have a talk with himself along the following
lines: This is just another year following many others;
I developed this practice; I'll figure out what to
do differently and creatively; and I'll be the one
still standing. The person who does so and follows
through with attitude as well as actions will not
only be standing when the economy turns back upward
but will be in better shape than before, positioned
in a now winnowed out group of competitors at a new,
more successful altitude.
IMS Expert Services is the premier expert
witness and litigation consultant search firm in the legal
industry. IMS is focused exclusively on providing custom expert
witness search services. We are proud to be the choice of over
90 of the AmLaw Top 100, half of the Fortune 100, and you. Call
us at 877-838-8464.
Rosalie Hamilton, Founder and President of 
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