SEMINAR MARKETING HOW TO BUILD A $1,000,000 ELDER LAW PRACTICE. Timothy P. Crawford, CPA, CELA*

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1 SEMINAR MARKETING HOW TO BUILD A $1,000,000 ELDER LAW PRACTICE Timothy P. Crawford, CPA, CELA* 840 Lake Avenue, Suite 200 Racine, WI (262) tpc@execpc.com Website: / As a Board Certified Elder Law Attorney I have found that one of the best ways to ensure a continuous flow of people coming into my office is to do good work and to host seminars to the public. By making people aware of the planning options available to them and what they are missing from their existing planning documents creates an urgency to take action now to implement the correct planning by seeking advice from an expert in the field. Some of my seminars are done in conjunction with financial planners. This helps to draw in those who are concerned about losing their financial assets as well as those who are concerned about planning documents. The first step to make certain that the public will attend your seminar is to make sure you find the correct place to put on your seminar. I try to find a hotel or senior center with stylish meeting rooms that is easy to locate and easy for the elderly to access. I have used two approaches to bring people to public seminars. One is to advertise by placing a colorful, eye-catching insert into the local newspaper. The insert usually goes out to 40,000 readers one week before the seminar. This generally yields a crowd of about 30 people. Another option to fill the room is to do a direct mail piece. I usually establish the mailing criteria as a person who is over the age of 60 and owns a home. A 5,000 piece mailing promoting your seminar will bring in a total of about 120 people. I try to offer several time options for the seminars. I have held seminars on one day offering an 11:00 a.m. session, a 2:00 p.m. session and a 6:00 p.m. session. The older crowd attends during the daylight hours while we get the children who are concerned about their parents planning for the 6:00 session. The 6:00 crowd is normally smaller but the children are more apt to ask for a free consultation for their parents to get the ball rolling. 1

2 For those who wish to attend the seminar we have them call in to a specific person at my law firm (usually my Marketing Coordinator) to make a reservation. We control the crowd size at each session and give people specific directions regarding the location of the room. This is our first positive contact with the attendees. The day of the seminar, I bring a friendly staff member with me to greet attendees, have them sign in and pass out a folder to them. My folders contain information about all types of planning including Health Care Powers of Attorney, Financial Powers of Attorney, Living Trusts, Special Needs Trusts and Title 19 Planning. My staff person tells the attendees that the materials in the folders may not all be covered today but that it is good for them to see what planning options are available to them. I also insert into the folder my business card and a map to my office. The financial planner and I will split the speaking time so that there is an opportunity for attendees to hear about the risks involved in the current investment of their current financial assets and a separate discussion about the legal planning which they still need. We use an interactive approach to try to get the audience to participate to keep their interest. We also alternate in speaking. First, some information on financial assets, then planning, then back to financial assets and how they tie into planning. As we near the end of the presentation, my staff person passes out a sheet where people can request a free consultation with me. It also gives them some choices to check so that we know what their interests or concerns may be when they meet with me. After the completion of the seminar, my staff person sits at a table to book follow up appointments. There are certain dates that we have held specifically for seminar appointments. We try to book as many appointments as we can right at the seminar. If people are not willing to commit to an appointment at the seminar, we tell them that we will call them and we ask them when is the best time to reach them. Another alternative is to go into the crowd and ask each seminar attendee to schedule a free appointment. The following day, our data entry clerk enters all of the attendees into our database. For those who did not hand in a form to request an appointment, we mail a letter to thank them for their attendance and remind them that they are entitled to a free consultation. For those who did request an appointment, we start the calls. The person who calls to book appointments attempts to make contact with the attendees at least once a week until we actually reach them and/or schedule an appointment. This person also works two evenings a week so that we may reach those attendees who are unable to be reached during the day. In the seminar folder, there is a packet which we use to collect financial information on the attendees. I require this to be filled out for the free consultation. It asks them family information and financial information. This way I am best prepared to tell them what 2

3 their best planning options are at the meeting. The person who schedules the appointment for the seminar attendee reminds them that I will need that packet filled out in order to meet with them. We then call the attendees three days before their scheduled appointment to remind them of the date and time of their appointment and, if we have not received their completed packet back, to bring the packet with them to their appointment. I then meet with the seminar attendee and explain the planning option that best fits their situation. I explain to them why they should do the planning and what the cost will be for the planning. I ask them to hire me at this appointment. For those who did not hire me at the meeting, we send to them a letter which reviews what was discussed with them at the meeting. The letter states that a staff person will call within the next ten days to answer any questions they may have and to see if they are ready to proceed to hire me for the planning that I have recommended. I then have a staff member call the potential client ten days after the appointment to check on the status of their decision to hire me. The staff person will try to have the potential client schedule a free appointment with me to further discuss the planning I recommended and the need to hire me. If we cannot book the second free follow up appointment with the potential client, we will send out an additional letter about three weeks after the initial appointment to remind them about the need to do the planning I recommended. In that letter, I ask them to call the office to schedule another free appointment. If we do not hear from them, I again have my staff person call them to try to sell them on hiring me to do the planning, and if they don t hire me, then at least to schedule another free follow up appointment. Six weeks after the initial appointment, I then have my staff send out a gentle reminder to encourage them to hire me to do their planning. My staff then calls them again within one week of this letter going out. Most people have hired us before we go through all of these steps. There are always those who procrastinate. If we have gone through all of the above steps and they still have not hired us, we send out a letter to them which discusses the fact that they need to do the planning that was recommended. It then leaves it to them to contact us when they are ready to proceed. 3

4 SEMINAR TIME TABLE CHART WHAT WHEN 1. Plan seminar location and date 8 weeks before date 2. Prepare Invitation/Advertisement 7-8 weeks before date 3. Block off dates for free consultations 7-8 weeks before date 4. Prepare folders/seminar materials 2-3 weeks before date 5. Take reservation calls for seminars Within 1 week of date 6. Attend seminar and book free Day of seminar consultations 7. Enter attendees into database and 1 day after seminar mail out thank you letter 8. Start calls to attendees to book appts. 2 days after seminar 9. Call to remind of appt./info. Needed 3 days before appt. 10. Free consultation with attendees When scheduled 11. Letter re: recommended planning 1-2 days after appt. sent to potential client 12. Follow up to appt. phone call to 10 days after appt. try to book additional free consult. 13. Second letter to encourage hiring 3 weeks after appt. 14. Second call to book additional free 4 weeks after appt. consultation 15. Third letter to encourage planning 6 weeks after appt. 16. Close out letter if not hired yet 8-10 weeks after appt. 4

5 EVALUATION OF SEMINAR RESULTS In addition to being a Board Certified Elder Law Attorney, I am also a CPA. It is my CPA training that tells me it is very important when you do seminars that you keep track of the seminar results. This includes analyzing the seminar from a cost effectiveness point of view. The first thing you need to do is accurately determine the cost of putting on the seminar. The obvious costs include paying for newspaper ads, radio ads, or payment to a mailing service to send out letters. The less obvious costs are your internal costs such as the cost of the postage, paper, envelopes and staff time. Do not forget the staff time involved in calling people to confirm their attendance at the seminar, both in advance and on the day of the seminar, as well as all of the staff time involved in all of the follow up. The largest single cost will be the cost of the lawyer s time to organize, present, and follow up with regard to the seminar. Once of the cost of the seminar has been properly calculated, then you need to focus on the financial results of the seminar. That is each file that you open in connection with the attendance of a person at the seminar (seminar attendee) should be reviewed and see what kind of fee it produced. Remember, the fee that it produces is not 100% profit. There are your normal overhead expenses associated with producing any work. In a typical law firm, this may range from 20% to 45% of the total fee. Then, from the remaining 55% of the fees brought in from seminar attendees who have ordered work, you subtract the total cost of the seminar. This will produce your net profit of the particular seminar. Your goal is to make sure there is an overall net profit for your seminar marketing for the year. It is not necessary that each seminar produce a net profit. Many times a particular seminar may be a bust and you do not produce enough fees to produce a net profit. Don t be disappointed. Continue the effort. It may be that you are attracting the wrong people to the seminar. (Consider changing the criteria of the people to whom you mail seminar invitations.) It may be that you are not attracting enough people to the seminar. (Consider increasing the number of pieces of mail that you are sending per seminar so as to increase seminar attendance, and hopefully increase the number of seminar orders.) 1

6 You need to analyze seminar attendance to make sure you are obtaining the necessary amount of seminar attendees. If your seminar attendees drop below 30 per seminar, you should consider increasing the number of invitations you mail out, decreasing the frequency of mailings to the same pool of potential seminar attendees, or deciding whether or not you want to provide a free meal to promote attendance. Deciding whether or not to provide seminar meals is a very localized decision. I have friends in Florida that say if you provide meals in Florida you ll go broke because you have many people that come to just eat the meals and have no desire to ever hire you. Thus, you can see, it is a quandary to decide which way to go. For years I did seminars without meals. I switched over to doing seminars with meals. I have found out that providing free meals increases attendance, increases costs, but does increase the number of orders to hire you to perform legal work. TPC/lmv/DATA-TPC/NAELA/SAN DIEGO SPEECH-SEMINARS