The Bill: Marketing in Disguise
If you think marketing is restricted to advertisements, brochures, and the like, then you are missing an amazing opportunity—the hidden opportunity that bills represent. In addition to the status reports and letters that you send to your clients every month, your bill is the single most obvious way that clients see what you are doing for them. Don't waste this valuable opportunity to look good to your client.
Explain carefully what you did for the client on each day. Write in complete sentences. Make sure that you haven't fallen into some sort of legalese, which will seem like so much annoying jargon to your clients.
You have worked diligently for the client all month, so show him that. Remind him of all the telephone calls you have made to the other side's lawyers. Jog his memory about all those impressive-looking legal documents you have been sending week in and week out. And describe what you have achieved for the client in each event.
Clients don't always understand the legal letters or documents you send them, but a bill is something that everybody can understand. Your bill is a good way to explain what you have been doing for the client do deserve all that money. Think of the bill as a defense of your fee. A client who reads your bill will not mind the large amount due at the bottom if he sees that you have been working hard and achieving positive results, which are moving the client closer to his goal.
The bill is a wonderful marketing opportunity in that you can communicate to the client—in the client's language—what you have been doing for the client every day. If you do a good job in preparing the bill, the bill will remind the client that you were thinking about him and his matter or case all thirty-odd days of the month. Clients really appreciate that sort of effort.
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