How to Effectively Follow up with New and Old Contacts in a Legal Setting

A large part of running a small law firm successfully involves keeping up with your client contacts, but that tends to be easier said than done, as it is a time consuming process to make time for in the midst of your already busy days. Following up with new and old contacts is of the utmost importance in growing your firm. It is something that you need to set time aside for, focus on and really put care into. In order to help you do so, we’ve compiled a few ways to effectively follow up with contacts and business opportunities:

• Create a process. To help yourself stay organized and on top of business development outreach, develop a process that works with your schedule and work style. This includes decisions about how you want to organize contacts, what type of communication you will use, how often you will do outreach and so on. With a defined process in place you are more likely to follow up in an effective and timely manner.

• Diversify channels beyond email and phone. Email and phone calls should be your primary communication tool, but integrating other outreach can have a positive impact. Think about using LinkedIn, discussion boards or Twitter to start conversations.

• Don’t put it off. Following up with business opportunities isn’t something that you should put on the backburner. If you’re working with a new contact, make a note to reach out within a day or two of connecting with them for the first time. If it’s an old contact that you are reconnecting with, make sure to reintroduce yourself and include a piece of information you have discussed with them in the past to trigger their memory of you. Staying on top of follow up will effectively turn contacts into clients.

• Stay organized in outreach. With a process in place, staying organized should be easy, especially if you’re using a tool like Smokeball. Smokeball keeps all your matters in one place so you can look up client and contact files, see past correspondence and gather contact information. This organization will help you quickly refresh your memory on where the correspondence started, stopped and is headed.