“How do I re-engage with past clients, post Covid-19?” is a question I was recently asked by one of my lawyer clients. He wasn’t sure how to get in touch with them without sounding like he was selling his services.
I gave him 4 options, with increasing levels of ‘engagement’ with his past clients, based on different levels of the ‘Client Re-Engagement Ladder’ (as shown in the above picture).
I’m going to explain these levels (and when to use each one) to help you decide which methods to use depending on the types of clients you work with, the level of engagement you want, and the volume of clients you want to re-engage with.
- At the bottom level of our ladder, we’ve got a simple way of keeping in touch with past or existing clients which is some kind of regular newsletter item either by email or post. It’s a chance to tell them about what else you do and remind them about what is going on. This requires a low level of individual engagement and it’s easy to do in high volume.
- The next level of engagement would be to send a personalized letter or email to a client may be about something you saw recently, and thought would be useful for them. It is personalized and therefore you can ask a question and start a conversation.
- The next level up is to offer them something more formal – a review or a meeting with you online, by phone, or in person (where that’s appropriate) to review, audit, and assess a situation they might have. For past clients, this could be a free review.
- At the top level, but involving the highest engagement, is to pick up the phone and call to ask them about what is going on which might give rise to an opportunity to engage them about the way you could help. It could be just a piece of advice to keep them going or maybe there is more substantial paid work needed.
You can choose to do all or any of these strategies and you might want to pick and choose. It’s not a one-size-fits. There might be somewhere you want to do a call and some you might just want to stay in touch via a newsletter.
Take action
Make the most of the clients you have. If you aren’t re-engaging with past clients, you’re likely to be missing out on additional fee income they could provide.
Which of these client re-engagement options could you be using now?
If you’d like my help to maximize instructions from your past (and current) clients AND attract new clients to your firm:
Join me at my one-day ‘Profitable Practice Secrets’ workshop (online). At this workshop, we’ll work together to analyze what your firm or practice needs in order to grow, and then start implementing the key ‘Accelerators’ to get more clients and increase your fee income and profits.
Watch my free ‘crash course’ video training ‘The Post Pandemic Accelerator Plan For Small Law Firms’. This is the 32-minute ‘crash course’ version of what you need to know and it’s available to watch immediately – perfect if you’re in a hurry to increase your clients, fee income, and profits.
