It might be difficult to build and sustain referral connections in the hectic and distant work world of today. For legal company development, a contact management application could be the answer to lost time, buried emails, misplaced business cards, and disorganized spreadsheets.
By storing and making accessible all of your referral partners and potential leads in one location, a solution aids in keeping you organized. Additionally, it offers reminders for appointments, notes-taking capabilities, private messaging, and referral tracking to help busy lawyers convert more business connections into reliable referral partners.
The growth of a legal firm’s business depends heavily on referrals. The Law Institute of Victoria reports that research into 151 Australasian law firms reveals that 70% of those companies view personal networks and referral ties as their top source of new business.
But for these kinds of ties to grow into stronger referral partnerships, lawyers must dedicate a lot of time and energy to cultivating and expanding them. Additionally, it calls for attorneys to exhibit credible competence, deliver value, and exchange work. Because it offers the best approach to managing referrals, remaining in touch with important contacts, and broadening their legal networks, many lawyers today are turning to products like NEXL’s My Contacts.
What Is A Contact Management Tool?
Let’s first clarify what a contact management solution is before we get into the specific advantages. Utilizing a program like My Contacts is essentially the discipline of keeping and organizing contacts so you can quickly maintain and enhance your most important professional connections.
The time spent manually utilizing spreadsheets or a Rolodex is considerably reduced when using a contact management application, whether for individual use or company-wide use. This increases productivity during billable hours.
With My Contacts service, lawyers can manage their contacts, keep track of referrals, and stay on top of duties that help them build relationships. Additionally, it has a number of tools that aid in finding new referral prospects and boosting business with other lawyers in the network or by finding new ones locally and internationally.
Here are four outstanding advantages of employing a contacts management solution to keep and expand your reliable referral network:
Stronger And More Reliable Business Connections
The most crucial information about your essential contacts may be tracked, including their specialties, email addresses, industries, birthdays, and favorite coffee shops—information that can help you forge a closer connection with them.
You can keep a deeper grasp of them, their type of referral job, contacts you’ve had, or obstacles or opportunities they may have professionally used this stored and readily available information. By doing so, you can adopt a more personable tack and come across as a close friend and business partner rather than a distant acquaintance. As a result, relationships grow stronger over time and become the basis for reliable referral partnerships.
Build A Network Of Referrals
Although relationships are what the law is all about, strong ones need effort from both parties. And you don’t get referrals just by asking your other lawyers for them. It takes intentional effort to establish genuine relationships with other attorneys if you want to create strong referral networks that bring in important and dependable work for you or your firm. It’s a popular misperception that doing this takes time and money and is frequently ineffective.
A time and money-saving contact management application make this procedure more efficient. It’s a secretive, clever digital tool that lawyers use to build relationships with other lawyers.
You can manage a list of your current referral contacts or leads using a contact management system, and you’ll always have access to the necessary details. You may set up personal referral targets, set up reminders for crucial dates, automate contact check-ins, and communicate updates and pertinent news about you and your company with a select group of lawyers around the world.
Effective Management Of Data
To manage your clients, coworkers, and legal contacts effectively, avoid using spreadsheets, paperwork, Rolodexes, and stacks of business cards. It’s a laborious manual process that reduces productivity and diverts attorneys from more crucial client issues.
You may safely keep and easily access all of your contacts’ information in one location online by using a contacts management service. You and your company will have a comprehensive understanding of each business contact, be aware of the crucial information, and never fail to get in touch with a legal peer or referral partner.
Keep Track Of Your Referrals
Understanding where your current referrals are coming from will help you and your company create a successful referral network. You may keep track of recommendations coming in and going out to your contacts in My Contacts. Start noticing any patterns that appear, such as how many recommendations you get from specific connections, the type of practice area they are in, and their location. You may fully understand what is effective for you and how to expand or enhance your referral networking by keeping track of your recommendations.
The fundamental lesson from this is that using a contact management application is a simple and efficient approach for lawyers to keep in touch with and fortify their most important business contacts. In addition to maintaining close contact with current referral sources, it is beneficial to identify and cultivate potential leads and new business partners.
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