You’ve mapped out an ambitious, yet attainable plan for your business and know precisely where you want to be in the next year. Now the question is “What should I be doing this afternoon to get there?”

Actions, we know, speak louder than words. While it’s valuable, of course, to consider the big picture, when it comes to marketing our business and reaching our goals, the question we continually face is how to translate thoughtful planning into successful execution?  

Start by building back your plan. That means breaking down that one-year goal into bite-size chunks: quarterly goals, then monthly, weekly and daily goals. For example, if you’ve set a revenue goal of $300K for 2015, a reasonable quarterly goal would be $75K, or $6K per week (50 weeks/year). That could translate into the weekly goal of two clients per week, each with an average fee of $3K.  With your financial goal now broken down into immediate, intermediate and long-term goals, write out a work plan with activities to ensure you’re consistently moving forward and working toward that goal. Activities would include meeting one new advisor each week, adding a new entry to your blog each month, building two referral relationships each quarter, etc.  

Explosive. That’s the word that comes to mind when I think about the growth of video in our world today.

Television might still be where many people go to be entertained, but make no mistake. New entrants in video are building audiences without the heavy costs attached to the traditional TV model. The fact is we live in a visually driven world. From music, news and sit-coms to commercials and college coursework, video has become a huge delivery mechanism.

How huge? Recent research results from ComScore Video Metrix show that 188.6 million Americans watched online video content via desktop computers in February 2015.

In an earlier blog, I reviewed the advantages of a strong referral network (CPAs, financial advisors, etc.) and how to make the most of this valuable resource for effective legal practice building. 

In this post, I’d like to “reverse field” for a moment and share some thoughts on how a partnership with you can add real value to a referral resource’s business.

When seeking new referral source relationships, the question of reciprocity is a common one:  “Will you, in turn, refer clients to me?” It’s a fair question and deserves a fair response. Because many of the clients an Estate Planning Attorney receives, already have a relationship with a Financial Advisor or CPA, is is very difficult for the attorney to reciprocate referrals. However, the question the referral source is really asking is:  “What’s the advantage to my business?” Or simply put, “What’s in it for me?” To that basic question, your response can be “Quite a bit, actually.”