Obtaining productivity as business owners and practitioners in the industry while working efficiently and maintaining a good work life balance is something to always strive for.
For many, especially during the crazy last few years, this may have been a pipe dream with many working more than 15 hours a day during the pandemic. However, in today’s outlook, it is far more achievable.
Conveyancing is a highly competitive market especially during this current time so focusing on great service, communication and a speedy transaction will ensure your business stands out from the rest. In this competitive world, that isn’t achieved naturally, it has to be accomplished with strategic business decisions and execution.
The five key strategies to stay ahead of your competition, improve your workflow, and most importantly, achieve a profitable business.
Within these strategies she will provide practical examples that you can put in place to help you meet your goals. By implementing these measures, you can mitigate financial loss, stay competitive, thrive even in uncertain economic times, and even expand or improve other areas your business.
1. Increase volume and professional fees
With software you can track the number of matters and the type of matters that come in. The numbers are there for you to access and from there you can make an informed decision as to whether it’s time to increase your costs or take on another staff member.
Keeping track of what you work on in the background, can justify the price increase or you can start charging for additional work that is out of scope.
Running a conveyancing or legal business takes data and dedicated time to review all that information. There is no other way to see opportunities and warnings.
To become a more profitable business, you must keep track of it and use technology to automate your processes to save you time to enable you to increase the volume of the work you can take on.
Increasing your price is perhaps the hardest goal to achieve especially in such a competitive market.
Clients do expect you to be competitive, purchasing a home is the largest investment clients make but for some reason when it comes to the conveyancing fees, they request a discount.
When you start tracking how much time you spend on matters you can reduce the need to provide discounts as you can start to value the work you do.
2. Maintain stakeholder relationships
Client Relationships
Clients make their decision to use a firm when they are looking to buy or sell based on agent or friend recommendations.
Clients will remember you on how well their experience was during the transaction. Being able to receive updates and communicating with you easily is key.
Software will allow you to manage your files in a way that communicating with the client is faster as the information you require is easily accessible.
Having a client call you six times a day for updates and you having to return their call to find information causes delays and that affects you financially. You don’t have time to take on more business as you are trying to manage your existing clientele.
When looking at how we can generate more work, Software that tracks leads and referrals is a great way to assist on building up the business and it gives you a way to circle back to your referrers and follow up on your leads.
Converting leads to active matters also reduces the admin time as all the information is already stored in the software.
Agent Relationships
On the Agent side however, this is where you can engage in a more business to business approach.
Your firm’s success depends on the relationship you build with both your clients and the agents. As you seek out new opportunities to grow you need to also stay in touch with not only your existing clients but also the agents who refer business to you.
If agents are confident that you will provide amazing service to their client (together with a speedy transaction) they will be willing to refer business to you in the future. If you can smash out a contract quickly from the moment you take instructions from the client that will make you more competitive say to the firm that needs to manually complete the contract and then scan it in and then send it out.
If the market slows down, take extra time to touch base with your referrals – you can visit them in person or arrange a coffee catch up (that includes brokers). A software that keeps track of your referrals will allow you to review that data during these times.
When considering profitability at your firm, you should look at the efficiencies and processes of your entire business, not just the conveyancing side.
To achieve the balance of reducing costs, and boosting your incoming billables, you can implement a few different scenarios.
By utilising or introducing practice management software, you’re enabling different areas of your business to function to the best of their ability. If used correctly, you can put time back into your day to focus on improving your incoming referrals and relationships in the industry.
