• Customer Login
• List Your Firm
• Legal Events

Publication Center

• Publication Center

Legal Publications

• Articles
• Articles by Industry
• Books
• Dictionaries
• Forms
• Journals
• Libraries
• Marketing - Attorneys
• Marketing - Law Firms
• News
• Publishers
• U.S. Court Cases

Experts Publications

• Expert Witnesses
• Marketing Experts
• Medical Experts

Legal Events

• Events Calendar
• Add your Event
• Update your Events

By Margaret Grisdela, Legal Expert Connections, Inc.

"Cross-sell" is a direct marketing concept that means selling more services to an existing client. Say, for example, that you provide affluent families with a range of tax and estate planning services. You might want to identify clients who retain you only for tax planning purposes, and ask them if they also need a “living will.”

Intellectual property provides other unique cross-sell opportunities, like developing HR policies that protect the “trade secrets” for new corporate clients who recently filed a patent or trademark application.

Each law firm practice area offers different cross-sell opportunities. Spend some time to think of complementary services that will enable you to offer greater legal benefit to your clients.
Create special campaigns, such direct mail or a series of seminars, to educate existing clients on the benefits of related legal services. Establish revenue goals for your campaigns and measure your success rate.

When your client makes a purchase decision based solely on price or limited knowledge, you have an opportunity to “upsell” the client to a higher level of legal service. The legitimate delivery of added value is important in this situation, since the client must understand how a premium service may be more cost-effective long-term.

Give some thought to how you might create tiered service levels with differing price points to encourage clients to choose a service package that best meets their needs. Examples might include:

• Establish clearly-defined but varying levels of retainer services
• Create geographic territories for your services, like a legal audit that measures compliance in a regulated industry, with pricing on a per state basis, and encourage clients to retain you for multiple territories
• Invite a purchaser of a basic service (like a will) to upgrade to estate planning as well

By moving your clients up the value chain over time from a basic level of legal services to a higher performing category, your client benefits and your law firm gains additional revenue.

About the Author: Margaret Grisdela is the Founder and President of Legal Expert Connections, Inc., a legal marketing firm specializing in marketing and business development in the legal and litigation support  markets. You can reach her at mg@legalexpertconnections.com.