Have You Started Planning for 2019?
It’s that time of year when you should begin reflecting on the past year and planning for what you would like to see happen in 2019. No, it isn’t too early and the best way to achieve your goals is with proactive planning.
Not long ago, Chad and I talked about the first two things you can do to get started in your firm now and ensure future growth, success, and fulfillment. 1. Figure out your baseline KPIs and 2. Set a goal for 2019.
Law Firm Business Planning for 2019
Yesterday I sat down with Jen, the certified legal document preparer for Access Legal and we began the process for setting goals and KPIs for Access Legal. Modern Law has been in the habit of goal setting and KPI tracking for years but Access Legal never has.
A bit of background on Access Legal and Modern Law. Access Legal is the sister company to Modern Law that provides paralegal assisted divorce and other self-help tools for self-representing clients. It started out as a software project to create cloud-based document automation software to automate the law firm and provide forward facing customizable documents to the public. Not that cool in 2018, but in 2013 the concept was novel, and the software wasn’t readily available.
Access Legal isn’t new, but a reiteration on the concept in 2018 changed everything. Consumers weren’t particularly thrilled with self-help technology, they wanted the support that came from a human who knew what they were doing. In May 2018, we raised prices for Access Legal and began positioning the offering differently, more akin to how we position law firm offerings. The growth has been incredible. Our little experiment has paid off, and a company that did little to nothing in revenue is now humming along creating about $60K in extra revenue each year. This isn’t groundbreaking, but its almost like found money. It costs nothing to offer in terms of supplies or space or marketing and we are helping more people than we previously were.
We decided earlier this week we will hit $100k in revenue next year, a 70 NPS, and a 40% conversion rate. These are aggressive goals, but we will probably hit them and if we don’t hit them, we will get close and we will certainly grow. This is the magic in goal setting. It doesn’t really matter if you hit the target. It matters that you try. That you learn. That you grow. Each week we will report in our company meeting the raw numbers for Access Legal and Modern Law. We will measure, analyze, and pivot as needed, and we will make more than the $60K in revenue generated in 2018.
In this example, we figured out our six-month baseline on revenue, NPS, and conversion and then decided we could do better. It’s not magic nor does it have to be. You have the information you need to figure out your baseline. Then you need to decide what you want to achieve and how you will measure if you have reached your goals.
