How to Boost Law Firm Revenue Using Online Payments

Online payments are a great way to boost law firm revenue. Especially, when we’re in a time where waiting around for paper checks and bank deposits just won’t cut it.

Data from the 2019 State of the Legal Market shows client demand has been stagnant for the last 10 years, since the Great Recession. Firms are fighting to bring in more revenue as demand continues to decrease.  The outcome could have been much worse. It hasn’t been, thanks to the ingenuity of attorneys and law firms. It’s still incredibly difficult for attorneys and small firms to build the thriving practice they want. 

Law firms are struggling to bring in business

Small firms face a variety of problems. There’s the struggle to attract and retain clients, minimize expenses and run your firm. The State of Small Law Firms outlined the problem best. 

“Chief, among these challenges are problems acquiring new client business. Every small law firm segment surveyed, regardless of the number of lawyers, identified this as their primary “significant challenge.” Whether a solo attorney or the managing partner of a 25-lawyer firm, worries about where your next client will come from likely causes some consternation.”

“Competition Is More Fierce than Ever.” In a market characterized by sluggish demand growth, the only way for one firm to improve its market position is by taking existing market share. That, in turn, drives increased competition.”

As in, stealing or luring clients away from your firm. It’s frustrating, but it’s also not a secret. Sluggish demand growth only adds to the competition. Ask knowledgeable attorneys how to increase firm revenues and they’ll outline some variation or combination of these solutions. 

• Attract more clients to increase cash flow
• Increase realization rates 
• Limit billing disputes and nonpayment
• Decrease expenses and non-billable work
• Increase productivity and work/life balance
• Fix gaps in your firm’s utilization 

These are all essential and valuable ideas. But there’s one idea that’s not receiving the attention it deserves. 

Using online payments to boost law firm revenue 

With the right strategies and payment processor, you can use online payments to boost law firm revenue. Many of these ideas are simple to implement but provide consistent (and compounding) value over time.  Here are three tips you can use to increase your revenue. 

1. Ask your clients to pay via credit or debit cards 

A recent study by Promothesh Chatterjee and Randall L. Rose found credit/debit cards change your client’s perceptions. Client focus shifts from cost to benefits. 

Purchasers were far more focused on the benefits of the products or services they received than they were on the overall cost. This reinforces previous studies showing participants are willing to spend twice as much as those who paid by cash or check. 

What does this mean for law firms? It’s a clear indication that law firms should recommend or set clients up with scheduled payments. The importance here can’t be overstated. This is just as important as the agreement. 

2. Get clients familiar with your billing options

Most attorneys/law firms focus their attention on pursuing and collecting from delinquent clients, which makes sense. 

What if they weren’t delinquent?  What if your fee arrangement was the problem? What if your clients aren’t able to swing a $33,000 lump sum payment, but they were able to swing a $2,750 per mo payment? Instead of sending your delinquent client to collections, you could move them from an hourly AFA to a subscription AFA. 

It’s a straightforward way to keep your clients. But it depends on your ability to save and retain your client’s credit card profile. 

3. Combine online payments with alternative fee arrangements 

When it comes to AFAs, there are only two ways to approach the problem. Proactively or reactively.

Proactive firms initiate the AFA conversation with their clients, discussing pricing, budgets and expectations. Reactive firms, on the other hand, wait for clients to initiate the conversation. 

An Altman Weil survey compared these two approaches. Here’s what they found:

“When asked to compare the profitability of non-hourly work and hourly work, 84% of proactive firms find their non-hourly projects to be at least as profitable as their hourly projects. This is the case in only 51% of reactive firms. Narrowing the focus, 40% of proactive firms report their non-hourly projects are more profitable than their hourly projects, compared to only 10% of reactive firms. The lesson is that firms that make a rigorous effort to understand and manage a new or evolving market tactic like alternative fees generally succeed in doing so, and enjoy increasing benefits over time.”

Here’s why this is significant. Let’s say your client hires you to help them with a matter. You estimate that they’ll need to spend approximately $17,000. Your client may bristle at that price. With an alternative fee arrangement, you can charge the same (or more), but you can break it up into monthly payments, (say $3,100 per month or $37,200 annually).

How can you justify charging more? 

Risk. A month-to-month arrangement increases the amount of risk you’re required to take on. That risk is mitigated thanks to the saved billing profile you have on hand. This strategy is also an effective way to deal with discounts, write-offs and write-downs. It’s a straightforward way to generate more income in less time and with less effort.  

This is why combining a saved billing profile and an alternative fee arrangement enables you to generate more revenue in less time and with less effort. See the difference? 

Online payments can boost your law firm revenue

Small firms face a variety of problems. Attorneys are struggling to keep their piece of the pie. Law firms are stealing or luring clients away from each other. There’s the struggle to attract and retain clients, minimize expenses and run your firm.  

It feels like an uphill battle. Using online payments and a variety of other factors, you can attract, convert and retain the profitable, high-quality clients your firm needs most. Adopting a built-in payments processor, like Bill4Time Payments, is an easy way to start offering online payments and creating a payments experience both you and your clients will benefit from. Take a look inside Bill4Payments below before booking your custom demo.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if every attorney in your law firm was a rainmaker?

Not just any rainmaker attorney, one who consistently generates huge amounts of business for your firm on a regular basis. The kind of rainmakers who draw clients in dozens at a time. In reality, it’s an option that’s available to every law firm, provided that they’re willing to make some concessions.

There’s a never-ending shortage of rainmakers

According to a recent survey by Altman Weil, 30 to 40 percent of attorneys are near retirement or ready to retire. What’s alarming about this is the fact that attorneys at or over the age of 60 control 25 percent (or more) of a firm’s total revenue.

Baby boomers are retiring. They’re taking their clients with them, or clients are taking their business elsewhere.

Law firms will need to adjust to these circumstances quickly if they want to retain their existing clientele. They’ll need to take proactive steps if they’d like to capture new clients. There’s an easy solution to this problem. Just convert every attorney in your firm into a rainmaker.

Law firm partnerships, on its own, is a complex and difficult issue to manage. If law firm partnerships go awry, law firms typically die. Harvard Law School points this out in their piece “Why Law Firms Collapse.”

Partner ownership encourages a cascade of partner withdrawals for two reasons. The first is that, as owners of their firms, partners get paid in profit shares rather than fixed salaries or wages. This makes partners acutely sensitive to problems in a firm because it links their individual compensation to the fortunes of the firm as a whole.

For some partners, at least, a decline in profits means a decline in pay. As profits drop, some of a firm’s partners will inevitably start to leave for better-paying opportunities elsewhere. But this causes profits to drop even more, which drives even more partners to leave. Profits then decline still further, causing even more partners to leave, and so on, until the firm finally collapses.

If partners were paid in fixed salaries, they would not care about the declining profits. But because they are paid in profits, departures become self-reinforcing. As each partner leaves, the benefits of staying decline for all those who remain.

The second problem is that because partners are owners of their firms, they face crushing personal liability when a firm finally dissolves. All the compensation partners receive in the months leading up to bankruptcy can be clawed back as a fraudulent transfer, for example, and the partners’ capital investments in a firm can be taken away as well. Partners who stay too long may even have to give up billings they generate after the firm dissolves. All these liabilities flow directly from partners’ status as owners.

If you’re like most firms, you need rainmakers.

You don’t need headaches like the ones listed above; the kind that leads to increased partnership concerns and the potential risk of failure with partners.

The easy way to attract, convert, and retain rainmaker attorneys

Spend most of your time attracting high-quality, A-player employees — the top 10 percent in your industry. Using a proven hiring methodology like Topgrading, you can attract the top 10 percent of talent in your area/industry at a lower cost.

Why is this important? You’ll need to find and convert employees with the right core competencies. According to Bradford Smart Ph.D., there are 50 competencies you’ll need to hire for.

Attracting high-quality A-players are really rainmakers in waiting. They supply the core competencies like integrity, passion, grit, ambition, etc. Having these qualities means they just need proper training to hone in on these skills and truly become a rainmaker. However,  firms rarely train employees to become rainmakers.

How to convert every employee into a rainmaker

In his book, The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell describes three archetypes in the world — connectors, mavens, and salespeople.

• Connectors: They know and keep in touch with everyone. They have a massive network of weak and strong connections; they bring people together. They’re able to connect with people and build long-lasting friendships.
• Mavens: These thought leaders want to teach and educate. They don’t want to sell. These employees are t-shaped. They typically have deep expertise on a few topics and are knowledgeable about a broad set of topics. They’re thought leaders and teachers.
• Salespeople: They’re able to strike up a conversation with or befriend anyone. They’re charismatic, able to build trust, and rapport with others quickly. These salespeople are socially and emotionally contagious, meaning they’re able to spread their emotional state to others.

This is where the struggle begins for most law firms. They attempt to force everyone into the salespeople category. But many attorneys aren’t fond of selling. Attempt to force attorneys and support staff into a role that’s incompatible with their personality, and you create rifts in your firm.

Encourage your employees to work with their personalities and archetypes rather than against them.  Ask your employees simple questions to evaluate their personality and preference. Mary Jaksh shares a brief questionnaire you can use.  

The following questions will help you decide whether you are a Connector:

1. Do you know a lot of people?
2. Do you like people?
3. Do you tend to remember peoples’ names?
4. Do you enjoy going to parties and meeting new people?
5. Do you collect acquaintances?

Here are some questions that will help you decide whether you are a Maven:

1. Do you enjoy reading junk mail?
2. Do you seek out the specials in your local supermarket?
3. Do you tend to watch trends and know what’s ‘in’?
4. Do you study the market before buying a new gadget?
5. Do you tell your friends about special deals?

Here are some questions that will help you find out if you are a salesman:

1. Do you find it difficult to sit still when hearing good dance music?
2. Do you have a loud laugh?
3. Do you touch friends when you talk with them?
4. Are you good at seduction?
5. Do you like being the center of attention?

Once you’ve identified each employee, the solution is simple.

• Give connectors the time they need to build relationships with others. Send them to conferences, events, or parties. Work to provide them with the soil they need to nurture these relationships genuinely and authentically.
• Feed mavens with information; identify the practice areas, legal topics, or issues that interest them. Pay for education, training, and support. Then, once they’ve achieved the appropriate level of competence, give them a forum to share their knowledge on your blog, guest posts, or partner sites.
• Salespeople need to conquer. Partner them with connectors, and invite clients or opportunities to your home turf. Have connectors prep them on the goals or outcomes you need and the intricacies of each prospect. Provide them with the training they need to grow, then set them loose.

Here are a few ideas to get you started.

• Create events (webinars, seminars, conferences, or events) that focus on a practice area (e.g., legally minimizing taxes). Have mavens present, ask connectors to befriend those who aren’t ready to retain your firm, ask salespeople to close who are ready.
• Create mastermind groups that are oriented around social get-togethers (i.e., dinner parties). Bring your mavens together with mavens from other firms and disciplines.
• Ask salespeople to reach out to influential thought leaders and power brokers. Then, ask mavens to interview them on a particular topic or practice area. Ask connectors to use the interview as bait to connect with a large, well-known publication that serves your firm’s interest. If you’re a real estate attorney, this could serve publications like Bigger Pockets, a forum that’s designed to serve investors.  
• Create a program where connectors can bring other professionals together. Create an environment where your firm’s connectors are approached as a prestigious resource available to those in need. The need would be determined and approved on a case-by-case basis.
• Have mavens create proprietary research, processes, and resources that you can use to grow your firm. Mavens would be tasked with evaluating the strength and weaknesses of other firms.
• Create a problem-solving team that bills clients on a recurring basis. Connectors and salespeople work with clients to identify their unspoken and pressing legal problems. Mavens do the research and testing needed to create a unique solution to solve these problems. These problems are turned over to your firm’s grinders, who are ready to solve the problem using this customized plan.

Here’s the caveat. You’ll need to be willing to share the rewards, the credit for this plan to work. Many firms are unwilling to share origination credit. Some firms don’t know how to share. If you want to retain your employee’s loyalty, you’ll want to share the origination credit. Here are some resources you can use to improve your origination schemes.

Here’s a more compelling reason why you should share, most firms don’t want to. Some firms are willing to lose $2 million in fees simply because a paralegal brokered the deal. This attitude is devastating for firms in the long term. It’s also a wonderful set of golden handcuffs for you if you choose to share. Employees won’t want to leave if you’re willing to build them up.

Furthermore, they’ll go out of their way to promote your business.

Your firm has a never-ending supply of rainmakers

You have access to eager employees who are ready to grow your firm and grow your firm. You just have to ask. Every attorney in your law firm can become a rainmaker.

You can attract world-class rainmakers who focus on bringing in huge amounts of business for your firm. The secret is simple. Find A-player employees, rainmakers in waiting, with the right core competencies then, provide them with the training and opportunity they need.

Encourage your employees to work with their personalities and archetypes rather than against them.  Give them the support they need and you’ll find you’re able to convert each and every employee into the rainmaker your firm deserves.

Law firm cyberattacks are more and more common. Could you live without your files for 3 months? 

Cybercriminals used ransomware to attack a prominent Providence law firm. Every single one of their files became inaccessible after the criminals encrypted everything and denied access. This meant all ten attorneys at this firm were unable to work as the firm bled money they couldn’t afford to lose. 

The losses were large, unnecessary, and growing. A few lines of code from a self-serving attacker created millions in losses: 

• $700,000 in billings
• $25,000 in Bitcoin ransom
• Another ransom, because the first unlock code failed
• Court costs, expenses, and lawsuit fees against the firm’s insurance company who denied their claim for lost billings
• Negative press, which discourages prospective clients and kills any negotiations in-progress
• Lawsuits from angry clients whose legal needs were negatively impacted

How many clients did they lose to this whole affair? How many prospective clients determined that they would rather do business with a more secure and reputable firm? 

Preparation is key to protect from a cyberattack

Matthew Perry’s law firm was attacked by cybercriminals, twice. Both times, his firm survived unscathed. How were they able to protect their data and preserve their reputation when other law firms fail? 

https://www.youtube.com/embed/zCMuHCYar-k”

Don’t wait to prepare. If you haven’t already, hire a security consultant that specializes in auditing cybersecurity. Then, hire a specialist to properly educate your team and set up your firm’s network and security practices. 

You need to do a security audit to ensure that your firm:

• Has cybersecurity policies in place to protect your firm’s work product
• Has intrusion detection and network security controls across your entire network
• Runs antivirus with heuristic protection which enables you to identify new threats before they cause damage, without the need for a specific signature.
• Conducts regular file backups to preserve data in the event of a breach or downtime 
• Regularly tests backups, following the schedule recommended by your security expert  
• Uses multi-factor authentication to verify identity and protect from remote attacks 
• Encrypts inactive data being stored on any device (data-at-rest) as well as data in motion (data-in-transit) 
• Protects workstations/endpoints
• Ensures that software and hardware is regularly updated and compliant with security best practices

Luckily, there are programs that do a lot of this work for you. A cloud-based practice management software, like Bill4Time, performs automatic updates and backups your law firm’s sensitive information regularly.

Train your team to avoid a cyberattack

Law firm cyberattacks are avoidable and starts with being proactive about closing gaps of vulnerability. Any gaps in your security can lead to severe financial and data loss.

Cybercriminals rely on bad habits and inexperience. They attack businesses with weak security and those not following best practices. As Matthew Perry has shown, it’s possible to meet these attacks head-on and win. You’re a highly trained legal professional — strong, capable and intelligent. This means you can solve this problem.

Don’t wait for an attack to find out you’re unprotected. Work with your security experts to make sure your network is secure, and all law firm data is safe. Trust but verify that the security protocols you are following are working to protect your firm.

It seems that every day another cyber attack is making headlines in the news. With an ever-growing amount of business happening online, malicious actors will continue to find ways to steal sensitive information like names, addresses, and bank account numbers. In 2020 alone, the US Federal Trade Commission received 1.4 million reports of identity theft, double that of 2019. 

It’s a troubling statistic and one that cannot be ignored here at Bill4Time. With the recent launch of Bill4Time Payments, we have taken every step necessary to ensure that our customers, as well as their clients, are fully protected from cyber threats while using the payments processor. 

We’re built by lawyers and tailored specifically for the legal industry, unlike the mainstream providers, we intimately understand the rules and regulations that as an attorney you need to follow to remain compliant.  

As you may have seen on our website, Bill4Time Payments is 100% compliant with IOLTA, the ABA, and lawyers’ online payment rules in all 50 states — but what does that even mean? We’d like to tell you a bit more about our security posture, as well as the rigorous security steps we take each and every day so that you can be confident in your choice to use Bill4Time Payments for all your billing needs.   

It starts with your Bill4Time Payments application    

The Bill4Time Payments application is a 3-step process that is designed to ensure everyone who is enrolling in our program is a legitimate person with a legitimate business. The Bill4Time Compliance Team is hard at work managing the following steps:  

• Step 1 – The first step to opening a Bill4Time Payments account is to provide the necessary business information. Our compliance team runs through a series of checks to ensure that the applying business is in financial good standing and a legitimate entity.  

• Step 2 – This step is crucial, it’s where the compliance team double checks that the person applying is in fact related to the business in question, and that they are not on any form of sanctions list with the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). 

• Step 3 – It’s not exactly rocket science, in order to get paid you need a real bank account. The final step is to check in on the bank account provided and ensure that it is, in fact, related to the business and in good standing. 

All three steps are interconnected, and if a single piece of information does not align, the application may be delayed and/or denied. From the time the application is sent into Bill4Time to the time it gets approved is between 7-10 business days. If you would like to ensure a smooth application process, make sure you provide each and every piece of information as requested —  you wouldn’t submit a selfie to the bank when they ask for legal identification… right?  

What’s a compliance team? 

Glad you asked! These eagle-eyed employees are some of the most hard-working and dedicated team members at Bill4Time. They’re our first line of defense, and they can spot a fake ID better than a bouncer in a college bar. While this may be true (we’ll hold a competition later) our compliance team is heavily trained in fraud prevention and payments security. Collectively, our compliance team has over 20 years of experience working for the U.S. banking system at nationally trusted institutions like Wells Fargo, Capital One Bank, Discover Global Network, and regional institutions like SunTrust Bank as well as other local credit unions.

Risk and Compliance trends change and our team is committed to staying current on their knowledge. We make sure that our team is engaged in continued education and has the certifications needed to be the best in the industry. This involves maintaining memberships with organizations like the Electronic Transactions Association (ETA) and the highly reputable Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists (ACAMS) 

If for any reason you receive a message from a compliance member at Bill4Time, they’re simply there to verify information to ensure your security and that of other Bill4Time customers. 

Using Bill4Time Payments 

Once you’ve been granted access to Bill4Time Payments you can begin using it right away. Here are a few reasons you can trust the system right out of the gate. 

• Tokenization – The moment a credit card number is entered, it’s tokenized. This means that it’s given a series of characters and it no longer resembles a credit card number, thus it can’t be read or stolen. Additionally, these payment details are never sent to or stored on our servers.
• Personal Identifiable Information – This information is encrypted by default using an SHA-256 SSL certificate, ensuring your data is always protected while using the platform. 
• Cloud-Based Hosting – Bill4Time Payments is hosted on Amazon’s AWS platform, which is built to meet the requirements of the worlds most security-sensitive organizations.
• PCI Compliance – Bill4Time is PCI level 1 compliant, the highest level possible. The PCI standard was set by the major credit card brands, and in order to achieve this qualification, an organization must be audited yearly.  
• Trust Accounting Compliance – Earned and unearned fees are always completely separated at all times (even during the online transmission process), fees are never taken from trust funds, nor is third party or chargeback access ever allowed.

As a lawyer you have plenty to worry about, the last thing on your mind should be stressing about the security of your client’s payments. You can place your trust in the Bill4Time engineers and compliance team to keep your data out of the wrong hands. If you would like to learn more about Bill4Time Payments, or even have specific security questions before getting started, you can schedule a demo below.

Your prospective client needs a lawyer and local SEO can help them find you. They enter the keywords “lawyers near me” in Google. Your law firm appears. As they scan through the search results, they see your law firm, again and again. Most of the information they see demonstrates your ability to get things done for your clients. 

Slowly they begin to realize the truth. You’re something special. Imagine that you could achieve these results in your law firm. What would this do for your career, reputation, or firm? 

Local SEO is the key to Google search success

The majority of small to medium-sized law firms struggle with at least one of the following problems: 

1. Lack of quantity and quality of leads
2. Lawyers are struggling to close the leads they have
3. Law firm margins are too small due to mistakes like discounts, write-downs, and write-offs
4. Firms are undercut by low cost providers and industry disruptors like LegalZoom or RocketLawyer
5. Advertising costs are too high
6. They’re attracting poor quality clients, which hurts realization and retention rates in the long term

Local search can help lawyers address these problems. Using local search, law firms can:

• Increase the number of traffic-producing keywords that drive clients to their site  
• Make credibility, authority, and prestige markers (e.g., awards, specialization, wins) more visible in Google
• Increase the number of leads generated so they can raise their prices comfortably
• Make competitors irrelevant or zone them out of Google’s search results
• Decrease advertising costs by getting others to rave about your firm
• Attract clients who will fight for your attention, spend more with your firm and pay higher fees

How lawyers can increase traffic, leads, and revenue via local SEO

Local SEO for lawyers doesn’t have to be expensive. There are several low cost and no cost tactics lawyers can use to boost search results. Before we take a look at these tactics, I want to cover some general principles regarding marketing. These aren’t absolute rules. They’re simply important details to keep in mind. 

1. Paid advertising produces results faster. Using services like Facebook or Google Ads means you’re able to generate traffic, leads, and revenue immediately. The nature of paid advertising and marketing means these paid services lack longevity. Results go away as soon as you stop paying. 
2. Free advertising takes time. Free tactics like search engine optimization, review management, influencer marketing, etc. all require time to generate results organically. If results are rushed, they’re typically pretty lackluster. As a general rule, free advertising tactics perform well over the long term. It takes time to set up but lasts for a long time. 
3. Combine free and paid advertising tactics for the best results. Combining free and paid advertising tactics produce exponential growth (think 2 + 2 = 42). Both of these tactics play off each other, boosting your firm’s reputed and presumed credibility. 
4. Paid advertising can be free. Structure your offers the right way, and your paid advertising can be free. This can be accomplished in several ways, i.e., using paid ads to send prospective clients to a paid consultation page to gauge their interest. 

With that in mind, let’s take a look at the local SEO search tactics you can use to generate 2x more leads:

• Consistently build a robust online review portfolio
• Systematically build a strong publicity/mentions portfolio
• Use newsjacking to promote your firm’s pro bono work
• Pick a public fight against a worthy adversary
• Write for notable publications
• Speak at local events where your target audience is present
• Use positive controversy to raise your firm’s profile
• Local advertising via Google Ads 
• Remarketing advertising to boost sign-ups from previous visitors
• Become a career interviewee on radio and podcast shows
• Create your own radio show
• Syndicate your content to client-facing sources 
• Become a career interviewer, interviewing people your clients want to hear from

Just one of these tactics can 2x your lead generation campaigns. Overlap these strategies, and the positive results grow exponentially. These local SEO strategies can be used to dominate Google’s local search results, many of these strategies, yes, even paid advertising, can be low/no cost tactics when they’re used effectively. 

Here’s the most significant reason your law firm should invest in local SEO: Most law firms aren’t using it well. If most firms are doing the same things poorly, no wonder it isn’t working all that well. But it can. 

Lawyers near me = your firm, everywhere

At least, that’s how it should be. When done right, local SEO for lawyers will help you drive more traffic and appear higher in searches. When your prospective clients enter location-specific keywords in Google, they should see your firm everywhere. As they scan through Google’s search results, your firm and accomplishments should appear consistently. 

Time tracking for consultants is a catch-22. In fact, consulting is a trap that will eventually enslave unknowing organizations. This sounds horrible; to be honest, this also sounds like pure hyperbole. This is often the first impression people have, but eventually, they come to realize that it’s true.

The advantages of consulting are intertwined with the disadvantages. The unfortunate part of all of this is the fact that the disadvantages of traditional consulting models outweigh the benefits.

Time tracking for consultants is a trap

Don’t misunderstand, time tracking is an absolute necessity for your consultancy. It really doesn’t matter whether you bill by the hour or on a fixed basis, you still need to know how much time you’re spending on your tasks, projects, meetings, and events.

I’m guessing you already know why. You need to know that your rate is fair to your clients and profitable for your business.

Here’s why this is a disaster. Using the traditional model, your consultancy loses more time and money as you grow. This is the reality for any service business that uses the conventional model. Let’s take a look at a common scenario to see how this impacts the business in our example.

1. Amazing news, you’ve just won a large client.
2. Your new client pays upfront for 50,000 hours of work.
3. You only have the manpower to deliver 1,200 hours of work.
4. This means you’ll need to hire more employees.

This is the problem. When your income goes up, your expenses shoot up exponentially. Win a large contract, and you’ll need to:

• Spend money to find candidates to hire
• Hire new employees
• Cover health insurance, incentives, and bonuses
• You’ll need to pay for insurance in several areas
• Pay for training, supplies, and materials so your employees can work
• Managers to monitor your flock of employees

All this expense for the chance to spend more time on your client’s project. This is the trap you face as a consultant. While some consultancies can make this work, most struggle in the long-term, eventually falling apart as work dries up or continues to grow.

This often leads to burnout. What if there was a way to use timekeeping to 2x your productivity, 3x your revenues, and work 50 percent less?

How to 2x your productivity, 3x your revenues

First, you’ll need to track your time carefully. You’ll need a timekeeping software that provides you with automatic, real-time updates. You need a precise measurement — you’re looking for answers to a few specific questions.

1. How much does it cost to provide your service?
2. How much value does the client receive (in real dollars) from your work?
3. What are you currently billing for your service(s)?

Contemporaneous (as-it-happens) timekeeping is important because it enables you to answer question #1. It also provides deeper insights into questions #2 and #3.

What’s next? Your consultancy uses timekeeping to boost productivity and pricing to increase revenues. With timekeeping, you focus your time and attention on the projects and tasks that lead to profitable results. Use the list of strategies and tactics in our comprehensive guide to boost productivity.

Then comes pricing.

Pricing is a struggle for many consultants and attorneys

But it doesn’t need to be. You just need the right structure for your firm. What do you get from the proper structure?

You get breathing room. You get the freedom and confidence you need to experiment, to figure out what’s best for your business. Let’s take a look at the inner workings of this structure. It may not seem like it, but this structure is just as important as your pricing. You’ll see why in a moment.

There are a few ways you can approach this:

• À la carte. You pick and choose what you want from this. Keep the meat, leave the bones.
• Take it all. You keep and test everything. You throw everything against the wall and see what sticks.
• Customize. You use this to create your own idea or plan.

Here’s the structure.

1. Choose projects you can do with your existing workforce.
2. Identify your breakeven point. This is the absolute bare minimum you need to cover your expenses without hiring employees.
3. Set a reasonable price you’re comfortable with.
4. Close the clients you need to meet your breakeven point.
5. Keep your existing clients then double your client roster.
6. Double your price for your newest clients.
7. Keep your clients. Double your client roster.
8. Double your price again at the end of your contract term for your newest clients.
9. Repeat steps 4 – 6.
10. Replace or re-up existing clients at your new rates.

Now, let’s role play with some numbers.

• Your breakeven point: $3,000 per mo.
• Introductory price: $1,500 per mo.
• Clients needed: 2

What if you doubled your price per client three times? That’s $12,000 per mo., per client.

If you keep six clients, that’s $72,000 per mo. or $864,000 per year. It’s doable, but it’s also comfortable. With the right tools, resources, and leverage, you can easily manage six clients on your own or with a small team.

See what I mean? Some consultants prefer to keep wonderful clients and their current rates. They value relationships highly and desire to work with the right client instead of every client. Others prefer to grow their revenues exponentially.

Do what works for you. It’s tough for most people to increase their pricing systematically. It takes a certain degree of mental toughness.

How consultants can work 50 percent less

As your revenue and productivity grow, you’ll find you need fewer employees to do the work, especially if you’ve been disciplined and focused on keeping expenses low. If you follow this model carefully, you’ll find you’re able to make more money doing less work.

This is how you work 50 percent less, but it gets better. Productize your service for clients who are unwilling to spend a large amount of money, and you’re able to make even more money from those with smaller budgets. They get the training they need, and you receive the cash flow you need to grow.

Create (at least) two streams of revenue, and you’ll find you’re able to grow your income on demand.

Consulting doesn’t have to be a catch-22

It doesn’t have to enslave your business. You can build a consulting firm that’s intertwined with advantages—a firm where the benefits outweigh the downsides. With an innovative model, your consultancy gains more time and more money. As you master timekeeping and pricing, you’ll find you’re able to grow your income on demand.

This is the reality for any service business that uses an innovative model. Focus on the right strategies and tactics, and you’ll find you’re able to double productivity and triple revenue growth in half the time.