In our first installment, we outlined concrete steps you may take to advance the growth of a prosperous practice. Below are the remaining key steps to take:

1. Break down goals into manageable action steps. Schedule a marketing activity for every day that need not consume more than five minutes in your already jammed schedule. Create a recurring calendar item to send an email to one non-active client and one high impact prospect every day. Is that attainable? If not, you get the idea now set your own calendar item.

By engaging in some type of marketing activity daily you will develop what is referred to as a “marketing mindset” by creating a sense of higher awareness that to build a solid practice, it is necessary to integrate relationship-building initiatives into your day (and in some cases, evening) along with your actual practice. The point here being that they go hand in hand, simultaneously.

The second purpose of engaging in daily marketing activities is that over time you will build a sense of confidence from the continual “seed sowing” of building your practice and you will “reap” the “fruit”, the reward being new client retentions and an expanding network of contacts and referral sources.

2. Get out of your office. There are abundant opportunities for lawyers to participate in extracurricular activities to develop meaningful business relationships and an expert reputation. Evaluate your interests, your target audience, and select one or two organizations in which to become active. You will be far more likely to contribute in a meaningful way if the organization’s mission resonates with you and/or your practice. Let me be clear. It is not enough to ‘show up’ to a gathering on an irregular basis if your intention is to “get business” from organizational involvements. You must take concrete steps (such as volunteering on a high profile committee like the membership or program committees) to develop relationships with organizational members as well as to develop a reputation as an expert in your chosen field.

3. Ignite your passion. Are you really committed to building, growing and sustaining a prosperous practice? What are you willing to do to achieve your goals? In coaching lawyers every day, we have found that if there are not enough SMART goals, accountability, and a lack of passion, it’s not happening. Consider what you really get fired up about in your business. Is it delivering a winner result for your clients? Or, maybe sharing your expertise with other lawyers? Take a bit of time to evaluate what gets and keeps you going in your business, and plan to do more of that in 2015.

4. Measure your progress. Successful lawyers know to create set points in the year to measure their results. Calendar it in to run a report monthly of your P&L and other important metrics. If you do not like what you see in the report, make adjustments to your action steps. What we know for sure is that building a prosperous business is not rocket science but rather entails this ‘secret sauce’ – consistent and persistent massive amounts of action over a prolonged period of time is the ONLY path to successful marketing results.

All the best for a very prosperous year!

To learn the requisite concrete habits you must develop to become the rainmaker you are meant to be, download a free copy of Top Habits of Successful Rainmakers. Do it today!