Marketing Hints For Nurse Consultants

Q:I have a Legal Nurse Consultant firm. We help attorneys with medical malpractice and personal injury cases. Does anyone have any ideas on how to market our business, other than by direct mail?

A:The old fashion way of knocking on doors: Have your most personable employee go around and visit lawyers. A handshake goes a long way. Have him/her practice with you (or if you're going to do it, you should practice with someone that will give you honest feedback [a.k.a. your boss ... or if you're the boss, a consultant]). Try to talk to as many lawyers as possible, and ask to attend a partner meeting. Once you or one of your employees has shook hands with a lawyer, send all direct mail to that person, and try to make it personable, a handwritten 'post-it' note slapped on the cover letter at least. In that note, show that you've kept track of them. Make a comment about some court case they just wrapped up. Offer to give a lecture at local lawyer conferences. Have brochures to hand out to attendees as they enter. The brochure can be single-sheet outline of your lecture on one side, and a pitch for your business on the other side. Hand out business cards at these events as if the success or failure of your business depended on it, and make sure that business card is informative so, next time, they look at it. They'll know what you're selling. You are selling high-end professional services. You should consider implementing a 7-step prospecting and contact management system. Relationship building is a slow and tedious process, but one that cannot be avoided if you want to succeed in your field of choice. I can help you set up, and operate, such a system. The end result would be a scalable pipelined process, yielding the number of new clients you are searching for. As far as marketing your efforts is concerned, writing articles and speaking engagements work well for me. These are not sales pitches, they provide just enough content for people to know if they're interested in what you have to offer and to feel as though they've taken away a tool they can use. Make sure your target market is the audience for your talk or article. If you choose this route, make sure you include some type of "call to action" at the end of your article or talk. Otherwise, the time you spent is wasted.