Carolyn Mumby

Can law firms really justify corporate hospitality?

Corporate hospitality events is a traditional method of entertaining clients as part of your legal marketing mix, but as lawyers it’s easy to fall into the trap of putting on the same old events and inviting the same clients each time. Here are some top tips for ensuring you get a good return on investment for your corporate hospitality budget.

1. Events should be viewed as means of keeping in contact with clients, encouraging referrals, cross selling & inviting feedback.
2. Profile your top 20 clients on the basis of overall yearly billing and number of repeat instructions per year.  Rotate invitations to ensure each one is invited to an event over the year
3. Invitees are more likely to accept invitations if the event is different from the usual race day, golf day and so forth. Use your imagination!
4. Keep a close eye on the budget.  Decide how much you are prepared to spend per guest and stick to your limit.  A good way to cut costs at a stroke is to avoid free bars, travel expenses and other acts of largesse!
5. Ensure that the attending in-house professionals are seasoned networkers and will spend their time bringing in leads, rather than indulging in free refreshments. As an exception to this rule, you could allow less experienced team members to shadow a more experienced colleague at these events so they can show them the rainmaking ropes. 
6. Always, conduct an analysis a few weeks after the event. Calculate the value of the work actually brought in against the cost of the hospitality.  If it’s a negative balance, you will need to adjust your legal marketing plan to focus on more constructive marketing activities.

Tags: Lead Generation, Networking, Relationship Building, Up selling exsiting clients

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