Growing a Great Firm One Referral at a Time

Craig Goldenfarb opened The Law Offices of Craig Goldenfarb, P.A. in 2001, beginning what would become one of the top Personal Injury firms in competitive South Florida. Craig has reached this level of success by consistently focusing on cultivating great referral sources, creating an excellent client experience, and building an efficient and happy team.

With a team of sixty employees, these days Craig focuses a lot of his attention on maintaining and developing high-quality referral relationships. While his firm does spend on advertising it is not surprising to those that know Craig and the firm that most of his clients are referred to the firm.

When Craig attended his first Atticus coaching workshop, at around the same time that he started his firm, the coaching was in alignment with his mindset of working on the business not just in it. For Craig, that meant developing a high-quality network of referral sources and maintaining and deepening those relationships consistently. But it is not enough to develop a top-notch and deep referral network, it is also important to track each referral as it comes in.

Creating a System to Track Referrals

To that end, Craig, like many Atticus clients, has a systematic way of keeping track of new referrals and using that data to direct his marketing efforts.

Part of Craig’s system is that whenever a new referral is received there is an automatic response on the part of the firm regarding the referral source. If the referral is from an existing referral source a thank you card is sent, and a lunch invitation is included if it has been a while since Craig has had lunch with that referral source. If the referral is from a new referral source a bottle of white wine and a lunch invitation are sent out. This brilliant systematic way of thanking and acknowledging referral sources helps Craig retain Top of Mind Awareness or TOMA with his referral sources. And it helps ensure that the first referral a new source sends will not be the last.

The impact of the pandemic is being felt every day on every firm and one of the key questions many attorneys are facing is how do I keep that TOMA with my referral sources during social distancing and all the restrictions that are in place.

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The Magic of ‘Giftology’

Craig had a unique take on this question that included partnering with a local coffee shop to send his top 100 referral sources a premium Brazilian coffee blend and a Law Offices of Craig Goldenfarb branded hand sanitizer. This project, called Caffeine and Cleanliness, was born from Craig’s belief in the power of gift-giving having read a book on the subject called, “Giftology” by John Ruhlin. One of the tenants of the book is to give gifts at unusual times so that the impact is greater than if you give a gift around the holidays for example, when it is more expected. If there was ever an unusual time to give out gifts it is during the pandemic.

Each referral source received the locally bought coffee, the branded sanitizer, and a personal handwritten note from Craig. The practical steps taken to make this project successful were to identify a local coffee shop to supply the coffee portion of the gift, have a team member call each referral source to get their home address (since many physical offices are closed), and write the personal note for each gift.

Besides the goodwill generated and keeping up TOMA with his referral sources, Craig also calculated his potential direct return on investment. He would need to receive one new referral from this project to generate a 3 to 1 return on investment. He anticipates the return is much greater.