Medical-Legal Topics

How do you determine if you should expand the services of your company? Should your law firm branch into another area? Should your legal nurse consulting firm start offering a new service? Which expansions are high risk? When should you make the change?

Norman Levy, a consultant, presented a model at the National Speakers Association Convention in August 2009 that made a lot of sense to me. These are four choices:

1. Provide more products and services to your existing customers.
2. Provide your existing products and services to a new market.
3. Develop new products and services for an existing market.
4. Provide new products and services to a new market.

Generally the lowest risk choice is #1, and the highest risk choice is #4. Conventional wisdom states that #1 is least risky because of the relationship you have with your current clients, who know and trust you. Med League started 21 years ago by supplying nursing expert witnesses, and added medical summaries, screening for medical malpractice, literature searches, attendance at IMEs, preparing of demonstrative evidence, and so on to our existing clients. These are #1 activities: more products and services to our existing clients.

Occasionally I teach (existing service) nurses who are being disciplined by the Board of Nursing, an example of a new market, a #2 activity.

When we started providing teleseminars for attorneys and legal nurse consultants in the fall of 2008, we branched into a #3 activity: new services for an existing market. We are about to launch a new service of a different nature to our existing market.

Although providing more services to existing client should be least risky, sometimes radical changes in the market place require businesses to shift the focus. For example, we used to have a lot more motor vehicle accident lawsuits before changes in the law toughened the criteria for filing suit. Many attorneys shifted their focus to new areas of law to compensate for the changes.

What’s clear if that you can’t stand still and be complacent. Look at where you are, what the market needs and what you need to change to move ahead.

            What are these?

Tags: change, new products, new services, product development

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 13th, 2010 at 8:05 am and is filed under Business skills, National Speakers Association, Personal injury, Trial lawyer skills. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.