◍For consultancies and the liberal professions

With your existing contacts, not with outreach. In advisory professions, most revenue comes from recommendations and from existing mandates.

The order:

1. Record existing contacts — including those you have not dealt with for two years.
2. Set follow-ups where something is open or an occasion is coming up (deadlines, annual accounts, renewals).
3. A website that answers the questions people ask on the phone: what does an initial consultation cost, how does it work, what do you specialise in.
4. Only then think about outreach.

What has a particular effect in your sector: being reachable and being clear about costs. Both are missing from most law firm websites, and both are the most common reason why someone does not call.

For lawyers, tax advisers, doctors and other professions regulated by a chamber, there are limits under professional law — they are broader today than they used to be, but they exist.

As a guide (the exact position is set out in your professional code):

• Factual information is allowed — areas of focus, qualifications, procedure, often prices too.
• Sensationalist advertising is not. Superlatives, promises of success, comparisons with colleagues.
• Success figures are delicate. “98% of cases won” is not permitted under many professional codes.
• Client-related details only with consent — and even then with caution.

Cold calling is additionally restricted under professional law, independently of the Act against Unfair Competition (UWG).

Clarify the specific framework with your chamber before you run a campaign. That is one phone call.

That you have to be more careful than others — the duty of confidentiality carries criminal penalties (Section 203 of the German Criminal Code, StGB).

What follows from this:

• A data processing agreement alone is not enough. With professional confidentiality, additional requirements apply to involving service providers; Section 203 (3) StGB sets out the conditions under which their involvement is permitted.
• Keep access narrow. Not everyone in the firm needs to see every client.
• Be restrained with notes. Whatever is in the CRM can be requested as part of a subject access request.
• Content belongs in the file, not in the CRM. The CRM manages the contact, not the case.

Clarify with your chamber and your data protection officer which services you may use — especially with AI.

What someone wants to know before calling, and that is rarely your qualifications:

• What you deal with, in the language of the person seeking advice. Not “company law”, but “setting up a company, disputes between shareholders, succession”.
• How a first contact works and what it costs. The most frequently asked unspoken question.
• Who you are. With personal services, the impression of people decides, not of logos. A good photo is worth more here than three paragraphs.
• How to reach you — phone hours, response time to emails.

What does not work: a list of areas of law that is the same as at every other firm.

And an FAQ page is particularly effective in your sector: people search for their question, not for your name.

State the price — whatever it is. The worst answer is none.

Why: uncertainty about costs is the most common reason in advisory professions why someone does not call. Anyone who knows that an initial consultation costs €190 decides for or against it. Anyone who does not know keeps looking.

What you can say if a fixed price is not possible:

• A range, with what determines it.
• The billing method — hourly rate, value in dispute, flat fee.
• What the initial consultation includes and how long it lasts.

And observe the rules of your professional law: for some professions, fees are regulated by law, and undercutting them is not permitted.

Only with their express consent, and where professional confidentiality applies, even naming the client relationship is a problem.

This applies more strictly than most people assume: the fact that someone is your client can itself be protected information.

What works instead:

• Anonymised case descriptions. “A medium-sized supplier with 80 employees” instead of a name. Make sure the description cannot be traced back — in a region with three such businesses, it can.
• Industries instead of names.
• Figures without attribution, as far as professional law allows them.

If a client expressly agrees: in writing, with a clear scope, and with a note that they can withdraw their consent.

With follow-ups instead of campaigns. With long decision paths, it is not the outreach that decides but the reminder at the right moment.

In practice:

• Every conversation ends with a follow-up. Even the one that came to nothing.
• Note the occasions. “Will review in the autumn”, “after the annual accounts”, “when the son takes over”. Those are your dates.
• Be useful in between, do not sell. A note about a change in deadlines is an occasion to get in touch.

What does not work: asking the same person every three weeks whether they have decided yet.

In advisory professions, the stock of “later” contacts is the real capital. It lasts for years.

By recording them — that is almost all there is to it.

Three steps:

1. For every new contact, note where they came from. After a year, you will see who actually recommends you.
2. Mark these people — a category “Referrer” is enough.
3. Get in touch. Not with a request, but with thanks and occasionally with something useful.

What many people overlook: the best referrers are often not clients, but neighbouring professions — tax advisers recommend lawyers, architects recommend tradespeople, GPs recommend specialists.

Cultivating these relationships is the most effective form of acquisition in advisory professions — and the only one that is unproblematic under professional law.

With particular caution, and for you the question is not one of usefulness but of confidentiality.

What you need to clarify before you start:

• May mandate-related material leave the firm? With professional confidentiality, that is a separate assessment, not just a data protection one.
• What does your chamber say? Many have now published guidance.
• Is training excluded? Contractually, not just by promise.

What is generally unproblematic:

• Help with wording for your own texts that are not related to a mandate.
• Summaries of anonymised facts.

What you should not do: copy a case with names into an AI service to have it summarised. That is the case that gets law firms into difficulties.

Follow-ups and tasks are suitable for dates you set yourself — callbacks, follow-up contact, reminders.

For genuine deadlines — appeal deadlines, limitation periods, statutory dates — a CRM is the wrong tool. There are specialist applications for that, with preliminary deadline, control deadline, double entry and proof. That is a quality issue of its own in your profession.

The clean separation:

• Deadlines in the specialist application, with the procedure provided there.
• Contact work in the CRM: who said what and when, when do I get back in touch.

What you can do: set a follow-up in addition when a contact belongs to a deadline case. But never instead of deadline control.

One shared set of contacts with clear assignment — not separate systems.

Why shared: the value lies in someone being able to see, before a call, whether a colleague already looks after the business. Separate sets create exactly the embarrassing situation you want to avoid.

What you should settle:

• Assignment as a category or tag, not as ownership.
• Who may see which notes? Where there is confidentiality towards colleagues — that exists — access must be restricted.
• What belongs in the CRM and what in the file? The line should be clear to everyone.

And the agreement that saves the most trouble: who gets in touch with whom? A shared set of contacts without this agreement leads to duplicate calls.

For four things, all of which need a specialist application of their own:

• Deadline control with preliminary and control deadlines.
• Case file management — the content of a mandate belongs in the file.
• Time recording and billing according to professional fee scales.
• Electronic legal communication and the associated mailboxes.

What Aurora Hive Sales does well and what law firm software usually lacks:

• Looking after contacts beyond the occasion of the mandate.
• Systematically staying in touch with prospects.
• Client communication in series — deadline reminders, changes in the law, annual letters.

The two systems do not exclude each other. The only question is where which information belongs, and that should be decided and written down once.