So, when people ask if you take cards, you can say “yes.”

As an alternative, when people ask if you will accept their payment with credit card, you can offer them a 2 percent discount, which is most often a better incentive than the incentive the client is looking for in the first place. That is client-pleasing and costs you about the same amount as accepting the cards.

One caution: I would suggest that you keep credit cards out of your advertising messages.

Lawyers advertising that they accept credit cards makes them look desperate for business. It “retails” them. (It puts them in the same business category as shoe stores and restaurants.) Sure, doctors and dentists – other professionals – take credit cards. But, these are insurance reimbursement driven industries, not at all similar to legal services.

A few years ago I started working with a client who was a family law attorney. He had a great-looking yellow pages ad and he displayed his credit card logos in his ad. As a marketing consultant, I advised him to make a few changes to his ad, including taking the credit card logos out. He let me make all the changes except for the credit card logo removal. His reasoning was that about 8 percent of his yellow pages-generated business used credit cards to pay. He did not want to lose these clients.

His new ad, with the revisions I suggested did great: twenty-eight percent increase ($80,000) for the year.

When it was time to renew his annual contract with yellow pages, he asked me what I could do to his ad to give him another big bump for the following year. I told him to change only one thing: get rid of the credit card logos. He argued. I listened. I explained. He argued more.

When he was spent, I told him that he sometimes just had to do the counter-intuitive thing. I told him he was losing business because of the credit card logos in his ad. “Dean, people are looking at your ad and not calling you because you look like the unprofessional, not-too-successful, I-need-the-business lawyer.”

I explained to Dean that it is easy to measure that which we can see and impossible to measure that which we don’t. “The 28 percent increase-those are the people who call you and give you their money. You can measure them. However, how can you measure the people who don’t call you? Dean, how can you measure what you lose? How many people didn’t call you because of what they saw in your ad?”

I reminded Dean that the other things I had done with his ad had resulted in $80,000 more money coming in the door. “Dean, can you afford to not listen to me?” That was the only logic Dean needed; he agreed to removing the credit card logos. How well did that work?

Dean is now six months into the credit-card-logo-free ad. His business is up 21 percent to date. Better yet, Dean’s yellow pages business is up 36 percent. (His non-yellow pages business is down.)

Sure take the cards. Just don’t advertise that you do.