How to improve the performance of law firm marketing, leads and sales in the process of selling of attorney legal services

One thing intake specialists have a hard time dealing with are objections and stalls from potential new clients. As I’ve written about earlier, most intake specialists come from a call center or customer service background—they don’t have a strong sales background—so when they get stalls or objections, they usually fold on the call and let the prospect get away.

In fact, just this week I was monitoring calls for a client firm I work with, and when a caller called in to cancel the day after signing the contract, the IS (intake specialist) literally said:

“That’s perfectly okay to take your time. Our agreement gives you three days to cancel and if you’re not comfortable with our firm, then you can definitely walk away…”

Seriously, she said, “You can walk away”! In fact, she went on for over 3 minutes telling this prospect that he should “take your time and it’s perfectly okay if you choose to go elsewhere…”

I’m not making this up. This is literally how many intake reps deal with objections or stalls. And in your legal intake department, your reps are getting their share of them day in and day out. Ask yourself, how many of these stalls sound familiar?

“I want to think about it.”

“I need to talk to my spouse first.”

“I want to read the contract before I sign.”

“Your fees are too high.”

“Another attorney said he would do this for just 25%”

“I want to get a second opinion.”

“I’m just looking right now.”

“I’m not sure I need an attorney.”

I know these sound familiar because your team gets these stalls over and over again. I promise you—if your intake team hasn’t been trained to deal with these objections effectively, then they’ll sound just like the example above, and your new case—and the fees that go with it—will go right out the door with them.

The good news is that you can stop losing cases like these by providing your intake team with proven and effective responses to deal with and overcome these and other objections and stalls. Let me show you how:

If your prospect tells you that XYZ attorney is willing to drop their fees to 25%—instead of your 33%–then you simply respond with:

“Well (first name) if my new attorney was willing to quickly drop his fees just to get my case, then I’d be worried that he’d just as quickly drop his settlement amount to get paid as well.

“I don’t know about you, but I prefer to have an attorney that works hard for me, who is strong in negotiating for me, and who will get me the best settlement I can get. Isn’t that the kind of attorney you want fighting for your settlement, too?”

[Once you get buy in, close the case!]

“That’s right, so put us to work for you today. We’ve won over $50 million dollars for our clients and that’s the kind of success that I know you’re looking for. Here’s what we need to do…”

How much more effective would your team be if they used scripts like that?

This is just one example of the kinds of scripted rebuttals we provide our client firms with. The teams that go through out training finally have the tools to close cases and bring them into your firm instead of letting them go elsewhere. And this kind of proven skill training can lead to increases of 40% and more in conversions for your firm.

Also, once intake reps have been through our proven training and have effective scripts like these, their confidence goes up and they perform better in all areas of their job. It also makes it easier to hire and onboard new reps and make them productive much faster. This, in turn helps you retain good reps and you know how much that matters to the growth and stability of your intake department.

If this article resonates with you, then reach out to us and let’s talk about how giving your team this kind of advantage will help you capture more fees and explode the growth of your firm.

Mike has worked with some of the largest Personal Injury and Tort Law firms in the country. His company was awarded both the 2017 & 2018 “Top Service Provider of the Year” award by the AA-ISP (American Association of Inside Sales Professionals). Mike’s strong background in sales and sales methodology allows him to offer his clients the kind of proven corporate training and results they can’t get with traditional intake training models.

Bottom line: More conversations and new cases that stay with you means maximizing your advertising dollars and increasing your bottom line. What would a 40% increase mean to your firm?

Have a conversation with Mike today and find out what he can offer you and your law firm. You can reach him by phone: (919) 267-4202, or by email: Mike@intakemastery.com

The post How to Improve Law Firm Marketing & Sales When Selling Legal Services appeared first on Intake Mastery.

Examples of how to best increase legal lead conversion rates within your client intake interview process, assessment, questions and law office template form sheet.

If you are a regular reader of my blog, then you know I work in a variety of industries and with many different companies in those industries. At first, when new companies are going to engage with me, some will ask what kind of experience I have in their specific vertical. My answer is always the same: sales skills and best practice selling techniques are transferable. Core inside sales skills and strategies work in all industries (that is why they are foundational) and can be adapted to work effectively in other industry.

And this is especially true in the legal field. For over a year now, I’ve been training some of the largest and most successful legal firms in the country and helping their intake teams dramatically increase their conversion percentage of inbound leads.

The clients I have worked with have seen as much as a 30% increase and more in conversion percentages using the proven inside sales skills and techniques I’ve perfected over the last 30 years. I’m going to list three of those techniques below, and I want you to ask yourself how many of these techniques and skills you (or your team) currently use when selling your product or service over the phone.

Skill One: Build rapid rapport with your prospect. In the legal industry, the calls are inbound—for the most part—and while you might think this would make them easy to handle, for some reason many of the intake specialists handling these leads treat them very much like a cop who pulls you over would. “It’s all about the facts, mam.”

You’ll hear many intakes start with, “And what is your name?” “Address?” “Phone number?” “And what happened?” etc.

The first thing I recommend to the teams I work with is to get on a first name basis with the caller. It starts with, “And may I call you by your first name? Great. And my name again is….”

Getting personal as soon as possible builds a bond with the caller and this instills trust. And trust is crucial for converting any sale.

In addition, there is a surprising lack of ongoing warm, of empathy, and genuine concern. Just little phrases I introduce make a huge difference in the overall feeling of the call and, more importantly, in getting buy-in from the caller. Things like:

“I’m so sorry you had to go through that!” And:

“Well you’ve called the right firm today, and I’m going to do everything I can to take care of you. Now let me ask you…”

These—and many other phrases and statements—instantly build rapport and trust, and this sets the tone for building investment throughout the call.

Skill Two: Getting the caller to act during the intake to increase their investment in the intake process.

This is an important component in any sale, but especially true in intake. The more things you have the caller do, the more invested in the intake and in your firm, they are.

Some of the things I recommend are:

• Getting the prospect to take down your name and phone number early in the call.
• Getting your prospect to send you any pictures of the accident or any paperwork they have.
• Having your prospect commit to directing any calls from an insurance company to their attorney at your firm.

These, and many other things, add up to making your prospect feel like they are already a client by the time you direct them to sign up with your firm.

For those of you in other industries, how many things do you ask your prospect to do? How can you invest them during your call or presentation?

Skill Three: Being prepared for the inevitable questions and objections at the end of the intake. As those of you who have read my latest book know, the secret to sales is knowing and being prepared for the stalls and objections that come at the end of your presentation. And it’s no different in intake.

Common objections and reasons that callers use not to sign right then include:

• I want to think about it.
• I want to talk to my spouse.
• Your fees are too high.
• I’m at work and can’t sign right now.
• Etc.

Sound familiar? They should because these are the same objections all sales reps get at the end of their presentations!

The way I help legal intake teams crush their competition is the same way I help other industries succeed: by developing best practice scripts to deal with these objections and stalls. And they work!

There are a lot of other techniques and skills I teach in my intake training, including solid customer service skills (it’s amazing how poorly intake reps handle the little things like putting people on hold!), building value in the law firm, creating trust and confidence, getting buy-in and investing the prospect during the intake process, disqualifying cases so as not to waste time on cases they don’t even want, and many others.

But the bottom line is still the same for the legal industry as well as any other: Sales is a set of skills that can be learned, and, if applied consistently, dramatically increase the conversion of leads.

And isn’t that what we’re all after?

** If you have a law firm—or know of one that needs help in maximizing their conversion percentage—then visit my website that is specific for the legal vertical: https://mrinsidesales.com/legalintaketraining/

Or call our office: (919) 267-4202.

I look forward to working with your team in converting more leads—regardless of the industry!

The post Legal Leads Conversion with Client Intake Interview Assessment & Forms appeared first on Intake Mastery.

Learn why customer service reps can hurt your intake rates and instead use specialist sales professionals to improve your client legal aid intake process and department at your law firm.

Most of the attorneys I work with run ads for intake specialists who have a background in either call centers or in a customer service environment. They think that someone who knows how to help people—or deal with problems—would be the perfect candidate for handling their intake calls.

They’re wrong.

Think about it: What happens when you call customer service for your Internet, cable TV, or cell phone? My experience is that when someone finally answers, they typically sound bored, aren’t very engaging, certainly aren’t smiling, and they don’t mind putting me on hold for long periods of time. When they finally get back on the phone, they are still bored, are quick to pass me off to another department, and I often end the call feeling they don’t really care if I get the help I need or not.

The reason they are like this is because they know I don’t have any options in whether I deal with them or not. They know we have to wait on hold and that we can’t hang up and change providers. We’re stuck with them and they know it. It’s not like you can suddenly call Spectrum if you have AT&T.

Ultimately, there is no urgency to help you or resolve your issue. They are just doing a job for minimum wage, and they are not invested in helping you or helping their company be the best it can.

While these reps can get away with this in their call centers, this is NOT the case with law firms. You know as well as I do that callers have too many choices when it comes to who they pick to represent them. If they get treated like this (and many of them do—if you don’t believe me, just call into your competition, or into your own intake team), your callers will quickly get off the phone and just call the next billboard they see or listing on Google. If your intake team doesn’t know how to build real rapport, invest the caller in the intake, and close the lead—convert that call into a paid case—then you’re simply rolling the dice.

So, what’s the answer?

The solution I immediately implement with the firms I work with is to run ads for people with a background in inside sales. Sales reps have a completely different attitude, and they know how to work with urgency to qualify and close sales. This is the skill set that makes a huge difference in the more successful firms.

The reason is that sales reps understand the sales environment and are used to the structure and best practice approaches that lead to higher performance and achievement of goals. Sales reps are the perfect fit for legal intake, and they respond well to:

* Metrics and being measured against expectations for performance.

* Training and being held accountable to using a best practice, scripted approach.

* Recording their calls and review of their performance.

* They are money motivated and will perform well with the right compensation plan.

* They are competitive and come with high expectations.

In addition, inside sales reps are closers at heart. They are driven to convert leads into sales, and they are the kind of professionals you want handling the leads you pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for every month.

Think about it: What does it cost you to generate a phone call for a potential case? $400 each? $500? A lot more?

Every time your phone rings, that’s a $500 bill calling—and even thousands of dollars in fees if you convert the case. Do you really want your untrained receptionist answering that? Do you want your untrained and overworked case manager taking that call? Do you want your customer service rep (who is not trained in sales) taking that call?

No. You want a highly trained, inside sales person taking that call who is trying to make a quota and convert a sale. THAT’S who will convert more of the $500 bills into thousands and thousands of dollars in cases per month.

And don’t get me started on your supervisors and managers… I’ll address that in another article….

Bottom line: It’s easier than you think to upgrade your intake department and explode your conversion rates. It just won’t happen if you don’t upgrade or train your existing team in the best practice inside sales approaches they need to be successful.

Stop expecting customer services reps to do what trained inside sales reps need to be doing for you. Hiring and training successful inside sales teams is what we’ve done for over 30 years, and it’s the best investment you’ll ever make in the profitability of your firm.

If you like to know more about this, then reach out to us.

Mike works with some of the largest Personal Injury and Tort law firms in the country. His company has received both the 2017 & 2018 “Top Service Provider of the Year” award by the American Association of Inside Sales Professionals. Mike’s 30-year background in sales and sales methodology allows him to offer his clients the kind of proven corporate training and results they can’t get with traditional intake training models.

By combining proven, best practices from the inside sales environment, Mike has been able to increase conversion rates in excess of 40% and more. Have a conversation with Mike today and find out how he can help your intake department convert more calls into fees. You can reach him by phone: (919) 267-4202, or by email: Mike@intakemastery.com

The post Specialist Sales Professionals in the Client Legal Aid Intake Process appeared first on Intake Mastery.