Top Strategies to Build a Better Law Firm: Follow Up or Fail
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Everyone who has ever attended a Rainmaker Retreat knows this is one of my mantras, but it bears repeating:
"The Fortune is in The Follow-up!"
I was speaking with an estate planning attorney who mentioned he’d recently had a fantastic meeting with an interested, and very wealthy individual. The attorney made a proposal to the prospect for a comprehensive estate plan and quoted him a fee around $5,000. He was confident in his belief that the prospect would sign up.
However, after thinking about it for a few days, the prospect declined, citing the attorney's high fee as the reason. Now, this potential client's estate is worth well north of a million dollars. His parents are multi-millionaires, so it's not a matter of not being able to afford it.
When I inquired as to what my client was doing to follow up and re-sell the prospect, my client stated nothing because his partner told him, "We don't chase clients."
Now, I am all for attracting clients and not being perceived as an "ambulance chaser." However, I rather pointedly stated I thought his partner was dead wrong! Now is the time to increase your follow-up, not eliminate it.
I coached him to immediately call and email the prospect and ask for a meeting with him and his parents and in this meeting to emphasize the value of having a comprehensive, bullet proof estate plan versus one cranked out by a trust mill or a generic online form.
In the law firms who have hired The Rainmaker Institute to consult with them on improving their conversion rates, we have found if they fix their follow-up they will fix their cash flow! If you are struggling with negative cash flow you need to immediately look to your system of follow-up or the lack thereof.
Every lead, every prospect, every referral source and every client needs to have a follow-up in a timely and consistent fashion. Since you have a very limited amount of time to do so, you must learn how to automate the follow-up process. We recently helped one of our clients set up an autoresponder series to do just this.
An autoresponder is an automated process that sends out a pre-written series of emails to a qualified list to encourage them to take a desired course of action.
For example, if you meet with a prospective client who does not make a decision to retain you immediately, you can set them up (with their full permission of course) to receive information from your law firm via email.
This may consist of a series of five to ten emails that is sent every three to five days. The first email may consist of a simple "Thank you for coming in to see us. Here's a link to our website for more information." The second email may be "There are 10 questions you must ask any attorney before you hire them to take your case. Here's the first two questions..."
On average, people require at least seven to ten meaningful touches to move from being interested in you to being ready to buy from you. Most attorneys stop after two or three touches because they falsely believe they are "bothering" or "chasing" the person.
As long as you are professional and courteous in your email communications, most people perceive your persistence as caring about them and wanting their business, not bothersome.
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