The question is simple enough. A lawyer asks a question on a group chat, “What I should do with prospects who don’t have a case?” The response is near unanimous with the group agreeing that the lead is worthless and the lawyer shouldn’t waste any time following up. HUGE MISTAKE!
But let’s face the truth: over 98% of online contacts have either a general inquiry or the prospect’s claim doesn’t have an ounce of merit. And you’re busy and have clients with real cases that will make money. Herein lies the dilemma: you don’t want to spend your time responding to online inquiries that have no merit, but you can’t ignore them either.
Follow-Up is Everything
You’ve worked damn hard to get people to respond to your website and lead generation campaigns, i.e., Pay Per Click ads, TV or radio ads, etc. Once you get a potential client to contact you (even with a crappy claim), do you really want to ignore them? The prospect might not have a case today, but six months later she might refer your next seven-figure case if you do one thing: FOLLOW UP.
But following up with prospective clients is one thing lawyers (and just about all businesses) do horribly. The statistics are ugly:
- 43% of businesses give up after one follow up. Why? No time, no system and they don’t know how to follow up with prospects.
- Only 10% of businesses make more than 3 contacts with prospects. We just don’t follow up.
- 80% of sales close between the 5th and 12th If you only follow up one to three times, you’re missing 80% of clients.
You are 9 times more likely to convert a lead if you follow up within the first five minutes. It’s a combination of following up repeatedly and timely. Prospects will refer a case when they are ready to refer, not when you are ready.
Automated Follow-Up is a Game Changer
You can’t be everywhere and with online inquiries that hit your inbox at random times, you can’t follow up effectively without one thing: AUTOMATED FOLLOW-UP. Automated follow up consists of a Welcome Campaign that provides a near immediate response to the inquiry and then nurtures and cultivates the prospective client with a Long-Term Nurture campaign.
The things that worked many years ago work today and will work for years to come.
Clate Mask, Co-Founder of Infusionsoft
There are three basics for an automated follow-up campaign: (1) Lead Generation, (2) Welcome Campaign, and (3) Long Term Nurture.
Step #1: Lead Generation
You want the consumer to stop searching for a lawyer and call you IMMEDIATELY. Easier said than done. Be different from the sea of lawyers by giving away your secrets and offering valuable information that no consumer can resist—this alone will instantly separate you from everyone else.
Your lead magnet can be a free E-book or white paper (i.e., “The Seven Deadly Mistakes of Malpractice Victims”) or a 24-hour/day phone number with an audio recording of “The 3 Most Common Mistakes Made by Injury Victims When Hiring a Lawyer”.
As a lead magnet for lawyer referrals, I offer my free book, The Power of a System, through a variety of channels:
- Facebook Ads targeting personal injury lawyers in New York State,
- Direct Mail Campaign to New York personal injury lawyers,
- Print Ads in TRIAL Magazine
But this only starts the conversation with your prospect and without follow up, you are wasting your time and money on lead generation.
Step #2: Welcome Campaign
Once the prospect contacts you, send a “Welcome Package” that contains your advice and information for injury victims. Our “Welcome Package” includes documents explaining the rights of injury victims, including:
- E-book, The 7 Deadly Mistakes of Malpractice Victims,
- Your 8 Basic Rights: How to Make Sure Your Lawyer is Doing his Job,
- Our Rules for Protecting Your Privacy and Confidentiality,
- Our 3 Rules of Communication
Your Welcome Campaign educates and informs the consumer about their rights like no one else. No other lawyers are taking the time or trouble to do this and that’s precisely why you should.
You should send an introductory email with embedded video that welcomes the prospect, takes them through a walk of your office and introduces your team. This adds a personal touch and builds trust with prospective clients. BTW, with www.BombBomb.com, you can embed video into email (as opposed to asking consumers to click a link).
Step #3: Long Term Nurture
The Long-Term Nurture campaign can be a series of automated touch-points that should be done at least monthly with all of your prospects and clients. Your Long-Term Nurture campaign can be a monthly print newsletter, weekly email newsletter or a series of automated emails that are relevant to the inquiry.
Automated follow up is a complete game changer.
Clate Mask, Co-Founder of Infusionsoft
You should have a Long-Term Nurture campaign that is unique for each of your practice areas. Let’s say you’re contacted by a prospect about a potential case arising from a delay in cancer diagnosis. The automated sequence of follow emails should focus on the issues involved in evaluating a case involving a delayed cancer diagnosis.
Automate Client Communication and Employee Training
After mastering the three essential steps for marketing follow up, you should automate client communication and employee training. You can also create a follow up campaign for book sales, webinars and live speaking events.
Write content for a sequence of emails that explain each of the 2-5 important milestones in a lawsuit, i.e., filing of the lawsuit, deposition of the client or the defense medical examination (“DME”). As the lawsuit progresses, you should send the email that will educate your client about each phase of the lawsuit, what they can expect and how they can prepare, i.e., “What to Expect at Your Deposition”. This alone will save you a ton of time in responding to questions.
Create videos for the on-boarding of new employees (thank you to Tyson Mutrux, Esq. for this great idea!). When you hire new employees, ask them to watch each training video module and track the time that they spend watching each video. With training videos, your new employees will know exactly what you expect from them and you won’t have to repeat the training with every new hire. Video modules for the training of new employees is a great way to supplement your Office Manual.
Hire an Expert to Automate
You should automate everything in your law firm with a customer relationship management software, known as a “CRM” (I love Infusionsoft!). With “campaigns” that you create within a CRM, you can automate the follow up for marketing, client communication and training of new employees. Hell, you can automate just about anything!
You can struggle to learn the technology of a CRM, or you can let an expert do it. I use a former Infusionsoft employee, Brett Farr of Blick Digital (480-278-6216, brett@brettdigital.com), for the implementation of follow up campaigns within Infusionsoft. Brett makes my life easy—I just tell him what to do and it’s done. If you haven’t used a CRM for automation, you should give Brett Farr a call.
photo credit: The Sales Whisperer Lead Generation Companies via photopin (license)
