R-E-S-P-E-C-T: Taking a Tip from the Queen of Soul to Make Sure Your Law Firm Tops the Charts!
No one has placed the word “Respect” more on the map than the infamous late Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin. We’ve all heard this Classic, originally written by Otis Redding, but knocked out of the ballpark with Aretha’s style and ingenious spelling out of the word “R-E-S-P-E-C-T.”…
And now that I’ve got the song stuck in your head, you may be wondering: “What does any of this have to do with Legal Marketing or Management???”
Simply Stated: People Respect What You Inspect. This basic principle is never more applicable than in your Law Firm Intake Department. Far too many law firms pour their time, energy, effort, and money into Marketing their firm while neglecting what happens when the phone rings. When this happens, it’s as if you have just poured your marketing dollars down the drain.
You may have hand-picked what you believe to be a fantastic Intake Department, full of competent, empathetic, and professional staff. You may have put great policies in place, including a step by step script, and clear criteria for handling phone calls, referrals, etc… You may have even hired a company several years ago to help you train your intake personnel on how you want calls handled. Those are all important. But the deal is, you can do all of this and still be scoring a C- when it comes to how your calls are truly being handled.
As Ken says, “We don’t know what we don’t know.” And we can’t find out what’s going on without examining the evidence. The only way to know that your Intake department is doing what you need and the way you need it done is to have a built-in method of inspection. You must be conducting periodic ghost calls. Otherwise, you are assuming your In-takes are being
handled appropriately, without any data to back it up.
A powerful story: Recently, Ken shared a powerful story with me that I think brings this point home: Several Years ago, Ken flew out to do a Consult with a successful law firm. (We’ll call them Firm X, for the sake of anonymity.) Firm X was engaging in quite a bit of expensive marketing. They had the latest PCP, SEO, great organic and engaging Social Media and the like. They were eager for Ken to tell them how they could engage in more new marketing strategies.
Cutting-edge marketing strategies are great, But, if you don’t have your law firm house in order when it comes to your Intake Department, none of the other will help you. Let’s admit it: Marketing is fun, it’s new, it’s exciting, and it is absolutely necessary today more than ever. It’s also much sexier to most lawyers than dealing with management issues… And lawyers are human; don’t we all want a magic bullet that we can buy or invest in that immediately transforms our firm and sky-rockets it to the top?
When Ken asked Firm X about how their Intakes were going, they immediately told him they had no problems at all. In fact, they said, “we sign up every case we want to.” Nonetheless, because Ken has been consulting with law firms for years, he knew the odds were not in their favor; that in all likelihood, they probably needed to give this critical department some attention. No doubt they “thought” they were signing up every case that they wanted. But were they?
The truth was that after a few ghost calls, they learned that was not the case at all! After setting up some ghost calls and listening to the tape, Ken knew he had to call an emergency meeting with Firm X’s partners. That night, when he played the Intake tape, you should have seen these lawyers’ faces.
In fact, the very lawyer who had assured Ken earlier that they signed “every” case they wanted, asked him to stop the tape. The attorney became physically ill and had to leave the room! Understandably so.
When we invest hundreds of thousands on advertising, we often assume the simple stuff like Intakes is just a given. Truth is, it just isn’t. So the moral of the story is simple: People Respect What you Inspect. Take the time now to inspect your Intake calls. Make sure that these calls are consistently being handled the way you want them to be!
Here’s Your Intake To Do List
* Make Ghost Calls to Your Law Firm a Priority. Set them up randomly, so the staff doesn’t know exactly when they will occur.
* Make sure your Intake staff Knows you will be conducting these calls. (Remember the Respect/Inspect relationship!) Knowing that their calls are being reviewed and that ghost calls are possible will give your intake department an extra incentive to be handling each potential client with the utmost respect, and professionalism. It will also help make sure your calls are being answered within the first several rings.
* Have Intake call coverage 24/7. Hire a call center if you need to. Accidents don’t always happen during business hours. Some of your best client calls will come through your phone lines on the weekends and evenings. Clients call when they need an attorney, and if your office doesn’t pick up the call, another firm will!
* Conduct ghost calls on the after hours, too. You may have hired an outside company to give you night/weekend coverage.
You need to know that the person your potential client is speaking with on the weekend is picking up the phone and handling the call just like you’re in house-trained staff is trained to do!
* Intake Training: If your staff needs more training, then make sure you take the time to put together the detailed training they need. PILMMA offers all of its members OPUS In-take training free. If you are a PILMMA member, start using this great benefit..
*Policies and Procedures: Make sure you have a clear script for each type of case intake and that your staff is following that script!
*Firm culture: You and I understand how important excellent customer service is to signing cases, and creating ongoing referrals from those happy clients. How your staff treats your clients, and potential clients are critical. Make sure every staff member shares this core value of client respect and commitment to excellent client service!
* The Grandmother rule: In Ken’s law firms, he had a simple rule: Treat every client the way you would want your grandmother treated. Talk with each client the way you would talk with your grandmother.
If you’d like to hear more about INTAKES, mark your calendars for PILMMA”s 2019 Super Summit being held at the Ritz-Carlton in New Orleans, June 25-28. It’s 3 ½ days that are jam-packed with presentations from Super Lawyers and Cutting–Edge Digital Marketing Experts. And for the first time: an all new and special Intake Powerhouse Panel, including Chris Mullins, Jay Jackson, Ed Lake, and Eric Coffman, and moderated by Harlan Schillinger. What you will learn from this Powerhouse Intake panel alone is worth the conference cost! For more info and to register, go to www.pilmma.org/SuperSummit.
