Over the last few years, intake has become more and more on the forefront of personal injury. And rightfully so, it is the quickest and cheapest way to grow your caseload. You tighten up your intake and then you sign more cases, sounds simple, right? It actually is. As the owner of a law firm, it all starts with your mindset and to treat your intake personnel like a sales team. Whomever answers the phones; a receptionist, a paralegal, an attorney, yourself or a dedicated intake person (which is ideal), they must do it day in and day out in order to hone their skills and really master the task. We all know the famous Zig Ziglar saying “Repetition is the mother of all learning.” This concept may come as news to you or serve as a refresher, but here are 4 intake tips to help you convert more leads and grow your caseload – without spending a dime more in marketing.
Step 1: Empathy
This is the most important thing you can do on an intake call. If you take nothing else from this article, then know this, pour on the empathy. People want to be heard, and they want to be understood, especially after they’ve suffered a traumatic accident. You can do everything wrong on the call but if you convey empathy and show the claimant that you really care, then you are in. It’s like the forgetful waiter who messes up your meal, but he is just so nice and genuine, he’s overly apologetic and shows you that he is a person. The chances are you let it slide and give him a good tip anyways. Exhibiting empathy is the most important aspect of intake and should be displayed several times throughout every conversation. This one thing will make the biggest impact on your intake conversion.
Step 2: Rapport
It is oft en said that people do business with people they like, which makes building rapport vitally important when it comes to intake. This means finding commonality between you and the claimant and most importantly, getting them to like you. Rapport can be built upon anything: their name, the car they drive, where they live or the even the weather. The main objective is for you to find things in common with the claimant and drawing parallels between you both. This is done by asking questions during your intake and relating their answers to yourself. The questions can be about their accident or them personally, they need to like you before they trust you and they need to trust you before they hire you.
Step 3: Trust
Transactional Trust is the ability to gain the trust of your potential client. You do this by reassuring them that they called the right firm. This is done by telling them that you’ve helped a number of clients with the same accident and that your team is well-versed in this type of case. Let them know that you are here to help and educate them on the process and what they can expect moving forward. This will result in you conveying to the claimant that you are the expert, and they will follow your lead and in turn, hire your firm.
Step 4: Close
Lastly, you need to close, which means “ask for the business”. Even if the intake conversation wasn’t your best performance, you must still ask them
sign up with your firm. We recommend you use the assumptive close, which means that you assume they are going to do business with you. This can be done with phrases such as “Here are the next steps to working with our firm” or “Here’s how the process works with our firm so that we can begin working on your case.” You will be surprised at how many firms forget to do this step and let claimants walk right out the door. Always ask for the business and you will be shocked at how many of them will follow suit.
Over the years, I’ve seen thousands of law firms perform intake, from the best to the worst, and the difference between them are these 4 intake elements. The best intake firms seem to treat their law firm like a business and their intake as a sales team, they use custom greetings, have weekly sales meetings and they refine their intake process on a regular basis. The worst firms simply don’t have an intake process. I can tell how well a firm’s intake is by how much time that they spend on the subject, thinking about it, talking about it, strategizing, reviewing calls and striving to improve. These small changes on an intake can mean the difference between you signing or missing a million-dollar case, so put the time in and practice. You will see your conversion percentage increase and your caseload as well. I wish you good luck and more importantly…good intake. ◆
