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[Music] welcome to the Josh Durban show because law school didn't teach business hi everyone and welcome to today's episode of the Josh gurbin show this is the show where we talk about the business of our profession the business of law basically everything they didn't teach us in law school about how to run and grow a practice of law so hope you enjoyed today's episode this is one of my all-time favorite topics sales it's sort of like a dirty five letter word in the legal industry if you tell any lawyer that they need to be a salesperson it's sort of like oh that's beneath me I went to three years of law school and I'm a really smart person so I don't do sales and for anyone with that attitude you need to completely leave that at the door the lawyers that we most look up to are probably the best salespeople in our profession and what I mean by that is if the partners at law firms that have clients that everybody looks up to how do you think they've gotten those clients most of the time it's through really good sales techniques or if you're aspiring to run and grow your own law practice how do you think somebody started a law firm and grow it through being a really good salesperson so if you as a lawyer don't understand the basic fundamentals of sales it's going to be really hard for you to acquire clients and even keep clients along the way so basically what I have to go over with you today is what I'm calling garb ins five fundamentals to legal sales ok so here they are I'm gonna run through them real quick and then we're going to go back and dive into each category so the first fundamental is you need to be accessible the second one is you need to use phone over email the third is that you need to be a human the fourth is that you need to be a very good listener and have empathy and the fifth is that you need to follow up and close so let's go through each one and I'll tell you a little bit about what I mean the first is that you need to be extremely accessible during the sales process this means that if a prospective client calls you who calls your firm and has a question about a potential legal matter there needs to be a way to get back to that person immediately now I know you may have a meeting or you may have something going on but the very first free moment of your life that occurs after that inquiry or lead comes in you need to get back to that person even if it's a referral and the person isn't necessarily shopping around you need to make the prospective client feel important so immediately call the person back even if you get their voicemail oh I just got your message I'm so sorry to have missed you I'll follow up with an email we can schedule a time to talk in the next day or so and make sure you're on it send an email ask them when they can talk give them sometimes you're available but being super accessible is so important I'd like to tell a story about how when I started my law firm I had my phone as a cellphone so this way here whatever I was I could get a call from a prospective client I remember I would be away on like a getaway weekend with my wife and we'd be somewhere one one weekend stands out we went up to Atlantic City from Washington DC it's a kind of a quick trip it's went up there for the weekend we're walking around I've got my cell phone on me at Saturday phone rings I'm picking it up and diving into a store you know cuz it's windy outside trying to get a quiet place to take the call so that I can see hey does this person need a trademark what can I do for them I'm not waiting until Monday morning to see who happened to call me while I was away you know I'm trying to start a business here so if somebody's going to call and they need potentially a trademark I'm gonna answer the phone and that was a really big advantage of mine early on is that people would call and just get me and I cannot tell you how many prospective clients would say to me oh you're the attorney I'm like yeah it's me like you're the guy we saw on the website yeah yeah it's me oh well I didn't expect to be able to talk to you and then we'd have a great conversation and the person would sign up for some work and many times I get the feedback that yeah you know I've called three or four other places no one picked up the phone I didn't even you know people don't leave messages anymore so you know they call they don't get anybody they call the next place so being able to just pick up the telephone and answer calls or even if somebody would call and we would get a message or even if we got a missed call I'd just call that number right back and say I'm so sorry I missed your call where calling us about something that aggressiveness led to me being able to build a client base very early on and I will tell you right now that's actually a weakness of our firm so if a prospective client contacts us it can be a little bit of time before we can get back to them or get a lawyer on the phone with them and they will call other law firms and get lawyers on the phone quicker than we can get on the phone so we lose business to that now now our law firm is a little bit more mature so we're not chasing every lead that comes in the door but for lawyers that don't get a lot of leads or potential clients there's no reason you shouldn't be super accessible to these people and that applies throughout the sales process so even after the first call you need sometimes some follow up to sell legal work it's something that doesn't just sell in the first call right so if the prospective client has a question or they email you some information make it your priority to get back then it should be a priority over all else another an existing client of yours you can manage expectations you can say you know what I'm so sorry I'm gonna be 24 hours later and getting back to you that I thought because of X Y or Z something came up that clients always going to understand it's the prospective client that won't because they don't yet have that rapport with you they don't they're not yet committed to you so getting right back to them making them feel comfortable that you're very good at communication is going to be critical to getting them to sign up and be a client of yours so the next point which is use phone and not email this is sort of a supplemental point to the first one if you will but it's so important I wanted to separate it out you know email answers questions and phone calls build relationships so if a prospective client emails you and you have a quick answer and you say oh I know the answer this question I'm a smart lawyer I can just email them back okay so you send them the email great they got their question answered what's next what's next in your sales process I don't know okay but if you pick up the phone and say oh you know hey Mary I got your question yeah that's a great question you know here's what I'm thinking about that oh okay yeah what else you doing today oh and you you develop the relationship here about something that's happening in their life now all of a sudden you have it back and forth plus they're hearing your voice okay so somebody hearing your voice getting used to you getting used to the type of person you are developing a relationship and Trust is critical to someone selecting you as their attorney because when you get selected as an attorney you're handling something that's very important for someone that they clearly can't handle themselves so the amount of trust they have to have in you is significant and the more you can develop a relationship during the sales process the more likely it is they're going to select you because you're the nice friendly voice on the phone as opposed to the guy that's just shooting them an email back with a simple answer to a question okay so and this applies for everything during the process you may have some in-person meetings with folks depending on how your firm is structured but if you are getting emails from people and you can respond with a phone call you would be surprised how far that goes I don't want to necessarily pick on Millennials here but I'm going to a little bit this is especially a problem for the younger generation it's coming up into law practice I see it frequently that there's just this desire to shoot off a quick email and move on to the next thing because it's just a question and it's no big deal but if you call us somebody and you develop that relationship it means the world sometimes that person that they're getting to know you and it's going to make bringing them in as a client so much easier so 0.3 on my list is be a human what I mean by this is that most lawyers exist in some weird world where they don't know how to talk to regular human beings anymore so we went through three years of law school and all of a sudden we can't speak normal English and when you get on the phone with a prospective client you're talking in all sorts of you know technical legal terms to show them how smart you are and that's fine if you want to do that a little bit you know but make sure you're being a human and make sure you explain things in words that people can understand that people that didn't go to law school will understand and if you're able to do that you're going to find that you can have a much better connection with the prospective client now the other side to being a human is just learning about the person learning about the person that could be your client so instead of just talking about legal matters you need to find common interest something that you share with this other person so myself I have three young kids and one of the first things I always kind of find out about somebody is what their family situation is so if they're married and they have a young family we immediately have a connection if you're a parent of a young child or you have been a parent of a young child you know that parents have a connection because we're all going through something that's pretty unique and pretty challenging so there's this automatically that connection and people will feel more comfortable with you one of my favorite calls will be someone will call me up and there's a screaming baby in the background right oh I'm so sorry you know I kind of work from home and that that's very common these days and my first response is well I have three kids in the other room if you want me to bring them in we can kind of have a competition so you can have the most background noise you know it immediately sets everybody at ease because now they know about my situation too you know I'm not some lawyers sitting in an office somewhere that's soundproof overlooking the city no I'm just somebody else I'm working too yeah this is my job and I have kids but you may not be kids right so you could have sports interests that could be common you know a common theme with a client you could have some kind of hobby find out about what your client does and that that just could extend to more about their business their personal life but if you make that connection with someone and you take the time to do that you're going to be one of the only attorneys are talking to that actually does because again most attorneys very interested in answering the legal questions this is how much it costs to do this this is what you know our representation would look like and keeps it in a you know in a very formal tone and all these fancy legal terms how about you just act like you're having a beer with the person and I cannot tell you how much of a difference that will make in your sales process just be human be normal the next point on my list is to be a good listener and have empathy this is another thing I think lawyers are terrible at I cannot tell you how many calls I've been on with other attorneys and they're just talking and the client will try to jump in and say something and the lawyer just keeps going it's you know I wish I had a good answer for it but I think in law school we're taught to just continue to argue our points and when you're talking to a prospective client for that matter an existing client you're not trying to argue with them you're not trying to make your point you're trying to give them information that they need and that information is going to be very different person to person so listening is critical and here's what I mean by that so I'm a trademark attorney and for 11 years I've pretty much sold the same service to thousands and thousands of clients okay we have to do a trademark search for you you have a new name we have to do a trademark search with the file the application followed through the registration it is a pretty straightforward service and process but every single call I've ever taken from a prospective client has been different because everybody has something that's worrying them it may be that they went online and they saw a similar trademark and they're not sure what to do about it it may be that they don't know how long the process takes and that's their biggest concern it may be that they wonder well once I have my trademark registered what happens then and they so it's funny because everybody's got these different concerns and you may have a prospective client that really could care less about how long it's going to take the first few steps to happen but really worried about what's going to happen six months from now and then you'll have another client who wants to know what's going to happen day 1 day 2 day 3 and can't even function and think about six months from now so you really have to listen about what the prospective client is concerned about and in order to understand that you may have to actually ask them some questions and then just be quiet and let them answer in negotiations there's this idea that you should be quiet a lot so that the other side will wanted to sort of fill the empty space and I believe that's true in the sales context as well obviously we want to talk I'm going to provide information and things like this but there's a point where you just need to be quiet let the prospective client fill that empty bass and you will find out what is concerning them and then address that specific concern even if you're concerned about their matter is something that's completely different than what they're worried about you need to take care of what they're worried about before you get to anything else because if you can resolve that you're much more likely much much more likely to get them as a client and the other part of this point is to have empathy okay and I think that's also something we lack as lawyers because we see so many problems like our whole days of solving problems so we're always a go yeah that's a problem you should have done that but now I'll fix it for you right or oh I can't believe they did that now I'm gonna have to fix that and that attitude pervades to the prospective client when you're talking about so instead of thinking about oh you know I know everything because I've been doing this for ten years and I can't believe this person you know like everybody else they keep making the same mistake what you should do is stop think about the person's situation think about what they didn't know before the problem occurred and have empathy and explain that empathy to them and say I you know I'm so sorry that happened to you I understand why this got away or I understand why you didn't think that this would be a problem and now it is and you know this is something that is not uncommon and you're not alone and we we've certainly fixed problems like this before and we can we can absolutely help you with this one and having that little bit of empathy and stopping and explaining you understand why they would have done something and not making the client feel bad he's going again build that trust in you it's gonna build a likeability that you have with the client much more likely for the client to come to you and want to use you as their attorney my final final rule of sales is you need to follow up and you need to close so there are entire companies that have been created to help salespeople follow up with prospective clients okay Salesforce among others I'm not suggesting you need to go and spend a whole bunch of money on software a simple excel sheet is all you really need if you talk to somebody or somebody emails your whatever your communication is there needs to be a plan to follow up with the person now in every law practices I look a little different in my practice if a client calls and talks to someone typically within 24 to 48 hours we're following up again to see if any other questions came up because we want it you know we know that they're thinking about this we want to be in front of them and make sure that if anything has changed in the day or two that we're on it and then after that we might go to a week you know we don't want to be too annoying so we might go to a week after that we'll follow up a little bit further then maybe two weeks every every prospective client could even be a little different depending on how ready they seem to get going or how urgent their matter is versus if it's something they need to hire a lawyer for in three or four months right but you need to follow up and you need to do it regularly I get a lot of pushback even internally when I talk about follow up and say well you know if they were interested they might get back to us oh no no no this is not the way it works right and if you just wait for people to get back to you you're probably going to not be in business for very long or you're not going to develop that client base for your law firm you need to be aggressive you need to tell people you're very interested in being their lawyer and you think you can really help them and and try to get and this is where it comes in you need to close have your whatever you need to close if it's an engagement letter and where it's a retainer or whatever it is make sure you get the document and the request to the prospective client you know hey Bob it was great talking to you today here's a short engagement letter that you can sign to get started you know we just require $1,000 or $2,000 a retainer with the letter you can mail it in I can accept a credit card whatever you do you know that's all we need to get started ask for the sale even great salespeople forget this sometimes you know you're talking you have a great relationship ask for the sale and also as attorneys we have we normally need that engagement letter right so you need to have that ready to go and you need to put it in front of the person so they know what they need to do because once they sign the engagement letter once you have the retainer the whole world changes now they're in your firm they're your client now you have to service them which is a whole different ballgame but you don't have to worry about somebody coming and poaching your client so we live in a very competitive world and depending on your type of practice you may have a handful you may have dozens of competitors that you have to deal with when I started my practice there was maybe a handful now there's probably hundreds if not thousands of competitors for the type of work that we do and in order to stay competitive there's a number of ways you can do this obviously price is one but I always encourage lawyers not to race to the bottom on price so the other way you can really stay competitive is to be extremely good at sales and this is because if a prospective client calls your firm and they get the red-carpet treatment they get phone calls back they get follow-up they get a true interaction with you whether you're learning about each other and you're learning about their business or whatever their matter is or whatever's going on in their personal life you were gonna stand out from the crowd from everybody else that just calls them back with a standard cookie cutter response so I hope you found this show helpful and the only thing I ask is that you please leave a comment or review if it's on the podcast or on our YouTube channel however you've consumed the content I would greatly appreciate that and of course if you found this helpful please share it with anybody else that you think would find it helpful as well thank you so much I'll see you next time you