When a qualified prospect comes to you & your law firm, why do some end up hiring you, while others just disappear?
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| How Law Firms Can Turn More Prospective Clients in Paying Clients |
I’m not talking about the people who, it turns out, aren’t actually a good fit. Or the people who simply couldn’t afford your help. I’m asking about people who, as far as you can tell, would make great clients, but decide against it.
What is it that holds these people back? More importantly… what can you do to remove those barriers and turn more of your prospects into paying clients?
Let’s look at that first question first, and see if that lends any insight into answering the second.
Why do great prospects decide not to hire you?
Lack of trust
For many attorneys I talk to, prospects are hesitant due to a lack of trust. Nobody comes out and says that, of course, but it’s there. How do I know you can really help solve my problem?, they think. Maybe they aren’t sure you’ve handled similar cases before, or they aren’t convinced they’ll be happy with the experience.
Clients want to know they’ll get great service, but they also know bad service is a common disease for law firms. They want to know you’re the best person to help them, but it isn’t easy to demonstrate that.
Conquering a lack of trust is likely the biggest obstacle facing your efforts to convert more prospects into clients.
Intimidation
It’s easy for would-be clients to feel intimidated by you.
After all, this is likely their first foray into whatever area of law you practice. You, on the other hand, have significant expertise. That experience is both an asset and a liability: if people feel like they’re being talked down to, or they’re baffled by your explanation of a topic, they won’t think warmly of hiring you.
Clients want to work with a real human being. Unless you can connect with them as such, they’re bound to feel intimidated.
Apprehensions about the cost or benefits
Let me play devil’s advocate for a moment and give you a look at the doubts your clients are facing.
If I hire you, how do I know I won’t be wasting my money? What if I go through all the trouble of working with you (and make no mistake, anything I have to do beyond my normal day-to-day feels like trouble), only to be unhappy with the results?
Heck, now that I think about it, maybe I’m better off dealing with things as they are (or trying to solve my problem on my own). After all, better the devil you know, right?
If clients see hiring you as a risk—either because of the cost or the uncertainty of the outcome—they’ll have serious apprehensions about moving forward. Allaying these fears goes a long way toward establishing trust.
Unless you can clearly explain your unique value to your clients, you risk being forgettable.
(Keep in mind, would-be clients don’t need to know anything to feel uneasy—whether about your rates or the likelihood of a particular outcome. A negative impression alone enough.)
Every attorney’s services look indistinguishable from one another
If your firm’s prospects can’t differentiate you from your competition, they have no reason to choose you. Both you and your Biglaw competition have a list of credentials as long as my arm—what makes you different from them?
Unless you can clearly explain your unique value to your clients, you risk being forgettable.
Again, merely having the facts on your side won’t win you business here. Unless your would-be clients perceive something unique about your firm, you leave it up to chance that they hire you. That’s a bitter pill to swallow, especially when you believe merit should be everything… but it’s the truth.
A failure in follow-up
No doubt, many prospects would have hired your firm, but life gets in the way. Maybe the person broke up with their girlfriend, or got a promotion, or sold their house, or gave birth. Maybe they could still use your help, but their priorities have shifted and they aren’t thinking about it any more.
In short… people forget.
For clients like this, your challenge is simply to keep the relationship alive through the ups and downs.
Can you spot the trend here?
We can characterize these breakdowns in client acquisition in terms of the “know, like, & trust” cycle.
Most attorneys & law firms stumble in getting prospects to know, like, or trust them (or all three!).
If your firm blends together in the minds of your prospect, or they forget you exist because you fail to follow up, they don’t really know you.
If they’re intimidated by you, it sure is hard to like you.
If they aren’t convinced you can really help them, or they’re worried you represent too big a risk, they don’t trust you.
That’s good news—it means the question we set out to answer, about what you can do to remove those barriers, is easier to nail down.
Turning more of your law firm’s prospects into clients requires that you help people along the path to knowing, liking, and trusting you.
Tactics for getting your firm’s prospects to know, like, & trust you
How do would-be clients get to know you?
Making first contact with a prospect is by far the most difficult step. You need a significant presence to rise out of the anonymity of the Internet. That first contact is beyond the scope of this article, but our article on getting in front of your firm’s potential clients is a good place to start.
But, that “first touch” is only the first step to a client getting to know you. A visitor to your site, for instance, might be a fantastic prospect… if you can keep them from forgetting you.
The statistics on this are pretty dismal—depending on the site, as much as 80% of your visitors will never return.
So how do you both keep in touch with a visitor, and help them really get to know you?
Your options here are legion. At this point in the client acquisition process, though, the key is to keep things low-friction. “Call to schedule a free consultation” won’t cut it—for someone who just “met” you, that’s a much bigger commitment than they’re looking for. Instead, you want something that won’t feel “salesy.”
A few ideas:
- Give visitors to your site a reason to come back. You might keep things lighthearted (share a video on “Funny Fridays”), or strictly educational (a post on “consumers & the law” every Wednesday). The key is to give people a reason to come back every week.
- Take a stand on your blog. A memorable blog post goes a long way, and the fastest way to be memorable is to advocate a controversial or out of the ordinary point of view. “Why I want my divorce practice to go bankrupt” (talking about how you help would-be divorcees get counseling instead) might fit the bill.
- Invite visitors to connect with you on social media. Tell them about the valuable stuff you share—things that interest them.
- Ask them to sign up for your newsletter. Again, a promise of the value your newsletter delivers will go a long way.
Now, I’m going to be honest: while all the tactics above could work for you, they have a problem. Each of them relies to some extent on luck:
whether a visitor will actually remember to return to your site is up to luck. Same goes for them actually read your blog post. And when it comes to social media, there’s no guarantee they’ll actually see what you share… even if they do use it frequently. And when it comes to your newsletter, no offense, but most people don’t do backflips at the prospect of signing up for another newsletter… no matter how great yours is.
That’s why there’s one approach that I favor above all the others:
sending educational emails on an extremely narrow topic over the course of a few weeks. These highly-targeted email campaigns are one of the best investments your law firm can make into your marketing.
When someone comes to you for, say, bankruptcy law, they aren’t likely to be interested in your other services (at least not at this point). That’s why a general email newsletter, your social media, and your blog won’t be overwhelmingly effective—they simply aren’t focused enough.
But, if you can address your prospect’s exact concerns over a period of weeks, you have a chance to stay extremely relevant to them, giving them huge incentive to keep paying attention to you—and thus getting to really know you.
What makes a prospect like you?
Suppose a visitor knows you now. They’ve seen your name time and again, and they’re starting to associate you with a particular set of characteristics—maybe you’re the attorney they keep hearing from who has a really witty take on current events, or you’re that really helpful lawyer who sent them resources for entrepreneurship.
However the person has become aware of you, your challenge now is to really start building a relationship—getting the person to like you.
Take a look at your communications. Do they engender likability? Are you positive, helpful, informative, and down-to-earth? Do you communicate your values, the why behind what you do? (After all, it’s one thing to say you practice adoption law, but another to say that ever since you adopted your two girls, you’ve wanted to help others share that experience.)
In short, ask yourself this:
Do I come across as the kind of person people want to do business with?
Don’t confuse being likable with being charismatic. You don’t have to be Leonardo DiCaprio—instead, you just need to take a genuine interest in the person you’re talking to. Helpfulness and empathy go a long way.
It usually takes time to build this “like” factor. You’ll need to keep in touch with prospects regularly, becoming a predictable, anticipated part of their life.
Once again, a blog can help here, as can your social media or your newsletter. But, as you might expect, these have issues. Only the most tech-savvy readers will know how to subscribe to your blog, and social media can feel impersonal. Likewise, most newsletters are you-focused… not a great way to enhance your likability!
While each of those problems can be overcome, if you signed people up for an email course back when they were first getting to know you, you can use that same course to build the “like” factor. Email is a great medium for telling your story and being helpful, because it’s bidirectional—it’s easy for people to respond and start a one-on-one conversation.
How do you cultivate trust with a prospect?
Knowing and liking you are not the same thing as trusting that you’ll be able to help me. I know and like my father-in-law very well, but I’d be an idiot to take his advice on my business’s incorporation. (Don’t worry, he’s not a lawyer… just opinionated!)
Likewise, it’s one thing for your firm to be on a prospect’s radar, and even build a bit of good will. But the real trick is to show them you’re the right person to help with their problem.
The goal for this stage of the client acquisition process is simple: position yourself as a trusted, helpful advisor. You want to give the prospect a sample of what working with you is like, showing them you’re responsive, easy to understand, and human.
Your blog isn’t great for this; prospects won’t necessarily read your posts in the best order, and some posts might not make sense out of context. (This is true of even the best bloggers.) Worse, they might not come back to the blog at all.
Same goes for social media. Prospects will only see a (relatively small) percentage of what you share, and it almost certainly won’t speak directly to them.
While your newsletter might be used to enhance trust, it typically won’t be effective for demonstrating what it’s like to work with you, or showing how helpful you can be with their particular problems.
(Are you seeing a pattern here?)
Show the prospect you’re responsive, easy to understand, and human.
As you can probably guess, I’m advocating using an email course to build trust with your prospect. They give you a chance to (over the course of weeks) educate people about what they need to know when it comes to their problem area. The value of this helpfulness can’t be overestimated.
Furthermore, these emails allow you to solicit responses and respond to people—a great way to demonstrate what it’s like to actually work with you. In my experience, these conversations are the most powerful sales tools you have, and they’re a perfect segue to a higher-friction offer—like visiting your office for a free consult.
A few caveats
With that in mind, let me give you a few disclaimers. First, “know, like, trust” isn’t always linear—someone may like you the instant they’re introduced to you, and they may trust you without liking you. In most cases, though, the progression works as described, so it makes sense to structure your marketing strategy to fit that.
Next, be aware that I’m not trying to badmouth using a Web site, a blog, social media, or a newsletter for your firm’s marketing. These tools absolutely have their place. But they’re much better at establishing first contact or keeping in touch with past clients than they are for turning a prospect with a specific need into a client.
Furthermore, despite how big a fan I am of using email to build relationships, not just any emails will do. To be effective here (both for your business and your prospects), you need to deeply understand what your prospects want and need.
But, if you put in the research to deliver something that’s useful & informative to your ideal prospects, you’ll be well on your way to positioning yourself as a trusted advisor.