To view Part 1 of this post, go here.

Over the last 15 years, it’s been our privilege to work with over 15,000 attorneys to help them generate and convert more prospects into paying clients. One of our main messages is, your lead generation efforts will be wasted unless you have a system to nurture and convert them.

By using a systematic approach to lead conversion, you can increase your lead conversion rate to 25, 35, even 45 percent. Translated – that means you can double or even triple your revenues without getting any more leads!

Here are the second three of six steps you need to implement in order to improve your law firm lead conversion rate:

4.  You must send them 3-5 emails in addition to the phone calls.

These emails should be educational in nature and subtly inform them of why they should call you and set up an appointment. When you consistently communicate with prospects and give them practical, relevant information, you build the “know, like and trust” factors that can lead to business for you down the road when they are ready to buy.

The first email may consist of a simple “Thank you for contacting us. Here’s a link to our website for more information.” The second email may be “There are 10 questions you must ask any attorney before you hire them to take your case. Here’s the first two questions…”   

On average, people require at least 7-10 meaningful touches to move from being interested in you to being ready to buy from you. Most attorneys stop after two or three touches because they falsely believe they are “bothering” or “chasing” the person.  There is plenty of evidence that people are always busy and persistence in your follow-up will win you way more clients than hoping that prospects will call you back.

As long as you are professional and courteous in your voicemails, text messages and emails, the vast majority of people will perceive your persistence as caring about them and wanting their business, not bothersome.

5.  You must track every single lead.

Once a lead comes in, someone has to be tasked with keeping track of the lead status so leads do not fall through the cracks.  Lost leads are lost opportunities, and are akin to leaving money on the table.  They also hurt your reputation with your referral sources if they supplied the referral and you didn’t follow through on the lead. People do not like lawyers who they call and leave a message only to never hear back from the attorney. Many of them will go so far as to leave you a negative review online if you don’t get back to them in a timely fashion. The only way you can be sure your team is following up with every lead is to track every single one of them religiously!

You must have a dedicated system for lead tracking and it must be consistently used. We saw this last week when we secret shopped a client’s office. His top paralegal did a great job answering the phone, answered several of our questions, built rapport with us, but never asked for our name, phone number or email address! It would literally be impossible for our client to follow up with that lead since his paralegal never obtained any of our contact information.

A good lead system should:

• Capture a prospect’s contact information.

• Ask a few basic qualifying questions to see if the firm might be interested.

• Track conversion rates: How many of these leads turn into appointments? How many of your appointments show up? How many sign up at the initial consultation? How many sign up afterward?

• Track the disposition of the lead: Who was responsible for follow up? Did it convert? If it was a referral was the referral source thanked?

• Set the appointment.

By tracking your leads, you can discover the disconnects in your intake process and fix them.

6.  You must have software to manage leads.

Most of the solos and small firms we know have a finite amount of time to dedicate to legal marketing, so having a process in place that nurtures a lead along the path to becoming a client is a great benefit. Consider these facts:

• Companies that automate lead management see a 10% or greater increase in revenue in 6-9 months. (Gartner Research)

• Businesses that use marketing automation to nurture prospects experience a 451% increase in qualified leads. (ANNUITAS Group)

• Companies that nurture leads make 50% more sales at a 33% less cost than non-nurtured leads. (Forrester Research)

First, you should identify the right software to assist in automating the lead management process. The more you can automate this, the lower your costs will be. Tracking software is readily available at a relatively low cost, compared to the expense of doing it manually.

Second, automate the firm’s follow-up process. Develop follow-up sequences for direct mail, autoresponder text messages or emails and phone call follow-ups:

• Direct mail – What used to be a very labor- intensive process can now be highly automated in a way that doesn’t adversely impact busy lawyers’ schedules.

• Autoresponder text messages and/or emails – Develop a series of email messages to be sent at regularly scheduled intervals that can convey your messaging in a timely manner to your prospects. You can develop autoresponders for every phase of the lead nurturing process.

• Phone call follow-ups – Develop a schedule of calls so that leads don’t fall through the cracks. Some of the tracking software can automatically place them into a calendar for your intake team to follow up.