An attorney recently posted a great question in one of our LinkedIn groups for bankruptcy attorneys that I thought deserved a longer than typical response. Here's the question:

I am curious whether anyone here has had luck with lead generation agencies. I am looking to expand my bankruptcy department and am wondering what has worked well for others in the past.

There are several lead generation companies out there for bankruptcy attorneys, from Total Attorneys (quite possibly the original one) to Nolo (may be the best one out there), Lead Rival and even LegalZoom. Even though it seems the pay-per-lead (PPL) model started out in bankruptcy, it has moved to other consumer practice areas such as family law, DUI, criminal defense, personal injury, immigration, and mass tort, among others.

Over the years, we have worked with several hundred attorneys who use or have used lead gen companies and found there are some common characteristics among those who are successful in converting those leads:

1. The leads must be geographically exclusive. It is extremely difficult to convert these leads in the first place, but doubly so if you are competing with another law firm who was sold the same lead at the same time by the same company.

2. You must have a dedicated intake specialist whose primary job is to call the lead. No attorney or paralegal will go after a lead with the kind of persistence and dedication it takes to convert them. Referrals are easy to convert, paid leads are not.

3. There must be a sense of urgency when following up with the lead. Research by velocify.com indicates your conversion rate drops precipitously if you fail to follow up within 5 minutes after the lead comes in. If you are going to use PPL, you must be faster than any of your competitors.

4. Your intake specialist must be instructed to call them a minimum of 7-10x before giving up.No, that is not a typo. If you want to convert these types of leads, you will have to work harder than anyone else. There should be 3 calls made the first day: one within 5 minutes, a second one within about an hour, and the third at the end of the day. Two more calls should be made the next day, then 2 more the day after that, then ideally one per day for the next 2-3 days.

5. You also need to send them 3-5 emails in addition to the phone calls. The emails should be educational in nature and subtly informing them of why they should hire you.

6. You must be dedicated to tracking every single lead, how many of these leads turn into appointments, how many of your appointments show up, how many sign up at the initial consultation, and how many sign up afterwards.

If you're unwilling to make these commitments, I recommend you stay away from buying leads from lead gen companies as your conversion rate will be so low it won't give you a good ROI.

By the way, the average consumer attorney only converts 5-15% of their leads into paying clients (out of 100 leads they sign up 5-15 new clients). I have met many attorneys buying leads who are converting in the low single digits. If you use a systematic approach to lead conversion, including the principles I mention above, you can increase that to 35-40%, which is what the best in the business achieve!