I’ve found that most law firms don’t focus most of their resources and energy on lead generation; they focus all of their resources and energy on lead generation. Virtually no one talks about lead conversion and intake; they all talk about lead generation.

I never have attorneys come in to me and say, “Stephen, I need to improve my lead conversion.” Every single day I talk to attorneys who say, “I need more leads.”

At one of our recent Rainmaker Retreats, I said to a bankruptcy attorney, “Tell me why you’re here.”

He said, “Stephen, I need more leads.”

I said, “How many leads are you getting?”

He pulls out a spreadsheet, and I was amazed. His background was engineering; he just happened to be a bankruptcy attorney. He pulls out this Excel spreadsheet, which was fantastic, and he could list every single lead he’d gotten in the last six months.

He said, “Last month, I got 221 leads.”

I said, “Wow, that a lot of leads! But how many of them turned into clients?”

He looked at me sheepishly and said, “Ten.”

I said, “Ten? No offense, but you don’t need more leads. To give you more leads would be a sin. You need to convert more of the leads that you’re already getting into paying clients. I have clients that are running multi-million dollar law firms off 200 leads a month in bankruptcy. That’s a lot of leads; you don’t need more leads.”

I’m not saying that some law firms don’t need more leads, but they spend 95% to 99% of their time on lead generation. They need to bring that back down to about 60% to 70% of their time and focus the rest on lead conversation and client retention, i.e., getting repeat business and/or repeat referrals from their former clients.

Lead generation will not solve all your problems. If you don’t have a really tight, consistent system to convert that lead into a paying client, or retained client, then you’re flushing your money down the toilet.