Unknown: 00:00:04

Welcome to the 10 Golden Rules of internet marketing for law firms podcast, featuring the latest strategies and techniques to drive traffic to your website and convert that traffic into clients. Now, here's the founder and CEO of 10 golden rules, Jay Berkowitz.

Jay Berkowitz: 00:00:25

Good morning, good afternoon. Good evening. Whatever time you're listening to this podcast. Welcome to the 10 Golden Rules of internet marketing for law firms Podcast. Today, we've got one of the great episodes of our live webinar, we're going to share the audio with you today. We have one of the world class experts Chris Mullins. She is one of the best experts at intake and conversion strategies for law firms, how to take a phone call and convert that phone call into a live case a live client. Chris is the expert in showing your team how to use empathy. And she's going to coach us through a live call and show you what you should be doing what you shouldn't be doing. As I mentioned, she is the founder and CEO of Intake Academy, the author of law firm conversions, host of the lawyers tell all podcast she started in phone sales at age 19 was number one in her shop by the age of 20. She absolute Rockstar headliner at all the conventions legal conventions around the country, you probably seen her somewhere or been lucky enough to see her on one of her pals. So without further ado, I'm going to get into the recording. As I've mentioned before, you can find all of these recordings at youtube.com/user/ten golden rules that spelled out te N golden rules. And by the way, if you get value out of these podcasts, I really appreciate if you're on Apple, iTunes or Spotify give us a five star review that helps us get found by more people and helps us get bigger stars and bigger interviews and bigger content for all of you. So again, without further ado, let's go live with Chris Mullins and myself on intake and conversion strategies. Well, hello, everyone.

Jay Berkowitz: 00:02:16

My name is Jay Berkowitz. I'm here with Chris Mullins. And welcome to this month's Webinar. Today we're going to be talking about intake conversion strategies for law firms. But most of what we're sharing would be relevant if you're a doctor and accountant, any professional services. And frankly, answering the phone is so important for every business, you'll learn a lot, especially with my guest Chris Mullins today more about Chris in a minute. I'm just going to give you kind of a couple of headlines take you through our agenda for today. And then we'll get right to Chris, we are going to cover the top intake and conversion strategies, of course, that's the whole premise of today, we're going to tell you about the five step relationship sales conversion script. And that's Chris's expertise. And then Chris is going to play a live call a recorded live call that came into a law firm. And she's going to walk through what they did well, what they should have done better, and how this relates to the five step relationship sales conversion script. Without further ado, why is this so important, and it's become even more important. And I've been telling the story of the red phone that was in the Ronald Reagan, White House. And I don't know if it's a true story, I guess it is. It's one of those urban myths if you will, but there was a red phone right on Ronald Reagan's desk. And when the Kremlin called in the middle of the Cold War, the White House immediately picked up the phone. It was a hotline. I'm sure we got some hotline situations today in the White House as well. So the red phone is significant because it means answer the phone immediately. This is mission critical. And today, with your Google business with your intake business, you are in a red phone scenario. The first reason is the Google Local Service ads. And if you haven't seen my entire webinar about this topic, please feel free to go back and watch it. You can find all of our webinars on our website on our YouTube channel. But the local service ads, this new section called Google screened, where you get the green checkmark approved by Google, not everybody knows exactly what it means. But what I'm going to share with you from a business perspective, it means when you get one of these leads, you have to answer the phone immediately. Because the local service ad platform, the back end on Google is tracking how quickly you answered the phone. And mission critical if you miss a phone call. It's going to hurt you significantly in the algorithm. And what I mean by that is there's probably hundreds of lawyers approved in my area for the Google screen program. For a search for personal injury attorney near me, and these three are in the top position, because they've checked off a lot of boxes in what we call the secret algorithm. But the first and foremost thing is you have to answer the phone, you have to answer the phone within 15 seconds, you have to disposition the calls after you answer the phone, you can't miss any phone calls. And you should have 24/7 services, you see all these guys in the top three are open 24/7, meaning they're answering the phone 24/7. So here's a quick peek into the back end of the Google Local Service ads program. And you see all these calls are precisely tracked. We know how many calls we got, and how many we dispositioned as a good call, and an archive call a good lead and a bad lead in the LSAS. But the important thing here is that every single one of these leads, we can click on these this lead, we can see when it came in, we can play the recording. And think of it from Google's perspective. Google's recording all these calls. They're tracking how long it takes you to answer the call. And they're they're hitting you with a negative in the algorithm, if you ever miss answering a phone call, because like let's go back to that Google search, when if Google puts you on the top of the page, and gives you one of these pay per lead. So these are pay per lead initiatives. It's not like Pay Per Click where they're just clicking over your website. Google is literally charging you per lead. And they want to send the lead to someone who's going to answer the phone, pay for the lead and not reject the lead. And they're going to answer the phone quickly. And they're going to do a good job with the customer. They're going to book an appointment, essentially, they're going to sign them up for a case. So face to say, when we say the red phones ringing today, it's critical that you answer the phone, it's critical that you answer the phone quickly. And it's critical that you have you know, almost like a cross functional team that attuned to answering your Google leads and answering your Google calls. Now, if we stretch out a phone, this is an example of what you'd see if you scroll down a little bit. Here's what it looks like when you search Personal Injury Lawyer near me on your mobile phone. And we see there's only two there's not three results on a mobile phone. And we see this extremely prominent call button right here on the phone. Now just below the Google screen, there is one or two or three ads, Google change it up in this search are showing one ad and then the Google Maps. And if we scroll down below, we see three Google Maps results. Now, as I mentioned, Google's algorithm is tracking how quickly onto the phone. Now everything I've seen, and I've been doing this, we've 10 Golden Rules been around for 19 years, our 19th anniversary is coming up on 1010. And every time Google's made a change in one area of one of their properties, it translates and correlates onto the other property. So for example, in Google bought YouTube, and YouTube videos, started being search engine optimized. And we started search engine, optimizing Google videos, creating videos around content about law firms, and putting the name of the video and putting the title of the video and search engine optimizing that content. When we had a focus on Google Video on YouTube, that translated into SEO success on the website. And so I would argue that that's been the case for every Google property. So now that they have local service ads, that they're recording the calls, that they're tracking how quickly you answer, and they're penalizing you for not answering the calls, I would suggest that Google is tracking exactly the same way. If you answer the phone on a Google Maps call, if you answer the phone on a Google Pay Per Click Call. And if you answer the phone, when someone finds you in SEO, search engine optimization, right, the 10 results further down the page, the free organic SEO. So my premise here is that when the red phone rings, you've got to answer the phone because we know for sure Google's told us in no uncertain terms. If you miss calls, if you don't answer the phone quickly, within 15 seconds, you're not going to be showing up here for very long or at all. And you're not going to get your piece of the pie in terms of showing up in your market. So I'm extending that to say you've also got to answer the phone when someone calls from maps, pay per click or SEO. Okay, mission critical answering the phone, getting to those calls quickly. If you need to rebuild your team, like if, if you have a one receptionist and he or she takes a lunch break and you might not answer the phone very well over lunch, because it you know it just goes to a ringer and people ignore it. That's mission critical if you're not answering the phone 24/7 after hours. Okay, I think I've made the point here. Read Phone's ringing, you got to answer the phone. Now the second piece of it is you want phone calls more than you want form fills or chats. So here's our client law tigers. And the right position for the phone number is in the top right portion of a website. Why is that the right position? Well, it's just become the standard or the constant or what we're used to, from a UI, UX, usability and website design standpoint. So as a consumer, we generally know we should be able to find the contact information in the top right portion. Now, I think I've made my case, we want phone calls, right? Now, we also will take a chat. But the reason why we want phone calls, here's the backhand for one of our clients. And this client got 177 phone calls in February 44 of those were retained were signed as clients. That's a 25% conversion rate. Our average is 24% of the phone calls, converted to clients. Now, chats weren't bad. Remember, I said we also want chats, they came in at 9%. And form fills, converted, we only had we had 58 web forms, only three were scientists clients, they converted 5%. Now the main reason for that is that if we if somebody calls, we get them on the phone, we give them confidence, and Chris is going to teach you how to do that in a minute, we give them confidence that we can help them with their issue with their their car accident with their insurance company, with all their requirements, we convinced them were the right person for the job, we're gonna get the job, we're gonna sign them up. And typically that rate is much higher on the phone than through chats or forms. And it's just human nature is is common sense, right? If somebody fills out a form, and you contact them, an hour later, or the next day, there's a very good chance that they hit the back button after they filled out your form. And they contacted a couple other law firms, we know that the vast majority of people are going to talk to two or three or four different vendors in every field, but in particular, in single incident law, right. So they're gonna talk to someone else. And they might call them if their websites optimized for phone calls. Or if they clicked on the on the Google screen, or the maps and called them and they filled out your form, you might call them five minutes later, and they're on the phone with the other law firm. Guess what that law firm, if they're doing their job, they're going to sign them up through electronic signature, and they're never going to call you back. So we want to optimize all of our campaigns, we want our pay per click campaigns coming through on click to call, we want that big phone optimized for our LSAS for our maps for our pay per click, and we want to orient our campaigns toward phone calls. Because phone calls convert at a much higher rate. We want our website optimized for phone calls. So without further ado, I think I've made my case here in taken conversion is mission critical today in converting opportunities for law firm, and our job at 10 golden rules for a digital marketing agency is to send the leads to the law firm, your job is to convert those opportunities into paying clients. And we're so passionate about improving your intake, because we want a higher percentage of the leads converting so you get more business and you think we're doing a better job. So the purpose of being here today is to help teach law firms with one of the best professionals in the world that I know. And that's Chris Mullins. And let me tell you a little bit about Chris. She started her phone sales career at 19 years of age. And by 20. She was number one in the company didn't surprise me at all, Chris, he's the host of the lawyers tell all podcast which I've been a guest on. Thank you so much. And she's an author of this book, law firm conversions, the founder and the CEO of Intake Academy. And with that, I'm happy to introduce my friend Chris Mullins. Hey, Chris, I don't know. Tell us one additional interesting fact about you. Hmm,

Chris Mullins: 00:14:07

let's say well, I've done a 30 mile ultra marathon in one day, But even better than that, I've done a triathlon when it was canceled. So triathlon was, you know, a big race and everything but there was a hurricane so they canceled it and there was no way I was gonna do all that training and not do it. So I did it in the hurricane by myself.

Jay Berkowitz: 00:14:35

Oh my goodness, where was the location? New Hampshire, Peterborough, New Hampshire. As you see Chris is a super passionate all star and today she's going to translate that passion to teaching us about intake and conversion strategies. And Chris you are going to be so kind as to introduce me.

Chris Mullins: 00:14:54

We have Jay Berkowitz, founder of 10 golden rules. author of five books too. Best Sellers plus Internet Marketing for law firms. Cmo Director of Marketing, sprint Coca Cola McDonald's moniker edits, if I'm pronouncing it right. He's a tennis player and retired hockey retired hockey goalie. Wow, we need to see a picture of that. That's amazing. So

Jay Berkowitz: 00:15:20

Jay Berkowitz. Thanks, Chris. Yeah, here's the new book coming out later this month, called advanced Internet Marketing for law firms.

Chris Mullins: 00:15:28

Let me begin by saying, Wow, holy, holy cow, what Jay was saying about the red phone. That's really cool. For you've got 15 seconds, and Google is monitoring it. I mean, that's amazing. Talk about accountability. I love it. So everybody should get a red phone. You know, it has to like a either Real Red phones for everybody, which would be amazing, but at least fake red phones on everybody's desk. So it's like a psychological trigger a visual reminder. That is like amazing. So awesome. Excellent. Okay, so I'm going to review with you how to use what I call the five step relationship, sales conversion script, and basically giving you the script, I'm going to go over each step. And then after that, I'm going to play the call recording that that Jay was talking about. So step one, so it's called the introduce step. It's the same idea as the greeting, but I call it the introduce step. And it's the very beginning of your call. So whether it's the receptionist or the intake specialist, depending on how your calls, you know, organized in your firm, it doesn't matter, you want to welcome them to the firm. So all you need to do is just say, Welcome to Chris Mullins law firm, this is Mary speaking, how can I help you. And what you want to notice is, I had a big voice, and a big smile in my voice. And I didn't sound like I wasn't happy, I sounded like, I'm ready for you. I sounded like I liked my job. And I'm happy at my job. And that's what you want. One of the things I want to mention about the word welcome is it's an important word, one reason because the prospective client that's calling you, they've been thinking about calling you for quite some time now. But something happened now today in their world that made them say, Okay, I'm done, I can't take it anymore, I need to call. And so when they finally call you that, they're kind of like, hyper responsive. And when they finally call you, one of the things you want to do is you want to blow them away with your greeting, using the introduce step. We're all consumers. And we all have experiences with businesses out there. And when we call them, the experience isn't really great, right at the very, very beginning, from the moment you say hello, it's just not great. So the prospect is also a consumer, and they have those experiences in their mind. And you want to kind of get rid of that for them. They're assuming that when they call you, it's not gonna be a good experience. One, they don't really like law firms and lawyers, they don't trust them. And so you've got to, you've changed that from the very moment you say hello. But the also just because of their experiences. So when you say welcome to Chris Mullins law firm, this is Mary speaking, how can I help you, they don't expect that they're shocked for all those different reasons. So so give them something to be excited about and to feel good about, because they're not feeling great right about now. So you do the welcome. And then the next step for the introduce step is you get their name, and I want you to get their name at the beginning, because I want you to use their name throughout the conversation. So if you get at the beginning, you can do that. So welcome to ABC law firm. This is Chris speaking, how can I help you? Yeah, I had a car accident. Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that may ask what your name is. My name is Mary. Well, Mary, I'm so glad that you gave us a call today. And then you'll go to the next step, which you'll see in a moment. But that's step number one, the introduce step with the word, welcome. Okay, so let's go to the next step, which is step two, which is the talk step. This step here is where you're going to spend the majority of your time. This is where the prospective client is deciding, do I want to do business with this law firm? Do I like them? And it's all based on the intake specialist. It's not based on your law firm yet. The decision to work with you and to have you be their lawyer has to do with the intake specialist first. They'll get an experience from your law firm later. So it's important to remember that and so when you think about that, ask yourself How important do you make the intake department, the call center, the intake specialist in your firm? Do you look at them and view them as critically important? Do you say that they are but do you act that way? And so that's really important and that's that's for another conversation but a couple of things that you should do is wear recognize them on a regular basis and customize your recognition to them, tell them why you're recognizing them. But get other people in the law firm to recognize them too. Because if you didn't have intake specialists, you wouldn't have a law firm. There's no need for lawyers. So keep that in mind. But you've got to make them feel special, and make them feel as important as they really are. The idea is that you want to you want to hire intake specialists, and put them in a career role, if you will not just, you know, handling calls, like we've been doing or customer service, it's a career position. That's the, that's the switch that you want to make, so that they stay. Okay, so step number two, this is where you build your relationship. So the first thing you're going to do after you do the welcome is, I'd like to ask you some questions and see how I can help you. Okay, so this is what you asked them before you ask them the screening questions, you want to ask permission to ask questions, there's a couple reasons for that. One is it's like a speed bump, it slows down the intake specialist. So they take a lot of phone calls every day all day long, back to back, possibly outbound phone calls, also. And then they get another call where you need them to reset. Before they get into that call, if they know they're held accountable, to ask permission to ask questions, before they ask the screening questions, then they'll do it. And by doing that, it's a speed bump, it's slowing them down a little bit. So that whatever they've been feeling prior to that call, they can have a few moments to erase it and get rid of it. And look at this, you should write this down. Now, they will look at the next call as a fresh start. So that's what I want you to write down fresh start, it's a fresh start. First and foremost, not for the person is speaking to it's for them, it's a fresh start for them. That's critically important. And that's how you can support them. So you have the welcome that we went over, you acknowledge the person for whatever they're calling for, as I said, like a car accident, you provide empathy. And there's a couple things here I'm saying so far that are not in the five steps you want to be really good at note taking right now. And then you get their name and you use the name in the conversation and you say, Mary, I'd like to ask you some questions to see how I can help you. Okay, and you, you ask permission. So you have to ask the question, Mark, and then wait, wait, wait, wait for the answer. And so I already told you that why for the intake specialist, everything is like times two. So it's also for the person that you're speaking to, because they're not expecting it. Remember, they've got all these preconceived notions of how your firm is probably like every other business out there with not the best customer service. And typically other businesses they don't, they don't do a welcome. They don't have a smile. They're not asking for the name and using the name. And they're certainly not asking permission, ask questions before they do they just kind of bulldoze through and go through a bunch of questions and sound like license and registration, like robotic. So for the for the prospective client. They're like, you're asking me if it's okay, great. So it helps with the experience. And step two, remember, this is where they make the decision. If they like you, if they want to do business with you all because the intake specialist, so I'd like to ask you some questions to see how I can help you. Okay, oh, yeah, that'd be fine. And so what you're doing is you're asking permission and making a statement of purpose, then you can see where it says screening questions. That just means now it's time to ask your screening questions. So the screening questions that you've already created for your intake teams ask regarding the different cases that they have. And if you don't have screening questions written up, stop and fix that and write them up. It's not for the intake specialist to figure out what the questions are. It's really like the lawyer, the attorney that would make up the questions, because they know what's the minimum amount of questions that they need to have answered in order to qualify if this prospective client goes to the next step. So please don't expect your intake specialist to figure it out, because they don't know. And they're not lawyers, and we want them to stay in their lane, and their lane is conversion, not trying to invent all the systems and protocols in your law firm. Okay, so you have your screening questions, and then see where it says saying and check in. What this means is you want to teach your intake specialist to sing while they ask screening questions. And what that means is you don't want them to sound like transactional or like, license and registration, question answer question answer. That's what you're trying to avoid. And so if you teach them how to sing, what's going to happen is they're going to change the inflection and the tone in their voice as they ask the questions and they won't sound like license and registration. So that is singing And then the last step for number two that you want to teach them is how to check in. Because number two is we're building that relationship decisions are being made, I'm going to work with them, or I'm not going to work with them. Sales and techniques are all happening here. And step number two, besides asking the screening questions, so you want to check in though with them, it's like a little poke on the shoulder. So teacher and a specialist to periodically say to Mary, Mary, you're doing a great job answering my questions. I just have a few questions left. The next question I'm going to ask you might be a difficult question. I understand that it might be because I get I need you to explain to me a little bit about the accident. But if you need to take a moment, that's okay. Those are examples of check ins, little love taps and posts on the shoulder during your screening question process. And that just helps to have a relationship of love, care and concern, and emotions and empathy, all at the same time. Remember, step number two is the most important step decisions are being made. Okay? Next, we go to step number three. So step number two is the talk. Step number one is the introduce Step number three is acknowledge now, this is the CTA, the call to action, the conversion, the actual conversion script happens in step number three. So we've welcomed them, we've done the talk step we've gotten to know them, they know us, we have all the information we need, we can help them, we've decided we can help them marry based on everything that you said, this is a case that we can help you with. What I'm going to do is right now is I'm going to email you our retainer, I'll check with you to make sure that you received it, I'll give you a moment to initial and sign. I'll stay here with you. I won't leave, I'll be ready to answer your questions. So go ahead. Did you get the retainer? Great, open it up is everything. Okay? Terrific. Go ahead and follow the instructions there and ask me any questions you want, I'm going to be quiet while you do it.

Chris Mullins: 00:27:00

Now, the reason I want you to be quiet while they do it is this is someone, this is the sales presentation. You don't want to speak, while they're trying to figure out how to sign this initial, you're there if they have questions, and you can check in with them maybe once or twice, but you don't want to be talking and trying to get other things done. Because you could lose the sale based on what you say. So you don't want to do that. That's why you want to be quiet. It's a very delicate moment in the relationship. And so they initial they sign and you tell them to submit the button, hit the submit button, then you don't hang up. Sometimes I'm listening to call recordings, and we hang up. And we don't even know if we'll receive the yet. Wait, did you get the retainer? Did you get it? Did you open it is everything good to go. So don't assume everything's gonna be okay. And don't assume they're gonna do it, because they're not going to do it. That's why I want you to stay there with them. Ideally, I mean, a lot of retainers I look at, I'll just kind of share this with you. They're they're several pages. Ideally, one page no more than two. That's really what you're looking for. And my hope is, while you're while you're learning today is your mindset isn't a student kind of mindset, a learning mode, which means that you're thinking about all the possibilities how you can do everything that you're hearing versus what we tend to do is think about all the reasons why something won't work. So get rid of that one. Because if you if you don't get rid of that one, you're not going to learn anything. Okay. So you know, the reason you want to say based on what you said, if those words in that language is important, because what you're saying to Mary is the decision I'm about to make right now with you that we can help you or we can help you. It's not something I made up. We're a team yet we're we're on the same team. It's based on everything that you just said to me. So that's really important to make sure that you use those words based on what you said. And so what step number three is doing is it's acknowledgement and recommendation. It's the CTA, it's the call to action. It's where the conversion happens. And if anybody's thinking, you haven't gotten quite the right mindset just yet, with today's session, if you're thinking, well, that's gonna take too long for us to close on the phone, it doesn't matter. You'll be able to sharpen your axe over time, it'll get less and less and less. The point is you won't have to chase you won't lose the lead. You can convert them immediately on the spot. You want to do that. You can do it. So just dive in, lean forward, start doing it, everything will work out. It will be fine. Okay, so that's step number three. Step number four is the Confirm step. Okay, Kay for confirm why because intake. It's an acronym for intake. So, the introduced step is I n, and the talk step is T and the acknowledged step is A and then when you get to the Confirm step, it's que for confirm because it's an acronym for intake. And the fifth step is execute, which is the E. So you don't need to change the spelling to help me out. Just keep it that way. Okay, so in the Confirm step, we just verify all the contact information. Now most of us have gotten the contact information. And step number two, during the screening question process. That's fine. But before you go, just doubly make sure you got it. Did you get all of it? Is it right? Did you get two phone numbers is the spelling, okay? Just double check. Look at the confirmed stuff is a catch all. So you definitely want to verify and confirm everything. Because the worst thing you could have is not have all the right information, all the accurate information. But you could also look at as a catch all, so let's just say the intake specialist, something was missing in the screening question process, or they want to clarify something, but they didn't want to do it on the spot, they can do that in the Confirm step. They can use that as a catch all. And so what you're also doing is you're validating the prospective client by confirming all of their contact information. That is the Confirm step. Okay, the last step is the execute step number five, E, which is the last letter in the word intake for the acronym. Okay? So the execute step is the very end of the conversation. And the reason for the execute step is because otherwise, we just say thank you, and we hang up, we want to give a Ritz Carlton experience from the beginning of the call to the end of the call the Ritz Carlton of law firms, that's what you're looking at, you don't want to sound like a law firm, you want to sound like you're giving an exceptional experience, no matter what. And that's the entire call. So what you do is, you're all done, I say it, because you're really grateful that you have a lead. So you're gonna say thank you, because you appreciate it. So thank you so much for giving us a call. That's appreciation. That's why the word appreciation is there, then you go ahead and you say, we look forward to blank. So whatever happened in step number three, is what would go in there. So let's just say as somebody that you can help, we look forward to working with you, we look forward to you having an appointment with the attorney at two o'clock today. Or if somebody pushes back, and they don't want to sign the retainer on the spot only if they push back. And they and they say that they'll sign it later on, then you you would have your intake specialist, just pretend that it's two o'clock, and they sent the retainer and they don't want to sign it right now, then the intake specialists would be okay, fine. Here's what I'm going to do. It's two o'clock, I'll give you a call at three o'clock to answer your questions. And then they would confirm the phone number, make sure it's all set. Let's just say the prospective client said that's okay. Then Then when you get to the execute step, you would just say okay, so Mrs. Smith, I look forward to speaking to you today at three o'clock to review the retainer with you. So basically, what I'm trying to give you a couple three examples is what goes in that space is whatever happened to number three? And what you're doing is you're providing assurance, okay, you're providing assurance to the prospective client. Okay, so then after that step, you have the verbal contract. This is really important. If you've ever read anything by Dr. Robert Cialdini, the art of influence and persuasion. He talks a lot about the word promise, I suggest you go on YouTube, there's like an hour and a half class that he did on it. I forget the name of the TV station that was interviewing him, but I'm sure that you could find it, and just watch it and get his book too. But here's how you would use this. So let's pretend let's just use the example of the appointment that was scheduled that three o'clock. So in the verbal contract with that example, you'd say okay, so Mary, know, for some reason, you need to reschedule that three o'clock appointment. Would you just promise to give me a call?

Chris Mullins: 00:34:04

Question mark, pause, wait for the answer. Notice my cadence and my rhythm and how I'm not speaking too fast. This is an important step. I want to know that she got it. And then you rest after you ask a question. You rest, you be quiet. You don't have to say anything. You've got to wait for the answer. You have to wait for the answer in order for it to be a verbal contract. And then she'll say yes, some people will say I promise. So why do the word why the word promise is because most people that promised to do something, have a higher likelihood of following through because they promised and we would rather someone promised that they were going to let us know they need to reschedule versus doing a no show. That's totally different. And then also when you use the route we're promised after you've given us full Ritz Carlton experience, from top to the very bottom now. They're like what Oh, they this, they don't even sound like a law firm. I gotta make sure I keep my appointment, I gotta make sure I take care of this retainer, I gotta make sure I get the sign. Because if I don't do it, and I'm not that that appointment, I probably won't be able to talk to them again. So you're instilling some urgency and some concern in the conversation and some scarcity, because I'm going to give you a bonus statement right now, it's not on here. So under the verbal contract for the promise, the scarcity statement would be that way, we can give this time to someone else who's waiting. So you have your verbal contract, if for some reason, you need to reschedule the three o'clock today, would you just promise to give me a call? Yeah, yeah, I'll promise. Okay, great. That way, I'll get your reschedule. And we can get that time to someone else who's waiting. And you had your pace, and you take it easy, and you don't rush, you want to be deliberate. You want them to understand it. Now they're like, holy cow, they must have a line of people behind them and out in the parking lot. And if I don't make this appointment, if I don't sign this and take care of it right now, I probably won't get in there again. So you're instilling, instilling concern, urgency and scarcity. All right there. Okay. And then you have the final hug. All right. Well, thank you, again, for calling. Did I answer all your questions? Is there anything else I can help you with? That's the final hug. And then at the very, very end, it's all free for you. The reason that's at the end is because that's the right place for it. It's the polite place for it. And what I mean by that is most firms ask that question at the very, very beginning. Now, if they've told you at the beginning, then you don't need to ask it at the bottom. But if they haven't told you don't ask it at the beginning, because it's this is really internally focused question. When you ask it at the beginning, which means you're not thinking of the person you're speaking to, you're thinking of you, you, you, you the business and the details and the information that you need to get, this is the beginning of the relationship, that that's a selfish step, you don't want to be that way. Everything is about them. It's 80% of the phone call is all about them and their emotions, okay. And that's, that's the way you want to focus on it, not what you need and what you need to get achieved. That's why it's at the other, it's at the end, it's kind of like, oh, by the way, who can we thank for refer you. And the reason for that language referring you is because you want to instill in them, okay, they get referrals. And he who doesn't want to work with a company that gets referrals? And also, it's kind of saying to them, you're probably going to refer to us too. Now, if somebody says, No, I wasn't referring it was Google, then you just okay, Greek, German with the words were that you typed in. And you can just jot that down as a note. And so that, that is how you would do that. Okay. Now, the big red bow is the very, very, very end. Okay, so maybe I just want you to know, before we go that you made the right decision column today, you're not alone. And you don't have to look any further. You made the right decision. People don't know, if they're making the right decision. You're not alone, we're with you. We're behind you, our entire legal team is behind you. And you don't have to look any further. The words and language on the five steps that deliberate they're not just like catchy phrases, and things like that. They all have meaning they all have a purpose times two, for the intake specialist. And for the prospective client, which you don't have to look any further takes care of what Jay was saying earlier, people that they're searching, you know, whether it's three to five, law firms that they're gonna go ahead and call it your competition. So you're just kind of putting this language in there to hopefully deter them from reaching out to other firms. Because it's

Jay Berkowitz: 00:38:57

such a great point, right? Convince them that they don't have to look any further. But at least 50% of them won't look any further.

Chris Mullins: 00:39:06

Exactly, but But you can't just say that. Everything up top has to match with that. So it has to be the red bow experience. The Ritz Carlton experience, it needs to be assumptive language, it needs to be sales, language and love care and concern and empathy, and assurance, all of that. And then what happens is when you do all that up at the top, by the time you get here, it's just a done deal. I mean, you just they're just kind of going along for a walk with you. And it's done. You don't even have to sell anymore. Okay, so those are the five steps. And you should definitely just take those five steps and immediately listen to this recording and train your team on how to do the five steps. It's Not a lot. It's all the other things that are that are above and beyond that, but this is a great way to get started. What I'm going to do right now, Jay, I'm gonna play the call recording. Okay.

Jay Berkowitz: 00:40:11

Awesome. So the beauty of this now, as we know, Chris's script, this is the master plan. And now she's going to show you someone who hasn't been trained, who's answering the phone, and she's going to make it real, and explain where each of the steps should be executed on a call. And by the way, she does this for all of our clients, this is an awesome service. And you should contact Chris, after the fact if you think this would be great for your team to have this kind of training.

Chris Mullins: 00:40:41

Okay, this is a real call, as was mentioned earlier, we have edited out the identification of the firm. So it there'll be like pauses and things like that, and sentences not completed. And that's the reason but you'll you'll definitely get the idea of the form.

Jay Berkowitz: 00:40:58

Yeah, it is a little funny, by the way, when there's these like, blank spaces, there's kind of like, in the background, but right as loud as it would make it easier for us to understand. Exactly. Okay. Chris will explain them. This is where they took the file name and the phone number, the name and the phone number had been redacted for privacy issues.

Chris Mullins: 00:41:18

Yeah. Okay, here we go.

Call: 00:41:20

We're calling them firm, please hold and someone will be right with you.

Chris Mullins: 00:41:27

So that's where you would do the welcome. Step number one at the very beginning, they have a recording that's going on right away.

Jay Berkowitz: 00:41:36

I'm gonna put a big red flag up. This was 23 seconds, when I listen to the call, of course, when I send it over to you, it's 23 seconds before a person actually gets on the phone. Super important that you recognize what I said earlier, like you have to answer calls within 15 seconds. Now, there was an automated attendant, you know, again, you know, I always say you don't want to mess with Mother Nature. Okay. And let's face it my business, Google is mother nature. So if Google's saying answer calls within 15 seconds, I think you want to do everything humanly possible to make sure that you answer calls within 15 seconds.

Chris Mullins: 00:42:15

Yeah, absolutely. I recommend that we get to where we used to be, and we have live receptionists at the very beginning of the relationship you're working to answer in 15 seconds. The world I mean, they just don't want to hear the auto attendance. So if you really want to do the right thing, and you really want to get conversion to be exactly what you want. And you're going ahead and you're doing all the marketing, this is the this is part of the same process.

Jay Berkowitz: 00:42:45

Yeah. How much is how much is one case worth 1020 $30,000? Could an auto attendant versus a real person? Get you one more case a month? So could you have an extra person answering the phones and extra receptionist, or an extra person and intake, just so that you always answer within 15 seconds? Never miss a call? Would that get you into the top three on the LSAS? I believe it would I believe that investment is worthwhile. Of course, I'm not writing the checks for the for our law firm clients, but you definitely want to push in that direction. Anyways, Chris, back to the call. All right, here

Chris Mullins: 00:43:22

we go. And I'll be fast forwarding and pausing and things like that and talking to you. Hello,

Call: 00:43:31

hello. Yes.

Call: 00:43:33

How can I help you?

Chris Mullins: 00:43:36

So there are the five steps, but there's also mindset and other training that you want to do with your team. And at the very beginning of the call after we have the initial greeting and the initial introduce step, we want to be ready. We don't want to be like hello and sounding like we're not really ready for the call. We always want to be ready for the call. And that's what you want to train your team to do.

call: 00:44:01

I was calling the consultation.

Call: 00:44:05

Yes, ma'am. One moment, please let me transfer you to a telephone calling. Okay, Miss, what is the nature of your of your situation?

call: 00:44:20

Our daughter was involved in a car accident, isn't it? Okay?

Call: 00:44:31

So I'm so sorry to hear the bank. So sorry to hear that. Let me transfer you to and what is your name?

Chris Mullins: 00:44:39

So it was great that we provide an empathy. That's really, really good and it's not, you know, it's not something that's typical. It's definitely something we all want to improve on. But we did provide empathy. So that's really good. One of the other things that you want to teach your team is how to read people and be in a state of readiness for however the caller is sounding, you can just tell right from the very beginning that this particular person should, she doesn't sound that at all. And so you want to be sensitive to that, when we transfer the call to the intake specialist, that person wants to be sensitive to it also. Okay. Again, first. So we know where the introduced goes, we talked about that, we are getting the name, okay. And then the ideal situation is, once we get the name, when we transfer the call to the next person, we want to say to that person, so say intake, we want to say to that person, I've got Mary on the phone, and she's calling because of x. And then the next person picks up the phone, and they can say their name. And they can say is this Mary? Yes, it is. Mary, I understand you're calling about your daughter, I'm so sorry. So just immediately, so everybody just needs to be a little bit organized and speak to the next person and make sure that they know, but it's the details that matter, the details really matter. Okay, so we're still getting to the talk. Step number two,

Call: 00:46:17

one moment, let me transfer you.

Chris Mullins: 00:46:22

Okay, and you want to have commercials, you want to have commercials, you don't want to have music, you want to be it's marketing opportunity, sell your law firm. When people are on hold whatever the case is sell your law firm is, it's real estate for you to use.

Call: 00:46:42

Goodmorning this is Hello,

Call: 00:46:44

I was calling.

Chris Mullins: 00:46:46

So now we've transferred to the intake specialist. And I think that you can agree, we didn't do a trust transfer with saying the name of the person get well, we probably want to edit it out. So you don't know. But I did listen to it before it was added. And we didn't do that and saying what the situation was because we're not acknowledging it. But the other is we don't we don't sound ready. We don't sound ready. We don't sound like we have a big voice and a big smile. You know, good morning. This is Chris. And I'm an intake specialist. Is this married? Mary? I understand that you're calling about your daughter. Is that correct? Okay. And your daughter is in the hospital right now. Okay, I'm really sorry to hear that. I'm going to ask you some questions to see how I can help you. Would that be okay? Yes, it would. And then you go into the screening question process. The real point I was trying to make here is we don't sound like we're ready. We don't sound like we love our job. We don't sound like it's the first call of the day. Even if it's quarter five, it doesn't matter. But consultation.

call: 00:47:51

Thank you.

Chris Mullins: 00:47:58

So let's just say this is somebody is saying I want a consultation. Let's just talk about that for a second. Fantastic, wonderful, you made the right decision calling our law firm today. I can take care of you, I can help you. So just pay attention to the details. Put your listening ears on pay attention to what you're hearing and respond to it. This is about the experience and experience does equal conversion and sales. But if you don't get the experience, you're not going to get the sale.

Call: 00:48:31

Spell your first name.

call: 00:48:32

It would be for both my husband and I my husband thing was worth

Chris Mullins: 00:48:39

and that's the awkwardness were in step number two now. Yeah,

call: 00:48:45

correct. Okay. She wasn't driving she was, you know, wanting to seek some legal advice. She wasn't driving, she was the passenger.

call: 00:48:58

Okay. Tell me, tell me a little bit more about that for I had a dino have an accident happened.

Chris Mullins: 00:49:07

So as I said earlier, I've already listened to the call, we have yet to provide any empathy at this stage. And that should be like the first thing. And I will say that probably the one of the biggest challenges that I face working with law firms is empathy. Everybody understanding what empathy is, but how to use it and it's okay. And it doesn't mean you have to solve a problem. It's a really big topic. And you want to teach your team take the time to help them to understand it, and roleplay with them and give them examples because that's what you know, you're there working for you. They're like in school, at your law firm. You're teaching them how to perform and how to act and behave at your firm.

call: 00:49:58

Okay. Yeah, I did happen. And I did speak to the sheriff, that was the only thing that was a deputy sheriff. And the, the drivers are in control of the vehicle.

Chris Mullins: 00:50:15

Now, I just want to give you something to think about to share with your team that when the prospective client is sharing about their accident, their incident their story, they're reliving the trauma of whatever it is, no matter how long ago it was. And they're giving you the details. And in some cases, a lot of details. So what you want to teach your team is to be sensitive to that, again, the details matter, and say something like, so Mary, I'm going to ask you some questions about the accident. And I understand that this might be difficult. If at any time, you need to take a moment when you take a break. Just let me know. Just set it up that you get it. humanize the conversation, you get it you understand. Okay.

call: 00:51:04

Slip that little time. But she was the one with the mountaineer injury they had.

Chris Mullins: 00:51:13

So when she just said, the car flipped several times. I mean, the natural step would be, wow, oh, my gosh, I am so sorry. I mean, what you want to do is train and teach your team, this will help them with empathy. To visualize what what's happening is, it's the accidents being described, they visualize it, so if they can see it, it will be easier for them to react to it. Okay, it'll be much easier for them to do that. So that's one way that you can help them.

Call: 00:51:49

Suffice to get her out of the car.

Chris Mullins: 00:51:54

So the way out, oh my gosh, which is showing empathy. One of the things that I teach, and you could teach your team is words matter. So write out three empathetic phrases. And then each of your team members could do that. And there wasn't in their language that they they can call on when they need to. But we did provide some empathy right there.

call: 00:52:19

So I don't know. Well, the officer decided that he he didn't smell like alcohol on, you know, the driver's breath or anything like that. I think it was in the case of reckless driving.

Unknown: 00:52:40

He just loved from what she knows he just lost control of the car. Yeah.

Chris Mullins: 00:52:47

So the other thing that you want to be careful of, and why you want to have screening questions written out and train your team how to use them, is because if you don't, and if you don't hold them accountable for using them as a tool, they'll invent their own, and they'll get out of their lane, and they'll and it's not their fault, they need to have the right tools and training. And they potentially could ask questions that are more legal, and that they don't, they don't need to do that. They don't need to go there. So just take the time to create them the least amount possible to find out if we can help this person or not use the name of the person during the conversation. Do you remember when we talked about step number one, the welcome step, the introduce step, and we talked about getting the name and using the name we want to use in fairness, maybe we were using the name here, because it's edited it out. But I want to remind you use the name of the conversation. And then also when the prospective client, or if a prospective client is talking about other people, or calling on somebody else's behalf, however you want to look at it, get the names of everybody, and start to use all the names in the conversation to build the story. So now your intake specialists, they have been really organized, really, really focused, they might need to write it down. So it's it can be just as confusing as trying to put the puzzle pieces together for whatever the incident was. But we want to do that because we want to humanize the conversation. We're still in step two, asking process questions, screening questions saying and check in saying right now, I'm not really concerned right this moment about the singing. It's more about the energy level. And the feelings of I like my job I enjoy what I'm doing and I'm so happy happy to be talking to you right now. Because this is really important and you made the right decision.

Call: 00:54:49

Report, an accident report of any car.

call: 00:54:54

Now that it is there that it would be available. They It was,

Unknown: 00:55:03

I mean, do you have a case number because we can get that for you. So you have to pay for him or not, but we can definitely get that for you.

Chris Mullins: 00:55:12

So other thing that you want to be careful of is intake specialists, their job is one thing converting get the retainer signed on the phone, and convert. And I even teach that it's more important to allow them if they're not quite sure if something should be signed. And I'm not even really talking about this particular call. But if it's, if they're not really 100%, short, just let them get assigned, just let them do it, and figure it out after and then teach them what what should have been done differently versus not doing it and potentially losing it. So that's the that's kind of what you want to really focus on and be really, really careful. But the other thing too, is, what happens a lot is we allow them to get out of their lane and become paralegal. And that's not what you want. Their job is just convert just get the retainer signed, anything after that, you know, the 34567 other pages to the retainer that we don't want them to deal with. We don't need them to deal with that. We don't need for them to get reports, or that's not what they do. They just convert your legal assistants, your paralegals, they take care of everything else, set them up for success to just convert with the experience.

call: 00:56:30

They want the report number abdicated from the officer. Oh, yes. I stuck it so that.

Chris Mullins: 00:56:40

So you can set it up as some heavy lifting that you're doing at your firm. You can say their name and say, you know, these are some of the things that we're going to need, but you don't have to worry about it. Leave it with me. I'm going to make sure that we take care of it, we will get it for you. So how much how can you remove the burden from the person that you're speaking to? And it's important for all of your team members to understand what is the heavy lifting that you do that you do at your firm? The services, the benefits that you actually do? And most law firms don't even talk about it, let alone think about it, make sure that your intake specialists understand what that is, and they should talk about it during the conversation. Okay, we're still in step two,

Call: 00:57:25

they're going to get it. Okay.

call: 00:57:31

Let me get a clip number for you.

call: 00:57:34

That's my phone number. And then you can raise my husband x.

Chris Mullins: 00:57:39

So we're waiting for her husband. So we're just gonna go forward a little bit.

Jay Berkowitz: 00:57:42

Getting the details is not the most exciting part of it.

Chris Mullins: 00:57:45

It's not the most exciting part. But remember, step number two is the most important step. Anything could happen in that step to make somebody say forget about it.

Call: 00:57:54

Yeah. Yeah. I think, especially as you were you were present to hear about it. I know.

Chris Mullins: 00:58:05

So that her daughter is in a coma in the hospital. That traumatic brain injury,

Unknown: 00:58:12

as a margin is definitely hard to get information about. So what are your children's do when they're not even underneath your care? So definitely feel feel for you as at this moment. How old is

Chris Mullins: 00:58:30

so everything that was just said right there? Yeah, that's empathy. And that's, and that's great. One of the things that when you're what you should be doing is listening to the call recordings of your team all the time, monitoring them, coaching them, and guiding them on what to do differently. And always tell them what they're doing, right so that they'll keep doing it. But you also want to train them on Words matter. And less is more. So I know that I'm saying Be empathetic. And then we were empathetic. But less is more. You don't need to get too into it. Because the more your team says or think they're supposed to say because they feel like they're in a customer service role. They're supposed to talk, talk, talk, they can it's dangerous, they can say something that it didn't make any sense. It wasn't the right thing to say. So less is more, which is why you want the five step script. And you want your own script of your screening questions in step number two.

Call: 00:59:35

All right. We'll be able to help you in this.

Chris Mullins: 00:59:39

So now we're in step three. Okay, step three is acknowledge recommendation step CTA Call to Action conversion moment. That's what's happening there. Or we're telling somebody that we can't help them. This is where the retainer is getting signed right here. As a result of Everything that happened in step two, the TOC step, okay. And you can probably tell by now why the TOC step is so important. Okay, so right, right this moment, we will say, the person's name, say, based on what you said, blank, blank, blank, this is the case we can help you with was this case we can help you with, and then you go through their tender process. So, it's right here at this moment.

Unknown: 01:00:23

situation. Um, first and foremost, I'm very sorry, that this has happened to your daughter,

Chris Mullins: 01:00:27

so great with the empathy bank,

Unknown: 01:00:31

especially since you were you were present to hear about it. I know, as a margin, it's definitely hard to get information about something any one of your children's do it when they're not even in underneath your care. So definitely feel filled for you at this moment. How old is she? So we are going to have to have her for that that paperwork.

Chris Mullins: 01:00:58

So if you heard that, we are going to have to have fulfilled the paperwork. So I mean, there's so we're missing a whole piece of what happened here. Their daughter has traumatic brain injury, and she's in a coma, she can't sign anything. And there's a disconnect with the intake specialist understanding that, and recognizing that, and focusing and paying attention to the detail. So there's the detail part of it. There's the I love my job, it's so important to me, I want to get it right part of it. It's the empathy, the real picture part of it. But it's also the disconnect of what your firm really does. And what the different cases are that you take, and what does that mean. And so the question you want to ask yourselves, as the owners and the managing partners and the attorneys, have you done a good job with training your team? Have you done the good job done your due diligence to make sure they understand or did you just make sure that they did Customer Service at an intake background and off you go. So that's on you, that's something that you need to take care of. And one of the things I recommend that you do is I would maybe get some videos of all the different types of cases that you handle, like the accident, but showing the the terrible part of it, that traumatic brain injury would happen that made that happen, car accidents, so on and so forth. And have your team watch them and tell them what they are. And compared to the cases that you handle, so that they can so they can almost live it and see exactly what's happening and get a really better understanding of it. You want to educate them. Okay, so this is where we, we lose it. This is where we don't get to have the retainer side.

Unknown: 01:02:52

But that's not a problem at all. We'd like for her to get a little bit more responsive. And then like you know what,

Chris Mullins: 01:03:01

to say when she gets a little more responsive. Major, major disconnect, don't think for a second that your intake specialists aren't handling calls this way, and it's not their fault. And so do your due diligence and get them trained, but listen to your call recordings, listen to your call recordings, listen to your call recordings, I call it our MFD record, monitor feedback daily. That's what you want to be doing, inspect what you expect. And I gotta tell you, most of my clients when they come to me, they say you you won't have any issues. But our calls on that. Mary's been with us for 25 years. John is my my nephew, so on and so forth. And every single time 100% They're shocked, and then they start to make excuses why that probably happened. Okay, and then some will probably they just go crazy and then really angry and they're really upset, which is exactly what I want because that means they'll get to take action. Okay?

Unknown: 01:04:07

Have a like a day of rest or something like that before we bombard her with paperwork. Request.

Chris Mullins: 01:04:13

You can hear the Mom,

call: 01:04:15

I'm sorry, let me stop you right there. She's had a traumatic injury. So basically, she's gonna she's not able to do anything.

Unknown: 01:04:29

That's very true. My adult we can definitely get a power of attorney to have one of you all. That

Chris Mullins: 01:04:41

that's not what we want to take doing. That's legal stuff. They don't they don't need to be doing that. That's not their role. That's not their place. You really need to listen to your call recording to take responsibility for how your team is performing. If you're going to spend any money on marketing at all, you've got to do that if you don't do that. If there are holes in your business leaking

Unknown: 01:05:06

really the bulk of your handle her affairs. I just don't know if she needs to be responsive, see your site, as well. But

Chris Mullins: 01:05:18

I want to put my head down on the desk. You me both? I mean, I can't tell you how many times I've listened to this. But so

Jay Berkowitz: 01:05:26

and by the way, Chris, you know, everything you said is so true. Like for every time a client told me Oh, no, we answer the phone, always immediately. And every time we get the report back from Google, and it's like, you know, their average call answering is 27 seconds or something. 15 seconds, and you're dead in terms of the algorithm. And same thing like oh, and our, our intake staff is fantastic. They're trained, we listen to the calls. And then they hear a few of these calls. And they're like, exactly what you said. Listen to your calls, make sure you're recording, and then call Chris.

Chris Mullins: 01:06:05

Absolutely. You know, just when you're doing your marketing, and you're working with Jay, you're putting together your Progress Party or marketing campaign needs to be, you know, your list is intake. Do we have the right people? Do we have enough people? We need to get ready, you know, it's like fire fire. Let's run, run, run. Let's get ready for this big campaign. Because it's going to be wonderful. That phone's gonna be ringing up a book. Are we ready? Let's get ready. Let's jump through hoops and get ready. Okay, we're almost done with this call.

Unknown: 01:06:38

versus, you know, let me talk to the attorney. He animated for the office.

Chris Mullins: 01:06:45

Less is more less? We don't, we don't want to be say he hasn't made it into the office.

Unknown: 01:06:51

But asked about their power of attorney to see that she needs to be aware of because I know she's only another legal age. But I don't know, this seems that she's still you off town. We actually need that. But did you have any questions for me?

call: 01:07:12

No. No. Yeah, just, you know, when you speak to the attorney, or have an attorney, Carla, thank you.

Unknown: 01:07:24

Okay, definitely, definitely have them give you a call as well. So you can speak to him and get his voice provide a voice to his name as well.

Chris Mullins: 01:07:34

So that's the end of the call. So this, this intake specialist doesn't know what to say. That's why he keeps saying things because he doesn't know what to say, it's a demonstration and us doing a poor job of I'm not gonna say hi to him, because we don't know that but a poor job of setting him up to be successful. And this is a case that you lose, you don't get this case. And they're just going to call the next person. Now, we were in that was that was step number three. We didn't it more happened there than normally would because it just kind of got off the rails. Stefan before confirming and double, verifying didn't happen. Step number five, the execute didn't happen. The big red bow didn't happen. So all of that didn't happen. And you could probably tell when we're done. It's just kind of like goodbye. And you just had this intimate conversation with someone and we're just kind of like, goodbye. So that's why it has step number five, and the big red bow.

Jay Berkowitz: 01:08:35

I do have some good news. The good news is our client did get the case. Sofa. The better news is the girl did wake up that it was not expected. And wow, thank God for a miracle she she did come out of the coma. And, you know, step by step number good news number three, there's a real case there. And I think family link getting significant compensation. And I think good news number four, they've hired Chris for intake training. Clearly they they did everything possible to not get that case. And and the young gentleman in question. I'm not sure if he's still on the team, but he's getting trained up. Chris, I don't know if you'd recognize his name. But um, you know, with that, what I'd love to do is open up for some questions. So please feel free to put questions in the q&a, or the chat. And myself, I always love to make my own questions and I get to go first. Okay, we time and format your questions, and please use the q&a or the chat. So the initial person asked for the name twice. And I believe the attorney also asked for the name twice. So clearly, that was a fumble. Like they've got to write it down or type it in. There can't be you know, it just it just seems like you don't care. Right. Is that am I just saying that or is that absolutely critical?

Chris Mullins: 01:10:00

It seems like you don't you don't care. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Jay Berkowitz: 01:10:03

What's the best practice like are using an intake screen, or just taking notes and entering it later?

Chris Mullins: 01:10:09

No intake screen, that's what you want to do. Just use your intake screen, make sure you have the right questions, integrate the five steps, because you don't want to be having them on the screen, they got a piece of paper for the five steps just integrated in there. And

Jay Berkowitz: 01:10:22

the intake screen comes with your legal case manager or your CRM software. Right. Exactly. Yeah. And if you like better or worse,

Chris Mullins: 01:10:33

well, I will say that the one that I recommend is bro path.

Call: 01:10:38

growth path. Growth.

Chris Mullins: 01:10:42

Yeah. And I recommend that because they get intake, they're focusing on intake. I've done demos with them. And they're just they're good people. So they'll take care of you. And you don't have to worry about being service. So that's really important to me.

Jay Berkowitz: 01:10:59

Okay, great. You had a number of examples are coaching on empathy. So what are some really good examples for empathy? You know, when you hear that the daughter was in an accident, when you hear that she's in a, in a coma with a traumatic brain injury? Give us some examples of the type of phrasing that demonstrates empathy.

Chris Mullins: 01:11:21

You know, you could keep it natural. I mean, it's tough. Answering the question, I can answer it, but it's tough because empathy should come from here. So it's a little bit of a brain twister there, but there is some education on it. So I'll just say for example, if you felt that you wanted to say, I don't even know what to say to you right now. If you felt, that's what you want to say, that would be fun. And that would be empathy. might, you might even say, Okay, I need a moment, I just need a moment to just take in what you just said, that would be empathy, saying the person's name and saying, I am so sorry, I can't even imagine being in that situation. I don't even know how you're able to even talk to me right now. So those are examples of empathy. It's just being with somebody during their pain. What it's not that people think it is, is trying to solve the problem. And that's not what it is you don't need to solve anything. You just need to be with them. And let them know that you're there. So those are some things that you could say that are okay. You don't have to worry about being too empathetic, if you will.

Jay Berkowitz: 01:12:40

We got a question really early on in the session? What if the intake specialist needs to speak with an attorney before he or she can tell the client whether the firm can help the caller? How do you handle this smoothly? And we saw the example where he needed to talk to the attorney for a technicality. But what about just in general?

Chris Mullins: 01:13:03

My first answer is let's fix that. Let's teach the intake specialist to be able to know the difference and make the decision. But separate from that. If that's not possible, then, you know, based on everything that you said, this is a case that we can help you with. But I just want to clear up a couple things and get some questions answered. Would you mind holding on for a moment? Sure. Okay, I'm going to just talk to the attorney, it might take me a moment, I'm not forgetting you. If it takes a little too long. I'll jump on just so that you know, I didn't forget you. And that's how you do it. You know, and you don't let them off the phone. You do everything you can to not do a follow up call. Because the minute you let them loose. There's an emotional gap from the relationship. They're just going to call the competition and go with the competition. So that I did I answer your question is my question back to you.

Jay Berkowitz: 01:13:58

Absolutely. Question from Karen. What are the some of the things you look for in hiring intake professionals?

Chris Mullins: 01:14:05

Oh, this is one of my favorite topics, not in any special order. But folks that have worked on a farm are great because they are really hard, hard workers. People that work in retail, they understand sales and metrics, and they're on their feet all day long every day. They are really really hard workers. waiters and waitresses, same thing, folks that have their parents have their own business so they were brought up to be in the parents business. And they watch their parents do that. Perfect. And the big answer is hire for attitude. Train for still. The most important thing that you can do is attitude, hire for attitude and character. You can train that person just about anything if you have the right training setup, the right onboarding process. So those are some examples right there.

Jay Berkowitz: 01:14:58

Yeah, I like the expression hire for attitude train for aptitude. It rhymes, but it's big words. Yeah, there you go. So question from Annabelle, if the screening is too long, we'll miss other callers. Approximately how long should the process take from hello to thank you.

Chris Mullins: 01:15:15

So one thing is, if you could try to keep your questions to no more than five, that would be good. And I've seen I think, if you're asking like how long would an intake call take? That's a that's a different answer for different, you know, for every firm, you know, depending on the calls, they're screening questions, the type of calls are getting all of that. But I have seen calls go an average of six minutes, I don't recommend they go more than 10 to 12 minutes. So you should be able to nail it in that period of time, especially if you keep your screening questions short, but you definitely want to do and you'll be able to do that when you have the mindset that okay, and take us conversion. The next step is paralegal they get all these questions.

Jay Berkowitz: 01:16:01

Next question from Robert, you use the term el MF de Listen, measure, follow up, what can you explain that and I missed part of it.

Chris Mullins: 01:16:11

That's my accent for you. So it's our SOA record. And monitor, F, feedback, D daily RMF D, record monitor feedback daily. That's, that's inspecting what you expect. Listen to call recordings, what I really want you to do when you can do it, because I know you might not be able to do right out of the gate is be prepared and put in your budget to hire somebody even part time. But that's what their job is. They listen to calls. And then they give feedback to the team. They monitor and audit calls on a regular basis.

Jay Berkowitz: 01:16:50

You know, one of the questions we get all the time is like, we don't want to listen to calls, there's privacy, we don't want to record the calls, our bar association might not allow the recording of calls. Frankly, that's all gone out the window. Because if you want to play in the most important part of Google Now, which is those legal local service ads, that Google screen, right at the top of Google, they're recording every call, and 30 or 40% of the clicks are coming right up there. So what do you say to people who don't want to record the calls and feel that there's a privacy issue,

Chris Mullins: 01:17:20

you really should do your due diligence and check the laws for recording calls, I mean, just usually you just have to give like a disclaimer. So it can be automated, or some firms, I like it when things are automated. Now, that doesn't mean I want an automated receptionist, because because I don't. But at the very beginning, you know, this call is being recorded. So you can have your team say that which is not the most efficient, or you can have it recorded that way. But it doesn't make sense to to do marketing if you don't have a marketing insurance policy in place. And your marketing insurance policy is monitoring and recording phone calls.

Jay Berkowitz: 01:17:58

What type of increase in performance and and conversions have you seen? Well,

Chris Mullins: 01:18:07

one, one client, which was a unique situation had a 70% increase in conversion, but I would say the average is like 25% 25%

Jay Berkowitz: 01:18:17

increase in conversions. So let's say we spend $10,000 on Google, I'm going to do math in my head, which I shouldn't do, it costs $100 to get a lead, we're gonna get 100 leads 100 times 100 is 10,000. We're gonna get 100 leads. And what's conversion rate like five or 10%? Let's say 10%. It's easy. I would say we're gonna sign 10 cases 100 calls. And then Chris is saying you can approve it as much as 25 or 30%. I mean, two or three cases, just using a ballpark for personal injury is 10 to $30,000, on average when we talk to firms, so three cases times 10 1000s $30,000 more revenue, or $90,000 more revenue per month. That's well in excess of a million dollars. I mean, the numbers are small, but you know, 30, you know, let's average 20,000 times 12 months, it's $240,000.

Chris Mullins: 01:19:16

It's huge. And I'll be honest with you, like if you said to me, Hey, Chris, what's the single most important thing I can do just one thing you can tell me? And they gave me that criteria. I would say record your calls and listen to them and give feedback. If you just did that one thing, that one thing alone, you will move that needle and you will get to that 25% That's not even with the expert sales training.

Jay Berkowitz: 01:19:42

I would say get signed up for Google Local Service ads. Take advantage of the top top of the placement search 30 or 40% of your leads are going to come in as phone calls now. They're automatically recorded for you. Last question from James. How often do you think legal intake specialists to update their knowledge, and should we do monthly trainings with the intake team,

Chris Mullins: 01:20:04

you should do daily huddles with them. And weekly sales drills with them where you talk about the numbers, you teach them about the numbers and the math. And they understand the key performance indicators. And they understand where they're at as individuals. And then if you have like a formal training with them once a month, where you're educating them on the different marketing campaigns that you're doing, making sure they understand that the cases that you're taking the new cases, that would just be for that part, but then you need to have some training, always to help them make sure that they're doing well, but the logistics and the technical aspects of their job and the computer and using the computer and everything, because they're not all great at that because we didn't do great training. You can't overtrain

Jay Berkowitz: 01:20:48

awesome, Chris. Well, any famous last words,

Chris Mullins: 01:20:51

record your calls, listen to them, monitor them, and give feedback. Just start today?

Jay Berkowitz: 01:20:57

What do they say about great presentations? Tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them and tell them what you told them. Chris is like, I think I made my point like local service ads, get the focus on calls and calls convert better than chats and forums and get your expertise up on your intake. Make sure your team has empathy and has closing ability has sales ability. Yeah. You know, it's worth hundreds of 1000s of dollars. Chris, thank you so much for doing this. I always enjoy my time with you. And I'm sure I'll see you soon at a conference. Yeah, feel free to reach out to me, Jay Berkowitz on all the social media, or through 10 golden rules and we'll be happy to connect you with Chris. Thanks again. Chris. Right

Chris Mullins: 01:21:43

So long, everybody.

Unknown: 01:21:47

Thank you for listening to the 10 Golden Rules of internet marketing for law firms podcast. Please send questions and comments to podcast at 10 Golden rules.com That is podcast at t e n Golden rules.com