Running a company that provides lead generation, I see a wide range of performance when it comes to clients being able to close inbound leads. While it isn’t something that we (technically) provide as part of our service, it’s something we have a vested interest in because we don’t operate on contracts.

We need our clients to be successful in closing the leads they get, otherwise it doesn’t matter if we’re doing our job.

Thankfully we know a thing or two about sales. I was closing $100,000 data center deals by the time I was 22, and have sold $30 consumer products at trade shows. To date I’ve taken training from 3 companies with a billion plus in revenue including one of the top 3 consensus training programs in HP.

So with that perspective in mind, here’s what I see working and not working when it comes to our legal clients closing leads and making money

1. Mindset is everything

We have (no joke) seen clients that have pulled cases out of <10 leads per month as well as clients that have failed to post a single case out of 50 calls in a month. Funny enough, the closer was no more hungrier or junior than the one that couldn’t close, as one would expect.

He had a better mindset.

If you’ve ever seen the movie Glengarry Glen Ross, you might remember this classic scene with Alec Baldwin:

One of the more quotable lines in sales organizations is “the leads aren’t weak, YOU’RE weak”. Now we wouldn’t have many clients if this was something we ever said, but it’s an important thing to take a look at. And it happens to line up with one of the most illustrative theories of 20^th century psychology, attribution theory.

People who attribute things externally place the responsibility on outside factors. These people get pulled over because the police have it out for people who drive an Audi. People who attribute things internally place responsibility on themselves. These people get pulled over because they decided to hit snooze 3 times and had to speed to get to the office on time.

In the case of not closing, external attribution = the leads are weak, internal attribution = you are weak.

What’s the difference between how each of these people will deal with a lead?

If you expect a client to be bunk, you won’t be giving them a good consultation. You’ll be trying to get off the phone because it could take your time. You won’t be on the ball with following up quickly (more on that later) or following up at all.

Someone with internal attribution will give it their all. They treat every client like their next biggest case until they give them a reason not to. They interpret questions like “how much are you per hour” as buying signals, not objections.

What mindset do you think will be better for the cases that are on the fence?

Both of these will snowball. Confidence breeds more success and more confidence, withdrawal breeds more failure and more withdrawal. People make this work every day, and there’s no reason you can’t! Believe in yourself when you pick up the phone and you’ll end up making more on your cases.

2. The 900% increase you’re probably leaving on the table

You won’t always be there when a lead comes in. As a lawyer, you might be on trial, with another client, or a myriad of other situations. It’s ok not to have 100% availability.

What’s not ok is waiting longer than you have to when it comes to following back up.

One of the most comprehensive studies on lead response, conducted at MIT, showed some pretty breathtaking results. Tracking over six companies and one hundred thousand calls, this is the largest data set ever recorded on the subject.

Responding to a lead within 5 minutes showed an incredible 900% increase in closing versus leads that were contacted 3 hours. And they showed a 400% increase in closing compared even to 10 minutes!

There are three takeaways to be had here:

First, make sure you have a system to let you know when leads are coming in. We have emails and text messages sent to our clients when they get a lead from one of our campaigns to facilitate this sort of follow up

Second, make sure your leads are only coming in when you are able to take them if at all possible. There’s no point in running ads at 3AM if you aren’t going to be able to take the call.

Third, call back as soon as humanly possible when you have the option. It’s easy to procrastinate on these things, but your results will be much better when you get the jump on even 5 minutes versus 10.

3. “The fortune is in the follow up”

Some of the biggest companies in the world today like salesforce.com make billions of dollars helping people follow up on leads. The reason why companies shell out the big bucks for these is because they make tens if not hundreds of billions in being able to follow up on leads.

Now, I’m not suggesting you go out and spend hundreds of dollars per month on a fancy customer relationship management system. The lesson to be taken here is that follow up is incredibly valuable.

Old school sales gurus love to throw figures out like this:

As a law firm, you don’t have to push through no’s, follow up hundreds of times or any of the other masochistic stuff that the old gurus suggest. Plain and simple, people are calling because they need your service.

But I would probably agree with the first point, that 44% of people give up after a single follow up.

Sometimes you’ll get a voicemail. Sometimes they won’t respond to an email. That doesn’t mean that the lead is dead or was never good to begin with. All other things equal, follow up is one of the most profitable activities you can do because you’ve already paid for the lead.

It’s infinitely cheaper to get cases out of what you have than to pay for more advertising and more leads. Keep track of people who haven’t responded (it can be simple as a note on your iphone) and go down the line when you have 5 or 10 minutes free between appointments. Five follow-ups is probably a bit much, but we recommend our clients to follow up at least 3 times before letting a lead go.

It could mean a new case for your practice.

4. Someone needs to own it

Marketing to generate leads is not cheap and it’s not easy. So it’s almost tragic to see leads get washed down the drain because of simple errors of organization. This tip is doubly relevant if you have multiple partners working your leads and/or if you use shared office space with a secretary.

When there is a single attorney, no doubt exists on whether something is happening with the lead. Either you, personally are attending to it or it’s not being attended to. When you have a number of partners balancing their own complex schedules, it gets a little fuzzy.

We’ve seen dozens of leads fizzle out when partners each think the other is taking care of it.

In most cases, the best move is to have one person take responsibility for following up on leads. There’s no doubt this way and your leads will get the attention they need. If you are generating leads for multiple practice areas and one person can’t handle it all, set up call forwarding so that the best attorney for the job is getting those leads, and make sure they are 100% responsible for it.

Another issue is letting the secretary (especially in a shared space) delegate who gets the leads. Sometimes this is not done properly, feeding into the issue above, or sometimes it’s done in a way that ruins the client experience.

We provide recordings for all of the phone leads we generate for clients, so they can listen to the process their front desk is following. Take notes! This is the first interaction they have with their law firm and can affect the tone of the relationship to follow, or whether one is made at all.

5. How your mom’s advice can get you cases

This is a super tactical tip but one that we see all the time, especially in the beginning. When you start receiving leads to your cell phone, they are always coming from an unknown number. Many of our clients (especially those in fast moving cities like NYC) will answer the phone with a skeptical “Hello?”

For someone looking to solve a pressing legal need, this is NOT what they want to hear!

It’s very simple, but if you can get into the habit of answering your phone with the following formula, it will set the tone for a pleasant and professional conversation.

“Law Office of [XYZ], [Name] speaking”

If they don’t introduce themselves immediately, following up with “May I ask who’s calling?” is how we recommend following that up.

It’s in your hands

You don’t need to be the world’s greatest salesman to get an ROI on your lead generation campaign. Thankfully, the biggest holes are usually the easiest to close. If you can implement even one of the tips above and change your close rate from say, 10% to 20%, the effect to your bottom line will be the same as if you had doubled your budget.

Now get out there and win some cases!