Nov

28

Converting Leads with “Bedside Manner”

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Throwing money at any kind of marketing or advertising is a completely worthless exercise when you cannot convert leads.

I recently had an experience with an client/attorney who closed his practice in a major metro area, but didn’t want to lose the many leads coming through his website. He decided to send these potential clients to another law firm, with the understanding that any leads converted would result in a referral fee for the client. This attorney had a thriving practice based on this somewhat generic website, and could not understand why the new law firm wasn’t getting any “decent leads”.

The problem was not with the leads, needless to say – it was with the firm. I personally called this firm and spoke with the receptionist, who served little more function than an answering service. The attorney at the new firm – who didn’t know me – took more than 24 hours to return my call. No wonder they weren’t converting leads!

Potential clients don’t care what law school you went to, or how many cases you have won. When a potential client calls, you have one chance to leave a good lasting impression on them. If you cannot personally answer calls, the second best solution is to train the person who answers calls to be empathetic, understanding, and to make the potential client feel like they made the right decision to call you.

It’s easy to forget these simple things. It’s hard to forget what you know about law and to put yourself in your client’s position. Your potential client may not “know the routine” and it may be their first time hiring an attorney. If you are a divorce attorney, a criminal lawyer, a personal injury law firm – chances are your client is under stress and this isn’t a fun process for them.

Even if your receptionist isn’t a lawyer or legal assistant, they can be trained to covert leads.

  • Most importantly, listen to the caller. Don’t interrupt.
  • Tell them you understand – if applicable, be sympathetic – and assure them they called the right firm and that your attorneys can help.
  • Take the client’s information. Give them an estimate of when they can expect to hear from the attorney.
  • Have an attorney call them back within the hour, whenever possible.

When potential clients call you without being specifically referred to you (ie, from the Yellow pages or internet), they are calling because they want to hire you. If they get a machine, or a receptionist who merely functions in place of a machine, they will call someone else.

Nov

18

What SEO Can Learn From Real Estate Agents

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In 2007 i invested a considerable amount of time and money and I got my Real Estate license. I scored 97out of 100 on my final exam, and I thought I’d be awesome at real estate. I quickly learned that technical ability had very little to do with success in the world of real estate.

In the world of real estate, the top producers are generally those who know the most people. They have a good reputation and people refer them, because lets face it; you’d rather have an agent someone you know has already ‘test driven’ for you. When you don’t know people in your community and don’t have these pre-existing relationships, you’re screwed.

Not only are referrals the best kind of leads in Real Estate, they are the best kind of leads as clients in general. How does this apply to SEO? Currently, Google looks at links back to your website as ‘votes’ for you. However, it’s easy to ‘game’ the system by buying links or hiring an SEO agency to find them for you. In the future, Google will rely more on a relationship-based sort of way of ranking in order to ‘better qualify’ links back to your site.

Social media is definitely a part of that. The friends you have on Twitter, on Facebook, and whatever social platforms we see in the future will help Google determine your ‘community’. The ‘Important People’ in your networks / ‘community’ who ‘recommend’ you (via Re-tweets, posting your links, etc.) will play a bigger role in determining how important you are – or will become – online.