EP061: Intake for Law Firms: Selling to Suits, Khakis or Denims with Adam Boyd

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.

Well, good morning, good afternoon. Good evening, whatever time this podcast finds you. Welcome to the 10 Golden Rules of internet marketing for law firms podcast. This is Jay Berkowitz got a great guest today you guys are gonna love Adam Boyd. Adam, I've had the pleasure. I met him through a group called the connective which is a virtual online networking group. Happy to tell you about that. If you're interested. Check it out. I think it's the connective.me. Right, Adam? Yeah, I think so it connects with me. I've been super impressed with his presentations. We've met two or three times. Seriously, one of the smartest sales coaches, sales consultants that I've ever met. And I wanted to share his expertise with you today, in particular, because we're focused on law firms. And Adams expertise has he's actually channeled his business. He's now focusing on the law firm, niche as we are. So hopefully, you'll enjoy this. If you're not a law firm. You'll super enjoy it if you are a law firm. And with that, welcome, Adam Boyd.

Hey, Jake, it's great to be here. Always enjoy talking to you. I learn a lot and excited to visit today. Well, thank

you. So let's start with a little bit of your background and expertise. And most a little bit about the North Boyd group. And you know how you got here?

Yeah, so I got out of business school. And for those of you who went to business school, you either did it to go into private equity and rule the world. Or you did it to delay having to figure out what you're going to do next was sort of a ladder. And I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I basically failed my way, interning for a sales training company. Now I know for the attorneys listening to this, that's a, that's a four letter word. Right? They hear sales now, like they want to throw up there, like I chose law school for a reason. So I ended up there. And I thought, I'll do this for a few months while I figure out what I want to do. And I ended up working in that environment for nine years. And I got married, we had kids, I started making more money. And we had some success working with companies, we saw a lot of them grow a lot. And really sort of notice patterns. I mean, most organizations have the same issues when it comes to revenue, right? You and I can probably spend 10 minutes just riffing on it. And now it's really two to four issues ever, right? So I did that and took a detour, ended up working for one of my clients and they had been acquired, we ran sales, and I kind of took over marketing because there was zero marketing, you would have had a field day with Ajay. And we actually increased new customer acquisition we, I think the most they'd ever done was like 12 new customers in the year and we got up to 60. And we found a system that work companies sold. I didn't want to work for the acquirer. And so I eventually it kind of took a little cup of coffee in commercial finance, which is a different discussion altogether, but found my way back to consulting. Over the last year and a half, I stumbled into working with law firms. And I can tell a story about that cut that firm. But we had some success with that firm because the owner said, hey, look, I need to increase, increase my close rates, he understands metrics, he understands marketing, and was trying to get attorneys to win more the business that he was funneling toward them. So we've worked with them, he was sort of referring me to other firms, I started noticing patterns in the console to the intake process and just been going deeper and deeper in it since then. So my expertise has really, I'm sort of a generalist by by background with my education. But I think really a lot about the point at which a customer converts to become a paying really where they start to work with someone, right everybody like I think of you as top of the funnel, and maybe middle of the funnel, I might touch the middle of the funnel. But I'm looking at the point of contact when Jay is handed someone to lead How do we ensure that we convert them to a paying client and not just have the conversation end with either I'll think about and get back to you or too much money. So that's where I spend a lot of time thinking that's what I research a lot. That's what I work with clients on.

Fantastic so why don't we start just a little bit broad and then we'll get into the law firm. So or you said something just when we were chatting before we pressed record here. And you know, what do you think the basics of selling are? Oh,

well, it's funny, I had a conversation with a CEO, he's in a different industry, but I periodically even on folks on law firms, I'll end up doing work but other industries, and I told the CEO, hey, look, in your environment, if you handle a few things, you're going to double your revenue. Right? So number one is, you simply need to be focused on going after the right people. And, you know, like in your world, Jay, you're trying to bid on the ad words that the right person is going to click on. So if you're working with a pie attorney, you're probably not looking for, you're not bidding on domestic abuse or divorce. There, there are a handful of keywords that are going to cause people to raise their hand. So the first thing is, what are we doing, whether you're in an outbound situation where you have to go and get it? Or you're an inbound? Are we doing the things to get in front of the right people? The second thing is, is the message the right message. Most people and lawyers are terrible about this. They talk in terms of what they do not the problem, they solve. A quick story on that I, I had a doctor of our family doctor for years, I loved this guy. And he was effectively like part of our family. But I would sit with him. And I'd say, Hey, here's my issue. And he would want to tell me how the medicine he was going to prescribe worked. And I had zero interest in and I was like, Doctor, I love you, I really don't care. You study this, I trust you. Maybe I'm not like the rest of the world. But I don't want to know. So what happens is if we get most people who are highly educated in front of a potential customer or client, they love to talk about what they know, I was talking to an estate attorney yesterday, he spends like 20 minutes educating people on the differences between trusts and Will's. And I said to him, no one really cares, maybe one to 5% care, but you're going to put them to sleep. They want to know, can you help me? Do you understand my situation? Are you good at what you do? Know how you communicate, those things are really important. Another example of messaging, I was talking to a company and they they divide up the potential customers into three categories, suits, khakis, and denims. Right. And you can imagine like suits, or owners, or C level khakis, or kind of mid level managers or maybe even ancillary people. And then denims, in their industry are the end users. Well, when you talk to people at the sea level, my good friend Chris, Shawn talks a lot about this, you have to talk to them in terms of return. Right? You have to have a message, especially the larger an organization that connects with how they think they think in terms of allocating resources. So you talk to somebody at the ground level, they're talking, they think, in terms of solving the problem. And then finally, the fourth thing is, do you have a process? A lot of people show up and they're like, you know, I'm in front of a prospect. I got this, I'm just gonna wing it. And I think about if I had to go into Jay Berkowitz his industry, and do search engine optimization, drive lead flow, bid on keywords, pay for ads. How on earth do I think I'm gonna make a living just guessing? Right? Yeah, there's frameworks and principles for everything. And if we'll humble ourselves, we'll just go and learn that from somebody else. And don't we don't need to make this up. We can either be creative, or we can get paid. That's how I view it. So I go ahead, good things

are taped on my wall right beside my desk. This is our sales process, which we're recording and we've gotten a lot better out over the last couple of years. The second thing, by the way, is the disc types. Yeah. In bird format. And bird. Yeah. There's a great book called Taking Flight. Yeah, this guy Mark Rosenberg said like the Ds are like eagles like they soar 10,000 feet and they shoot on everyone below them. No, not really. The parents are the eyes. They're the interactives social guys the the butterfly at a networking event. These are the wise owls. I find most of the lawyers are actually DCS. Yeah, I can

imagine in the middle. Yeah. They want to get things done. There are some things they want to know. But they're really inspecting every single piece how, how how what they do is they actually educate people too much. And people are like, look, I didn't go to law school for three years. I hadn't clerked somewhere. I didn't. I don't want to know all this.

So So let's dig a little bit on those four things. And maybe now we'll go into like a law firm and I mean, I'm going to do that one minute, let's, let's be a bit more general. And let's use the example of a personal injury firm. Yeah, you know, every law firm is a little different. Because, you know, if your divorce, bankruptcy, immigration, you know, it's still consumer denims, if you will, although it could certainly be some suits in those categories. But, you know, mostly, it's denims, to use your example of personal injury. So high level basic things, we do our job at 10, golden rules and the phone rings or on chats with you on your website. And then the intake team takes over, you know, talk about that sales funnel at a high level, and then delve into your four areas in a minute.

I'm gonna riff on this a little bit, and if it becomes too wonky, just cut me off. Um, one of the things that a lot of people do, and obviously, I think PEI is a little bit unique. Because working on contingency, you're looking for the winners, right? You need the phone to ring so you can sift through and find out which are the cases we can actually take and win who actually has something. Right. And that's, that's one challenge. Well, the problem is, when you're focused on weeding people out, you get intake thinking, go through a checklist, and weed them out. And most people are, unless they, you know, like I'm in, we can probably name the people who are really big, I drive throughout the Southeast, and I see all the billboards. And so I know the names. If I get

it, you can pretty much say Morgan and Morgan and cover how we're going to Morgan

Shannara, in like Louisiana, training with a guy in Alabama, and Texas. It's Thomas B. Henry, Jeff Davis. So those guys were all getting these free shout outs. But yeah, they spend enough money to

so the Texas Hammer. Yeah, the Texas Hammer.

So one of the things that happens, Jay is people, the phone rings, and people simply just check a list. But they don't actually, they're not necessarily great at knowing what to look for, and how to parse things. Because if it doesn't exactly meet this one thing, they just, they throw it out, that might be a 25 or $50 million settlement. So I know you've got to protect your attorneys time, but we need to find a way to have those people be really dialed in on what to look for, and what to connect, because if I'm in an injury, if I'm in an accident, I'm going down the list and just call on people. And one of the things there's I know they're trying to vet me, I'm trying to vet them as well, if someone's injured,

and it's not just like a really simple soft tissue, right? Do you know they're going down the list? Like do you know they're talking to five or six, seven people?

I don't have data on that. But I mean, just think about it, if you're scared. Let's say you're making 80 grand a year, and you're scared, you're looking for the person who's going to give you the most assurance that they're going to take care of you that they're going to care about you, they're going to advocate for you, and they're going to get you the most, you know, they they can't ethically guarantee anything. But we see it in other practice areas like DUI, it's time sensitive, it just happened. They're looking for Who can I talk to? Who can I get in and have a conversation with as quickly as possible. So it'd be an interesting thing for you and me to kind of study together like behavior. But you know, that's what you need. So you're looking for, which is the right one really quickly?

I guess my my theory on it is that there's different personality types. I always explained this was websites, like some attorneys will say, Well, nobody's going to read all that long copy. Right? And I have to explain well, first of all, we need it there for Google for SEO purposes. And then like my theory is, and this is proven out with click tracking, some people will watch a video, some people would never watch a video, some people read long copy of it as a fact. I'm personally a clicker like, I'm going to try and find the page with the information specific to what I'm looking for. Right. So I think it's the same thing if someone's in an injury situation, right? Some people are going to do a lot of research and want to talk to four or five attorneys. Yeah, some people are very unsophisticated. And I always use this example of a woman calling for her aunt who was in a car accident. You know, it's not her issue. She's not going to give you her email. She's not going to fill out the form on your site. Right? She's just looking for information for her aunt, so she'd be happy to do a quick chat and find out if you're the right person. And then she's going to connect her aunt with you. But there's different people in different scenarios.

I think it's at the top that people would call around. I don't I think there's a subset that would want to meet with several attorneys. It's at the point of intake, the People who probably are the least invested in the outcome, who are like, they're making the least amount of money. They're the hardest to keep. They're the hardest to train. They're checking a list when I audit intake calls, or receptionist calls. This is where so much is lost. Because the tone, isn't there. The warmth isn't there, the patience isn't there. They get asked questions, and there's not an agility on their feet. Because they're like, Look, man, I'm I'm taking this call, I got 60 More today that are coming in. And I'm exaggerating on that. I think that's where you have to be aware of people looking around. And that entry point, that conversation has to be good enough that they will want to answer all your questions and go forward.

Awesome. Okay, so we talked about the phone ringing. And you went through the, you know, two to four issues. I think you summed it up really right on our call before he said, sales is pretty simple. Yeah, get the right offer for the right people. And then selling is easy. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. So you broke it down into four things. So first of all, is the right people. So let's go back to a personal injury firm. You touched on this briefly. Picking a niche makes your life a lot easier in sales and business. I've been so pleased that we picked the lawyer niche for many reasons I wouldn't have known in advance. The one thing that is like, you know, we're talking to attorneys all day, every day. Yeah, my SEO teams focused on getting lawyers ranked all day, every day, my local service ads teams figured out how to get lawyers in the top three of the LSAS. My Google Maps guys are analyzing how to get you ranked in the top three of the maps all day, every day. So we become really good at it. And it's actually easier to do than trying to, you know, yeah, one day you're talking to a university, the next day, you're talking to someone who's selling real estate. So for the personal injury attorneys or you know, brought into attorneys, how do you go after the right people.

So this is interesting. And this is the kind of thing that if you and I had cigars, and some bourbon we could sit and talk about for a while I one of the things that I think people are scared to do is niche because they believe they're going to let go of this huge market. And what ends up happening is I had a mentor guy named Edie Perry once told me that when you let go of the cup, to grab the cord, the time between holding the cup and the cord, it feels like death. So if I'm gonna grab the cord, I gotta let go with the cup. And let me give you an example from another industry then go to go to law. Um, I worked with a company and commercial finance and commercial finance is non bank lending. And people hear that and they imagine the mob breaking your knees for, you know, 90% interest, and there's some people out there that do that. But generally, it's people who buy invoices, agencies, staffing, trucking, people who don't have heavy assets will factor their invoices. Well, here's the thing. Everybody's going after the same people and they're selling the same thing. They're selling money, at roughly the same rate to the same people with the same message. I worked with a guy who's like, we know, commercial subcontractors, we're going to focus on that. Now, you would say, well, they've limited themselves, well, here's what happened. They would tell everybody, we do this thing. And so they got all those leads. And they became really good at it. Because very one very few other people were doing commercial subcontractors. No one knew where to send those leads. These people knew how to do it, so they know how to price it. So they got it all. So there's that. Um, let me come back to law. niching doesn't have to mean, you don't do other things. It doesn't mean, you know, you have to create this really funky niche, right? I've got a client. And what she's decided to do is there's a certain demographic, she wants to be known as a certain type of lawyer for in her geography. It'd be like saying, hey, look, I am the divorce attorney for Hispanics in this market, or I'm the DUI attorney for African Americans in this market. Now, that sounds really crude, but that's the way some really good thinkers are thinkers. Like I'm going to focus everything on those people that when they work with you help set their strategy. I was talking to a criminal defense attorney who's done a lot of defensive people. It's like they're being accused of crimes sexually. I said, Well, let's think about this. If you do that, and you're good, you're trying to make the phone ring Think about this if you've been accused of a sex crime, or you ever, even if you've had a great experience, you don't talk to your friends about that you would never refer that work. He's likely to post

on Facebook. Hey, yeah. Crime attorney.

Yeah. I said, so here's the thing, what you need to be doing. And he said, No one's ever told him this. I said, Look, if I'm you, I am regularly speaking at places where folks who are likely to deal with those issues are, I'm talking to sororities about date rape, I'm talking to guys about how to stay out of it, because one of those knuckleheads is gonna drink and something's gonna happen, and they need to know you before the time. And I said, Hey, look, you need to think about it like this. If you're a high profile female who's involved in a sordid affair with a famous celebrity male, Tiger Woods, Donald Trump, who's the attorney you call Gloria Orrin, because she's niched in the mind of people for that. So she gets all those calls. So I think this is what they need to do. It's like, how do I get in front of those people? So when the time comes, they're ready. So that's, that's my thought on that.

And, you know, then part of that is extending that throughout your website, your social media, your Yes. Your your, your, your commercial in networking. Yeah. Absolutely. And I'll touch on that in a minute. So then the second thing you said is the message right, and I guess I'm tapping into those things. Yeah. So the first thing is go after the right people. The second thing is the message. Right? So how do you message right?

Well, I think one having in luck, I'm not, you know, you I think this is fair to say somebody like you can help them with that somebody like me, I can kind of help them. There's resources I use. But let's let's talk about criminal defense. The message there on the front end needs to be it's just that you show up and you're talking to those people about the situations they're gonna find themselves in. You don't need to get into the like the nuances of the law. So I'm talking to this estate attorney. He's educating people on wills and trusts. That's not the message. The message is really about what's at risk, here are the problems you're likely to run into. You have a son that you want to inherit it, you're in strange from this daughter, what are things that are likely to happen? Right? So I think I'm convinced you have to get in the mind and the circumstances of the people that you want to hire you in. This is not how the legal mind typically works. Maybe the trial attorneys are good at this, I don't know. But a lot of people want to solve a problem. What they need to do is say, how does that person view the world? What do they think? How do they feel? And how do we adjust to that, so that we're speaking their language? Because they don't look, I had a brother, when he was in law school, when I was in high school, he come back and talk about torts at the dinner table. And I'm like, is there chocolate flowerless cake coming? That I don't know about? Right? So I was like, didn't mean anything to me. Yeah. So I think that's how you get it. It's also probably not one and done. You're constantly iterating on your message, so that it lands with people, because let's be honest, Jay, the attorneys listening to this are in commoditized markets. They're all saying the same thing, the same people. So they've got to like get in front of the right people gain mindshare. And then when they talk to them say something that resonates so that they say, Ah, you're the person I want.

When you said before, he said, Too many people are saying what they do not the problem they solve, you know, and that's the classic advertising marketing, don't talk about your features, you know, like we do link building and copywriting. What's the problem we solve? We get on the first page of Google, we get to the top of Google. And, you know, we often look at that in marketing. You know, if you drill it down, we have the same conversation with like, your LinkedIn signature, you know, you shouldn't say like, oh, I'm a manager of a company. I own a company. And I'm a founder of a company like that's, that's nice. And that's ego. But you know, I get people on the top like law firms on the top of Google, right, much more effective at telling them the problem I solve. Same thing with your elevator speech, right? Like, if you're at a networking event, and this is all part of is the message, right? Like is the message right for your firm, your website, your social media, and even the people answering the phone? I've been using an elevator speech saying, you know, we get people to the top of all four parts of Google. Yeah, in my elevator speech, like a networking in there. Oh, what are the four parts of Google? Yeah, but yeah, it's the local service ads, the maps the pay per click in the SEO. But we've, you know, I've now realized, like there's four different parts of Google. There's we have for different groups of experts at 10, golden rules, and like they're each of them has its own algorithm and its own specialty and its own craft. It's complicated enough, even in a very specific niche, right? Oh, yeah.

I mean, I think if most people knew the depths of sophistication to manage Google, they would never let a generalist do it. Right. So like, you guys have gone super deep on Google. And you understand it. And because there are four areas, my guess is Jay, you got specialists on all of them. And this is something that a lot of people don't get, like, 15 years ago, a guy like you, you could probably know, almost everything you need to know about Google. Now. It's evolving so rapidly, and it's gone so deep, because it's so massive, you have to have people go very narrow on that. I think that's just a shout out. Like, it's kind of like I used to might, one of my favorite shows historically, is suits. And you've seen it about the attorneys, like on one hand, they're doing a divorce case, then over here, they're doing a murder case, then they're representing Michael Jordan, his contracts like, that just doesn't happen in the real world, right? So

hey, by the way, they they do those massive, like corporate mergers and acquisitions, in 60 minutes in about three days.

I love it. I mean, I love the show. But a quick thought, in terms of getting the message right. One of the things that some people are going to not like, but I think is really it's important, is helping people connect with loss. And I don't mean like personal like losing a loved one. But a lot of times, people most of us are more loss averse than we are gained focused. And so what I will sometimes do, depending on who we're dealing with the practice area of the market, the clientele will adjust to focus messaging on avoiding loss, because that motivates most people take action. And I'll give you one of the best taglines I've seen on LinkedIn, there's a, there's a guy I've gotten to know a little bit. And his tagline is, you build a cash flowing business, I will free you from it. And you think about a lot of lawyers, small business owners, they're like, I am tied to this thing. It's great income, but I am trapped. And he taps into that with both, you're trapped, I will get you free. And I think that's a great way to do it. And for the attorneys listening to this, their LinkedIn profile isn't going to solve all their problems, because most of their clientele isn't on LinkedIn. Right? The data, it would help them to say, you've you've done X or you're in X, I do Y, um, you know, that doesn't solve Google problems. But it is something they need to think about is what's the situation somebody's in? What do I do for them, it doesn't they don't need to get into the house.

So we're getting into your third point, which is, you know, the suits, khakis and denims. And I love that most PII attorneys are targeting the denims. Certainly the different practice areas target different types of people. But there's a term called personas. A lot of times we create a persona, so we're creating like, an figurative person that you're speaking to. So maybe that'd be great training for those intake folks, young lawyers taking the initial phone calls. Do you want to talk a little bit about who you're targeting and personas in the training of the intake folks?

Yeah, so I initially am an 8020. person, right? Let's deliver 20% of what you need, that's going to connect with 80% of the people. So a long time ago, my, the way I was trained in training, was to try to teach people to adjust to all the disc styles. And then I was like, no one's gonna remember that. Jay Berkowitz is going to remember that Jays clients are going to remember that, but the people in the front end, they aren't yet until they decide I want to be good at something. So what I did instead, as I said, What's the what's the shortcut? What's the heuristic or the what's the way that I can have them connect with most personas the right way. And I start by just giving them some tools. And I learned a lot of this from Chris Voss, and one of my mentors, a guy named Dave Curlin. And it was like, well just mirror what you hear or label and for most people that works. And what I like to do is get people a lot of reps at whatever it is and then say, when you deal with this, because you've gotten burned, dealing with a high D, who's very brusque, here's how we're going to work on that. But I can't give it to them academically and expect them to learn. It's like, alright, this tool set is going to work for 70 to 80% of people. When you run into this, here's how we're going to handle that. But I do think one of the reasons niching is so important is, so I'm coming back to what you said, like you were exclusive with attorneys, and there's probably a sub market, I know you do a lot in PEI that you do a lot of work with, you start to pick up on patterns, what they ask personality behaviors, what they're going to need, it's you can get ahead of it. Same thing happens, I've got a client that I call, like their 1012 person law firm, or in terms of attorneys. They do what I call consumer laws, family, limited bankruptcy, some labor, estate and probate work. There a couple other practices that has professional license, it's typically the same type of people calling them same type of questions. And so we can train the intake and the console team. Here's what to expect, here's likely what you're gonna get, at least with labor, here's likely what you're gonna get professional license. And they just start to know, here's how I engage with those people. And if we can, we specialize.

So the final area, the four is the process. Oh, yeah. What's the best process? You know, maybe use the pie example again. So phone rings, where should it go? In an ideal scenario?

Well, let's pretend the intake person has done a good job of not alienating somebody, making them feel like they're cared about. Because this is really interesting to me. intake is the other than, like all your marketing. intake is the first point of contact with a potential client. And we have often, and some of our lowest paid people doing it, who are checking a box. But my it's like if I call 10, golden rules, and somebody was just kind of asking a lot of questions that we'd be out. I may be turned off, and I may not go through that process. I'm a high D, so I probably wouldn't have the patience for it. You're probably a DC. So you may or may not. So one that's pre process, but let's pretend we've gone through we've been able to discern through a series of questions and listening, if they are likely to have good case, they might go to an attorney, they might go to a console team. A quick note on this. I'm working with a law firm last September, they brought on 88 new cases. Wow. Same level, you know, they're small, it's like onesies. You know, it's like they're gonna hit, they're going to spend X and they're done. But they had attorneys running all the consoles this year, same spin on leads, they're probably little bit better on the front end, in terms of making sure they show and you know how they did it. They took people out of 50% of the intake process. They've removed people, but they are now at 181 cases they signed in September this year versus ATA last year, the difference? Non attorneys are on the consults. So I want you to think about this,

and probably some great training and process.

Right? Right. And so the process was the attorney, here's typically the process they run. I don't know it for everybody. But all the firms I've worked with basically do this. I asked Jay, some I asked him to tell me what's going on. And then I tell him, I educate him on the law. I tell him what he can do or should do. And then I kind of mumble or talk a little bit about money. And then it's over. Here's what

we've had in the bad scenario, the pre in the before,

right? So what we've done is we've said, Look, you need to vet out their expectations, so you can meet those. We do what I call open a loop so that we know where the conversation both sides know where the conversations going. And then we do two things. We separate the facts of the case from how it affects them. If needed, we do a little bit of education, but only what they need to make a decision. Then we close the loop by saying what do you want to do? Then we talk fees if fees are needed. That's the process. So what we didn't have to do with the non attorneys was teach them the law. Yeah. And they're actually converting at twice the rate of the attorneys, because they're just saying they're listening to people. We actually have heard this. We've actually heard it had intake team say, Hey, do you want to meet with the attorney and the people in there and this was a this was immigration. They would say no, you haven't heard me out yet. So if we can turn people more toward listening, understanding what they need to know about the case to determine Can I take it? Do I want to take it? That's the first piece. The second piece is, does this person want my help? So, attorneys always tell me J, they're like, I'm too expensive for him. I'm like, no, no, that's what they told you. Because it's easier than saying, I don't like you. I don't want to work with you. I don't feel comfortable with you. It's the least protectable thing they can say. Now, they, it's the case, sometimes they don't have the money. But we've started to solve for that on the intake a little bit that the process needs to be one that you follow. And it's not just us showing up talking about your clerkship. Most Americans can't name half the Supreme Court. You think they understand where you clerked, and why that matters, or where you started your big law career? They don't know.

It's almost like sales is a microcosm and you know, the best books you know, if you read Dave Carlin's book I think is baseline selling. Yeah. Chris Voss is the ex FBI negotiator guy. Yeah. If you took the best of sales and put it into microcosm, ask good questions, show empathy, understand their need. And then obviously, you need some soft closing. Yeah, to hear. If you're if the next step is talk to the attorney,

all these people listening, their perception of sales is Glengarry Glen Ross. It's boiler room, it's Wolf of Wall Street. And unfortunately, most people selling to a lot of these law firms are probably just as bad if they're not pushy. They just kind of like show up and educate. And attorneys, highly educated people think I want to be educated. So today, most people don't want to be educated. They want to know, can you make my problem go away? Jay, I see what you and I do. We're either selling morphine or dopamine. In one attorney gets that I'm selling morphine or dopamine and I need to get I'm either making, I'm taking pain away or making them feel good. It changes the way they they run in taking consults.

So we're gonna wrap up in about 10 minutes. So a couple of super quick, you talked about, you know, going from 81 cases to 180 cases, you've doubled close rates for a number of law firms. Make it simple, like, what's three things or four things that firms should do? short of calling you and engaging you high level? It's a young, young firm starting out, right? What are the basic things to double close rates for landing?

This is a great question one, they need to look at lead flow and where it's coming from. So honestly, if they are trying to drive lead flow on their own, they need to talk to somebody like you. And I'm not saying this, because you had me on here. But like, if you're just relying if you're in a consumer world, where clients pay you one time 4000 8000 10,000, you need to start to understand a funnel, you have to get traffic traffic is eyeballs, it's clicks, it's all that. But ultimately, it's the phone ringing or a form filled out to you have to understand, you're not going to get business very quickly, if you don't have some sort of investment in traffic. That's number one. I've seen people in like a state law or family law, like their strategy is to network a lot. And I'm like, You're not going to eat a lot for a while. Spend a little bit you don't need to mortgage your house, but you need to make some investments, because you need to learn. You also need to find somebody who knows what they're doing. Because Jay, you and I know is good as you are there are a lot of charlatans out there who the best sale, the best work they ever do is getting the client. Second thing is they have to stop thinking like an attorney. When it comes to marketing, and we'll call it client acquisition, we won't call it sales. People aren't there to have a rational discussion. People don't buy people don't invest rationally 95% of decisions that most of us make are between our emotional brain of a reptile brain. It's either out of fear that survival, or like greed or discontent. That's where most of us make our decisions. We justify the decision after the fact intellectually. So it's like, well, I bought it because it was on sale when you bought it because you want it you told me it was on sale after the fact. So if they understand that, they'll start learning. I don't need to spend my console time educating and here's the big thing. This is I hear this all the time. This is the one thing I ask attorneys look. Think about the state in which most people come to you. If you're calling an attorney, you didn't wake up that morning like I can't wait to talk some attorneys today. This is like this is the day. I'm going to call one I'm going to When you don't, you're doing it because you're scared. You're angry, you're hurt. You're in survival mode. I mean, think about most things unless it's like a merger and acquisition. You're hiring an attorney to prevent loss or protect you. The attorney things, Jay calls, I'm gonna start to talk to you about your problem. No, no, the attorney, that P and C calls, you need to step back and think where are they emotionally? J if you call me and you had just lost your best friend, it probably doesn't hurt for me to pump the brakes and say, Jay, how you doing?

What's PNC?

potential new client? Sorry,

I know, I just want to drill down on acronyms. Like,

I just need to treat you like a human. Before I deal with your problem because i You're calling me in an emotional state. So think about this doctor's bedside manner is inversely caught like it's correlated to the amount of malpractice suits they get. So your bedside manner is going to determine my level of trust in you, and willingness to go after you to better your bedside manner, especially in a vulnerable moment, the more I'm going to trust you and believe what you say, and the less likely I am to ascribe to you mistakes.

Where's it going? Are there trends? You see, obviously, AI is a game changer. And you talked about using setting up meetings with technology. We're doing a lot of text and meeting setting automatically. Now. What trends do you see in the sales and conversion process?

I will tell you this, I think, here a couple of things I'm seeing, I am seeing younger attorneys are starting to see their farm as a business and an asset. And so they're the ones starting to think in terms of the funnel stuff you and I talk about, like I've got a client, he says I'm building a legal factory. He cares about people, he fights forum, but he's like, I'm building legal facts. So I think that's number one. I think the younger attorneys are going to start appropriating practices from other industries. Number two, I think automation, like the FORM FILL firms I'm talking to they're seeing their leads are coming online now. It's not the white, it's not the yellow pages, the white pages. billboards are still important. But I think billboards are probably driving impressions. Right? Like, you know, those guys, that's why they pick the phone numbers they do. But I think digital and form film is gonna be more important. I think, eventually. And I've started to look a little bit into the technology. I think AI is gonna be a game changer for intake. And this is this is gonna sound nuts, eventually the console. We're not there yet. But can you? I mean, just think if you had bots that were good that sounded like Jay Berkowitz his voice that had empathy that can answer the phone 24/7 Didn't take days off. You didn't have to like coach them or manage them. And they were getting better all the time. I think I mean, that's, that's coming whether people like it or not. And there's something really big there. So,

so the couple sort of more personal questions that I like to ask to wrap every podcast. Yeah, no, I came here from Canada and I found out there's a great question, relationship question to find out a lot about people. Who's your NFL team.

This is a really good one. I grew up in Tennessee, which is an American. I live in Florida, the American South. We didn't have an NFL team. And when I was a kid, the Falcons were terrible. So I became a Tennessee Vols fan and behind me is a photo of the stadium at night last year. So I fall I follow the Titans. I followed the Colts a little bit when they had Peyton Manning, my kids because we're in Texas are becoming Cowboys fans. So I guess that's where I'm headed. I'm headed to a game. They're

awesome. Yeah, I want to go to the stadium. That's it looks fantastic. In Sure some software, some apps that you're using for business or personal productivity.

I just use toggle to GGL to kind of track my time. And it was really valuable for me to go through that process. I mean, I did a two week time audit. I'm using Asana to manage the our projects, our to do's What else am I using, I communicate with some of my coaches via WhatsApp. And I am probably going to start building a lot of my work inside of Kajabi. Because I can deliver a lot of content to my law firm clients via they don't have to have me all the time to get the material. So those are some ones and then from an email automation, which isn't as applicable to most of our audience. I've used tools like SalesLoft and cleantie to create some automated sequences and outreach.

Fantastic We flipped from Asana to click up like it. The agencies are using click up.

Yeah, I'm hearing everybody's moving to click up for CRM. I mean, just for it's sort of this all in one unicorn.

Yeah, it's probably it's probably good. It is our CRM once clients come on board. Wow, I don't know if it's a front end CRM, course WhatsApp, I had a whole course on Kajabi it's really nice and easy to use. And we're building a new product called T Gru. 10 Golden Rules University. We're using Thinkific or Kajabi. We're gonna make a final decision.

I like that. Let me know what you choose.

Yeah. Thanks for sharing. And last question. Are there any other podcasts you listen to or any videos you watch? On a regular basis?

Oh, two things. One, I just bought Shane Parrish his book clear thinking. So his Farnam street podcast is one of the best things out there. I like to distinguish between like, truth and business porn. And the stuff you hear on Shane's podcast is really deep, like he doesn't make things sound really sexy. But he's a really good thinker. And I think for most of us, if we just think better, we perform better. There's a friend of mine, a guy named Owen Fitzpatrick, who has written like nine books on kind of social psychology and persuasion. And it's called inner propaganda. And I like Owens stuff. He's, he's a friend, he's actually helped me understand why some of the stuff that I do works, so he's provided, hey, here's the research behind him. That makes sense to him. So

that's great. That's great. Any last thoughts for

if you're not working with Jay and I would say, I'm gonna plug you because I think that top of funnel is so important and understanding what's happening and why is really important. And I think the more that our audience can start to study human psychology, the more they'll understand why people choose them or don't. So that's what I

got from Great point. And where can people find you?

They can find me at the Northwood grp.com. They can also follow me on LinkedIn, I post regularly there and I engage with folks on out on people lead. And you could just find me on LinkedIn.

We'll have links in the show notes, of course to Adam and that was awesome. Thank you so much time today.

Great being with you, Jay. Thanks for having me.

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