So, Jack and I were ready to discuss the “moment of truth” - that point where your prospective client is in your office for a consultation and has to decide whether they sign a contract to engage your services or not (assuming you have decided you want them as a client).  All of the lead generation and follow up activities that we’ve implemented thus far are meant to get qualified prospective clients to meet you with the expectation that they will engage you as their lawyer.

I explained to Jack that there are a number of ways to mess this up, and many lawyers do.  Many lawyers have trouble simply getting the client to take that ultimate action (what sales people call closing).  As Zig Ziglar says, “timid sales people have skinny children.”  But, we did not want Jack to come off as some type of pushy sales person that tries to “close” his clients.  I explained to him that he did not need to worry about that - I did not do that in my own law practice, and don’t expect him to do so either.

The fact is that you must be confident enough in your knowledge, skills and abilities to convert a prospect to a client.  But, the most effective way that I have seen to convert prospects to client is to “pre-condition” them such that they want to be your client before they ever come meet with you.  There are many ways to do this so a full exploration is beyond the scope of this brief article, but here are a few:

1. be the expert - when you know your stuff, it shows in your confidence and demeanor.
2. be known as the expert - publish, speak, get pr and media coverage.
3. promote your client list as an exclusive club - you don’t just accept every case that walks in the door (or you shouldn’t) so make sure that fact is explicit in your written marketing materials and in your conversation with prospective clients.
4. use social proof - if your jurisdiction allows, utilize testimonials and case studies in your marketing materials.
5. send a prospect kit to client’s in advance of their meeting that incorporates each of the preceding four strategies on this list.

As Jack and I worked on this process for his firm, we developed an impressive prospect kit as well as scripts that the staff would use when setting the appointments and that he would use during the client interview to make sure we took full advantage of each of the strategies listed above.  We began tracking his conversion percentage (the numbers of prospects that hired him divided by the total number of consultations he had) when I first started working with him - so we had a few months worth of data to compare.  I assured him that utilizing these strategies would result in a significant increase in the 34% conversion rate that he had experienced so far.

Coming Next: Lesson 7 - Client Delight:The Ultimate Retention and Referral Strategy 

Links to the other articles in this series can be found at the Lawyer Marketing 101, et. seq. post.