7 things you can do to turn bankruptcy leads into paying clients
Closing leads can be tough. Very rarely do you get that golden lead that is ready to file immediately. Similar to farming crops, most of the time, leads require a great deal of nurturing and cultivating before they become ready to file bankruptcy and hire you. It is not uncommon for many bankruptcy leads to take 2-6 months to finally make the decision and be fully ready to actually file bankruptcy. Do you have a strategy for cultivating your leads and turning them into paying clients, or do your leads fall by the wayside before reaching full maturity? How effective is your strategy for growing and preparing leads into paying clients?
As you develop a clear, consistent, effective strategy for closing leads, your close rate (and your income) can increase dramatically. Consider following these farming tips and principles to help you close more leads and increase your paying clientele.
1. Prepare the soil for leads to be planted
Before you ever plant seeds, the soil must be tilled and fit for growing. Similarly, before you generate leads through your marketing, you should have prepared a system for cultivating and closing leads. Without a clear strategy for closing leads, you may as well be planting seeds on hard, rocky, unprepared soil. Prepared soil looks like this:
- Clear methods for tracking incoming leads and how leads progress towards becoming clients. You can track this manually or using available software or lead management tools.
- Goals and objectives for what percent of leads you help progress towards the next stage
- A clear strategy for what action items you will take at each stage of progression to help leads progress
2. Begin cultivating leads immediately and consistently
Seeds shouldn’t sit in the soil long before they are nourished, just as leads shouldn’t sit in your voicemail or inbox long before being contacted. The longer you wait to contact leads and begin the process of progressing them, the higher the likelihood that they lose interest or contact your competitors. Make sure to be available for inbound phone leads (or have an excellent voicemail for when you aren’t available) and be sure to respond to email leads within 5-10 minutes if possible. Consider having automated email response messages for inbound email leads. Once you start the process of engaging with leads, strictly adhere to your schedule of maintaining contact and beginning the process of cultivating your leads.
3. Water and fertilize your leads with follow ups and helpful resources
Leads often take time to grow and progress. You can nurture your leads with frequent, consistent, appropriate email, phone, and in-person follow ups and with free resources that will help them 1) thoroughly understand the bankruptcy process and 2) feel comfortable hiring you as an attorney.
To follow up effectively with leads, consider these strategies:
- During your initial consultation, get their permission to stay in contact with them. Help them understand what to expect in your follow up calls and emails.
- Use follow up calls, emails, and in-person appointments to answer questions, overcome objections, and strengthen their understanding of bankruptcy
- Use Free informational resources to grow their understanding of bankruptcy. For example, you may have a series of 4-5 emails that explains confusing or challenging aspects of bankruptcy. Or you may have eBooks, printed brochures, videos, infographics, or website content that you can share with customers.
- Share testimonials and case studies of your past clients. Keep them anonymous, but use their success stories to increase your potential clients’ confidence in bankruptcy and in you as an attorney.
Example of a lead progressing (click on the image to see large version)
As you nurture leads with information and stay in frequent contact with them, you keep your relationship fresh and make it more likely for them to hire you.
4. Weed out objections and competitors from your leads
Just as weeds can choke out growing plants, so can customer objections and law firm competition keep your leads from growing into maturity. You should overcome your leads’ objections and your competitors’ efforts by:
- Discover what objections your leads have. Maybe they are worried about the cost of bankruptcy, what happens to their property, or how they can rebuild their credit. Ask good questions to discover hidden objectives and then help them overcome these objectives. Once all of their objectives have been addressed, it will be easier for them to move forward and hire you.
- Clearly explain to all leads what makes you different (and better) than your competitors. In other words, why should someone hire you instead of the 50 other law firms in your area? Maybe your experience, high success rate, prices, location, convenience, etc give you a competitive advantage that you can use to thwart your competitors. As you help your leads understand that hiring you instead of your competitors is their best option, you will lose fewer leads to your competitors’ marketing efforts.
5. Wait until the time is right to harvest leads
Each crop has an ideal time to harvest, just as each lead has an ideal time to close. If you try and close leads too early (or too late) or put too much pressure on them, they may get scared off or be unprepared to fully commit. Many attorneys try and close leads too quickly instead of taking the time to discern how ready the lead really is and develop a solid relationship. Other attorneys are too passive and wait too long to call the lead to act. With each lead, determine their readiness level and make a plan to cultivate them until they are ready for the right time to ask them to act and to file bankruptcy.
6. Use modern tools to automate and speed up the process
Modern farming techniques are much more efficient and scaleable than traditional farming methods, just as modern software makes managing leads 10x easier than doing it manually. Consider using software, such as the following, to make lead management easier for you:
- Call tracking software. Use call tracking companies (such as LogMyCalls) that track calls, record conversations, offer a “heads up” notice when leads call you, and provide easy-to-use reports for analytics purposes.
- Use lead management software (such as Salesforce or Hubspot) that tracks lead progress, aids with automated, scheduled, or triggered email responses, and offers analytics on how well your lead management is going.
7. Replenish your leads with new ones
Once crops are harvested, the ground should be once again prepared for new crops to be planted, just as you should always replenish your incoming leads. Remember that you should constantly have leads flowing through these 3 stages:
- Leads that are freshly planted
- Leads that are being nurtured and grown into maturity
- Leads that are being harvested
As you keep a constant flow of leads at all stages, you will rarely have dry spells where you don’t have leads. Spend a certain percentage of your time on each one of the three lead types and you will maintain consistent income from your lead sources.