JUPITER, Florida—Josh Konigsberg, Partner & Co-Founder of Law Firm Marketing Pros, an award-winning digital marketing agency offering the most cutting-edge, efficient, and cost-effective digital marketing tools available for law firms, recently welcomed Chris Mullins to the Behind the Bench Podcast for Lawyers. Mullins is a thought leader in the legal world of intake and attorneys, a preeminent sales and communications consultant, founder of the Intake Academy, and author of the book Law Firm Conversions: Great Marketing Is Not Enough When Your Prospects Don’t Convert!
Konigsberg begins the interview with praise for Mullins’s book, noting, “Law Firm Conversions pretty much lays out exactly what you do. It’s a tremendous book, I highly recommend it. It’s well worth the read in terms of the things that you’ll learn, things that you’re not doing, or things that you might be doing wrong as a law firm.”
He then asks Mullins, after her 30 years in her field, if she works with particular practice areas or law firms of a specific size. She responds that she consults with all types of law firms, regardless of the practice area, size, or location. While her business primarily tends to lean toward personal injury, she works with any kind of law practice.
“When someone’s calling a law firm, oftentimes, it’s the first time,” Konigsberg notes. “They’re scared, and don’t know what to expect, how much money it costs, (if) they might be taken advantage of. For most types of law, there’s some type of event or crisis that’s triggered the communication. Let’s talk about how the law firm might want to handle the incoming call.”
“When it comes to your mindset for handling these calls, you want to train and coach your team to focus on the person, the humanizing part of the relationship, what they’re going through,” Mullins responds. “The only way you can really know that is to ask them. Train your team to find the emotional pain. Ask questions, then plug in what they said they called for.”
Konigsberg replies, “You’re training the staff to be more empathetic with the person. In the book, you talk about reiterating the pain points with them and personalizing the conversation. Can you give us an example of what a call might look like if I were to call in and say, ‘Hey, I walked in, and my wife was in bed with another man, and I need to talk to somebody to get a divorce?’”
She responds with a hypothetical example. “First off, Mr. Smith, I want to tell you my name is Chris Mullins. I’m an intake specialist here at ABC law firm. You made the right decision by giving us a call today, and we get calls like this all the time. It sounds to me that this is probably a very difficult moment for you. I want you to know you’re in good hands with me right now.”
“That was tremendous because you made me feel like I’m not alone, you have experience, and yes, it is a difficult time for me,” Konigsberg affirms.
Next, Mullins expands on the point. “With this particular example you gave, which is a very sensitive situation, I helped you to feel you’re not alone, because there’s a lot of shame with something like that. And who wants to say it out loud? When I say it out loud back to you, and you don’t even know me? It can help you to feel like, ‘Okay, I’m okay. I’m really okay. This person said it.’ It can help build that relationship of trust and intimacy that is really important.”
“You’re training the staff to do this, and you do this with role-play in the training, right?” Konigsberg asks.
“Role playing and, even bigger and better than that, listening to call recordings,” Mullins clarifies. “You’ve got to listen to call recordings, so when they’re doing marketing campaigns with folks like you (Law Firm Marketing Pros), they have to record those calls. It’s like your marketing insurance investment policy. You’ve got to know what’s going on.”
“I’m amazed at the number of attorneys, law firm owners, who don’t listen to calls, who don’t even record calls,” Konigberg observes. “And one of the other things I picked up in the book was that you’re recommending that the intake team listen to the calls so they can help each other. And what’s really important and resonated with me, it’s not about being critical. Because the critique process is to identify also the good someone’s doing that other team members can learn off of.”
“Exactly,” Mullins agrees. “It’s very shocking and scary still, and I’ll even emphasize 30 years, and I still find it today. I could get a phone call today from a prospective law firm, and there’s a good chance that they’re not recording their calls and that they don’t know where to go or how to do it. And they might be spending $50,000 a week on marketing.”
“And they wonder why the conversions are ten percent,” Konisgberg comments.
Mullins explains that is why she points out what worked in terms of recorded calls, but also the things that went wrong. “Other than that,” she says, “there’s not a whole lot more you can do to demonstrate it.”
“Tremendous stuff,” Konigsberg asserts before asking how she got started in her business.
“I was at Dan Kennedy, a mentor of mine,” she answers. “Back in the day, Dan used to charge just $6,000 a year, which back then was really a lot of money. I had to go find a credit card, a few of them I could put that on. He would do masterminds in his house in the basement in Ohio. I was one of those students, through the years, up until a few years ago. He’s the one I learned the most from. I was able to take everything I already knew and craft it to be sharper and speak more like direct marketing, specific to those individuals. In his different conferences, there were attorneys. Not a lot, just a couple. Everybody knows, mostly in a mastermind, you’re sharing what you need help with. And so attorneys heard me, and before you knew it, they were saying, ‘Well, can you do that for us?’ Then I started speaking at legal conferences and it took on a life of its own. I could keep doing butcher, baker, candlestick maker, or I could just stay in my lane, my new lane, and stay with attorneys.”
Konisgberg shares that her story is similar to Law Firm Marketing Pros, except that it wasn’t Dan Kennedy but a disciple of Dan Kennedy that led to the formation of the award-winning digital marketing agency.
Later in the interview, Mullins shares her marketing strategies for her own business, which includes writing and publishing books, speaking at conferences, and doing podcasts. “The biggest type of marketing I’ve always done is never burning my bridges. Having a an A-plus reputation and constant networking and communication with thought provoking leaders,” she says.
The conversation then shifts to Mullins sharing best practices for attorneys in terms of converting qualified leads, strategies for increasing conversions, and the right kind of mindset for success.
Watch the full interview below.
The Intake Academy™ Story
Intake Academy™ is a total business solution that transforms how law firms and call centers train, coach, hire, and retain intake specialists and how front-line staff handle legal intakes. We do this by creating significant financial breakthroughs in record time with less struggle and less costly yet more effective intake conversion strategies. So instead of your law firm spending MORE money on marketing and advertising to generate inquiries, the Intake Academy™ helps you make the most of what you’re already getting.
Using online and offline products, services, training, and coaching programs, the Intake Academy™ shows attorneys and their teams how to handle intake calls, and how to be MORE effective on the phone, in person, or online with prospective clients.
Intake Academy™ was founded by nationally recognized sales and marketing experts Chris Mullins. The Intake Academy™ brings together exclusive groups of like-minded attorneys, partners, intake specialists, receptionists, and managers who want to increase their caseload with ideal clients, maximize their marketing dollars and create a better client experience and more rewarding law practice.
Intake Academy™ teaches better intake and conversion by concentrating on a proven IN.T.A.K.E.™ system, which focuses on four things:
- Relationships first, business second
- Consistent, integrity-based sales process
- Empowering and enabling staff with the right skills
- On-going coaching and reinforcement to ensure intake quality
Whereas most law firms ignore this straightforward approach and simply spend MORE money on marketing to “make the phone ring,” Intake Academy™ helps clients understand where the law firm is “leaving money on the table” and provides the correct process to convert more ideal clients, gain a serious competitive advantage and increase the firm’s revenue exponentially in ANY competitive legal marketplace.
About Lawyers Tell All™
Lawyers Tell All™ is a powerful platform that pulls back the curtain and gets to the heart of what lawyers need to succeed, hosted by Chris Mullins.
You are about to meet innovators in the legal profession who take you beyond the stereotypes and show you the entire picture, including powerful stories and lessons that will inspire you. We’re all in this together.
Enjoy these conversations that reveal how things look through a lawyer’s eyes and find yourself inspired to connect – or reconnect – with your mission to make the world a better place through your work and service.
About the Behind the Bench Podcast for Lawyers
If you’re an attorney in the pursuit of a successful law practice, a fulfilling career, and the life of your dreams, this podcast has it all. Behind the Bench Podcast for Lawyers gives you great tools to overcome the unique challenges you face every day as a law firm owner. Hosted by Josh Konigsberg, author, partner, and co-founder of Law Firm Marketing Pros, and lifelong entrepreneur, the podcast features expert guests and teaches lawyers how to grow their business through effective digital marketing strategies.
About Law Firm Marketing Pros
At Law Firm Marketing Pros, our vision is to help improve the way law firms market their services. Our mission is to educate, serve, and provide our clients with the most cutting-edge, efficient, and cost-effective online marketing tools available to increase their revenues and profits and exceed their goals.
Learn more at our Facebook page and subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Please feel free to contact josh@lawfirmmarketingpros.com with any questions about Law Firm Marketing Pros.
Law Firm Marketing Pros
250 S. Central Blvd, Suite 100-A
Jupiter, FL 33458
(561) 948-5001
https://lawfirmmarketingpros.com/
