One disturbing and fictitious myth continues to dominate the legal landscape and is costing attorneys their credibility and profitability. This myth states that attorneys don’t need to know how to sell their legal services to the legal consumer, they need only spend tons of money on marketing and lead generation, and the clients, profits and referrals will roll in.
This fable implies that if you’re a good marketer, you don’t need to know how anything about closing business and the lead conversion process. Not anymore! Attorneys need skills, and they need to understand how the savvy legal consumer hires an attorney and buys legal services. They need to know how to effectively sell their legal services in a way that yields consistent and substantial results.
Attorneys are shocked when I tell them that the process that they are using to convert leads into clients is out of date, out of sync and clashes with the way that the new consumer buys legal services.
Selling is still a dirty word to many attorneys. With love I say, get over it. As an attorney, you sell legal services. If you want to sell more of your services, you must trade in this decades-old myth that depletes the bottom line for some fresh and modern skills that accelerate profits and increase referrals. You can’t generate new business using old skills.
DO YOU WANT TO BE A MODERN ATTORNEY OR LOSE BUSINESS TO ONE?
Every day I receive calls from attorneys that tell me this: I’m not a salesperson. I don’t want people to feel like I’m selling to them. I went to law school to practice law. I would rather market my services than have to sell them. I don’t want to be perceived as pushy, aggressive, salesy or phony. These mantras keep their selling foundation weak and unstable. I tell them that there is a more evolved, ethical and genuine way to close business and seal the deal.
The best part of selling today is that you get to create your style. You get to be comfortable with what you say and choose the language that keeps you true to yourself. Selling becomes an authentic extension of who you are.
MARKETING AND LEAD GENERATION IS A COST TO EVERY PRACTICE. SELLING AND LEAD CONVERSION IS A REVENUE GENERATOR.
Selling isn’t about clever closing techniques, putting someone in a headlock or talking people into something they don’t want to do. Selling legal services is about helping people get what they need and ethically moving them to take action and retain you. If you don’t give prospective clients what they need in their decision-making process, they will take their money and their business and happily give it to your competition.
Everyone sells something, and sales affect everything. Every person, every practice, every company, every industry, and every bottom line. Sales are like oxygen, and we all need oxygen to survive. The legal world is no exception. Every business stays in business because someone knows how to close business and seal the deal.
Progressive firms and innovative attorneys don’t hire me to turn them into salespeople; they hire me to strengthen their sales and lead conversion muscles and give them a strong competitive edge to win more business. They engage my services to get to the root of why their dollars spent in marketing are not translating to dollars returned in new clients and business. They are tired of watching ideal clients leave their office and hire the competition, so they are clamoring to learn this potent skill. It is the skill that catapults attorneys into rainmaking status and propels them miles ahead of the competitors.
WHY KEEP INVESTING IN MARKETING LEADS IF YOU ARE NOT INVESTING IN THE SKILLS THAT WOULD HELP YOU TO CONVERT THOSE LEADS INTO PAYING CLIENTS?
Why not invest in the skills, instead of resisting the skills that could double or triple your bottom line? Why not be a prospective clients first choice instead of the runner-up?
Extraordinary benefits come from knowing the up-to-date methods that will allow you to convert a lead into a client.
Let your competition fail to impress by using a process that makes them sound like everyone else and look like they are stuck in the 1980s while you get noticed, and you get hired. It is not too late to catch up to what some of your competition is doing and profiting from. Liz Wendling
