In this episode, Jim and Tyson will check in on what’s going on with both of their practices, talk about MAXLAWCON and go over the Sales Prevention Department List; 10 things lawyers and law firms do that prevent the closing of sales.
First, Jim and Tyson will discuss about case management and catch up meetings, Tyson will go over the importance of synergies in a partnership and then they both will go over the difference between own generated leads and referrals of Personal Injury Attorneys.
Also, they will go over next year’s conference. Lessons learned and a lot of improvements! It’s going to be awesome!
And then, our topic; The list of The Sales Prevention Department:
1. Not having a live and empathetic person answering the phone.
2. Not returning calls or taking too long to call a lead.
“When you think about all the money that you spend to get the phone to ring, to not maximize what happens after when the phone rings it’s just waste of money.”
3. Having a slow sales process.
“They never love you as much as they do on the day that they sign you”.
“If you can stop them from looking for other attorneys, then you have done 90% of the battle. Get them to sign the contract”
4. Being too salesy AKA too much “whiskers”.
5. Brand and generic marketing.
6. Not having the knowledge base for the types of cases you’re advertising for.
7. Not following up on clients after an initial phone call.
8. Hiding the ball or over promising; being disingenuous.
9. Not being crystal clear on what it is that you do: NO REFERRALS.
10. Being afraid of walking away from the table.
Please give us a shout out in the ABA JOURNAL’S ranking of podcasts!
Hacking’s hack: No external information until 11am!
Tyson’s tip: Talk to every person as if you never gonna talk to them again.
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Transcripts: 10 Things Lawyers or Law Firms Do That Prevent The Closing Of Sales
Tyson Mutrux
If you can stop them from looking for other attorneys, you’ve done 90% of battle. Alright, so obviously, if you meet with them, great meet with them afterwards, but get them to sign the contract. If they’re ready to sign the contract, right, then you can get the HIPPA release all that kind of stuff, sign later if you want to, but get that done, because that’s part of getting that sales process closed. So that way you can get working on the case. That’s a good way of sort of closing that sales process.
Unknown Speaker
Run your law firm, the right way, the right way. This is the maximum liar podcast, podcast, your hosts, Jim hacking and Tyson metrics. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm.
Jim Hacking
Welcome to the show. You’re back on the maximum lawyer Podcast. I’m Jim hacking.
Tyson Mutrux
And I’m Tyson Mediatrix. What’s up Jimmy?
Jim Hacking
I’m in Kansas City, Missouri. I had a naturalization interview this morning. And I have an asylum interview this afternoon. So you and I have met had one of our own podcast without guests for a while, I thought that we could check in on what’s going on with both of our practices, talk a little bit about Max law, and then get into our topic today, which is going to be a good one.
Tyson Mutrux
I love it. So it’s interesting. I don’t know if we’ve talked about this before. But I think it’d be really funny when she traveled all over the country is if you had on your home screen, like where in the world is Jim. And like you have like a little bitty tiny jam on a map. And you know, today be Kansas City. You know, a couple weeks ago, you’re in San Diego or wherever the hell you were. You’re in New York not too long ago, I think he’s so cool to have a little thing, you know, little bitty gyms all over the world, a little map could be pretty cool.
Jim Hacking
That’d be fun. Because, you know, usually in our office, we have about 10 or 11 interviews a month. And this month, I counted him out yesterday, we have 24 interviews this month. So either something crazy is going on or USCIS is trying to finally move cases. But between the three attorneys and the two that are waiting to see their bar results, we’re going to be pretty busy this month.
Tyson Mutrux
These are really busy. We’re hiring two new employees, we’re hiring a legal case manager, we’re hiring a paralegal, we’re looking for office space, because we’re out of space, it’s been pretty hectic. So we’ve got a case review meeting tomorrow, where we’re going to try and go through all of our cases, I’m not sure we’re going to get that done. But things are really, really busy. It’s busy is a good thing. But we’re trying to make sure we stay ahead of the curve. So what about you,
Jim Hacking
I’m glad you brought up that case review meeting because I was talking to our friend Josh Goldstein on Facebook Messenger over the weekend about these case review meetings that are interminable. And I really want to focus. And this was one of the things we talked to Sean HAMP about, I really want to focus this quarter on cutting down on case review meetings and figuring out the best ways to have cases be self reporting or automated reporting, or, you know, these meetings just become interminable. And they go on and on forever. And this is my, my 90 Day focus for this quarter is to try to figure out ways to at least get me out of having to go to those meetings, if not eliminating or minimizing the meetings altogether.
Tyson Mutrux
So you know, it’s interesting, I mean, I feel the same way about this, we had this influx of cases that we didn’t really expect to get the number with that we got. And we just kind of got behind on some of them. I think this is almost a catch up meeting, to be honest with you. We don’t do a lot of the case management meetings, but I completely agree with you, I don’t think they should be completely unnecessary. And I think like people like John Fisher might completely disagree with that, because he’s, he’s a big fan of meetings. But he’s, he’s more of a fan of the maintenance meetings. You know what I mean? Like the daily meetings, the one weekly meeting at the end of the week, one weekly meeting at the end of the week, I think he’s more into those I’m not sure if he’s into the case management meetings. But that can be a huge time suck these these case management once a week. I don’t try to make it a habit. So this isn’t something that we do. I know that some firms, they do like a monthly case management meeting. And that seems to work for them. But I’m with you, though, I’d rather have it where the cases are self reporting, so you’re on top of them as the cases are moving along, as opposed to Okay, let’s have this big ketchup meeting. And this is the first one we’ve had to have. But it just, it’s almost out of necessity at this point, because we’re just so we’re short staffed, and we’re in the process of hiring, whereas we have all these interviews scheduled, but we just haven’t had anybody hired yet. So just we had to do what we got to do at this point. So
Jim Hacking
for the big spike in cases for you.
Tyson Mutrux
It’s interesting. So you hear this word synergy, you know, and it’s it’s a word that everyone throws around, and it’s kind of, I think, for the most part, misused. But Chris and I we partnered, and they I think we were viewed separately as good attorneys. Good firms, but we were thought of as, you know, small firms that couldn’t handle big cases. And I don’t know, this had nothing religious support that. But I think that that was the view because, you know, you get a call everyone’s want a better, better, better, really big case. But you wouldn’t get a regular flow of cases calls it that big cases. And I think what it was is, whenever we joined forces, we were perceived as having that that power now to take on the big cases. And what I mean by that is the bank account, honestly, I that’s what I really mean with these injury cases. And some of these bigger actually, some of the big kids if you’re doing them, right, usually the big cases require a big bank roll. And so I think that what it was that we were just perceived before is not being able to bankroll those cases, and now we can. So I think that has a lot to do with it. So I’ll call senergy. I’m not sure if that’s the right word for it. I may be misusing it. But I think the two of us joining forces has really, really changed the perception overall, which is, which is
Jim Hacking
good. It’s either might be a situation where some lawyer just bulk referred a bunch of cases to you, but it’s not that cases coming in the same way, but just an increase in the quality of cases and the number.
Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, and what part of what makes me think that it’s not just clients, you know, referring us cases, it is, like small auto accident cases, it is big firms referring as big cases. So I think that’s part of it. So part of it is some of these in their in some of these other injury firms too. So they know what a big case is. And they’re referring them to us. We’ve also got that big mission of trying to earn 50 cases in 10 years, and so people know that we’re willing to try these cases. And so it’s it’s a combination of things. But I think the biggest part is just us to join forces has made a big difference.
Jim Hacking
Do you think most personal injury attorneys get their cases from other attorneys? Or do you think like, what percentage of cases do you think attorneys that are doing high end PII stuff, generate them themselves versus referral? Like what percentage do you think are self generated?
Tyson Mutrux
I think for the average attorney, I’d say if we’re looking at just PII, the average attorney, or are we talking about just big PII or PII in general? So there’s a difference? Yeah.
Jim Hacking
I would say it’s substantive PII. Yeah. Not not soft tissue car accidents. You know, I’m talking about for people that do, because like, John, are you guys that are sort of the complicated, were you like you said you’re bankrolling them, I would think most of those cases come from other lawyers. And you’re always, of course, happy to get it on your own, because you’re not going to have that CO counsel fee.
Tyson Mutrux
I would say 90%. And that seems like a crazy number. But it’s, I think it’s true, because you’re getting them, usually you’re getting them from other attorneys. It’s really, really, really, really rare that you get a big case through mass advertising. And I can tell you from experience, because I’ve worked for one of those, those volume firms, the people that are calling those numbers, and going to those websites, are the ones that are not as injured. And so they’re inundating you with these tiny car crash car crash cases. I mean, I remember whenever I was at another firm, we were turning down probably 90% of the phone calls. I mean, it was a huge number of cases that came through in 90%. Of we said, this is not a case, the it is quite different now with my practice now that the number of cases that we take, compare, the number of calls we get is much different. I mean, we take a lot more of the cases from the calls because we usually qualified, they’re usually qualified by some attorney in some way, because they’re able to recognize, hey, this is probably a case, how do we get the junk wins to occasionally guess. But it’s not the same, same extreme, and you get a whole with the volume practices. And I’m sure there’s PII attorneys that are listening to this, they can vouch for that you get a lot of bad calls, a ton of bad calls of volume practices, but just it’s part of it. That’s it, that’s part of the the mass advertising, the mass advertise, you’re gonna get a bunch of those calls and a bunch of junk calls no matter what. So the for the big pie, though, you’re getting the vast majority of them through through referrals, usually from verbal referrals from other attorneys. And he
Jim Hacking
probably spent a lot of time thinking about this. And you’ve obviously talked about it on the show before with prior guests that I think that might make for an interesting episode, try to try to figure out, you know, if the majority of our cases are coming from other attorneys, is there a way that we could sort of sift and sort out the the bad cases or the nine cases without as much human interaction in a way that sets us up for more self generation cases? Does that make sense? Yeah, I
Tyson Mutrux
think no, check them out. I guess the problem with that is that there is there are some cases that we’ve identified that were turned away by other firms that were the liability was far, far more difficult. That if you were to create that criteria probably would have been filtered out at the beginning. And I think that so you have to be sort of be careful. I mean, I’ll give the example that we set up one for 1.25 million a few months ago. And most firms will not have taken that case, I think even most big firms would have taken the case, because the liability was very if you were to look at it on surface at the very, very beginning, you think? I don’t think so. But if you have this sort of peel back the initial layers to figure out, hey, is this the case? And so I think if you were to have some strict criteria, you’re gonna lose that along with the baker cases.
Jim Hacking
All right, well, we should get to work on this week’s topic, I believe,
Tyson Mutrux
yeah, we’ve already gotten pretty deep into this. And we’re not even we haven’t gotten to the topic. So let’s, do you want to talk about a conference? Or do you want to save that for another day? Oh, yeah, we’ve
Unknown Speaker
talked about the current rents. I mean, we haven’t set the date yet. But we’re thinking of going ahead and setting it in regard, knowing the cardinal date, I think the cardinal game might move out of this year’s conference, if there’s a way we can work it in with the schedule works out that way. But we really want to start talking about the conference, getting things set, I think we’re gonna be going into a new venue, a bigger venue, are expecting more people. And I also think we’re going to put out a call for submissions. So we’re going to invite people who’ve either been to the conference or spoken at the conference, or who want to come to the conference and speak at the conference, to pitch us ideas on what they talked about, everyone’s going to have about 45 minutes for each presentation. And we’re going to take applications, it’ll be a short online application process to let people sort of apply to present. And I think that’ll help, I will still pick people that we want to have on the stage with us. But I think that opening it up to people to let them you know, submit topics will help us increase things that we might not necessarily be talking a lot about, and give us some interesting new topics. Yeah, it’s we’re expecting and we’re not expecting, we’re our goal, I’m gonna go ahead and say what our goal is, we want to get to 50 250, which is a substantial increase from last year. But I think after talking to the people that went last year, they really got a lot of benefit from it, we’re going to have to raise the price a little bit just because we’ve got to pay for the venue’s we didn’t have to pay for the venue. Last year, we worked at a deal with flu, as an advertising partner or sponsor. So that was that was kind of part of the deal, which worked out really nicely for us. But we’re at the paper space. And so I sort of want explained the the reasoning for possibly scratching the Cardinals games, just because we feel like there will be an increase, the venue can only hold so much if we were to rent a suite or even two suites. And so some of the people that didn’t get didn’t get to go to Cardinals game sort of missed out on a lot of the conversation and the experience. And so we don’t want that to happen next year. And so we want to have sort of a built out experience from start to finish, we’re adding it to making it two days instead of a day and a half. So you’re gonna get some more value out of that. And then it’s going to extend into the night and get some really good ideas, I
Tyson Mutrux
think we’ve got to sort of put all the pieces together, Kemp already been looking at the venues. And I think there’s some really good options. And so I think it’s going to be a different experience than last year, I think it will be ultimately a better experience, it’s going to be pretty cool. And I loved last year, last year was amazing. And I think a lot of the listeners did to the people that attended. So we have a lot of fun. We’ve got no people are sort of begging us for that date, we’ve got to get that date hammered out or kind of figured out. But people have suggestions on dates, feel free to fire away at us. And we’ll try and wouldn’t say we’ll try and accommodate or we’ll try and find a date. That works. Because something that I don’t know if people most people realize we’ve got to sort of figure out the dates that other conferences are having their conference. So we don’t have that on the same date. And just try to coordinate a lot of things when it comes to graduation weekend, one other weekends that we hadn’t really going into last year thought about. And so we’re trying to make sure we don’t fall on one of those weekends. Because I think last year Jimmy we were on at graduation weekend, and so a lot of people weren’t able to come so but anyways, more to come by the conference. So let’s let’s get going. Yeah, I’m
Jim Hacking
excited about the conference. And one of the big pieces of feedback we got is that everyone felt I think that things were a little bit too compressed. I think they really liked the interaction at the faccin. And at the cardinal game, I think opening up the nighttime stuff to everybody will be beneficial. I think everyone was looking for a little bit more one on one interaction, a little more breaks in between, I think our vendors would like a little bit more foot traffic. So we’re excited, it’s gonna be great. I’m already working on my presentation, I think I know what I’m gonna talk about. So let’s, let’s roll into today’s topic, which is the sales prevention department. Now, this is a phrase I love to throw at my wife who I work with, because every now and then she has a client who’s sitting in front of her and for whatever reason, she decides to tell them to come back and sign the contract and pay later. So I always teach her about being the chairwoman of the sales prevention department. But the phrase comes from Dan Kennedy. And I heard him say it in the podcast once about the sort of the things that people do to prevent sales. And so sometimes I’ll be at a restaurant or be at a store and somebody a salesperson and do something dumb, and I’ll go oh, they must be part of the sales prevention department. So what we wanted to do was to come up with a list of our top 10 things that we think tie sent an eye about ways lawyers or law firms prevent the closing of sales. And so we’re gonna get right into it. And the first one comes from me. And it’s about not having a live and empathetic person answered the phone. So I think we’ve talked about this before on the show, and we’ve talked about it at the conference that really getting someone who’s good at answering the phone, and empathetic and who’s not just trying to click boxes, or fill out a form or take down someone’s phone number or rushing them to the next call, I think that any investment that you make in your phone intake, whether it’s hiring outside company like Ruby, or Smith AI or suntex, that when you do things like that, and you get people who can handle a number of calls at the same time, and can do so well. And get down the important contact information to retain all the contact information that all that money is very well spent. And it’s always going to come back to support you, you might view it as an expense. But really, it is an investment if, if you spend say $2,000 a month on phones, and whether that’s for a person or for a service or 3000, you know, that’s money that hopefully is going to come back to you at least two times over, if not 10 times over. So I just can’t underestimate the or understate the value of having someone who knows how to talk to clients about their problems and sympathize with them. Because that’s what those callers initially want.
Tyson Mutrux
I 95% agree with you probably 98% agree with you. Okay, I want to make sure that 2% is a very, very small percentage. So 98% agree with you. I don’t really have any pushback, but only only that 2% If you are more of a referral based practice, I think it’s less necessary to have a live empathetic person on the other side. I know it’s definitely important. So I don’t want to I don’t want to over stress my point. But I do want to say that if you do have a referral based practice primarily from other attorneys, you’ve got a little bit of leeway there where they will, I guess, yes, some wiggle room. Okay, so it’s not as important but it’s definitely it’s important energy. Alright, volume practice, it is highly important to have a live person answering the phone. And in a very, very cheery voice, I think it’s extremely important. But it was actually a good segue into my first one. So number two is not returning calls or taking too long to call a lead. So I sort of put those two together. So if you do get a call to your office, and it goes to voicemail, that’s the middle of night, you don’t have an answering service, not returning them immediately in the morning is probably an illusion case, the other part of it is taking too long to call those web leads. So when you get those leads, if I get one in my email, what I’ll try to do and fits into the night out in, let’s say I see it, I will try to shoot them an email really quick. And hey, I’ll call you in the morning. And then calling in the morning. It’s extremely important because otherwise, if you take too long to call those leads, and I bet Jimmy you get a bunch through yours. Did you get them throughout from all over the world, calling those people and that’s a big task, you have to sort of filter in the filter through the good cases, in the bad cases, they call in those cases right away, otherwise, you’re gonna lose them.
Jim Hacking
When I went to the last mastermind with John Fisher Price’s office set told me a story about how he had gotten a referral for his father who’s an attorney, and he had called his father in New York, or and sent the referral on and, and such chart back on like Tuesday, and his father had not gotten the chance to call the person back. And of course, when the firm called back on that Tuesday, the person had already moved on. So I think that that was a valuable lesson. For me. It’s something that sort of when I think about that, because when you think about all the money that you spend to get the phone to ring to not maximize what happens after when the phone rings, it’s just wasted money. And it’s just like throwing cash down the garbage chute. So yeah, this one stuck out for me.
Tyson Mutrux
I want to add something to that though. I’ve got a good story. So a couple weeks ago, I got a call on a really good case. I mean, in LSC really good cases. I’m not talking like a multi million dollar case. Certainly a couple $100,000 case, though. So pretty good fees to the firm. And I, the guy sat down with me, and he had just signed the contract and hit a list of hits three attorneys on an envelope that he had written down. And I said, What’s that? He said, Oh, these are I talked to such and such, and they gave me three names. And here’s the three names. And they said, This person, he said, You were actually the third person that called this person didn’t call me back this person. So they’ve called me tomorrow, and then you’re the first person to meet with me. So it was pretty funny. So it’s one of the things where and I will tell you the second person that list is one of my really, really good friends but I I told him afterwards Hey, man, you gotta you gotta start calling your clients a lot faster than that. Because that this is what happens. And so he’s like, Oh, I get it. So anyways, go on to your next one.
Jim Hacking
But number three is having a slow sales process. And I learned this lesson. So Kelsey Bratcher and I automated our attorney client agreement process. So For, someone would come in and meet with one of the attorneys, they’d say they wanted to hire us, the attorney would say, Okay, I’m going to prepare a contract, I’ll email it to you in a few days. So they would tell Jim, tell me that the contract needed to be prepared, I would prepare the contract, I printed it out, I’d scan it in, I’d email it to the client, and then they would sort of send it to us when they felt like it. And now we’ve automated it, so that they can sign it right there electronically in the office, or they can sign it electronically at their house when they do decide to hire us. And then there’s a payment automation that happens right after that. So compressing down that process between when someone says, Yeah, I want to hire you, and when they actually hire you, because they never love you as much as they do on the day that they signed you. So that’s when you want to really strike while the iron is hot. And anything you can do to condense that process is really going to help boost sales and shut down the sales prevention department,
Tyson Mutrux
the contracts, man, if you’re not using E contracts, and you can use it in your state, which in Missouri and Illinois, you can, if you’re not doing that, you need to start doing it right away if you can, because if you can stop them from looking for other attorneys, you’ve done 90% of battle, alright, so obviously, if you want to meet with them, great, meet with them afterwards and get them to sign the contract. If they’re ready to sign the contract, right, then you can get the HIPPA release all that kind of stuff signed later if you want to, but get that done, because that’s part of getting that sales process closed. So that way you can get working on the case. And that’s that’s one way that we sell it over the phone when it comes to getting them to sign the contract, say hey, listen, you know, we can meet in person or we, you know, we can do it, we can do most of this over the phone, and we can meet later, I’m gonna leave that leave it up to you. But if you sign right now what we can do is I can get started the case right away, but and I say, You know what, every bar doesn’t let me on a contingency fee agreement, I work on your case until it’s under contract. And so I can start getting in touch with the insurance company and requesting medical records right now, you sign the contract, and that usually works and we usually meet later on down the road, but it’s a good way of sort of closing that sales process. Alright, so number four is mine and it’s being too salesy, aka too much whiskers, we’ve talked about cheese and whiskers before. And you have to really sort of when you’re meeting with clients, I think it’s really important when you’re on the phone, just not selling yourself too much. I think they can almost sort of smell that whenever they’re on the phone with you, because they’re used to being sold all the time. And I think trying to sell yourself your phone way too much red flags are gonna start popping up and they’re gonna start saying, I don’t know, I talked to other people, maybe I need talk to my knee, talk to my spouse, whatever it may be, and you talk to my friend. So I think you’re being too salesy over the phone, or even in any of your advertising, I think make a really hard purchase. For sure, I
Jim Hacking
think, where’s, I mean, I go to town, we drove up to Chicago to see my mom and the billboard after billboard, it’s just so passe. And so over dinner, and the billboards and the messaging and the sales minutes. And, you know, there’s some way to act like we’re a professional in that we should be, you know, professional. And then there’s others who just go way off the deep end, and just sort of over the top stuff. And so I think that, you know, being balanced and being informative, and and certainly you can tell your own horn, but you don’t have to do it in a way that sounds like a used car salesman,
Tyson Mutrux
for sure. All right, but
Jim Hacking
what’s number five. Number five is bland and generic marketing. So, you know, that sort of segues right into what we were just talking about, but I think that so many lawyers, and not necessarily our listeners, but maybe some of our newer listeners get trapped into these cookie cutter ways of doing marketing that everybody else does. Because everybody else has a billboard, they need to have a billboard or because everyone has a yellow page ad or a website, that there’s not much out there that’s unique or content driven. They’re not they’re not sort of educating the clients or helping them solve a problem. It’s all about me, me, me so many years of service, you know, we’ve been doing this for so long, we’re the experts will fight for you, we care about you. Because the marketing messages are sort of way over done and do nothing to help you distinguish yourself. And so, you know, good marketing should be about getting the clients to raise their hand and letting them know that letting you know that they’re interested in what you have to offer. And so I think that too many times lawyers and marketing people that try to help lawyers just do the same thing as everybody else and there’s so much individuality in baked into their marketing.
Tyson Mutrux
That’s such a good one. It’s such a basic one, you know, maybe this one should have been number one, you know, but it really is true. It comes down to niching down and that one practice area advertising that one practice area at a time. For those of you that have not listened all of our podcasts we talked early on about I love marketing, go back and I don’t know what If Jimmy edited their episode number six, or whatever it is where they talked about the, just basically the sales process and about picking that one practice area or that one topic to advertise for, it’s a really good one, but look up, look up, I love marketing, just listen to their first 10 or 15 episode, they’re really good. Alright, number six, and, Josh, this is a pet peeve for me. And it’s it may not seem like it has to do with sales, but it will whenever I explained it, so not having the knowledge base for the types of cases you’re advertising for. So and here’s what I’m talking about. You literally do pay per click advertising, or you put up a billboard, something like that. And we see this in St. Louis all the time where someone gets a big pot of money from something and then they start throwing up billboards, and they start getting injury cases, right? Well, what happens is, is that they start taking on all these PII cases, and I’m talking about PII specifically for me right now, but the people do with every practice area, but they take on these cases, and what happens is they they sit in their drawer for six to nine months, and nothing gets done on them, because they don’t know what they’re doing. And then they get fired on the case. And the case goes to someone else. So I see this people all time saying, oh, I want to get into personal injury, I want to get into personal injury. Well, if you get into personal injury, half the knowledge base, because there’s this is a two part one is you’re fired on later and on the ropes, you don’t know what you’re doing, she’s letting the file sit in your drawer. The other part of it is, is that when you’re talking to a client, you better hope that they don’t sit with someone that isn’t eligible, because they’re a potential client. So if they stay with me, and then stay with you, they’re going to know it, there’s a noticeable difference between the two, because I’m gonna have a knowledge base for it, you’re not, so you’re probably gonna lose that client. So if you start advertising for cases, know what you’re talking about, before you start taking them on, because otherwise, it’s gonna be a disservice to your firm, and it can be a disservice to your clients.
Jim Hacking
So back when I was still doing all kinds of different stuff, before I started to niche down, I had someone sitting across from me, who, whose father had gotten run over by a big semi truck, and I tried to sign up the case, myself, and I should have sent it to John Simon, were to get a burger and I didn’t. And of course, he didn’t hire me. And so I thought, when I saw this in your notes, that putting aside, you know, of course, the ethical obligations of being able to know how to do the case. And like you say, the ability to handle the case and not just stick it in the drawer until you get fired, I think you’re talking about the actual sitting across from the client. So I had an interesting take on that. So last week, or two weeks ago, I met with a doctor who’s here on a J, one visa and getting a green card for doctors have their own special set of rules. And we’ve all had times where we met with clients, and we thought we could sort of talk our way through it or sort of show that we know what we’re talking about, well, I just went out to jail. And you know, even within immigration, which is its own specialty, but there’s their immigration lawyers who specialize in this, I’m just gonna refer you to her, I refunded his console CI, I got her on the phone, I set up the console for them. And I was happy to do it just because I’d much rather stay in my lane do the things that I’m really good at. And, and from a marketing standpoint, from an ethical standpoint, and from a future headache standpoint, nobody wants to have those files that sit in the drawer. And so for all those reasons, I was glad to send him on his merry way to someone who’s really going to be able to help them.
Tyson Mutrux
And really, that’s what it should be about is you know, helping this person that’s calling you. It’s I mean, if you know you don’t, you, if you don’t have what it takes, you’re better off just to sign up the case, if you want, if you want to take the case, sign it up and refer it out that way you get paid on it. And that way, you know, the client gets help as well. All right, Jimmy, take us to number seven.
Jim Hacking
The number seven is the lack of follow up. So so many people want to just focus on that time period to get the person to call. And then they try to push them to see if they’re gonna hire them. And then if they don’t, they just move on. And they just consider that to be a dead lead. And, you know, we’ve talked many times on this show, and it’s probably the thing I harp on the most is that lawyers do a really poor job of follow up, me included that we’re really getting better. At follow up, we’re making sure that we capture all the right contact information at the beginning. And now we’re retargeting people based on the topic area that they’re interested in. And you really it doesn’t have to be that sophisticated, but you have to be capturing all of their information. And you have to be contacting them on a regular or semi regular basis. So that just because they didn’t hire you immediately, doesn’t mean that they’ve hired someone as our friend Gary Falcone said when he came on the show, you got to keep on them until they either hire you or tell you that they’ve hired somebody else and they don’t need your services. So a lack of follow up after an initial phone call is key.
Tyson Mutrux
And we obviously talk a lot about automation on this podcast about automating a lot of that stuff. And there’s a ton of actually free services out there once you pay for like Infusionsoft. But there’s ways of actually doing that. Another way is just putting a calendar item you’re on the phone with the person or whenever you get a message, you know, just put a calendar for two days to follow up or whatever, whatever Have a timeline you want to put on it. So that’s a good way of actually reminding yourself to follow up. Alright, so number eight for me is hiding the ball or over promising. And another way of saying this is just being disingenuous is very similar to my number six, when it comes to just, when you’re talking to clients, they’re going to know if you’re not telling them something, or they’re going to know if you’re over promising if they’ve talked to other attorneys. Or if you’re hiding the ball or over promising and they find out later, they’re going to fire you. So this is a good way of getting fired. An easy example of this is if you try to hide something in your contract, about your either your fees, your fee, structure, your percentages, whatever it may be expenses, explain all that to them being open, being radically expressing radical candor to them, just being overly honest with them, I think it’s really, really important. Gonna go through the contract with them, explain it all to them. So they have a good understanding as to how the case is going to progress, what their obligations are, what your obligations are, they that’s all really, really important in the process. So that later on down the road, there’s not a miscommunication where you get fired, where you get fired.
Jim Hacking
I really love your last two points, this one on the next one, I if anything I over, explain. And I talk to people seriously about how hard their cases are. I mean, I think sometimes people want to go see a lawyer, and they want they think that you need that you can wave a magic wand and make their problems go away. And I tried to be much more realistic with people. I tried to downplay their expectations, not oversell the expectations. And I think, when I think people are surprised by that, and they’re sort of like, well, no one really explained it to me that way before and you know, I’ll tell someone, I’ll do a percentage chances else that I think you have a 20% chance of winning are 30%. And they’ll have lawyers who have promised them the moon. And I think that that definitely builds credibility. And also, if you do succeed and helping them, then you’re the hero because you’ve overcome the card out. I don’t you know, I say it like I see it I don’t over emphasize or de emphasize how hard it is I just play it straight. And then, but the chips fall where they may. And if they want to hire me they hire me if they don’t want to hire me. They don’t.
Tyson Mutrux
Yeah, so it’s funny, I get in any of the PII attorneys on here will really understand what I’m talking about. You get the question all the time, you know, what’s my case worth? And I’ll never answer it. I say, You know what, I’m never gonna answer that for you or actually know what to say I say, I will not answer that for you at this time. I said, at some point, I’ll give you a range as to what I think the case is worth, when everyone will close to it closer to settling. But it’s like me trying to diagnose you as a doctor without seeing any of your any of your diagnostic reports. And they usually get that because what happens is that some of these attorneys, they will promise the moon, and because they think that’s what’s going to get them the case. And I’ll just say, you know, respectfully, you know, such and such may have said this, but it’s hard for any attorneys to tell you what the case is worth, because we haven’t seen anything. And so the clients are like, Oh, I get that, you know, how are they able to actually tell me a number when they don’t really haven’t really seen anything. And so if you’re over promising if you’re telling these clients numbers at the beginning, you’re making a big mistake. And Jimmy that kind of was later time that you know, chances of winning as I guess if you’re going to give those percentages, guess low, because if he gets high, guess what you’re you’re gonna be looking forward to at the end of the case, maybe a bar complaint because, or a bad review? Because you’re gonna say, Well, you told me at the beginning of the case, you know, 20 or 50%. But you know, we didn’t win this case, or let’s say you told me 80%, and we didn’t win this case, well, did you screw something up? I mean, it is or something you did wrong in the case, you know, and you never really meet those expectations. So it’s, it is a recipe for disaster if you oversell, but alright, so number nines, you may too hard to refer.
Jim Hacking
So this is an old whipping boy of mine. So I’m going to talk about a lot on this podcast. And that is that when people aren’t sure as to what you do, what services you provide, and I’m talking about other lawyers or other people in your area, who like if nurses or tow truck drivers or whoever that might be good referral partners for you. If they if they’re not crystal clear on what it is that you do, then it’s going to be really hard for them to refer you and remember, people don’t make referrals to help you. No one wakes up in the morning says I think I’m going to refer a case to Tyson matrix today. People refer cases because it makes them look good. It makes them look like they have the connection. And it’s like they’re the people that are helpful. And so if it’s too hard for you to be referred, if your contact information is not clear if your practice areas and clear. If you’re not crystal clear on what it is that you do as a lawyer than the people around you who might refer you things they’re not going to be crystal clear. And that leads to Fuzzy results, which means no referrals.
Tyson Mutrux
I love it. It’s funny. So I clearly was not doing a very good job with a friend of the family who had sent me a message Amy’s my wife sent her a message the other day saying hey, what kind of kind of work to Seisen do She had to tell him she had. And so she’s like, well, you know, it’s it’s another type of case, give Tyson a call because he can, he can refer to someone that’s good. But it’s like, you know what, it’s a good reminder, I need to make sure that people know what I do on a regular basis, because one they’re gonna forget. Or maybe my message is just not clear enough. So I gotta make sure I clarify my message. So I think that’s really, really important. All right, so the last one, Jimmy, this one is, I think, really, really important for the young attorneys, that one’s just starting out, or the ones that are maybe not doing so hot right now. And you get a big case coming in. You cannot be afraid of walking away from the table. I think that people can smell fear. They know and you’re nervous. They know and you’re desperate. They know you really, really need this case. And I think that when you’re walking in that room with that potential client, you have to be willing to walk away from the table, because something that if you’re afraid to walk away from the table, they’re going to try and get your rates down. So if you’re if you take cash for your cases, if you have a flat fee, or if you have an hourly rate, they’re going to try and work you down. I think you have to know what your rates are. You have to know what your fees are and stick to them. I mean, I remember one Jimmy, you referred to me a couple years ago, and he’s from another country, Kevin, which one it was, but he’s used to negotiating, okay, he’s negotiating. And I remember I sat down with them. And he said, and Marwan was there, he was negotiating with me trying to get my feet down. And I just, I just wouldn’t budge. And then finally, he eventually said, okay, and shook my hand and we had a deal. It was just kind of funny. But like, you have to stick to your guns, because they’re going to know it, they’re going to know they’re going to sense it. When I used to do criminal defense cases. And I have a big one come into my office. I remember early on, I was afraid to walk with the table. So I was willing to budge. And they sense that and so they took advantage of it. I think it’s important that you don’t fall into that trap, because you’re gonna leave a lot of money on the table if you do that.
Jim Hacking
Yeah. And you know, I deal with immigrants every day, and immigrants love to haggle. But it really seems like over the last couple of years, just by being completely firm, and never haggling, never giving anyone a deal, then people come to me knowing that I don’t haggle. And I haven’t really, it probably happens about once every three weeks. It happens so infrequently now, but I’m surprised when people do it. And actually remember my lines, you know, my line is, you know, my wife works right down the hall. If I come home and tell her that I took less on a case, then she’s gonna bring me and so I just, I can’t haggle. I’m not officially available or able to haggle. And so that just sort of cut down on a lot of that stuff. And, you know, the one thing I always say to clients is, you know, if, if I’m willing to fold with you on what your request for the fee is, how do you expect me to advocate for you, when we’re dealing with the immigration service? You know, if I’m, if I’m not confident enough in standing up for myself, and when I think, then how am I ever going to be able to do that for you? Sure, it
Tyson Mutrux
was something, I was haggling over a about a motorcycle recently, and I was haggling with the salesperson about the about the motorcycle. And I made a comment something like he at this point, we were texting back and forth, it was kind of it was kind of a funny negotiation. And he was like, like, you know, I’m just going to my wife, I could be very happy by that number. And he said, he said, Well, if I do such and such, then then my wife’s not gonna be happy about that number either. So it’s what you can sort of use their arguments against you, if that’s part of the problem, you know, they can say, well, you know, my spouse, just, they really want me to do this for $3,000. And you say, You know what, my wife, she really wants me to do it for $3,500. You know, you can kind of have some fun with it, too. You know, you don’t have to be overly stiff about your negotiations. But all right, Jimmy, we’ve gone a really like that as long as one we’ve had a long time. So let’s wrap it up. Before we get to our tips and hang the week, I do want to remind everyone to go the Facebook group. It’s growing every single day, literally every day people are asking to join. Just so you know, please don’t ask marketers to come to the group. We’re trying to limit it down to just attorneys. Previously, some markers had gotten in and we’re good with the ones around there. They don’t they don’t spam everyone. That’s what we’re trying to keep spam out of it. We’re trying to make keep this more of a sort of a legal thing, legal questions, legal topics, and keep spam out of it. So but join us there. And then also, if you don’t mind going to iTunes or wherever, get your podcasts and give us a five star review. We would really appreciate it. And Jimmy, what is your hack of the week.
Jim Hacking
So my hack of the week is no external information until 11am. What I mean by that is that last couple of weeks, I’ve been doing everything I can to not have any external information come into my brain until 11 o’clock. So I’m not checking email. I’m not checking social. I am journaling, meditating. I’m reflecting. And I’m planning. I’m doing sort of the entrepreneur work that only I can do at the firm as opposed to jumping in first thing in the morning grabbing my phone looking at other people’s crisis. And you know, you and I have that or I used to have that. I don’t check email. It says that 11 and four and that was never really true. I just did it sort of as a shield to have to respond to things but now I’m actually stepping back and not checking things until 11, I feel a lot more balanced in the morning, I get a lot more done, I’m able to be on the offense as opposed to the defense. And we’re gonna have our firm retreat next week. And that’s gonna be the whole theme of my presentation of our firm retreat, which is being on offense instead of defense. And for me, the best way to do that is to dictate what I’m doing in the morning before the world tries to take over my agenda.
Tyson Mutrux
I love it, I’ve actually gotten to the opposite extreme, Jimmy. Like last Friday, I didn’t check my email until I was leaving the office. So I say that I check it at those times, but I really don’t even check it out the early time, I just wait until the very last minute cuz I hate checking my email. So but that’s, that’s a good one. So my tip of the week actually has to do. I was my mother in law stopped by our house yesterday, and one of their family members had passed away last week. And so we were sort of talking about that, you know, and, you know, he had made this comment about how he just wasn’t ready to go in then he like died like three hours later and push, like, how tragic that was. And then she says, You know, I don’t, I don’t know if I’d want to know that I was gonna die, you know, and I’m like, I’m like, it was kind of thing like, you know, I think I kind of would that way I can say goodbye to everybody. She’s like, you know what, you should talk to every person as if you’re never gonna see him again. I was like, You know what, that is such a true statement. So, my tip of the week is, when you’re talking to everyone, talk to each person, talk to them as if you’re never going to talk to them again. Okay, so treat them with respect. Be nice to them. Don’t be a jerk. So that is my tip of the week, Jimmy.
