Improving Your Relationship with Your Client from the First Touch Point- and it’s FREE!

I talk frequently about the huge advantage that we solo and small firm lawyers have over large firms in that we generally have the time to perfect and deliver an excellent experience to the consumer.

Always remember, for the vast majority of our clients, this is (1) their first experience with a lawyer, and (2) they were thrust into our world involuntarily.

I was reminded of this recently as I was counseling a lawyer and his wife about her disability case. She had mixed worker’s compensation and long-term disability issues and a lot of questions about both. He does not practice in either of these fields, but had tried to help her the best that he could.

I do not practice workers’ compensation law, but I do know enough to at least have a discussion about the claims process. He was totally clueless. So, if a really smart lawyercan be totally clueless, imagine what most of our clients are experiencing and work hard to create every touch point in your arsenal to get that client to know you and trust you enough to get to the next step. (i.e., prospect > client > trusting your litigation advice > trusting settlement advice > raving fan when case is over).

At BenGlassLaw, we are in the process of re-examining every “canned” email that we send to clients and asking ourselves, “How could we make this better? How can we give the client a better experience?”

We recently met with a sales representative from Needles. Several firms in our MasterMind group rave about  the software and my associate met with them this summer at the American Association for Justice meeting in Boston. We don’t really think we need them (Infusionsoft and our own internal systems work fine for us), but sometimes you go looking just because you don’t know what you don’t know.

So we had the regional sales rep in for a show and tell. As you probably know, this would be about an $8,000-$10,000 initial investment with a maintenance “tail” forever. (I wasn’t impressed at all with the answers we got to my questions about how all our stuff is on the cloud and we don’t even own a server, but that’s for another day!) You would think that this would be a BIG DEAL for the guy and that his follow up would be awesome because he’s gotta be making a lot money on the upfront sale, right?

So, this is the email we get after three of us met with him for 90 minutes:

Dear Benjamin & James,

Thank you for your recent inquiry about our Needles Case Management System!  This email contains a link to download a FREE trial version of our software. The technical specifications can be found on our website, and a price sheet is included as an attachment to this email for your review.

Download to Needles Evaluation Software: http://www.needles.com/files/NeedlesEval.exe

Please note: Local Administrator Rights are required to install this software.

If you would prefer a guided tour, we are available to showcase the program through an online meeting. After you have had the opportunity to review the demonstration software, we will reach out to answer any questions you may have.

Please feel free to call or email me anytime regarding our product. Thank you again for considering Needles as your case management software solution.

Sincerely,

Joe Zanta
Sales Manager, Needles

What?

This looks like the same form email one might send after getting an online form filled out. No recognition of our practice areas, the specific questions we had (and the promises he made to get back to us with the answers to our specific questions), and I didn’t introduce myself to him as “Benjamin.” Moreover, he had just given us the “guided tour” the day before. This email does not help him move the ball forward.

How hard would it have been to write:

“Dear James and Ben,

Great to meet with you and Alicia yesterday; sounds like you have an awesome thing going there at BenGlassLaw. I know you all said that you were in love with Infusionsoft, and it’s a great product, but I think you’ll find that Needles will give you that extra little push to get to the next level and I’m confident that the efficiencies that it creates will make it pay for itself before your first anniversary as owners. I’ve attached….”

Contrast that with the email(s) I got from a company called “Survival and Cross” after I bought a $10 jump rope. (Because at CrossFit, it’s good to have your own custom-length jump rope so that when you are learning to do “double-unders,” you don’t look like too much of a fool. I don’t think I had jumped rope in about 48 years when I started, but I quickly figured out ,“I gotta get my own jump rope.”)

Not only did I get a [non-standard] “thank you email” and a “congratulations you’ve made a very smart choice” message, but I also received a PDF booklet and an invitation to join their VIP club in order to get my Double Under Dominator eBook (which I promptly ordered because, yes, I want to dominate double unders in my CrossFit class!).

The 64-page book was delivered immediately via email.

When the jump rope arrived, it came with a cool window sticker that I could stick on my  car to show the world I was now on the “inside.”

All to sell a $10 jump rope???

No, of course not. This company is not going to become enormously successful by selling $10 jump ropes. They are going to become enormously successful by creating a raving fan who will (1) come back and buy more stuff because I’ll remember their name, and (2) I’ll tell other about it. In fact, I just did. (If you are looking, this jump rope IS awesome and I am getting to the point where I can do ONE double under!)

If this article doesn’t motivate you right now to ask your team to “print out our email sequences right now and let me take a look at them,” then I’m not sure why you are hanging around. Like, right now. Or this weekend. Just do it!

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