Our recent tips focussed on the importance of having a sales process and script that anyone working in your firm can follow when the phone rings. We talked about capturing your sales process and about using scripts to politely screen out anyone who isn’t your ideal client. But, some of you have asked, how do you create the most effective script in the first place? And what if your scripts aren’t working?

This week’s tip: capture every sales conversation you have.

The best sales scripts are genuine, address client concerns, and demonstrate whatever it is that distinguishes you from your competition.

Your action item this week is to listen intently to what you say every time you answer one of these calls. Record the calls if your jurisdiction allows, or capture them immediately afterwards (dictate or take a few quick notes).

Then sit down with a cup of coffee and your stack of sales calls and ask yourself which ones worked. What were the key questions people asked and what were your best answers? What convinced people to hire you?

Use that information to create a new sales script or improve the one you’ve got.

Don’t be afraid to involve your team in this strategy. By giving them the freedom to improve the scripts, they'll feel confident when answering calls and won’t come to you every time they have a question.

The Tip in Action:

We recently had a Strategy Session that centered on intake. Strategy sessions are designed to give people direction as they’re starting to improve their practices. In this particular call, we focused on intake. The attorney was swamped, without enough time to answer the phone when potential new clients called. She also d felt like she was floundering when people asked questions about her fees and her process.

The solution: We advised her to think about the questions people asked in her most recent calls and write down exactly how she wants to answer questions, so she can create a starting script. Then, over the next few weeks, she's going to open that script and use it for every call. After each call, she’s going to tweak that script, keeping what works and improving what didn’t. After a few weeks, she’ll have a proven script that she knows will help her land her clients.  As soon as she's got her script ready, she's going to hire a receptionist service and get them to take over the incoming calls using her script.

By delegating the intake calls, she'll have more time to do revenue-generating work and she'll be sure that whoever answers the phone gives all the right answers. In short, she'll have an intake process that works AND a process she can delegate confidently.

Remember that even with a good script in place, there may be instances where answers aren’t immediately available for a potential client. That’s OK.  Include a line in your script to the effect that  you (or your intake specialists) don’t have the answer immediately  but you’ll find out and be in touch as soon as possible. The important thing is that you follow through on that promise.

Look out for next week’s Tip of the Week on building a profitable and productive law practice.