Turn Calls/Inquiries into Signed Retainer
Agreements and Cash in the Bank… Remotely
interviewer We’re getting ready to finish up. I have one more question about clients and then we’re finished. Haven’t you noticed that special clients speak to you differently or interact with you differently or just treat you differently now, that you’re marketing to them this way and you’ve changed things up?
Robert We don’t let the inmates run the asylum. That’s a conscious effort that myself, as the lawyer, has made. You make things clear right off the bat. As you’ve said, I don’t do free consultations. Nor do I do consultations anywhere but in my office in Richmond. That’s something I set down. If people don’t like it they can go to another lawyer. Just today, I met with someone who drove an 1 hour and 15 minutes to meet with me.
On Friday, I’ve got a case in Bedford County, Virginia, which is close to Roanoke. That person drove two-and-a-half hours just to meet with me and pay me $400.00 for a consultation fee. Those are the things you dictate. Clients will often say they see Yellow Page ads that say available nights, weekends, et cetera. Really? That screams desperate for any work. Can you get your surgeon, if you try to call the office even during business hours? Absolutely not. Can you set up an appointment with a surgeon by saying “Hey, I’d like to come see you 10:00 on Friday, or can I come on a weekend”? Absolutely not.
Because lawyers let themselves do that, if a client says “I’d really like to see you on a night or weekend” I say “Look, the clients who I’m willing to accept, the clients who I will let hire me are clients who realize their case is so important that they make time during the business week to come sit down and talk to me about it”.
Also, sometimes I will have clients who hire me on the reckless driving speeding. The exception, I can count on one hand the number of people who actually come in and meet with me on appointment. Whereas for DUI, that is the rule, that they come in. Sometimes they’ve been referred by someone else who I’ve gotten a great result for and they say “Look, I’ve already made up my mind. I want you to take care of me” so I will do it that way.
interviewer Cool. I’m sure some of the listeners may be skeptical. Some may be ready to learn from you and talk to you more. Some have questions. I’m sure a lot of them do. What should interested attorneys do right now to get more information about you, your coaching, your marketing method?
Robert As I’ve said, Ben Glass started out “Great Legal Marketing” just mainly for personal injury lawyers. But over time, people like myself, and in other niches have really done incredibly well in terms of what we’re doing. So Ben has expanded. He’s got “Great Legal Marketing” and the niches are that I had the DUI niche.
There’s a lawyer who does divorce for women only. He has shown that by niching that way, his practice has exploded. His name is Charlie Hofheimer. He does the “Great Legal Marketing” family law niche.
There’s an estate planning niche, a bankruptcy niche as well with some amazing lawyers like Dave Freeze and Jim Brown. If people would like to get into the “Great Legal Marketing” niche coaching, which is where I will reveal everything to folks, you can go to greatlegalmarketing.com and look for the niche. They’ll actually send you some free information. Ben Glass, his book is available on Amazon. For less than $10.00 you can get the Kindle version on your iPad or Kindle. That has a lot of links to valuable video.
If you want to contact me directly, bobbattlelaw.com is my website. Bob@bobbattlelaw.com. The biggest thing I want to emphasize to people is that one of the things I’ve realized is you need to hang around with winners. You don’t want to hang around with the whiners who are saying “Business sucks because of this, that or the other thing”. There’s a great quote by Jim Rohn, the famous motivational speaker. He was Tony Robbins’ mentor. He said “You are the product of the five people you hang around with the most”. That’s the greatest thing about getting involved with this marketing program.
The great thing for me, is as you said, when you were talking about those letters at the beginning, Richard, the reason that resonated is because that could have been me. It’s horrible in this area. I have been incredibly successful, successful beyond my wildest dreams. One of my goals from this year was to go from success to significance.
This is something I heard Doctor Mehmet Oz talk about in a “Success Magazine” article. When he talks about significance, he talks about sharing what you know with other people. I have seen, in this area, two former prosecutors commit suicide. I have seen a lawyer who had hired me right out of law school get disbarred. I have seen another Harvard educated lawyer, who was a good friend of mine, actually because he got his ticket taken away and was suspended from practice, develop a crack cocaine habit and get murdered by a crack dealer. I can just go on, horror story after horror story. I kept saying to myself, “That could have been me”.
Really, even though this year, my numbers for the first quarter, last year was another record year for me. I’m up by 22% in the first quarter in 2012. But I still actually have been freaked out, and I mean this. I really want to share with people because I have been where you people are and I have been to one too many funerals of good people who basically got so desperate they saw no way out other than to end their own lives or start smoking a crack.