145: Intake Strategies and Emotional Intelligence with Brooke Birkey of Level Up Law Firm Coaching

We start with having a defined sales choreography. And a lot of people are resistant to scripting because they're like, I don't want to sound scripted. But what we use is what we call conceptual choreography, or conceptual script, and it starts with the greeting and thank you for calling 10 golden rules. This is Brooke speaking. How may I best help you today? We talk about posture, keeping your shoulders square, your head forward, so that it carries over to your voice, and then, of course, putting that big old goofy smile on your face, because it really shines through. So we all have that big goofy smile. So if you're sitting there listening to this, I want you to put on your biggest goofiest smile and think about that next time you pick up. I'm trying. I'm trying. Excellent smile, yes. And then, before we dive into gathering information, we want to let the caller know that we're glad that they called. So we call that empathy or confidence or assertion, whatever your term, it just sounds Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that you're having issues with your lead sourcing, but I'm glad that you called us. That's exactly what we do here. And then you move into contact information. So there's a very specific way to engineer your sales choreography so that it ends up converting we call that the consultative sales approach. There's some philosophies out there different philosophies, but basically, our three chunks are connect, qualify, sell, and if you can go in that order, then you should be in pretty good shape. Well, good morning, good

afternoon, good evening, whatever time you're listening to this podcast, welcome to the 10 Golden Rules of Internet Marketing for Law Firms podcast, hopefully like the signature intro. A few people were trying to do it for me at our conference, but we got a fun guest today, Brooke Berkey is a real rock star law firm expert. Her company is level up law firm business coaching, and we're going to get to Brooke in just two minutes. I just want to ask you a quick favor. If you like the podcast, go click the like button, and if you're watching on YouTube, please subscribe, or iTunes or podbean helps us a lot when we want to get great guests. And now the good news is a lot of guests are reaching out to us. We're able to bring awesome content to you each week on the podcast. And if you haven't seen our webinars, drop by the 10 golden rules YouTube channel, because we do a great monthly webinar. And kind of like the best topics that we cover in the podcast and the best experts that we meet throughout the industry, we'll put a couple people on a panel for the webinar, or I'll teach some new content about internet marketing for law firms or growth strategies for law firms. Definitely check out the 10 golden rules YouTube channel if you haven't been over there, 900,000 people can't be wrong. Brooke, exactly. Yeah. I was shocked the other day to find out we got into the back end of the statistics, and one of our webinars been viewed 90,000 times, and I was shocked that 900,000 views on the webinar. So that's awesome. I believe it. Yeah, so great to have you on and I guess we met three or four years ago, and we've done a few things. You were at 10 golden rules tgr live our 10 golden rules conference. Thank you for attending. We had a lot of fun. And just tell us a little bit about your journey and start there, and maybe get us caught up to level up, and then you can tell us a little bit about what you're doing today. Absolutely.

Jay, thank you so much for having me on and I really enjoyed the conference. It was fantastic. Anybody who hasn't been and is considering going next year, I highly recommend it. It's a good time. Thank you. So I have been working for attorney since I was 19 years old. And I started off as an office position in a real estate law firm, Title Company and mortgage broker, triumvirate type of situation. And I've worked for land use, personal injury, just different areas. And so I've always been very interested in the law, and I worked for a fantastic attorney in Washington, DC, named Frank Carney. And while I was there, I did every role, from intake specialist to case manager to staff manager marketing. He gave me a lot of opportunity to grow and learn new things that became a part of a mastermind. And so the interest in the business side of it began to grow. And

I went practice area was Frank, yet he

was personal injury, so mostly workers comp, car accidents and medical malpractice. Great. Yeah. So if you need any, any of those areas. Check out Donna ho Carney in the Washington, DC, great, great firm. So from there, from being more of a practitioner, I did some intake coaching at a great company, and then eventually went out on my own. One of the reasons that we feel so strongly about what we do is we've seen in law firms the need for emotional. Intelligence coaching and how it affects the bottom line. And so I learned a lot about emotional intelligence growing up. And I have a friend who taught me a lot, who is in the mental health industry. And so I saw the marriage of EQ, as we call it, and business, and how those things work together to increase revenue and reduce opportunity costs, and so that's why we say Inside Out revenue solutions, because we come from the inside, training your team members and emotional intelligence, helping them hone their skills and making a long term impact on your company.

So the tangible and obvious one is intake. And obviously, we focus a lot on intakes. Matter of fact, we were talking to client today, and we were going through how many leads they had, how many conversions they had, and then we listened to a bunch of phone calls, because Google records all the LSAs, and we use call rail, we record most of the phone calls for most of our clients. And there was a lot of, let's say, opportunities lost, putting, yeah, things from obviously, putting people on hold for two three minutes, and them hanging up, the most obvious of things, and then putting them on hold to get an attorney telling them, oh yeah, if you want to talk to your spouse and then get back to us and letting people off the phone, those are not best practices and conversions. Maybe start with the basics of intake. Because obviously, you're an intake coach, and as well as all the other areas, you help law firms. But maybe let's start there with some tips on basics for intake, and then maybe broad note to the emotional intelligence piece, absolutely.

So the problems that you described is, I call that reeling in the fish and then just throwing it back into the water. So yeah, you've got, like, a good one, a tarpon or whatever, and you've been fighting and you've been reeling it in, and you spend all this marketing dollars on it, and paying Google, paying your agency, yeah, and then you take the fish, and you're like, you know what? I think I'm just going to throw you back in the ocean, maybe I'll catch you again later. And that's one of the biggest issues that I hear from marketing people, is like yourself or marketing experts is that we bring in the leads, but the leads have to fall into a place where they're being reeled in and then caught. We don't want to throw them all the way back. So we start with having a defined sales choreography. And a lot of people are resistant to scripting because they're like, I don't want to sound scripted. But what we use is what we call conceptual choreography, or conceptual script, and it starts with the greeting and thank you for calling 10 golden rules. This is Brooke speaking. How may I best help you today, we talk about posture, keeping your shoulders square, your head forward, so that it carries over to your voice, and then, of course, putting that big old goofy smile on your face, because it really shines through. So we all have that big goofy smile. So if you're sitting there listening to this, I want you to put on your biggest goofiest smile and think about that next time you pick up.

I'm trying. I'm trying.

Excellent smile, yes. And then, before we dive into gathering information. We want to let the caller know that we're glad that they called. So we call that empathy or confidence or assertion, whatever your term, it just sounds Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that you're having issues with your lead sourcing, but I'm glad that you called us. That's exactly what we do here. And then you move into contact information. So there's a very specific way to engineer your sales choreography so that it ends up converting. And we call that the consultative sales approach. There's some philosophies out there, different philosophies, but basically our three chunks are connect, qualify, sell, and if you can go in that order, then you should be in pretty good shape.

I love that. Do you mind expanding Connect? Qualify, sell? Yes.

So connect is that starts with tonality. What does your tonality sound like when you pick up the phone? Is it? Thank you for calling 10 golden rules. This is Brooke speaking. How may I best help you today? Even if you have the most amazing greeting, full greeting, if you don't have the tonality, then your tone is going to be what people believe, rather than your words. I believe that 93% of communication over the phone is experienced through tonality, only seven through the words. So I'll play a game with you that I play with my students all the time. Ask me if I can borrow if you can borrow my car this weekend?

Brooke, I love your car. Can I borrow it this weekend? Sure.

Go right ahead. What am I saying?

You're saying like you're not gonna be able to find the keys.

So that's the passive aggressive version of the assertion, yeah. Or concession. Okay, try it again.

Brooke, I'm gonna be up in Fort Myers this weekend. Could I borrow your car? I. Yeah, sure, go

right ahead.

What am I saying? Yeah, zero chance. No

chance. So on one side it's sure, maybe I have a little bit of reservation, but yeah, sure, go right ahead. Yeah. And the other side is absolutely not a chance in Hell, yeah. But did my words change at all? No, no. Exact same works. So that's that connection piece is starting with the formality. I'm sure you've experienced some of that when you listen to recorded calls. All

right. So connect. Number one qualifies. Number two, yes.

So we connect through the tonality, through the gathering contact information, by saying something to them. I'm sorry about what you're going through if it's a PI case. So sorry to hear that, but I'm glad that you called us and then talking up the next step, if you're a receptionist, you know you're going to speak to the intake specialist next She's amazing. She's going to be able to answer some basic questions. We're managing that relationship all the way through, not just trying to send them through our process. The second chunk qualification is, if it I'm just going to use pi because it's easy and we both, we speak that language, qualification should be pretty easy. It's five case criteria, and it's where, when, extent of the injury, liability and insurance coverage. So that's pretty straightforward. If you've wandered off into policy information or driver's license number or date of birth, address and social security number, you've gone too far. You want to qualify the case first, and then we have what's called a sales crest that we don't want to overshoot. So there's a certain point of the conversation. I'm sure you've heard it when you're reviewing calls, where you can tell that the call has lost momentum, that they're starting to pull away, even though they've been pulled in, and that's what we call the sales crest. So we want to go ahead and qualify the call quickly, before we overshoot the sales press, and then once we know that it's qualified, we can pivot to sales we don't need to know policy numbers in order to qualify the case. That's ancillary information. Great, love it. Yeah. And then the sale. Third step is sales. That's great, yep. So you pivot to the sale. Once you know that it's something we can help with, then you say we can absolutely help you. Let me tell you about what it's like to work with us. We have this benefit. Here's what we do for our clients, and I encourage them to go look at their own reviews when they're building their value, to talk about what really matters to clients who have left reviews that will give you some information about what you can say about what it's like to work with your firm.

Great. I love it. And

there's a lot more where that came from. So if you're out there and you're interested, give me a shoot me an email, and I can tell you more. We actually do secret shopping for potential clients to get a diagnostic on their experience and then show how we can improve it. Great.

And is the secret shopping diagnostics. Is that something you'll do a la carte, like we could get you to do it for some of our clients? Absolutely. Yeah,

yeah. How's

that for us? How's that for a sale? On board job one is intake, and obviously mission critical for firms haven't put a lot of time and effort into that area, yeah, but talk about the emotional intelligence portion of that training and whatnot that you do, yeah?

So that's where it gets really fun and individualized. So all of my trainees or students, they take personality assessments, and I teach them how to read them. So the first step to gaining emotional intelligence is being able to understand how you're wired. And there's no right or wrong way to be wired. It's just that we're all very different. So one of the things that we measure is introversion versus extroversion. Introversion is really it's all about energy management. So introversion is if you gain energy by being alone or in small groups, and extroversion is if you gain energy by being around other people. And so if you're a really heavy introvert in an intake position, you're talking to people all day long, you're going to be really tired at the end of the day, versus somebody who's an extrovert, AND gates energy from doing that could be bouncing off the walls. So everybody has to manage their energy, right? And I teach, I have a special emotional intelligence matrix that I use to teach people how to understand where people are coming from and what their processing styles might be. For example, I like to use this example from when I was an intake specialist and my processing style is very straightforward, and I like a straight line. And so when I would get clients who are more circuitous or storytellers, then that would really irritate me. And so I had to learn it's not about how. I'm wired, necessarily? I have to adapt my natural wiring to somebody else, because they're the person I'm serving in this situation. It doesn't really matter that I am a straight processor. They are not, and so I had to figure out how to meet them where they're at. Does that make sense? Yep, 1,000% and we have all kinds like I have multiple different personality types that I categorize clients as. And this is not exhaustive, but it helps people understand. Everybody has had the rambling clients, and everybody has had the anxious clients. Everybody's had the angry clients, withholding the one that only wants to speak to an attorney, and so we have techniques to deal with those base categories that help them to navigate where their callers are coming from to get the best outcomes, and really focused on helping the caller achieve their goals.

I love it. So what are the other areas that can really move the needle? You called it inside out. Revenue solutions is what level up provides. Yes, you achieve that. The obvious one is intake. Because if you're throwing out the line, bringing in the fish, you got to bring in the fish, bring in the fish all the way, whether you're personal injury, family, like, whatever opportunities, wherever they come from, you've got to close those sales opportunities when they're qualified. Then even if you're a digital marketing agency, same thing. Got to close the referrals, the internet leads, etc. But what are some of the other areas that are perhaps less obvious than intake, where emotional intelligence can really move the needle.

So it's interesting. As I was I've been doing intake coaching and seeing a lot of success with my clients, jumping up in percentage points for their conversion rate, and really bringing in a lot of new cases. But as you and I and other business owners, know that when you have success in one area of the business, it can be a pain point for the other area of the business. And so what I realized is that the case management team needs similar coaching in order to deal with the new wave of business, so that everybody is operating under the same umbrella of expectations of how they treat clients. One of the problems that would pop up is that we spend all of this time wooing the client. I call it the wooing period. During the intake we are we're using the concierge model. We are calling them every day, maybe even twice a day. We are in hot pursuit of the clients that we want. And then what can happen is that once they sign up, then they drop off, and they're no longer getting that attention. They're no longer getting that treatment. And so we have to have our departments aligned between intake and case management to make sure that the same level of concierge experience that they're getting an intake is picked up on the case management side, and it also helps to deal with interdepartmental conflict. So sometimes case management side says, Why aren't you gathering all of the ancillary details about the case during the intake? And I'm over here pushing on intake is, don't overshoot the sales press. You can get that information later. You need to sign the client up and overcome their objections at the peak of the sales crest, rather than letting them fall off and become less interested. And so we have to work that out. We have to work out a system between the two departments. Is that everybody might not be perfectly happy, but we're focused on what's best for the business. That's what we look to. So that's that external focus. It's not what's best for one department or what's best for the other department. It's what is best for the business overall.

I'll give you a personal experience with exactly that. Someone said, Oh, we have to put a bell in your office. And when the sales people sell a deal, they ring the bell. And so we put a bell, and we rang the bell, and as soon as we rang the bell, like everyone's heads like, oh my god, more work. So that's a classic case of, we really have to systematize onboarding. And one, one thing we learned from our mastermind we're working with other niche, focused agencies, is you've got to get great at onboarding, and take onboarding away from the team that has to do the work, because when we onboard a new client, we've got to get their Google passwords and their Facebook passwords and their Google account and their website up and everything. It's a lot of work, but a lot of it's vertical, meticulous, pain in the butt, second factor authentications and things like that. Yeah, and it's frustrating for whoever's doing it and for the client at the same time. So we actually, our group has all decided we're going to do onboarding with someone other than the account team, so that when they meet the account team, at least the initial frustration is not there, and then hopefully. We can get the account team as excited as the sales folks who rang the bell to ring the bell for new client. How do you move the needle on emotional intelligence center?

So we talked to both departments, and we have a interdepartmental meeting, and what are your pain points? What are your pain points? And then redirect and focus on what's best for the business. Part of emotional intelligence, for me is giving people an opportunity to have buy into the solution. It's not just coming in and saying, This is what's best for everybody, and this is how we're going to do it. We want the team members to say, what about this? Or what if we did that? And and out of that can come some solutions, and we can supplement with additional solutions from the outside, like hiring additional we call hinge staff. They're not quite intake and they're not quite case management. They're the hinge in the middle. And that is more successful if you have the right systems in place, because you don't have the bias on either side of saying we don't want to bias on the side of sales and we don't want to bias on the side of client experience. We want to provide that one seamless expression of the law firm's identity and branding and experience to that client.

Sounds like what we're calling the onboarding team. So they're not sales, they're not account management and operations, which is the delivery of the product. Yep, the hinge. Okay, we'll call them the hinge. The hinge. The hinge, yes, and you just got, you gotta make sure you got a little oil in the hinge so there's no squeaky wheel. Oh, yes, I love

that. Yeah. And those are the systems and processes which they can be a part of building, yeah?

Definitely write down all those things, right? So we have a sales process, we have a onboarding process, we have detailed SOPs, standard operating procedures, and it's all in a software so those are best practices

from a leadership perspective, just being willing to come in and say, this could be messy for a while, and I'm not 100% sure how to do it. And so then that reduces the friction, the top down, friction of you're telling me to do something, and it's not quite right, and I don't know if I can speak know if I can speak up say, let's do this together. Let's develop this. I have the final say, of course, but I don't have all the answers. I

love that. I'm writing it down. This could be messy for a while. What was the second part of

it? I don't remember, but we'll work through it. We'll work through

it right, that kind of thing, essentially.

Yeah, right. We'll get it right eventually. Yeah,

that's fantastic. So I just start to say, I normally ask this question at the end of the conversation, but folks are listening to Brooke and saying, oh, man, this could help someone more. Oh, I wish our bosses hired Brooke. What's a really good introduction for you? Who's typically a great client for you to work with? Who are you looking to meet?

You know, it's funny, we can work with any size law firm, and because our programs are rooted, that nucleus is emotional intelligence, it can just be adapted and scaled for different sizes. So right now I'm working with a solo practitioner, and I've worked with 4050, people, law firms. I mean, it's more complex, of course, to scale up, but the programs are incredibly scalable. I enjoy both ends of the spectrum.

That's great, fantastic. So another question I love to ask the other consultants, like myself, we have a vision into 5060, law firms every month, and every year, like we see their numbers, we do their annual planning with them. And I see a lot of things that work across the board, and a lot of things that cause these folks problems and pain. And that's the one of the advantages of the consultant role is you get to give them advice. Hey, you're really hurting yourself here and here, your intake needs help. Call Brooke or your you want to hire. Call Aaron Anderson and folks that we always recommend. What are some of the core things that you see from the inside looking out, advice that you could give a firm? Maybe it's separate for a small firm and a larger firm that you would say, here's what the pain points that we see, and here's how you can save yourself a couple years and speed up your learning,

I would say, to look at your business from both the numbers perspective and from the Human Resources optimization perspective, and that sounds a little roboty, so I will, I'll drill down on this. I think a lot of firms, and rightly, are very focused on their annual numbers and what that story tells them, and that is half of the equation. I would say absolutely you have to have that. There's no getting around it. You have to have a scoreboard, you have to have metrics, you have to have all of that. And those are the clients that I work really well with on the bigger firms. Is that if you have all of that infrastructure in place, you have something to hold my training programs in, rather than just water leaking out of the boat. But don't neglect the other side. The one example I can think. Of is your paralegal says that she is she's got too many cases, she's got too much going on. We need to hire somebody else. Okay, possibly, possibly you need to hire somebody else. But does your paralegal have clear expectations about time management? Does she have training on client communications? One of the things that I hear from case managers and paralegals a lot is that the clients interrupt them all the time, and they don't necessarily feel permission to manage the conversation in a way that I would teach them to, or they don't have the skills, and so they just let the client go on and on. They're on the phone for 40 minutes. So there's a whole bunch of hours every week. If your team member, who you already recruited and vetted and love, has training to buy back that time, then after the training, find out if you need to hire somebody else.

There's a couple of client happiness applications, and we've interviewed both of them recently on the podcast a from Hona and case status is awesome. These are part of a growing suite of products that the client can actually get the status of their case, and they don't have to bug the paralegal, and if they ask a question in the app, which a lot of them would rather do than try and get someone on the phone, the apps write an AI response, and paralegal or the attorney can click yes and send it, or they can edit it and send it, or they can write their own response. And these apps have been super successful in reducing the number one bar complaint, which is my lawyer doesn't get back to me, doesn't tell me the status of my case. Yeah, you're familiar with those tools. And what do you think

I love, Hona, I don't know case status very well. I'm at the Badger conference, and they seem really great as well. But yes, part of what I do when I come in, and this is on the firms with probably at least a tier of management, I come in and do an assessment on the entire firm, and I start with marketing, and I'm from a client experience standpoint. I'm not a marketing expert like you, but I see the connection. And then we move through all the way through the client cycle. And so what one of the things that I'm looking for is, do you have humans doing something that a robot can do, well, like automations, like Hona? And do you have any robots doing something that a human should do? Either one is not good. So we don't want robots doing anything that requires nuance, so that the whole AI conversation gets a little bit tricky in that. But if you can supplement with automations and tools like Hona 100% I love it,

great. So we've come to the time of the podcast that those longtime listeners have heard 100 of these, and I love them. These are the short questions, the short one liners, if you will, and just give us quick answer. Do you have any apps or techniques that you use for personal productivity?

Yes. So the thing that has saved my life over the years is Google Tasks. And I know it sounds really simple, but it is so effective. When your emails come in, you can actually drag them over to a task and assign a due date so that it's not cluttering up your inbox, and you can assign it a priority, say that I don't need to deal with this until Thursday, then I'll drag it over to Thursday, and I don't even have to look at it until I see it again. It helps me keep track of things. It helps me remember to follow up on things. And it's just a very simple tool that I would highly recommend anybody use.

Love it. I'll check that one out. Do you have a personal wellness and fitness routine?

I don't know if I would call it a routine, but I'm a big salsa dancer. I love it. I'm out dancing all the time and social dancing, and then I also do individual styles like hip hop and street jazz and ballet and things like that. So I guess it would be more of a hobby than a fitness routine, but I'm definitely very active.

Dancing has a lot of positive endorphins, right? Yes,

yeah. What

about you doubles tennis? Oh, tennis is fun, yeah, and watching the first place Winnipeg Jets hockey team. So hopefully this is going to come out in a month, so hopefully we're doing still in the playoffs.

About your Canadian flag? Oh, that's right,

yeah. So in my background, if you're listening on the audio, I have an American flag and a Canadian flag. So I'm a Winnipeg Jets fan, so there's only, can only be one reason for that. I'm from Winnipeg, Canada, or I guess you could like one of the players, but I grew up watching a team and being a part of it. I worked for an ad agency. We did the marketing and everything. And then I moved to Toronto, then I moved to Florida, and was lucky enough to become an immigrant, the right way to this country, the expensive way with lawyers. No, I. A disrespect, but y'all made some money. And so I've been a citizen for many years now. So I always wanted one of those really great American flags on my wall, and so I found this really cool, retro looking American flag, and then it became a little bit politically charged a few years ago, and so I put the Canadian flag so now I can just tell my story, because I'm not trying to make a political statement, but I am very proud to be an American. I'm also proud to be a Canadian, particularly when it comes to hockey season.

And they are the flags are similar. Did you have them made at the same place? Yeah,

no, I found them online. They're just super cool, retro and painted flags. Yeah. All right, next up, best business books.

Best business books. I would say the business book that has had the most influence on me is by Pat Lencioni, and I'm going to totally blank on The

Five Dysfunctions of a Team or something? No, it was his

first one. I can see it in my head. I can see the I can see that picture, but I can't think of the name. You'll tell

us, and we'll drop in the show notes if it doesn't, yeah, but our EOS coach had us read The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Oh, what did you think of that one that was fantastic. I've read two or three of his books as well. I don't know which one's first.

Oh, the advantage. It's called the advantage, the

advantage. I don't think I've read that one, so I'll put it on the list. I think

it's his first one. It's, it's about organizational health, of course, but it breaks it down into really manageable bites for somebody that that's new. And of course, when I read it for the first time, and I tend to send a copy to my new leadership support, yeah,

that's great. Yeah, blogs, podcasts and YouTubes, what do you subscribe to? And it hits your feed, and you stop everything else, and you go listen to that podcast or watch that YouTube.

I don't really have anything like that. I tend to get stuck watching a lot of dance reels on Facebook.

Does it come up? Does it come up in your YouTube feed as well?

No, just on Facebook, but it's like the first thing that I see when I log on with Facebook, and it's can be anything from from somebody current to, like the mid 90s, and it's just dance videos. And I could spend an inordinate amount of time watching those. I've

got some dancers, and they always come up to Michael Jackson or Saturday Night Fever, and I watch them because they're great. And he keeps hitting them. What's your NFL or sports team?

Simone Biles,

okay, I'm a doubles tennis player, and for a while, my favorite sports team was by far and away, the Brian brothers, which are these American doubles they're both six foot four. They're identical twins, and Wimbledon multiple times they won the Olympic gold medal. And I loved watching these guys because they were just completely in sync. And my friend did a training course with them, and I got to learn their secret sauce. Clearly, they were my favorite sports team, but we Winnipeg Jets. Winnipeg bought the Atlanta franchise, and the Jets were

back. I really don't watch sports. I'm from Ohio. So I have to say the browns, even though I don't know if they're good or not, probably not, but I love gymnastics and anything the college meets stuff like that. I'll watch that. Yeah, that's

great. And we covered before. What's a great introduction for you? But where can we find you? Where can people get in touch with you? I

hope you do. Please do at level up law firm coaching.com level up law firm coaching.com It's a mouthful, I know, and my email address is Brooke, b, r, O, O, k, e, at, level up law firm coaching.com and seriously,

there wasn't a shorter domain available. I'm just kidding, level up law firm coaching.com Brooke, this was a lot of fun. I took a whole page of notes. So thank you so much, and I look forward to hanging out more in the future. Likewise,

thank you so much. It was my pleasure to be here.