158: The Ten Golden Rules of Intake for Law Firms with Brooke Birkey and Jay Berkowitz

A lot of firms are thinking, Well, you know, I'm not the Ritz Carlton. I can't afford five star service. Well, I would argue that you can't afford not to have five star service, because everybody expects five stars on their Google rating. So the counterbalance is if you don't answer the phone, if you don't treat people with enthusiasm, if you don't manage their case with enthusiasm and professionalism, and if they're constantly calling you for an update on your case, and you're not proactively sending updates on your case, and you're not wrapping up their case with perceived efficiency, it's really hard to get those five star reviews. And selfishly, I want to train my firms to give five star concierge service, because I want my firms to get five star reviews. Because five star reviews help me give you great SEO, local SEO and and you need it too, because a lot of people are going to look at those calls. Well, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, whatever time this podcast finds you welcome to the 10 golden rules of internet marketing for law firms. Podcast, we have a very special guest today. It's not very often we get a two timer, but Brooke Berkey is back, and I'm super excited, because Brooke and I were sitting together at one of the many conferences we go to, and we were brainstorming, and I told her we were doing some 10 golden rules topics. And she said, Oh, I've got some great stuff. We could do the 10 golden rules of intake for law firms. So that's what we're going to do today. Quick mini commercial for tgr live. And Brooke's been to tgr live, our live conference called growth strategies for law firms. We've got everything lined up. The contract is signed. Some of the speakers are booked, and we're doing the first ever legal all stars live concert at the cocktail party. So we got some really cool stuff happening. It's March 16 and 17th. We're back again at the opal grand everybody loved the location. It's right on the beach in Delray Beach, Florida, in the very cool Del Rey area. If you haven't been on Atlantic Ave, the Ave has about 100 restaurants and bars. It's like super fun. Anyways, love to have you at tgr live information on 10 golden rules com and with that commercial in the books, Brooke, welcome back to the 10 golden rules of internet marketing for law firms podcast.

Thanks for having me, Jay, and I will second that everybody listening, you should definitely go to tgr live. It's a great time, and I'm very happy to be here.

Well, thank you. So if you haven't heard this format before, 2324 years ago, I wrote the 10 golden rules of online marketing, and I really liked 10 lists. And the genesis of it is in business. I used to work in corporate for McDonald's and Coca Cola, and I found if we can make the top 10 priorities for the year and work through them, it was a pretty manageable number. And one of the things we did at my last job at E diets.com we listed all of our tech projects that our CEO had come up with, and everybody at brainstorm, and we had 107 projects we're trying to do all at the same time. And we got them to agree to the top 10. And once everybody's on the same page, we got number one done right away. We launched the Atkins diet, and then we launched the E fitness product, and then we launched the Zone Diet. Because when everybody's focused on something, you can have tremendous success. So I love 10 lists, and I've created the 10 golden rules, and today we're going to do the 10 golden rules of intake. And we believe passionately in the importance of intake, and so we love working with professionals like Brooke Berkey, who is an intake expert. Brooke, if people didn't listen to your previous podcast, why don't you give us a super quick rundown on your background, and then last time we talked about emotional intelligence, so we really didn't get into Brooks wheelhouse, so go ahead and tell us a little bit about

yourself. Absolutely. Thanks, Jay. So what we do is programs that are rooted in emotional intelligence, as you mentioned, and we do recruiting more like an attraction vetting type of service we do curriculum based intake and curriculum based time management, client management, and EQ for legal teams. So EQ is at the center of everything, and it's it spiders out into all these other areas that can really increase revenue and decrease opportunity costs.

Love it. So let's get right into it. The 10 golden rules of intake for law firms. Golden Rule number one, give the user what they want.

Absolutely, give the user what they want. Yes, yeah.

And I'll expand on what the concept is, and then you can tell us a little bit more. So basically, what that means is when people, if people, come to your website, and I guess that's where a lot of interactions, but a lot of folks are going to be calling or even texting directly from Google now or from different online sources, but when they come to your website, you should have four options on your website, because different people are going to react and interact differently with your website, and you definitely want to find. Focus on calls. We do a lot of work with personal injury firms and consumer facing firms. Brooke does as well. You definitely want to get the folks on the phone if you can, because typically phone calls will convert that 20% 24% depending on your category. And when someone fills out a form a lot of times these days, you you call them back, and they don't even pick up the phone, and then you gotta text them, hey, this is the law firm. They don't even remember they filled out your form. And then in the middle in terms of conversion, are the chats. And we believe very strongly in having the web chat as an option. Because back to my point earlier, like a lot of people are just not going to call you one of our greatest cases ever. Unfortunately, a gentleman fell five stories off scaffolding a construction worker in New York, and his niece did the research. And so when she chatted with us, and we asked her, like, why did you do the chat? She said, Well, I wasn't going to call because it wasn't my case, and I wasn't going to fill out a form because I didn't want to get spammed, so you guys had chat. So she started chatting, and she's like, Oh yeah, my uncle fell flat store, and he's in the hospital and he's broken, like most of the bones in his body. The poor guy did survive. Thank God. So there's a definite there's 10 or 20% of people who are standing in line at a bank, they're at work, or it's not their case, and they're doing research for someone else, and chat is a window into that opportunity that they're just not going to call you or fill out a form. And then one of the newer things is text. And a lot of people are particularly younger audiences. They're texters, and most of the chat platforms now can facilitate texting, and it's it really functions like texting if you're on your cell phone. So basically, the AI in the chat is going to walk them through, Hey, were you injured in an accident? If it's a PI, yes, I was. Did you seek medical treatment? Yes, I did. Do you have an attorney? No, I don't. So it's going to walk them through and prioritize that opportunity. And we also said maybe AI is coming, and maybe there'll be sort of a comprehensive AI that recognizes you from other visits to this website or other websites. And, oh, hey Jay, welcome back. How can we help you today? Right? But that one's probably about three weeks away. So it's gonna Troy to step right

like a dystopian novel or something with every or the Jeff meet the Jeffersons. Or what the Jetsons? The Jetsons.

Yeah. It's funny. How many Jetsons things are coming true, right? Yeah. So give the user what they want. What does that resonate to you?

Yeah, I think the the core concept here is coverage, right? You have to have coverage in every way, or we call it multi modal coverage, to capture the lead in whatever way that it's going to come in and and so everything that you mentioned absolutely you should have that in place. There's the intake or chat box that we see all the time that are on the front of your website. I think engage also does that. There's more companies that do that as well. And there's also considerations like, Do you have a backup for your receptionist? And spent AI different companies like that, or Overflow. And so you just want to have this bucket. And no matter what kind of a lead it is, it comes into the bucket. But you absolutely have to have all of that going on in order to catch a

great lead in to Golden Rule number two of the 10 golden rules of intake for law firms. And that is 24/7 365,

oh yeah, pick up the dang phone. Yes,

absolutely. Number three. That's number three. Oh, 24/7 365,

go together. Yeah,

the concept there is you really have to have after hours now, particularly in pi, but I think in the other practice areas too, because so many people are just used to the internet being a much more virtual, interactive type of environment, and frankly, Google and AI and everything like that, and we're not just

trying to cater to the new technology. And you get the boomers and beyond that, only want to talk on the phone, and so they have

that if they call it night or on the weekend, if they see a commercial, and it might be for one of your competitors, but then they Google personal injury lawyer or family attorney near me, and they call you just have to be there. And the biggest reason that I say you have to be 24/7 365, these days is because of the LSAs, the Google screen, local service ads, really we see a definite fall off if you don't have 24/7, 365, and when Google starts tracking something, and with the local service ads, they're tracking how quickly you pick up the phone, they're tracking if you have any missed calls. And yes, you could schedule your LSAS to run nine to five, but you're just not going to get as much opportunity in the marketplace if you're not opened up. And a lot of the your competitors are saying, we're only doing nine to five, so you might as well open up in the evenings and take advantage of some of those opportunities. But if you're not, if you don't answer the phone, 24/7 they're tracking it now, and if they're tracking it in the LSAs, you're. My theory is they're tracking it in SEO. They're tracking it for Google Maps. They're tracking how quickly you pick up the phone, whether you're available 24/7 and they're favoring the people who are so Google's listening. 24/7 365, what say you Brooke and

Jay is that actually picking up the phone connected the human can they? They are tracking that specifically.

Yeah, they're tracking how many rings it takes you to answer, and they're actually scoring you on how well you you deal with the calls. And it's very important that you take the cases, because the AI is basically listening. And when someone, I'll use the car accident, example, again, someone's in a car accident, or they do a search for car accident attorney, they click on your ad, on the local service ads, your phone rings, Google is definitely tracking how many rings it takes you to answer and how you deal with the call. And so what we're coaching our clients to do is take all of those calls and say, well, thank you so much for calling. We can definitely help you with that case. We've helped hundreds of people with cases like yours. We get great results for our clients, and I'm going to help you personally, and I'm going to stay on the phone with you until we get you talking to an attorney, and we're going to take care of your case, and you show the empathy and you show the responsibility, and you're much better at talking about what you say, But Google's tracking, listening, scoring you so and so the pick, you know, we're leading it to the next one, which is pick up the dang phone.

So it's interesting. I focus in my training on marketing and sales integration. So you know, we're talking about building systems for intake, but also integrating the way that you build your systems for intake with marketing, right? Because you have to keep technology, yeah, Jay, what do you think is the best way to stay up on the technology between marketing and sales integration?

You know how I stay up on technology? I listen to a lot of podcasts, and for me, a great way to be sort of on the cutting edge is to create content. So sitting down with Brooke brainstorming and learning more about intake and creating content is great learning everybody has to be blogging and creating content these days. So you can't just sit back and listen to the 10 golden rules podcast, which I do highly recommend, but frankly, I learn as much from the experts that i i Look for the smartest people at conferences and best guests on other podcasts, and I invite them over here for you all and for but frankly, it's it's just as much for me. So let's get on to Golden Rule number three. Pick up the dang phone. Why is that so important?

Pick up the dang phone. So the caller wants you to pick up the dang phone. They want to speak to a human, many of them. So we talked about multi modal. But the people who are picking up the phone and calling you, they probably want to speak to a human as quickly as possible, and so it's important to come up within three rings, no longer than three rings. And I teach this little trick to my team members. Can I teach it to you guys? Yeah, please do okay. So if you're in the middle of something before you pick up the phone, and this is especially for paralegals who also do intake, ring number one, put aside all that you're working on. Ring number two, put a big old, goofy smile on your face, huge. And then ring number three, pick up with intention, be completely focused on what you're doing, and answer with empathy, and use your script and all of that.

That's a great point, and we kind of overlapped it to some of the things here that we talked about, which is, pick up the phone less than three rings, 15 seconds, Google's tracking. You no missed calls, and that's super important. Like you miss a call from the local service ads, you're on your way to going down the list, and if you were in the top two, you might already be in the third position, where people have to click more to see you. The other thing that's really important is you can't have any phone trees. So a phone tree is typically like if you're a new customer. Press one, if you're an existing customer. Press two, if you're a medical professional. Press three, for the local service ads, calls, and frankly, for any new incoming leads, you should go straight to your intake department. Yes, don't make them go through the phone tree. And for the local service ads, that's adding to your 15 seconds, and it's really hurting you in the algorithm, and it's pushing you down. You want to be right at the top of Google with those local service ads. And then fourth thing, no answering machines. By the same token, you go to an answering machine on a local service ad, and then you call those people back nine times out of 10 they've already taught on the phone with somebody else. Yeah, they know how to hit the back button on Google. Everybody knows today. So Golden Rule number three, pick up the dang phone.

Pick up the dang phone, and do it with intention. Be fully present. And if you don't pick up the dang phone, then have a dang answering service or. Overflow.

Good name that I'm thinking of starting my own answering service. Alright? Golden Rule Number 4333, follow up. And this is in particular for New York, LA, Miami, Atlanta, like the big, tough, super competitive pi markets. It's funny though, by the way, because everyone I talk to in new business prospects doesn't matter what market they're in the country. They say, well, our market's very competitive. Everybody feels like it. But trust me, yeah, if you're in the Midwest, you're not seeing the type of aggressive competition some of the bigger markets are. But what the three by three by three follow up is if you do miss one of those calls, or if somebody doesn't close on that first call, you want to have a three by three follow up. So that is the first day, three phone calls, three Texas and three emails. Second day, three phone calls, three texts and three emails. And you can do that as much as for the first week. And then the second week maybe go 222, and then the third week go 111, until they text back and they say, Hey, I've hired a lawyer, or please stop today. Yeah, so you want to evaluate your market. I mean, this is more for personal injury, which we know folks are going to make a decision relatively quickly. Some of the other categories practice areas, you definitely don't need to be quite as aggressive when you text, by the way, or sorry, when you call. So that that model says you call and then you text and say, Hi, this is Jay from such and such a law firm. You just filled out a form on our website. I'd really love to talk to you about your case and see how we can help you, and then I'm going to call you back right away. So one of the great things to do is call, text and call, and so many times we get those calls on our cell phones, we don't pick them up. If someone would text me and say, Hey, I'm trying to reach you from such and such company, and then I'm going to call you right back. I'd probably pick up the call if I'm available. So three by three for the big competitive markets, evaluate your markets. And let Brooke expand on that thought,

yeah, in addition to the 333, model, which in general, you should follow up until they tell you to stop. Did you hire another attorney? I want you to stop. Calling me. Okay, stop, but you can continue to follow up. Another tool that you can add to it is the CRM campaign. So I'm a big advocate of building out remarketing, so if you didn't sign them up for the first time the first call, then you have a drip campaign that they can go into that addresses psychographics, like for pi. What happens if you delay signing up with the right attorney? What happens if you delay signing up with an attorney at all, right? If you're vulnerable? What happens if you sign up with a mill and they take your case and they never contact you, right? Great point. You have to have this psychographic sensitive follow up. We call it remarketing, or sniper sales type of content, to really hone in on that. And it saves staff time too, because you have that extra follow up going on behind the scenes. By the

way, I love remarketing, not as big a fan of Sniper sales. I don't terms that are kind of like aggressive, like a drip campaign. I'm going to drip on you until you finally give in. Like, I prefer remarketing, just because I want positivity in my thinking. And the final thought on this one is, we've created a product called tgr Boomerang, if you're watching on video, over my right hand shoulder is the Australian toy, the boomerang. You throw it out and it comes back to you, and you can try and catch it. We've created a technology product called Boomerang if you miss a call. And by the way, every firm misses calls, even Morgan. Morgan has 800 agents. They miss calls because sometimes people hear the recording. This call is being recorded by Google, and they hang up, and that's a missed call. It doesn't mean Google is going to penalize you, like in the local service ads, they're not going to penalize you for it, but it is. It's classified as a missed call, and nine times out of 10 they're going to grab the phone number and it's going to be in the back end of your local service ads. So the technology grabbed the phone number. Google sent you the phone number. When you go into your back end, you can call them back, but a lot of times it's too late. Like we said, people go back to Google, they call the next guy on the list. So what tgr boomerang enables you to do is it immediately texts as the lead over to your intake team, and you can call them right back from that phone number, and you didn't even hear it didn't even hear it didn't ring, didn't hit your switchboard, but you missed a call. Technically, the call is grabbed by Google. It's sent to you by tgr Boomerang, and you can call them another thing boomerang does, if someone fills out a form on your website a lot of times that just goes into someone's email box. Well after five minutes, that lead degrades significantly. So again, we text that lead to immediately call the person back at 30 seconds. They're a little shocked and thrilled, and you've capitalized on a lead that might have gone dead. 333, follow up. Evaluate your market, not for every practice area, not for every geographic market you. And we've got a great tool called Boomerang to grab those misleads.

That's a fantastic tool. I like that. That's really great. Thank

you. Next up is our five star concierge approach. Brooke, you've been to some fancy hotels in your day, right when you go to the legal conferences. So what's the difference between the Holiday Inn the Ritz Carlton or the four seasons?

So the Holiday Inn is like self service. So you come in, you do your own thing, all of that is taken care of. You go to the Ritz Carlton in the Four Seasons, they're anticipating all of your needs. You don't have to ask for anything. And that's the kind of service we're looking for. An intake every single time is we're well choreographed. We're anticipating needs, understanding who you are and customization, right? You said earlier, the greeting, the redirect greetings, that, Oh, hello, Mr. Berkowitz. You know, that's the kind of thing that we want to let's say the receptionist picks up and they get the information. They transfer to intake. The intake is saying, well, Hello, Miss Berkey, and that continuity and experience,

yeah, my read on the five star thing, and I'm always amazed. We just were at one of the legal conferences and pulled up with the car, and they asked you your name, and they wrote it down on the check in ticket for your valet for the car. But then the guy at the door is, oh, hello, Mr. Mrs. Berkowitz. And then as we went to check in, oh, right over here is our reception, and you walk up. Oh, hello, Mr. Mrs. Berkowitz, they use their phone system, mic system, whatever, and immediately you are recognized for the rest of your stay there. And five star concierge means that they'll accommodate your every need. And in these hotels, the concierge even has, I think, a $200 problem solving limit. So something spilled on your shirt in the restaurant, they're taken care of. It's going out to a super nice dry cleaner, and they're getting your stuff back, and it'll be in your room before you know it. So the mentality of from the minute you call the firm you want to give five star service. Now, a lot of firms are thinking, Well, you know, I'm not the Ritz Carlton. I can't afford five star service. Well, I would argue that you can't afford not to have five star service, because everybody expects five stars on their Google rating. So the counterbalance is if you don't answer the phone, if you don't treat people with enthusiasm, if you don't manage their case with enthusiasm and professionalism, and if they're constantly calling you for an update on your case, and you're not proactively sending updates on your case, and you're not wrapping up their case with perceived efficiency, it's really hard to get those five star reviews. And selfishly, I want to train my firms to give five star concierge service, because I want my firms to get five star reviews, because five star reviews help me give you great SEO, local SEO and and you need it too, because a lot of people are going to look at those calls. So you called it cultivate congenial tonality. Want to explain that one, yes.

So the reality is that if you don't script it teach it and reinforce it. It's not going to happen. You can't just tell your intake team members. I want you to behave like the Ritz Carlton. I want you to anticipate needs. You have to give them a script that they can follow. And we call it a conceptual script, because the concepts are what we want them to master, not the actual text. But there's five or six bullet points on our script that have to do with that engagement, that hospitality, tonality, it's all a part of the training. And so they have to have something that they can review, that they know how to follow it, and you have to have the same expectations for everybody. That's another thing about the Ritz Carlton is, no matter who you're talking to, they all have the same training. They're all treating you with that white glove service. And so my biggest takeaway from this is, if it's not down on paper then reinforced through training, it's not going to happen.

Have you ever seen the Ritz Carlton huddle? No, there's a great book on the Ritz Carlton service. Yeah. Highly recommend it. And also, when you if you're at a Ritz Carlton, you want to sit in on a huddle, because they do them out in the open. I remember in sat in on one and the gentleman welcomed me to be there in the restaurant. And they did it about three o'clock in the afternoon. So between the busy lunch and the start of dinner, and there's 14 Points of service. I could be wrong. It could be 17 in the Ritz Carlton, and I think they're 17, they call them gentlemen and ladies, or whatever it is, and they address one of the points of service in every meeting, and the manager will either call out someone who did something great or address something that they think they need to shore up on a little bit, and everybody knows all of the points of service. CPS, any staff member, they know him by heart. It's kind of the same approach we take with our EOS core values, where we we use our core values to recognize the good work by our employees. You want to touch on just a couple more thoughts. You. Under actually managing the call with five star concierge approach?

Yes. So it starts with hospitality, tonality and engagement, and then next is taking control the conversation using empathy, asking your qualifiers, which we'll get to, making a clear delineation. We take, we can take your case and then building a value proposition why you should work with us. And that's the that's the five star experience, and it's buttoned up by reviewing the retainer with the caller in real time in ways they can

understand. Great. All right, so we got through the first five quick review, give the user what they want. 24/7, 365, pick up the dang phone, three by three by three, follow up and five star concierge service and Golden Rule Number six, the 10 golden rules of intake for law firms is conversation, not interrogation. Brooke, let me take this one.

Yeah, if you've ever listened to intake calls, which I do a lot of, and Jay, you do a lot of, you've heard the interrogation, right? It's, who are you? And then let me just ask you a whole bunch of questions about your life, but you didn't build that relationship. So let's say you and I were doing an intake and you were injured. And I said, Okay, all right. Where were you, okay, when did it happen? Okay, are you injured? What's your injury? And I'm being funny a little bit. But what do we really hear this in real intake calls, okay, did you call the police? Okay, do you have insurance? And so just

banging off a checklist.

I mean, goodness, it's but you're speaking to a human right, that human wants conversation, and your priority is to get the information, but their priority is to be heard and understood, so you have to make it conversational. Oh, you were injured on Atlantic Avenue. I'm so sorry, but there's a lot of traffic over there. You said that happened yesterday. Okay, well, that's really recent. How are you feeling? Right? You have to make it into a conversation, not an interrogation. Yeah,

I was going to add that you're talking to a human, but you're also talking to a human who's in a negative, emotional experience. And I really need the empathy and the caring to know that you understand. You said, succinct, clear is a part of it?

Yes. So the essential intake is five pieces. We'll just do personal injury to make it easy, where, when extended the injury, liability and insurance coverage. So that's really succinct. You only really need those five pieces of information in order to qualify the case. And if you're properly trained, then you can balance those case criteria against each other, and know, okay, it's $100,000 case, but there's only $60,000 worth of insurance. It's still a good case, but it might go from an a case to a B case, right? If liability is clear, and so that that clear, succinct piece just means that we're not working up the case while we're doing the intake. We're not getting policy numbers, we're not getting specific medical treatment information. We're not getting declaration pages, any of that we don't need that to qualify the case. We say, just sell it, right? Just do it like Nike. Just sell it. We're only getting those pieces of essential information. And then we say, we can help you. And then if there's time, after they get the contract signed, then we go back and work up the case.

Great. So number six, conversation, not interrogation. Yes. Number seven, measure what matters. Great. Book by John Doerr, I think, is where I'm quoting this term from. And one of my clients, Jeff McDonald, runs their whole firm on measure what matters. But really what we're talking about here is getting the important numbers. And so it's surprising how many times I talk to a prospect and I ask them, how many leads do you get, and how many cases do you sign in an average month? And I would say at least 50% of the time people don't know that number, yes, and at the very minimum, those are critical numbers you need to know for your business, because you need to study, analyze and improve. Another great quote is, what you measure gets attention and improves, yeah, what you measure gets attention and improves. And so if you're measuring how many leads you get, how many are calls, how many are forms, how many are chats, how many are coming in from walking in the door, whatever. And then what's your conversion percentage, and have you improved this month over month? It gives you a real indication of areas where you can get some improvement. So what you measure gets attention and improves. So very important to measure those key numbers, and we give all that to our clients in a simple shared Google Sheet, and that we give them all the calls. We download it from call rail, or you. Of the other tracking services that they use, and then they can go in and tell us, okay, this guy signed on. This is a case. This is a case. This is pending. And then we look at the numbers, we know how the campaigns are performing, and particularly where you're spending money. We need to know paid Google ads, paid sponsorships on some of the legal sites, the local service ads we want to evaluate. Okay, here's how many leads we got. And of course, it begs the question, what's the cost per lead? Here's how many sign and what's the cost per case. And frankly, those are the critical numbers on the marketing side for any law firm, I would say, for the most critical but there's probably on the case side, there's probably critical numbers too, but those are the things I need to know, and those are the things you need to know to help me improve my performance. Because obviously, if I know something's not working, I'm going to dig deeper and fix it. And for example, if the conversion percentage is too low, Brooke is my first phone call. I want her coaching my clients, teams measure what matters. You said, just the stats. Ma'am, just the

stats, man. And we take that over to sales as well. And we believe that marketing and sales are are on the same spectrum, right? But there's different things that we need to measure. But at the end of the day, from our clients, we always get the wanted leads, the conversion rate. We want to know what is going on with marketing, not just sales. It's not just what's the conversion rate and how many signups Do you have? It's like, how many wanted leads were there? And so we take that data too, and we track that for our clients, because it's really important we that we have the whole picture even from the marketing side, because the conversion rate can change depending on the leads, right? So if there were a whole bunch more leads that month, and the conversion rate goes down, that's not a sales performance thing. That's just an adjustment in the actual input. And so we look at all that too,

yeah. And here's another valuable stat point. A lot of people have said that, oh, we convert 97% of all the cases we want. And that number would be very high. Yeah, it's often very flawed. For one thing, if you're measuring your intake team on that, they're not going to tell you about the cases that they wanted that got away. So they're going to say, Oh, we really didn't want that one because she was whatever this or that. Really, you kind of track everything and then try and improve it. You want more referrals. What can you do about that? There's lots of things you can do. You can communicate with your past customers. You can make better relationships and more relationships with referring professionals. You can obviously improve your marketing, improve your digital marketing, then improve the quality of the leads too. Golden Rule Number Seven of the 10 golden rules of intake for law firms is measure what matters Absolutely. Golden Rule Number eight, the value sandwich. Take it away.

The value sandwich is what you should eat before you sign up a client. So it's the first piece of bread is the unique selling propositions that you have in order to introduce why you should come on board with us. The meat in the middle is the extension of the contract and the reviewing the contract. And then the other piece of bread is the value withheld until they sign up with you. It's very important to have the entire sandwich in place, because if they don't know the value withheld, if they don't know, for example, what are the dangers of going with the mill firm and having that lack of communication? What are the dangers of being unprotected and given a statement to the insurance agency, things like that that they just don't know about they and so that's what we say, the value sandwich, first piece of bread, your value here's the contract. Second piece of bread, what you could lose if you don't come with us?

I love it. That's a great one. Anything more on that? Or we jump right into Golden Rule number

nine. I would just say, Just do it, because the value sandwich is the hardest for intake specialists to remember to do. So that's the one to really focus on reinforcing.

That's the advanced coaching. Is it? Yes, yeah. Okay, great. Golden Rule Number Nine. Explain it to your grandmother.

Alright, so this is on the coaching side as well. I'm sure you've heard this, Jay, when you reviewed calls, when they send the retainer, either not explaining it at all or explaining it in legalese that doesn't really make sense to the normal person. And so the first mistake you can make is just sending it and not staying on the phone and reviewing it with them in real time. And the second mistake you can make is not explaining it as though it were your grandmother. So just think about yourself sitting across the table from your grandmother, and your grandmother says, Honey, what should I do about this contract? And then you say, Okay, let me tell you. And just break it into chunks so that the first chunk is usually the scope, the second chunk, if we're staying on personal injury, is usually the fee. The third chunk is usually the costs. And then the fourth chunk is usually limitations, what we're not responsible for. And so if you can break it into those four chunks and explain it like it was your grandmother, you'll be in good shape.

I think you have a lot better granny voice than I do, too.

Come on, let's hear your voice. I

might in a minute, but you said, Don't show off your legal knowledge. And I think that's a really important one, because even if a lawyer tries to dumb things down, they rarely get it down to my level. Here's another good tip. Chat TPT is great. You can actually take a script and, say, Write this at the eighth grade level, and that's probably about your granny's level too, unless your granny's, like 62 in sharpest attack, which a lot of but don't show off your legal knowledge. And when you think you're dumbing it down as an attorney, you're maybe getting it down to, like, the graduate level. But the average customer out there who doesn't know a lawyer, and that's a big point, that the folks who do know a lawyer are the kind of people who've done commercial contracts, they've had an employment contract, they've hired people and had attorneys. They've bought buildings, they bought homes. The kind of people who know a lawyer generally have that bigger vocabulary. The folks who call you from the internet are generally not the bigger vocabulary. Folks don't leave it to them to read on their own. I think you covered that off and talk to them like a normal human.

And the other part is you can't give legal advice as an intake specialist. So that's another reason why the chunks are so important, is you're not reading the agreement and then explaining exactly what it is. It's a way of getting around it so that you're not giving legal advice. You're saying this part is about this part is about this, not reading it and then explaining it. Does that make sense? Yeah,

1,000% and right now, I know there's someone who's like, on a bike, and they're like, in the gym, and they're like, oh my god, can you get to the end please? They don't want to fumble. They don't want to change and find another podcast. So good news for that one guy, because waiting for Golden Rule Number 10 and Brooke, I'll let you hit Golden Rule Number 10 of the 10 golden rules of intake for law firms, do

not let the fish off the line. Okay. So this is a great marketing concept. You have spent all of this time and money and detail and acquisition analysis and all of this just to get someone to raise their hand and say, I'm interested in your firm so the intake process is like having a fish on the line and you're reeling it in. So many times I see people just pick up that fish and just throw it right back in the ocean because they don't have a date, certain follow up, or they don't have clear closing techniques, or they don't know how to overcome objections, so don't throw the fish back in the water, just reel it all the way in.

That's a great point, and far too many folks will let someone go. We've developed a GPT, a custom AI that we're analyzing calls just to give our clients a quick run through. And we've developed a bunch of proprietary information about what is expert call analysis, some of which is from Brooke's training that she's done for us on the podcast and at tgr live or live event and whatnot. And then we read in about 20 calls from the client. And we say, give us what the intake professional did well and what they could improve on. And we get tons of stuff that they can improve on. One thing that comes up over and over and over is you can't let them off the phone. You've got to, like you said, You've got to try and get them to sign digitally with a DocuSign or another online signing, get them to say yes, at the very least, even Okay, I'll do it even if I want to check with a husband or wife or mom or dad, or whatever it is. So Golden Rule Number 10, don't let the fish off the line. Alright, we made it. I'm going to do a quick review, because we're right in on time. Golden Rule number one of the 10, golden rules of intake for law firms, give the user what they want. Number 220, 473, 65 number three, pick up that dang phone. Number 4333, follow up, depending on your market and your practice area, number five is funny enough, five star concierge service, and then number six, conversation, not interrogation. You want to treat them like a human and have a conversation, and don't make them feel like you're checking off a checklist, even though the really good intake departments give their professionals a checklist number seven, measure what matters, very important that you get the stats. And I added my coach, Josh always tells us what you measure, gets attention and improves. And so if you look at the numbers with your team, and you hold them accountable to improving month over month. Guess what? It's going to happen? Because you're giving it attention, and you all are focusing on working on it. And number eight is the value sandwich. Sum it up again for us quickly, bro. That was a good one,

unique selling proposition, contract, value withheld. Number

nine. Explain it to your grand. Mother and number 10, don't let the fish off the line. Brooke, great job. That was really, really fun and really, really good. I think it'll be helpful for

folks, right? Yes, absolutely. I enjoyed it as well. Yeah, we always

wrap up with the quick one liners, but since you've done it before, we'll do it super quick. Any new best business books,

the hospitality book. I haven't read it yet, but it's on my list of books to read next, so I'm looking forward to that

one. Awesome and how about blogs, podcasts and webinars, anything catching your attention these days that we didn't talk about last

time? Oh, of course, 10 golden rules and law firm blueprints. I listened to a good one the other day about recruiting that was really interesting. And they don't teach this in law school.

Love Charlie MAN Yeah. Matter of fact, I was lucky enough to be on the Charlie Mann podcast. They don't teach this in law school. Brooke, this was lots of fun, as always, I look forward to maybe number three. Maybe you'll be I could be our first three timer. I don't know. Let's aim for that. I haven't done the math, but thank you so much for your time and everyone. Hope you enjoyed and if you did, please give us a five star review and subscribe. If you want to get more content like this, whether you're watching on YouTube or listening on iTunes or podbean, we'd love to have you take a minute to do that. So with that, we're out. Thanks. Brooke, all right. Thank you. Bye.