Integrity Marketing

Automated Client Intake: Creating a Great Customer Experience

I thought last week might turn out badly.

Recovering from pneumonia, Thursday was my first day out of the house in more than a week. I went to Denver (about a 90-minute drive from the Ranch) to serve as a guest lecturer at Colorado Christian University. Little did I realize that the campus would be nearly deserted by the time I arrived. I was slated to teach a 300-level marketing class at 1:40 p.m. on the last day before Thanksgiving break!

Trudging across the vacant campus, I thought about all of the other things I might have enjoyed doing on this beautiful fall day, instead of driving to speak to an empty classroom. I was surprised to find a full classroom! Every single student showed up! We had lively interaction and several students stayed long afterward to ask questions in a discussion that ranged from the ethics of marketing to their fears about the job market. You can read more about their insights on Digital Marketing for Professionals here.

I won’t lie, though. Pneumonia will kick your butt and by the time I was ready to drive home, I was completely and thoroughly exhausted. Knowing I had to catch a 6 a.m. flight the next morning out to Newport Beach, CA to speak at the NAELA Summit … well … I thought it might all go badly.

NAELA Summit 2017

I arrived at the conference hotel around 10 a.m., feeling surprisingly well. It was great fun meeting up with old friends like Lisa Briley (InterActive Legal), John Shickich (ElderCounsel), and Tom Caffrey (Premium Software).

I was scheduled to speak at 4:30 p.m. on Friday afternoon – the last session before the weekend! As the day wore on and the crowd thinned out, that same feeling of dread I’d experienced the day before at CCU started to take over. I thought about all of the things I might have been doing instead of flying to California to speak to my own sales staff and a few of my closest friends!

And then a funny thing happened.

As I approached the podium, the room started to fill up. At first, just the front seats. And oh boy, was I relieved to see those early-arrivals! Before I knew it, the room was full. Then it was standing-room-only, and then people were filling up the doorway and spilling out into the hall.

Where did all these people come from, and why were they crowding in to hear me?

After a brief introduction, I asked two questions that would solve the mystery.

1. “How many of you have a client intake process?”
   Every hand in the audience went up.
   
   
2. “How many of you love your process and think it delivers a great customer experience?”
   Not a single hand in the air.

For the next hour, I shared what we have learned are the essential elements of success when implementing an automated, online client intake process. Then, from 5:30 until almost 8 p.m., we visited with attendees anxious to learn more.

Sure, I was exhausted. But what a great day!

Key Takeaways About Client Intake for Estate Planning and Elder Law

My takeaways from the experience?

• Client intake is a vital, but challenging issue for estate and elder law attorneys
• Most intake processes are broken and woefully outdated
• Improving the intake process for both the client and the law firm is a high priority

For those who were not able to attend the NAELA Summit, I have agreed to host a webinar on the same topic.  I  hope you will join us!

Automated Client Intake: Creating a Great Client Experience
12 noon (Central Time), Nov 28, 2017 

https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/969357325705561858

In the digital age, client intake is key to new client engagement as well as practice efficiency. Sadly, most intake processes are broken, and automating a broken process just means you can fail faster than ever! In this session, Jennifer will show a process that works, define some of the key characteristics of an ideal client intake process, and address issues of concern for elder law attorneys, such as data security issues, intake automation, process efficiency and case management integrations. 

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

Related articles

Elder Law Client Intake in the Digital Age: Special Presentation at the NAELA Summit 2017

The One Thing to Know About Client Intake in the Digital Age

May is National Elder Law Month

May is National Elder Law Month and an occasion for community events and client outreach. Many elder law attorneys use May as an opportunity to give presentations to local community groups, hold open houses or participate in local bar association activities for the community.

Consider National Elder Law Month as a great reason to reach out to local media with information specific to seniors and elder law issues. If you registered for our April 5 webinar on how to get the media to help grow your practice, you know how to make this happen. If you missed it, register to “Get the Media to Help Grow Your Practice”now.

You may want to reach out to your local elected officials and see if they will provide an official proclamation marking the special month and noting you as a leader in the area. This usually requires you to write up a description of National Elder Law month, why it is important and what related activities your practice does to help the community. It is printed with an official town seal and often presented at municipal meetings. Call your local town hall and ask to speak with an aid to the highest elected official. They will have done this before and will be able to walk you through the process.

If you are already doing an event in the community, make the most of it. Let clients and prospects know by using the E2 CRM. If the event is open to the public, you may want to invite clients. Even if they do not attend, you will have reminded them that you are a leader in the field and that you are doing good work out in the community.

Many attorneys open their doors to the community for seminars, where attorneys and associates give presentations on issues of concern to seniors. Free information kits are good to have on hand for these events (the IMS design department can help you in creating kits, brochures or any printed materials you need). Use this time to offer seniors a free consultation as a follow up to the program. Considering offering your event in two ‘sessions’ – one in the morning and one in the afternoon – so that you control the time frame.

If you’d like some further ideas about how to promote your practice with National Elder Law Month, send us a Support Ticket and we’ll be happy to discuss some ideas that are right for your practice.

Only Three Spots left for Legal Marketing Boot Camp!

Want more insight on how to grow your practice and your profits? Register for our Legal Marketing Boot Camp,  June 8 – 10 in Kansas City. Your estate planning practice is ready to grow – we will show you how to make it happen!

 

Elder Law Website Design: Is Your Website Just an Idle Engine?

James and I just returned from a great week at the NAELA (National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys) Annual Meeting in Las Vegas, where we had the high privilege of visitng with members about elder law marketing and practice development. During those discussions, we often turned to this graphic to show how an integrated marketing system should work.

Properly deployed, your website is an extremely powerful marketing tool. It should attract qualified prospects, establish rapport, build trust, and begin the process of converting visitors into new clients. With these jobs in mind, it should be designed to be user-friendly, welcoming and engaging. It should be properly optimized for key search terms that are relevant to your prospective clients. And it should lead the visitor into an ongoing relationship, whether through a newsletter subscription, a visit to your blog your Facebook profile, a workshop registration, etc. Remember, the longer your visitors linger on your website, the more likely they are to become new clients.

But, no matter how well-designed your website, it simply cannot stand alone. If you have a "solitary" website, you already know this. Many of those who came to visit with us last week were looking for something they could "add" to their website that would make it start working. They said things like, "I already have a website that I sorta like, but it doesn't bring us any business." They wonder whether adding a newsletter or an e-newsletter would jolt their website to life.

The truth is, effective marketing begins with the end in sight. A website designed to stand alone cannot be magically transformed into the hub of a strategically integrated system. It would be like trying to put a turbo-charged engine into a Ford Focus. Oh, it might fit under the hood (and then again, it might not), but there is more to it than just shoving a new engine under the hood. And even if you could get the engine to run, the body of the Focus is not built for speed. The best you could hope for is one hot mess!

If you want to reach your destination, why not stop shopping for an engine? You will get there much faster if you just buy the whole car.

James recorded a short video that may tell the story better:

 

NAELA Annual Meeting -- How Do You Define Elder Law?

James and I are packing our bags and heading off to Las Vegas today! No, it's not to feed a gambling addiction ... running a small business today is enough risk-taking for me, thank you! We are heading off to the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys' (NAELA) Elder Law & Special Needs Annual Conference.

Integrity Marketing is a big supporter of NAELA, which we observe is one of the finest supportive organizations in the legal field. Their annual meeting provides Elder and Special Needs Law professionals an unparalleled opportunity to learn, network, and engage with leaders within the field. The focus this year is on current legislation, changes in tax code, and updates in health care reform and case law.

Many of our clients are NAELA members. When I meet with a new client, I always ask them about elder law -- and the answers I get back are quite varied. It seems "elder law" means something slightly different to nearly everyone. Some see "elder law" as primarily crisis Medicaid planning. Others see it with almost a social-work mentality -- helping families choose care providers, sift through housing options, obtain health care powers and guardianship if necessary.

I spoke to a new client a few weeks ago, though, who provided the answer that I liked best. She said, "I don't consider Elder Law and Estate Planning distinct areas." She went on to explain how, in her view, comprehensive estate planning will encompass elder law and Medicaid planning ... and elder law cannot be practiced properly without an eye toward estate planning. I liked that, and repeated it to another new client who said he did not "do Elder Law."

He said his main practice focus was traditional estate planning -- wills and trusts. But he said his "ideal client" is typically age 55 to 60, and often comes to him initially because of issues relating to their aging parents. "What prompts them to call me is usually something that has happened with their parents. They need to protect a family farm or business interest from Dad's nursing home expenses."

So, I said, you do practice Elder Law. In fact, it's a big part of your marketing and practice development, because it's issues of elder law that are motivating new clients to call.

He just had never looked at it from that perspective.

As our population ages, issues of elder law are pervasive. They affect each of us in our own lives, and are a necessary component of any responsible estate planning.

If you have not yet, I encourage you to look into joining NAELA. It's a great organization, you can learn a lot -- and of course, you'll get out of it only as much as you put it into it. So, don't just join. Get involved. Chances are you are practicing "elder law" on some level -- NAELA can help you do it better!

Market Like a Marketing Company

 We are shooting videos tomorrow. We blocked off the whole day, even pulled Kyle out of his law practice and James out of his office. Just to shoot video.

Then, our videography staff will spend several days editing those videos and our web design staff will spend a few more optimizing, publishing and distributing them.

Last week, we storyboarded a new video commercial that we plan to take to the NAELA conference later this week.

One June 1st our videography staff & studio will move into new, dedicated office space -- breaking our nearly ten-year tradition of virtual officing.

Why? Why would we invest so heavily of our time and money into this new technology?

Because it works.

If you know Kyle and me, you know that we are both a couple of oldsters who grew up at a time when Print was King. Heck, when I went to journalism school, we still had to memorize the letter positions in the California Job Case!

We moved fairly easily into the internet world ... we were among the first to launch an interactive estate planning listserv, way back in 1998! (Does this make our listserve the longset continuously running listerv for estate planning marketing?) We adapted to incorporate basic websites in our marketing tool box. We winced a bit with the dawn of e-newsletters, but we gamely hung in there.

Then came blogging ... and social media. Kyle is the first to admit that he was a reluctant adopter. With each new technology, we paused to evaluate the impact before trying it out for ourselves ... and eventually passing our experience on to our clients.

So here comes video. Ack! Really? Video? You mean you're going to record ME? With all my years of ... ahh ... experience showing up right there on my face -- in the form of crow's feet, wrinkles, and ... well ... the ravages of gravity?? Really?

Yes, really.

This just in from comScore:

RESTON, VA, April 12, 2011 – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released data from the comScore Video Metrix service showing that 174 million U.S. Internet users watched online video content in March for an average of 14.8 hours per viewer. The total U.S. Internet audience engaged in more than 5.7 billion viewing sessions during the course of the month.

Let's take one more tidbit from comScore's recent numbers:

• 83.5 percent of the U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.

Okay, so people love online video. 174 million American people last month alone. That's a big number.

But, friends, here is what really persuaded us to invest in video --

1. We put a short video on our website about a year ago. When people called to talk to us about marketing, they mentioned watching the video. They said it made them feel like they already knew us.
2. Based on that tiny success, we took another step and started creating video proposals. The feedback was enormously positive ... and our conversion rate from inquiries to new clients skyrocketed.
3. Then Google decided to love SEO-enabled video. We found we could get page one results with properly optimized and strategically deployed video. And, we saw Google was indexing our properly-deployed videos almost instantly ... oftentimes the same day we launched them.

So, we are shooting video tomorrow.

Are you?

Kudos to Steve Silverberg

Many of you know Steve Silverberg, especially if you practice in the field of Elder Law. For those of you who may not know him, Stephen is the immediate past president of the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys (NAELA).

Big Kudos to Steve for being honored last week by the Long Island Business News as one of Long Island's Fifty Around 50, described as the annual tip of the hat to 50, or so, "Long Island companies and business leaders who have chalked up five decades, or so, of success."

Read snippets from Steve's interview on his blog.

If you visit his blog, you'll also find a link to the original Business News article.

My favorite "Steve-ism" from the interview:
Q: What is your motto?
A: Never attribute to malice anything that can be explained by stupidity.

We have enjoyed the privilege of knowing Steve for many years and working with him recently to design his website and blog. He is one class act, and we are proud to have him as a member of our IMS family!

Practice Fitness -- Practice Development Blog

JAMES CAMPBELL, VP OF PRACTICE DEVELOPMENT:
YOUR PERSONAL TRAINER TO BUILD A STRONGER PRACTICE

Practice development tips from a bodybuilder? How the heck does that happen?

I've spoken to many of you over the phone about how to build your ideal practice. We talk not only about marketing, but also about your specific practice development and lifestyle goals. For some of you the ideal lifestyle and practice you had in mind when you decided to go to law school hasn't turned out exactly the way you dreamed it would. What I want to do is help bring your ideal practice and lifestyle to fruition.

We all have goals. We have goals for our career and goals for our personal life both short term and long term. Often times we separate the two, when in reality they go hand-in-hand. "I want to make more money, work less, work with better more qualified clients that are willing to pay for my services. I want to spend more time with my family." Those are GREAT goals to have and the ones I hear most often. I will post to my Practice-Fitness blog about ways to achieve your goals, not only through strategic marketing but through practice management strategies as well.

I mentioned that I have met many of you over the phone...I also have met a few of you in person. I have noticed that when I meet an attorney in person the questions they ask me are not about marketing or building their practice but are more like "Can you give me a good workout routine? What should I be eating?" and the dreaded "How much do you bench press?"

I get these questions because I am an anomaly in the estate planning / elder law arena. You don't see too many nationally-ranked bodybuilders at the annual NAELA meeting, but you can find one right here. Competing in bodybuilding is no easy task. It takes months of discipline, a strong work ethic, consistency, and the ability to see a plan through to the finish. These are all traits required to win, to be better than the average bodybuilder. I want to help you develop and hone these same traits in your practice, so that you too can WIN.

My goal is to motivate you to see your own strength and opportunities -- to be better than the average attorney. You do not have to settle for what you have, but you do have to be smart about how to get where you want to be. I will include fitness tips both for your practice and for your health. Feel free to comment or email me with questions pertaining to building your practice or building your fitness and health.

NAELA Wrap-Up: Great Work for Elder Law and Special Needs

I'm back in the office today after a week in Orlando at the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys (NAELA) Annual Elder Law & Special Needs Planning meeting. Great meeting, and kudos to Casey Anderson for all of her terrific organizational work!

We spent Saturday evening at the home of Trish McLelland, of InterActive Legal Systems (www.interactivelegal.com). She and husband, Mike, offered us wonderful hospitality -- plus a GREAT dinner! Thank you.

For those of you who are not familiar with InterActive Legal, they are the premier provider of legal practice systems and document drafting for estate planning and elder law attorneys. Their organization and product systems are built with the highest integrity and the most respected authors in the profession, from Jonathan Blattmachr and Michael Graham as authors to Tom Begley, Andy Hook and Steve Silverberg on the elder law editorial team to their entire advisory board.

Our friendship with Jonathan, Mike, Trish and Interactive Legal is a long and enduring one, and I am both pleased and proud that InterActive Legal chose our firm to provide marketing and practice development support to their subscribers. It is a trust we respect and cherish.

If you are an InterActive Legal subscriber, please take a moment to visit the Practice Development Center we have built for you online -- or give us a call toll-free at 1-877-352-2021, ask for James and find out more about the practice development system we have designed to help ensure your success.

Time, Contact and Case Management Solutions

It's Friday, the last day of the NAELA annual Elder Law &Special Needs meeting in Orlando. I think everyone is ready to head outside for some sunshine!

Yesterday I visited (again) with Tom Caffrey of Premier Software. Tom is a TimeMatters specialist, with customized case and contact management solutions for estate planning and elder law attorneys. He also is a benefit partner with NAELA.

If you haven't settled on that "perfect" case and contact management solution for your practice, I'd recommend contacting Tom. Attend some of his online training sessions, spend some time visiting with him about your practice management challenges and see if he has a solution to fit your needs.

Expertise, Marketing, Processes

Dave Zumpano of MPS Success (http://www.mpssuccess.com) spoke briefly at the NAELA luncheon today. Briefly, but powerfully.

His goal was to have an impact on the lives of the people in the audience, and I believe that, even in the 10 short minutes he had to speak, he definitely achieved that goal.

One of the concepts Dave stressed was that most NAELA members excel in the area of expertise. But, frequently they struggle with the business aspect of their law practice -- especially in terms of marketing and practice processes.

The three pillars of any successful law practice, Zumpano said, are expertise, marketing nand efficient processes. I couldn't agree more.

We focus on the marketing aspect, helping clients define their practice development goals, develop integrated marketing plans, and then implement the strategies to achieve those goals.

We also do this in a way that I think comports with Zumpano's advice to manage expenses. In other words, I believe we provide the best value for your marketing investment -- with personalized, branded solutions that take advantage of our more than 15 years of systems-development. In other words, we don't have to re-invent the wheel for every client, nor charge for that process! Instead, you gain the cost advantage of utilizing time-proven systems to build your practice!