The Sterling Family Law Show
The Sterling Family Law Show is where successful family law attorneys share the exact systems they used to build million-dollar practices.
Host Jeff Hughes scaled Sterling Lawyers from zero to $17M with 27 attorneys.
Co-host Tyler Dolph runs Rocket Clicks, the agency in charge of supercharging Sterling and other family law practices to success using revenue-first marketing strategies.
Together, they share the playbook for building the law firm of your dreams.
If you're looking to grow exponentially, generate revenue, and get good at business, this podcast is for you.
The Sterling Family Law Show
The Power of Prediction: 5 Keys To Law Firm Sales Success - #163
Learn the 5-step system Sterling uses to convert clients predictably. No more guessing, no more lost revenue walking out the door.
You know what's wild? Only 4-5% of consultations fund same day, but Sterling converts 25% in 14 days using predictive law firm intake optimization. Stop losing clients to bad attorney consultation processes.
I mean, here's what actually happens - most family law firms treat every consultation like a coin flip. But when you understand client psychology during their first attorney client consultation, everything changes. These aren't just legal client follow up tactics. This is about meeting people where they are emotionally and building the law firm conversion rates that scale your practice.
Tony and I break down Sterling's exact playbook for law firm lead conversion, including the CRM automation that handles 18 months of follow-up without your team getting confused. We're talking about systems that work whether you're doing 5 consultations a week or 100+ like Sterling.
📲 Subscribe Now: https://www.youtube.com/@TylerxDolph
📝 Schedule a FREE Family Law Firm Audit: https://rocketclicks.com/schedule-a-family-law-quick-audit/
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📄 CHAPTERS
0:00 - Law Firm Sales Struggling? The Power Of Prediction Explained
2:09 - Understanding Client Psychology On Attorney Intake Calls
4:45 - Why Most Law Firm Follow Up Systems Fail (Sterling's 25% Close Rate)
7:42 - Strategic Questions That Break Through Client Defense Responses
10:54 - Law Firm CRM Systems That Convert Leads Automatically
14:15 - Avoiding Assumption: Why Having 6 Different Pitches Work
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Are you struggling with inconsistent sales performance from your team? What if your team could see objections before they happen and guide prospects with pinpoint accuracy? welcome to the episode where we unpack the secret weapon, the power of prediction. We'll show you how to use it and how to integrate it in your firm. Welcome to the Revenue Roadmap Podcast, the podcast that shows you how to build your firm, how to bring real strategies, proven tools, and thought leadership from inside and outside of the legal industry to help you scale smarter. My name is Tyler Dolph. I'm your host and also the CEO of our digital marketing agency, Rocket Clicks, where we focus exclusively on helping family law firms grow their firm. Today I have my co-host, Anthony Karl's with me. Anthony is the president of our agency. He's also the co-founder of our family law firm, Sterling Lawyers, which has grown to over 32 attorneys and 25 locations across two different states. Tony built the sales team over at Sterling and brings valuable insights to today's episode on how you can do the same thing. In this episode, we dive into how great salespeople can leverage prediction to help anticipate clients needs and move them through your pipeline so that you can schedule more consults and achieve better sales. All right Tony, welcome back. We are continuing our sales series here on the roadmap. And today we're going to talk about the five ways to build predictable power in sales. We're going to start with our first one which is understanding your clients at a deeper level. I think we've seen the power of this at the agency by focusing on a single client type and having the firm that gives us kind of an advantage, right? Because we we've been there, done that. But how? How do you see this working Yeah. I mean I think one of the things that. All really, really good salespeople have is this, it's called the power of prediction. And it's they understand what's going to happen and when because they've been there before. So you know at like one of those things is understanding your client's at a deeper level, which, you know, really means, like you, you understand where they are in the moment of the like, if we're just talking about an intake call, you know, where they are in the moment of that intake call. You understand that this is probably the first time that they've externalized, that they're getting a divorce to a stranger, someone that they don't have a relationship with. Like they may have told their brother and sister. They may have told a friend, they may have told the pastor or priest or something, but they generally have a relationship with all those people. It's now going to become real because now it's not an idea. It's like, okay, I'm telling a stranger that can do something about it. And like understanding where your client is allows you to have a better conversation because you know where they are emotionally. You know, it's going to trigger them. You know what's going to get them to respond in the way you need them respond. You're going to have, a good understanding of the right cadence for the conversation so that you can actually connect. You're going to know the different types of people that are going to come in, because there's going to be some that are just going to vomit all over you and tell you everything in the world, and there's some that are going to be really closed up. And you have to approach those people differently. But when you get really good at this, you you can like see those things happen in real time and you're like, oh, activate, activate the closed off, closed off 35 to 40 year old male script because he's not going to say anything and like, okay, how do I get this person to open up? We talk all the time about, meeting our clients where they are. I know you talked about that with the intake team at our firm. And the way that you do that, the way that you meet them where they are is by having an understanding of, like, what they're coming in with, what their baggage looks like, and you know, what kind of day they've had and something you can empathize and, and be a shoulder to lean on as opposed to like a robot where you're just like, well, I have to say this thing in the script and then it's going to go where the whatever way it goes, like, no, I'm gonna say where they're at. Fully agree. And to kind of compound on that, you know, a second item is, is recognizing patterns and deals and behavior and, to to your point, the more the more reps you have and the more opportunities you hear the same story and you hear the struggle, the better and be able to empathize. Right? Yeah. And I think this is so true, especially in a, like in any sales role, plays in a family law firm or it applies over an agency. One of the things you're really good sales team members are going to figure out is. And not good and not good to Scrooged by which is part of the bigger point, is the number of follow ups required to get to get most of these deals across the finish line, because it isn't one and it's not two. You know, at Sterling, 25% of our deals are signed in the first 14 days. That means, and all I and I believe only 4 or 5% are funded on the date of the consultation. It might be less than that. So what that means is I'm not discouraged that they didn't sign in fund at the consultation because I know this is going to come through. So, like, it's not going to change my day. I'm not going to get nervous about the fact that they didn't sign and ruin my next consultation, because that's that's what a salesperson can do, is like, get in their head. And now they're going to really become a real pushy, aggressive salesperson and turn everybody off versus I understand the process. Most are going to, you know, a good chunk are going to fund in the first 14 days, 50% are going to fund in the first 30 days. I got a sale, I got a follow up team behind me that's doing a bunch of activity. And like your follow up team, they know that doing the follow up is actually going to equal results. And you know, you learn that as you get really good at this and you have that predictive power because you can just sense what's going to happen with these different clients and deals and how the how they actually are behaving and with what needs to happen when they behave certain ways and when they respond certain ways. So, leverage the data. And as a former, you know, immature salesperson myself, I thought I could always just wing it. I could just figure it out. And then when you get access to the data and you start going through the reps, you realize that there's so much more confidence that comes from from that knowledge. And it's not like a it's not like a crutch. It's actually it's a benefit. Yeah. If you know that, you know, after after nine follow ups, there's a 50% chance that they're going to fund. You're not discouraged during the first eight. Right. Because like you know what the data tells you. And then those that don't close in the first those first nine like here's the next set of follow ups. And now 75 like the another 75 or 25% of that group is going to close. So like, you know, stuff is going to happen as long as you just keep executing. And that can be really powerful from an attitude mindset perspective. Yeah. item number three is one of my favorite ones, which is use strategic questions to uncover hidden information. I think, you know, last time we were on, our sales series, we talked about the fact that people oftentimes will just give you a, a, a why or answer your question in a way that allows you to leave them alone. They're not I can tell you the real issue. They're going to make up a superficial issue. This to me is all about that. Yeah. And I think there's, you know, one of the things we talk about in our sales process is figuring out their dominant buying motive. And like, what is what's underlying that. So some of it, you know, sometimes that's, their dominant buying motive is that they don't trust lawyers, you know, and what they're actually looking for is someone to, like, meet them at that level because that there's some reputation there in the marketplace that not all lawyers are, on the up and up. So and they get they get bad reputations. So how do you deal with that reality when, your honor, on with a client on that initial phone call or in that consultation room, like ask them what it looks like to have a successful attorney, client relationship, like, have them articulate what they, what they want. That's feel like like you're going to get their real you're going to get the real understanding from them. Not just like the, what we call RDR reactionary defense response, which everybody does. So if you've ever walked into Best Buy and you, you've been greeted by the the tech person or the the I think it's a tech person slash security guard. Whatever they do, they're it's always funny because they're usually like super skinny and they're real small. And I'm like, you're not going to do anything if I try to steal something. Oh, but anyway, anytime you walk in there, they always ask, can I help you find something? And everybody says, no. Nope. I'm good. Just looking. That's your order. And this happens in every sales interaction. And if you know, that's what's happening, like now, you can you're like, okay, I gotta open them up because, like, they're they're just giving me their already reactionary defense response. So how do I use strategic questions to start on peeling the onion? Yeah. strong and something that takes a lot of reps and and it's a little scary for us because. Because you hear. No I'm fine. Like, oh, well they're fine. Yeah. So like great question. You know, what does it look like to have a successful attorney client relationship. You know, what does your life look like when this is done over, over and done with? Well, so like things like that are going to be in that, in the consultation room or on the intake call. They're really, disarming questions that get them to actually share with you the real information. Okay. Moving on to item four. Leveraging CRM data and past client behavior, we've been talking a lot about the importance of data. And we know that a lot of salespeople don't love the old CRM, but it is massively powerful, both in a, today. Like, how am I keeping track leads? I have, but also from a marketing perspective, how am I staying in touch with, the leads? I didn't close right? Yeah. I mean, I think like once you have once you have data and you can action on it, you can be so much more strategic. So, we know based on doing interviews with clients and asking them how long they were in market before they talked with us. The response is 18 to 36 months. Like it's a long time before they actually call. Some people will call in between their research and then they will then fund in the next year. So if you understand what your what the sales cycle actually looks like, you can be so much more strategic on how you're using like sales and sales enablement automation to stay in touch with them over a long period of time strategically. So, you know, one of the things that we do at Sterling is we have we have 18 months of content that we follow up with clients with because we know that if they don't fund in the first 30 days of our follow up, they move into a non-responsive status and then they get put into a journey that's 18 months long, because people will generally fund within that, within that 18 month period. After that, our data shows that there isn't a lot of conversions that happen after that 18 months. So we don't need more content for that. So but up until that it's worthwhile doing get good open rates, decent engagement with with those emails. So it's important because you can leverage the CRM data to make your firm operations so much more effective, because then your intake team doesn't have to do it. No intake team member is going to do 18 months of follow up. They're going to get it confused and they're going to screw it up like it's just the reality. And you know, if you don't do it, they're going to forget your brand and they're going to go back to search. And they're, they may or may not call you back because they forgot what you, what your brand name was because they talked to you one time. Yeah. I mean, as your law firm grows, we're talking about thousands of contacts here. So there's no way even the best salesperson in the world is going to be able to keep track of all those things in the right order. And remember to do the right things. And so leveraging data and automation to do that for you is going to be hugely beneficial. Yeah. I mean, at Sterling, we currently have about 23 or 24 scheduled consults every single day. So it's over. It's over 100 a week. All of them need follow up after that initial consultation. So like. over 18 months, that's going to compounded it. Yeah, that's a that's a big number. So that's why that's why for you sales enablement automation to do that. So like there's a lot of benefit there. Okay. Wrapping up to number five, which is stay curious and avoid assumptions. I think, intake team member sales team members go through emotional roller coasters just like everyone else. I would say we probably tend towards to be a little more emotional and like, oh, I didn't get a sale today. This is the worst day ever, and I'm the worst salesperson ever. And, you can't think that way, right? You got to stay positive and stay consistent and understand all the other points that we talked about today because, if you if you, if you play the numbers and you run the process, good things will happen. Yeah I mean I think one of the things that's really important here, so you know, at at Sterling, we have what we call skilled offers. So our intake team has six different things that they can pitch. Our, our lawyer team has 5 or 6 things that they can all pitch. And it's just different levels of service. And one of the assumptions that often gets made in sales and what drives down sales performance is the sales person assuming they they know what the client actually wants to buy when they didn't validate it. And the best way to do that is to assume they didn't tell you what they want to buy and present them options. And even when they say, yeah, I think that's what I want, present them an option down and then option up so that they can see what else is potentially available to get them to actually pick the right thing. And it's really important to do that, because if you just go in to a situation and you're you're only selling a full representation and you're not open to selling, you know, unlimited scope or an hour worth of, you know, do it with me. Coaching, that's revenue walking out the door because it wasn't perfectly ideal for you. And the reality is like that, that that makes up a fairly large portion of not the majority, but it's in the 15 to 20% range for sterling. And it's a it's a big bucket. So, kind of avoiding assumptions and being open to, having scaled offers is, a huge benefit. And from a sales perspective, avoiding the assumption that you know what they're going to buy. So, you know, if you only have one offer, you're not really making an assumption. You're just it's a statement of fact. The only thing you can purchase is the one way we do this here. If you worked with us, we would encourage you to build skilled offers, because there's a lot of benefit to that in the long term conversion funnel. Absolutely. I love it. Totally. I always appreciate your insight and, and knowledge here as it relates to helping these, these law firm owners grow their firms. We're going to continue down our sales series. And so we will see you next time over there. If you enjoyed this episode, you will love our next episode. On the commitment required for salespeople to be successful. Make sure to check it out here and we will see you over there.
