From $0 to $17MM: The Sales Training That Changed Everything

Sales training isn't optional for family law firms—it's the difference between 15% and 30% close rates on cold leads.

A lot of attorneys resist sales training because they think it's "dirty." The data shows attorneys sell constantly—to judges, clients, and peers. Our systematic approach at Sterling turned a 15% cold lead closer into a consistent 25-30% performer through daily role-play training and our Council College program. The result? You need fewer consultations to hit revenue targets, and your intake team development becomes predictable instead of hoping for natural talent.

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📄 CHAPTERS:

0:00 - Sales Training Reality Check: Why Attorneys Resist What They Already Do 

1:45 - Redefining Sales Commitment: From Dirty Word to Professional Service 

5:32 - Sales Training as Growth Strategy: Daily Role-Play Systems That Work 

8:38 - Council College Framework: Teaching Attorneys to Listen Before Speaking 

12:10 - Lead Follow-Up Systems: The 91-Day Sequence That Converts Cold Prospects 14:37 - Mary's Method: How One Intern Became Our Best Sales Manager 

18:38 - Balancing Process with Authenticity: Why Scripts Kill Conversions 

23:28 - Activity vs Achievement: The Vince Lombardi Sales Truth

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Chapters

• 0:00 Sales Training Reality Check: Why Attorneys Resist What They Already Do
• 1:45 Redefining Sales Commitment: From Dirty Word to Professional Service
• 5:32 Sales Training as Growth Strategy: Daily Role-Play Systems That Work
• 8:38 Council College Framework: Teaching Attorneys to Listen Before Speaking
• 12:10 Lead Follow-Up Systems: The 91-Day Sequence That Converts Cold Prospects
• 14:37 Mary's Method: How One Intern Became Our Best Sales Manager
• 18:38 Balancing Process with Authenticity: Why Scripts Kill Conversions
• 23:28 Activity vs Achievement: The Vince Lombardi Sales Truth

Transcript

0:00

Are you tired of inconsistent sales results and leads that slip through the cracks? The real problem might not be your process. It might be your people's commitment and today's competitive family law market. Mastering sales is not optional. It's your edge. My name is Tyler Dolph. I'm the CEO of our agency, Rocket Clicks. We are a full service agency that works exclusively with family law firms to help them grow their business, attract more leads and have a wonderful life. Today I am joined by our president, Tony Karls. He's also the co-founder of our very own family law firm called Sterling Lawyers that has scale to over 30 attorneys across 25 offices. We are very excited to have him here today. And today we're going to talk about commitment, the commitment to personal sales growth, and to every lead that enters your funnel. We'll break it down into five core ideas, each packed with practical tips for family law professionals. I really hope you enjoy it. Tom, great to have you back. We are continuing our series on diving deep into sales and sales within family law firms. A lot of law firms doing a lot of different ways. You know, our smaller, often clients. It's the head attorney, attorneys doing all the consults with all the sales. Once you you see the growth in law firms and our own firm, we're doing we've evolved all the way into non attorney sales. But sales still matters whether you're doing yourself or you're outsourcing or whatever. We're going to talk today about the five ways sales commitment drives growth and a family law firm. And the first one we're gonna talk about is, is redefining commitment in sales. Give us a little perspective here on what you've seen over the years. I would start out with saying this is probably a topic that most of our attorneys don't want to hear. That's been my experience at at Sterling, primarily because sales is dirty, and I don't want to be a salesperson. The the truth is, attorneys are constantly selling their clients, safety and security and a future that they don't have today. Their constantly selling judges and opposing parties on their ideas and their positions. They're they're constantly selling their teammates and their peers in the marketplace on their competence. Attorneys are probably one like in their day to day interactions. They sell more than most positions. They sell way more than people in marketing. Because most of their interactions are they're they're communicating ideas that other people need to that they want other people to accept. As the idea we're going to move forward with. So. You know, I think redefine like redefining commitment in sales means how do we recognize that everything we're doing is a sale? It's like everything we're doing is a sale. It's not a dirty word. It's a dirty word. When you're a scumbag salesperson and you try to cheat people out of something. Yeah. Then it's absolutely a dirty word. But when done ethically and in the right intention and with professionalism, it's what we all do every day. Every single one of us that are is successful in the marketplace. We're constantly selling either actually selling our services through a service perspective. You know, one of the things we talk about here is we're we don't we don't need your money. So we're going to tell you we're going to show you what we can do. We're going to show you the proof of how it works. And, you know, we're going to we're going to follow up with you on on it. We're not going to negotiate necessarily on price because this is this is how much work it takes to get this done. And here's the outcome. And this is this is what it looks like. So like consistency in sales is like how are we are we believing that it's important. Are we showing up. And all these moments are we are we doing things truly out of service like our. Because if we are, the sell should come from the fact that you truly believe that you are the best person for a potential client to work with, because you're going to give them the most security and most, confident position in the future. And you're selling out of the fact that you authentically believe that it's not a sale anymore. You believe it, and you want them to believe it. So you're communicating that belief. You're all you're communicating and sales, if you're doing it well, is belief and confidence in what you have to offer. And not everybody will take it. And that's fine. But the reality is like, that's where you want to come from, from a point of sales, if you're going to do sales tricks, you should feel gross because it's not going to work and it's going to feel disgusting. not sales. It's that's that's been emulation. Exactly. to me, is the difference is, if if you truly believe in what you are advocating for, whether it's a product or service or a point of view or a, dinner location, an at home, you are selling. You're selling because you believe you're convicted to to, share this belief with another party, right? That sales manipulations, all the other stuff, all the gross stuff that that makes sales have a bad name. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, the way we do it here at Rocket Clicks is every person that that onwards, regardless of position, they have to go through a sales training, program. And you, dummy, that's one of their. I think it's a week. I think it's either week one or week two. We have four weeks of pre-planned work for everybody that starts, I believe, either week one or week two, they have to go through, a sales workshop and like, understand that part of what they're doing, even though they're not in the sales role. They're selling the ideas that we have as an agency around what it what it looks like for family law firms to grow and grow consistently and scale their business. Because if they can't communicate it, no law firm owner should buy it. No law firm owner in our weekly, weekly, calls that we have with them should buy and convicted on unconvincing strategy from one of our strategists because the reality is, is why should I believe you if if I don't really think you believe in what you're talking about? You know, I think you, You know, you touched on our second point there, which is like investing in sales training as a growth strategy. And I know you have the sales team at Sterling. The not a attorney sales team that that goes through training, all the time. And then we have our, our own sales training here at the agency. How have you seen that? Really? You know, uplift your sales team and top. Great. To continue to improve. Yes. On the on the intake side. It's. You know, a lot of times what we're looking for is people that are, they're early on in their sales career because they're working in an intake type role. So we want to teach them how to do it well and do it ethically and do it with conviction. Our best intake people, they're not good salespeople, quote unquote, from like a process perspective. They communicate their belief in sterling, and that's why they're successful in that role. Those that don't do that well, they don't perform well from a metrics perspective. Same thing on the non attorney sales side. Those are those are more seasoned higher end sales type people that are making, you know, in the, in the six figures and they're you know, they have more of the sales skills. But again, it's the same. It's the same thing. And in those two and those two roles over at Sterling, every day we do a role play training. And it's just something we do every day. And it's it's something that, you know, our sales manager runs and we essentially go over a topic and role play that role, play that topic with a couple different people on the team in front of the team as a group. And what that does is it gets everybody more confident. They start asking questions, they start seeing things that they may have not experienced if they're less, if they're less experienced on the team and everybody grows because now we're going to be like everybody's part of a growth, growth mindset in that one area from a skills perspective. And then on the attorney side, we developed what we call council college over at Sterling. And it's it's something all of our attorneys, before they start taking counsel to have to go through, know, I believe it's a three month course and most of it is around how are you communicating future. How are you shutting your mouth so that they can tell, tell and unload their story? Because what a client doesn't want to do is hear how smart you are. What they want to hear is that what they want to feel is heard and understood. And like, that's a different type of communication than regurgitating statutes and, different types of case law and situational things that it's, you know, way above the client's head. You know, there's one of the, one of the things we, we record our consults, whether it's attorney or non attorney, and we use it as training material internally. And there was there was one console where, lady came in. She's telling, you know, the story of how she's where she is getting a divorce. Her mom had died the week prior, and then her dog died that week. It's just like, she's, like, just pouring her soul out to our attorney. And this is one of our attorneys that was like. This was before we were doing console college. This is one of our attorneys that was more of a I'm going to tell you how smart I am in the consultation room. She didn't empathize at all. After all that was said, she just communicated. Here's the next step. Here's how we're going to go. And it was it's just like it's a funny recording to hear, but it's so obvious when you listen to it that what's the human response in that circumstance? It's like, are you okay? Like, do you do you need a hug? Are you are you actually doing okay right now? Because that's a lot that's tough. So and our attorneys that do that naturally they're amazing in the consultation room. But it's because they make a connection. They're not selling anything. They're selling that they believe they can help you. They're authentic. They tell you the truth. They're not trying to over sell you anything that you shouldn't hear. So then it back to it. Investing in this type of training has a massive impact on revenue because you you get more efficient in your funnel. You need less consults to get deals, so on and so forth. Yeah. And I would say that like, people have different backgrounds that grow up into being in sales in some way or another. Some people do it based on, you know, EQ and reading people and being able to read situations, and that's how they're able to be good at sales. Others know the facts, but everybody else and and so by having a training where you can come together and learn best practices as it relates to your firm, like your point about, empathy is so important, right? If I'm a salesperson, I'm only a factor of nine and I don't shown empathy. Well, then you're going to have the call that you described. But if you can learn a little empathy and hey, if someone's pouring their heart out, take a second, take a beat, ask them how they're really doing. Like, that's going to improve your ability to make a great living and also impact people's lives in a positive way. Yeah. I would say another thing here is this is. This isn't optional. If you like investing in sales. Training isn't optional. If you're going to, be prospecting in the marketplace, if you're getting only referrals, you don't need this because they're already pre introduced to you and they're going to close at a really high rate. What we see often is a client comes in they don't have a prospecting funnel. And then when they get prospects from the marketplace that aren't referrals they close them really poorly. And then they just think the leads suck. And the reality is it's like, no, you're not good at actually doing the sales part because you're so used to layups. Referrals are so easy to close that same that same person that, I described, she she had lots of referrals because she was super connected in the Lake Country area. So she, you know, she's kind of, very involved with her church. She was involved with. Forget what other forget what organization? Oconomowoc. But like, everybody knew who she was. Right. So when you pulled her referrals out of her closing rate, she closed so poorly. But when you looked at her total closing rate with her, with with referrals included, looks like she was one of their better closers. And the reality was no, her referral closing rate was like 80%, which was great. Her cold lead closing rate was like 15% because she actually didn't know how to do it. Do you know how to do well? Counsel College helped her helped her like role play out that, that opportunity that I described so, and she got she got better, you know, which is she never she's probably never going to be a 40% closer. But she became a 25 to 30% closer very consistently. And that makes a big difference. That's like that's way less consults that you need schedule. So sales training here, if you're going to be prospecting in the marketplace is absolutely required because you will fall on your face if you don't know how to do it. Love it. I mean, as it pertains to sales training. You know, our our third point here is follow with every lead, no matter what. And, I think one thing I learned early on in my career was that you never know what's going to happen until you have the conversation, and so you might as well just continue to try to have the conversation because, you know, if you can stay positive and, and work, work the program, the good things are going to work out. Tell us why this matters in law. Well I think it's I don't think it's any different. I can tell you, a story about. So our, our, our sales manager today, her name is Mary. When she started she was just an intern working on the marketing team. And she was, like, running around the state, helping us at night when we were running our workshops. So that's kind of what she was doing. She put the sign up outside and she would, like, have the sign up sheet. And she agreed all the, the all the potential clients. And she would sit them in the conference room, make sure the attorneys presentation was set up, so on and so forth. So she did that for, I don't know, 3 or 4 months. She helped with some other stuff too, on the marketing side. But she wasn't in she wasn't day to day in the org. And then she and she wanted to be. So the one thing I told her is, if so, if you're going to come in and you're going to be, you'd be on the intake team. If if you follow up and understand what what happens with every single client and actually care about their story, you will be the best person here. And she's a mary's, a rule follower. And she so every day she a new piece of paper. She wrote down every single person's name that she didn't have an answer from from the previous day. And all the people she talked to that she didn't have an answer from today on that list. And every day she'd write all their names. So every single day. And if you read all their names manually like that, and she would follow up until she heard from that person how they were moving forward and if they needed anything, it didn't mean they all closed with her. But they all knew Mary cared that like they could just feel it. And she she truly believed that Sterling was the best place for them to be. And that's why she performed so well, because she followed up with care about making sure that they were safe. Because we hear tons of stories that are hard and not everybody can, afford for services. But she was good with she did research on other resources and other ways to go about it, and she would follow up until she knew that person was moving forward in a way that they felt safe. And she was very successful as a result. She did intake. She did. She was our best not attorney, sales person. She now runs our sales team. She's very wildly successful there. That's so awesome. It just, like, gets me excited hearing that. Well, the follow up, Good follow up. That's like the dirty part of sales. everything. There's some stat about the number of deals that close on the first call versus, like, the 15 call. Oh, yeah. And it's. Yeah, it's even close. Yeah, I think I think it's like. I think it's more than 50% of deals will close between calls eight and 12. Some some some stat like that. So it's a massive portion and most people hate doing the follow up and they're like, this is pointless. I followed up four times and they don't even answer my phone. It's like, yep, you haven't hit it yet, have you? You hit nine, have you? Ten and 11. Oh look, they answered, they they answered. And they now are really, they really believe that you care. I mean, we've seen that even on the marketing side, where we'll get a lead and we'll continue to follow up and have conversations. And it may take a year. And if you know when it finally happens, we always, you know, laugh like, hey, look, there's another example. You just got to stay in touch. Yeah. Yeah. Don't have them restart their their search process there to contact you once. So they just don't believe you care. So help them believe that you care. I'll do the follow up. Which, you know, that kind of leads into like our fourth point, which is balancing high commitment with smart efficiency. So how are you creating those efficiencies, those rhythms, those processes, and maintaining high commitment? Same So I think you can over process sales. Right. So. Yeah, like, I, I think there's, a real truth there. And what ends up happening is when you over process and like you over commit to to a process, all the person on the other side of that sales hears is your script and it it's not working anymore. That makes sense. So there's Yeah. You listen, floozy, as I'm on the sales team as well as, you don't sound authentic anymore. And your your potential clients feel that, you know, when we first rolled out console college, the V1, our are like, revisit on what we taught. Wasn't as good as it could be. So what I would say maybe a quarter to a third of our team did was they just implemented a script and that, like, nothing changed. They followed the process. We measured that. They followed the process, but they didn't close any better because all they were doing is like checking the boxes. They were committed, but they weren't weren't really working with, you know, smart efficiency. They were overly they were overly committed on process and they weren't balancing IQ or IQ, like you said before. I think that's it's really smart way to think about it, because if you have if you're overly processed and you don't have any EQ, you're probably not going to close the deal. If you're all IQ and there's no there's no process. You're probably losing people along the way because they don't know where you're going. And they're like, well, he was a nice guy, but I don't really understand anything you said. Hey, so. So having a balance both I think is really important. always going to be. I think we talk about it. There's going to be a healthy friction between sales and ops. Yeah. thing. If managed correctly. And how do you get how do you get both teams working efficiently together, knowing that there's going to be that kind of friction? I would say the like getting the team to work well together is helping them, helping them both understand each other's roles. I think that's when there's opportunity, when there's, like, full awareness of the tensions in both a you're going to problem solved better. So like you're not going to, you'll be less likely to say that's their problem because you're you're like, okay, I see how that sucks. And I see how I'm creating more work like this happens. So intake teams, a big complaint intake teams have and if you're gonna take a team isn't telling you this this probably just because they're not telling you the truth is they can't stand how often things get rescheduled because they already, if they did a good job doing that initial sale well, especially on a paid consultation, to have an attorney who didn't manage their calendar well, tell them to reschedule a consultation is so demotivating, right. But on the other side, like things happen on attorneys calendars that things need to be versus things need to be rescheduled. So like that's a tension point that's often there. It may not be talked about in a lot of firms, because your intake team might not be telling you the truth, but that it's there. Trust me, it's there. And like having healthy communication around that so that you're both respecting each other and you're getting the best out of each other, will allow the intake team member to be as highly motivated as possible in that call. And they're going to sound more authentic, and they're going to be a better representative of you and your brand. You know, that comes through the communication between between both and having the intake team understand this is going to happen. We don't want it to happen. So how do we make how do we how do we create a situation where this happens as few times as possible and then, the attorneys I'd like really understand like what that means. Like that's so that communication I think is, really important because that are high quality conversations you can have with the, with each other internally, the better problems you're actually going to solve. So when that comes back to kind of really balancing process over relationships and like how do you do a how do you do both? Well. Absolutely. You got to work together to have a shared faith and common goal. And, And be able to understand the strengths and weaknesses of both teams. I want to close on our final point, which I think is, is I giggled at it when, we were prepping for this, and it's the avoiding the busy equals committed salespeople maybe, majority of salespeople love the. Well, I'm busy. That must mean I'm doing a good job thing. Yeah. I mean, it busy equaling committed can look like a lot of activity and not very much result. So, kind of back to the like, if you have a really strong inflow of potential clients, but you're. Do you don't have a great close rate on those? The problem might be the fact that your team isn't committed and they're not actually doing follow up. That it might not have anything to do with quality of the lead because there's you know, we over at Sterling, we follow up for, we have a 91 day follow up sequence, that gets perfectly executed. Not a high percentage of the time, but we get to about 70% of that often, and we do it because it works. You know, like we balance the the idealized follow up against staffing and profitability. But the reality is, like we're committed to follow up and we see results as a result. Not just dump more into the funnel because we can hire more intake people. Let's hire the right intake people. Let's have the right processes. Right procedures will need less. Leads will have be more profitable, so on and so forth. So I would say, you know, being overly busy and not getting results is not a not a great thing. If your team's busy and you're not scheduling consults, they're working on stuff that doesn't matter. So, you know, like the Vince Lombardi quote is don't mistake activity for achievement. It's something I say all the time. It's very true. In sales, you can be super active and not achieve anything. Cheeseman is like, did I get a deal across the finish line? Yeah, just scoreboard. very clear. Am I doing the job or not? Making money or not? I love this, Tony. I appreciate your time and insight. And continuing our our deep dive into the to sales at family law firms. And, really excited for the next episode as well. We'll look forward to seeing you over there. If you found this episode, exciting. If you enjoyed it, please continue to follow, our journey as we continue to deep dive into the sales role, role at family law firms. Make sure to check out our next episode, which is the great shortage of talented salespeople. We're going to dive into why it's happening, what it means for your firm, and how to build a recruitment and retention strategy that actually works. Check it out here and we will see you there.