New Business
Capture
Client capture - Maximising sales through improved capture and on-boarding
Is your client capture as effective as it can be and do you know just how much new business you are losing simply through not having an effective sales capture strategy and process in place?
While most law firms focus on its marketing and sales promotion, many don’t invest enough in its client journey and capture. And yet, spending time, energy and resources to improve your client ‘on-boarding experience’ will have immediate results, improve conversion rates and drive down the cost of acquisition … while at the same time beginning to build that all important client loyalty.
But how many firms have a proper New Business Capture strategy, one that gives a distinct advantage in helping to connect with prospective clients from the initial contact (whatever channel they come through), and which allows them to demonstrate a clear understanding of their needs and offer a solution to their problems?
And, in addition, have you considered how your target audience may want to deal with you, and provided them with a range of options from traditional telephone and email through to a complete on-line journey … or somewhere in-between?
Not only does a well thought through and managed capture process improve conversion rates and drive greater returns on your initial investment, but it also creates uniformity and consistency across your business, enhancing the client experience and helping to drive repeat business or client referrals.
Having worked across some of the largest law firms in the UK and developed their centralised client capture processes and New Business Teams, including digital and e-commerce offerings that enables remote capture and sign up, Legal Reach has extensive experience of implementing change that drives improved conversion rates and enhanced client experience.
Sales training, management and coaching - continuously improving sales conversion
Law firms are notoriously poor at sales. And while creating a centralised and dedicated New Business function is vital, it is only part of the solution.
Having a dedicated new business function will drive improved conversion but without continuous sales training and coaching then the true benefits will not be realised. In addition, while training members of the New Business Team is vital, looking within the legal teams and aiming each and everyone of your solicitors with the skills to ‘up sell’ and ‘cross sell’ is equally important … something that many of your legal team members may find alien.
A well managed sales training programme, involving fact-finding, planning, coaching, call listening and role play will drive enhanced performance and help you realise the true growth potential of the firm. It will also help to increase the number of internal staff referrals, maximising your existing client base and help to reduce the acquisition costs as you obtain ‘a greater proportion’ of your clients legal spend.
In addition, money spent on recruiting and selecting, and putting in place your centralised new business team will be wasted if there isn’t follow-up and proper and continuous training programmes in place. It also improves technical knowledge and improves self confidence, moral, reduces turn over and ultimately improves sales performance.
Having worked with leading sales trainers and seen conversion rates increase significantly through sales training, Legal Reach is ideally placed to work with you and your teams to put in place a continuous training and coaching programme that will drive enhanced conversion and reduce acquisition costs.
Building effective client journeys - improving client satisfaction, loyalty and repeat business
Creating the right client experience is vital. From dealing with enquiries and the initial contact through to on-boarding, provision of the legal service, and then post legal and building engagement, having an outstanding client journey will drive client satisfaction, loyalty and ultimately more business.
But what, exactly, are we talking about when we talk about client experience? Well, in simple terms, its basically making sure that we put the client needs at the centre of the service provision and then ensuring that the client has an experience that exceeds their expectations at all the touchpoints along the journey. And why do this? Well, when a client is satisfied with a business, not only do they complain less (lower cost to service), but also have a higher engagement and higher loyalty and, therefore, are more likely to come back when they need further help and advice or will recommend the firm to their family, friends and colleagues.
The starting point is to map out your ideal journeys and, when you have the whole journey defined, to think about how you can improve it, what the client is looking for and how best to service them.
The complexity comes when you look across different legal (and non legal) departments that the client may engage with. And therefore it is important that every part of the business that ‘touches the client’, from marketing and sales capture, to the legal teams and even IT and finance, work together to improve the client experience and provide a consistency of service and ultimately client delight.
Call Centre Development & Management - driving efficiency in client capture
One of the areas within law firms that can have an immediate impact and drive greater new business is establishing a centralised call centre or New Business Team that focus purely on new business capture and client on-boarding.
Yet while many of the larger firms have centralised their new business and client onboarding operations and have dedicated and experienced operators managing the teams, many smaller firms have yet to make the leap and reply on inefficient processes that often see prospective clients being managed within individual legal teams.
Creating a high performance sales or new business team is essential for any firm looking to grow and maximise its marketing investment and, while increasing overhead through centralisation, a proactive and effective New Business team, under pinned by effective sales processes will more than pay for itself. indeed there is a very strong case to say that reducing your marketing spend and investing in your sales capture will see a better return.
Having overseen the centralisation of sales and the creation of efficient new business teams with more than 50+ team members, specialising in different legal functions, Legal Reach are able to assist you in building the right infrastructure, processes and structure that will enhance sales capture and aid your business growth.
Improving existing sales materials
When was the last time you reviewed your client onboarding materials and made sure that not only did they explain the legal process in an easily to digestible way, making it easy for a prospect to understand, complete, sign and send back but that the materials also set out your unique sales messages and why someone should use your firm?
Often the first time a prospective client gets to really experience your firm is through the initial telephone call or material sent following an initial discussion. It is therefore vital that any initial discussion or material sent reflects your marketing promise and helps to re-enforce the sales messages that you have promoted, and which often made someone contact you in the first place.
Sadly this is often far from the case, with initial discussions not helpful and often complex and detailed documentation sent, often in language that is not user friendly and which can add strain and worry to prospective clients who are already feeling distressed.
And yet it is often possible to remove a lot of the complexity, reducing the materials down to a few core documents or even offering a true on-line process, which removes any barriers and makes sure that your prospective clients are able to understand what is important and feel comfortable in signing and returning the documents to you.
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