No really, are you?
Recent findings from Shopper Anonymous have proved that responses to enquiries to some law firms have been few and far between – some taking two to three days to respond.
For their report, they surveyed 85 firms and made over 400 enquiries around a variety of legal problems such as property purchases and wills and probate.
And the results may surprise you :-
- Walk-in enquiries: 7% followed up
- Website enquiries: 6% followed up
- Telephone enquiries: 7% followed up
These statistics really prove that more has to be done; now is not the time to bury your head in the sand.
Jonathan Winchester, Chief Executive of Shopper Anonymous warns that today’s tech-savvy clients are expecting instant responses: “The challenge for law firms is the ‘millennials’ – the new group of customers coming through, who expect everything to be now, fast and accurate – the firms, or at least the ones in this survey, just aren’t really geared up to deal with that.”
So it’s all about adapting with the times…but how?
What can you do to change this?
Get into good habits. If you start by putting every enquiry into your CRM as you go, then you’ll find the job a lot less time consuming. We find that using a proper CRM system like the open source (aka free of licence fees) SuiteCRM, is a great way of achieving this.
SuiteCRM can set up alerts to remind your staff to follow up a lead after 48 hours.
It’s important to be on the ball; the sooner you respond to a new lead, the less likely it is that they will go to your competitor. It makes sense really. They’re contacting you to get some answers; so the sooner you give them the information they need, the more likely they are to trust you and be more open to choosing you in the future.
Like with any sales and marketing strategy, you should set targets and measure your progress. Look into how many enquiries you get in a week, how many are responded to and how many become qualified prospects. This will allow you to assess your performance and improve. If you’re not reaching your targets, then there’s something wrong with an element in your process, so work out what it is and fix it.
If you want to find the simplest way to optimise ROI on your investment, then this really is the best way. Just keep on top of it and analyse your process as you go and you should really see the benefits for your firm.
What else can I do to follow up leads more efficiently?
A really simple and efficient way to keep on top of who is visiting your website and making enquiries is through CANDDi. CANDDi is a website application that allows you to see all of your identified website visitors in one place, and also see where they have been on your website. Ultimately, this gives you the knowledge about what services they’re interested in.
Through CANDDi, you can download a spreadsheet every day with a list of your identified visitors; you can then assign certain prospects or clients who visit your site to various people in your firm. CANDDi is so quick and easy to use that it will take barely any time out of your day.
Abby Winkworth from IBB Solicitors has used it and agrees that it makes tracking leads a lot easier:
“CANDDi helped us to pinpoint when an opportunity was warming up and allowed us to act accordingly. Without CANDDi, it would have been like walking around with a blindfold. Knowing who is visiting your website, what they’re looking at and when is crucial to chasing up quality leads.”
It’s worth trying it for yourself – ultimately, CANDDi is there to make your job easier.
Overall, it’s important to adapt to the fast-paced nature of the times and keep on top of enquiries. It will not only increase conversion rates, but will create strong and trusting relationships in the long run.