Scott Berry Joins Ruby Powers to Discuss Law Firm Intake and Client Acquisition

00:00:00 Ruby Powers
Welcome to Power Up Your Practice, the go-to podcast for law firm owners and managing attorneys working on the business, not in it. Prepare to open your mind, be inspired, and power up your practice to the next level. Welcome back, everyone. This is Ruby Powers, your host of Power Up Your Practice. I’m excited to have my guest today, Scott Berry, the founder and president of MarketCrest. We’ve met through conferences and stayed in touch. We were both recently speaking at a legal tech conference. His focus is identifying hidden revenue leaks between your first contact and the signed retainer, covering marketing, intake, consultations, and follow-up. And on top of all that, he’s the author of The Law Firm Intake Playbook, which he so graciously sent me a copy of. Number one Amazon bestseller. You got this really cool sticker and award here, and I’m on page 171. Thank you for that. Appreciate it.

00:00:56 Scott Berry
Thank you for contributing. That was wonderful. You and Nadine both. That was really awesome. I appreciate that.

00:01:03 Ruby Powers
I see some other friends here, like Flavia and others.

00:01:07 Scott Berry
Yes, yes, she did. Really awesome. Yep,

00:01:09 Ruby Powers
Lucine did as well. Lucine, Laura Leon.

00:01:14 Scott Berry
She did.

00:01:15 Ruby Powers
You know Laura?

00:01:17 Scott Berry
Yeah, she’s magnificent. We work with people all over the world in

00:01:21 Ruby Powers
Our space. I love that. For those listening, tell us a little bit about yourself, and then let’s talk more about intake and leads, and not losing them.

00:01:33 Scott Berry
Sure, yeah. I’ve had MarketCrest for 10 years. My background is as a chief sales and marketing officer at very large companies in the corporate world. And then 10 years ago, I wanted to get more into digital, and so I started MarketCrest as an agency, and our first client was an immigration law firm, and that’s how it all started. I worked with that client for about seven years. And my second client was an immigration law firm, and I worked with them for probably eight years. Then it went national.

00:02:20 Scott Berry
Before long, we were focused on immigration and family law firms, and that’s where we built our name from coast to coast. Our campaigns were built around growing immigration and family law firms, and they just got tested and refined. And there are some other practice areas that we could get involved in, but we just thought, man, we can do this in our sleep. Let’s do what we know we can be successful with, and so that’s where we focus. And now we work with about 40 clients throughout the U.S. and have a team of about 22 or 23 people.

00:03:10 Scott Berry
Our clients are with us for years, so we get pretty deeply involved, which we love because, as a former chief marketing officer, naturally I want to be involved in everything. I want to talk strategy. I want to be responsible for the ROI, the whole budget. That’s just the way I was raised in the corporate world. ROI is critical, or you just get fired. I’m used to that accountability: you hit your numbers, you grow, and you deliver a strong ROI. And so I take that into all my business relationships. Like I assume if I don’t hit my number, we won’t be around next year. So that works really well in the agency world because most of the time you don’t hit your number, and so we stand out.

00:03:59 Ruby Powers
I think that’s why. That’s awesome. So for those listening, whether they’re in immigration or another practice area, they still have a lot to learn. We’re going to talk about why having more leads isn’t the same thing as having a client acquisition system, and where the biggest revenue leaks actually happen between the first contact and the signed retainer. I remember when I first saw a sales funnel years ago, I initially thought it didn’t apply to lawyers.

00:04:35 Ruby Powers
I teach it all the time. It’s in my book, it’s the topic of your book, and it’s essential. We’re also going to talk about why marketing, intake, consultations, and follow-up need to be managed as one system instead of like four separate ones. But it’s all in concert together. So why don’t we dive in? Because I know those listening are probably like, tell me, Scott, tell me how I can keep my leads and not lose them. So you said that most law firms don’t have a lead problem; that they have more of a client acquisition problem. What do you mean by that?

00:05:12 Scott Berry
Yeah, and when I say that, I mean most firms that are kind of stalled out, right? If you’re wanting to be growing, but you’re stuck at a certain number, something’s causing that, and As law firm founders, you think like we need more leads, and I think that’s kind of the first thing that people think of. And we spent one of the things that’s really unique about us is we my agency spent two years inside of a pretty large immigration law firm. Two years—that’s really unheard of. And downstairs was the intake team. Naturally, we wanted to see how the leads were doing, and so we would always go down there and listen to the phones, and that’s how we really discovered.

00:06:00 Scott Berry
And that was about five years ago. That was when we realized: wait a minute, this is bigger than just sending leads. We really have to rely on these people to answer the phone properly and say the right things and convince people to pay for like a consultation. Because if they don’t, a really good lead is going to get away. And I’m like, oh my gosh. And we started realizing that I don’t think we can be successful for the next 20 years if we don’t really get involved in and intake. I just don’t. I don’t think we can, and were right. And then that firm hired a sales company to come in and teach them how to close, and spent a lot of money, tens of thousands, of dollars. I’ll leave it at that. And I’m like, oh, this ought to be good, because I had been a former sales trainer and at in my job, And they didn’t know anything about law firms, and it didn’t work.

00:06:58 Scott Berry
And I’m like, that’s it. Like, mark my words. We’re gonna show them how to do it right because we’ve seen it. We know both sides. And it took several years, but we finally wrote the book. The reason that we wrote the book is that people would start saying, Hey, can Scott show us how to? Like we’re just not closing enough. Our close ratios are down. Can Scott show my consulting attorneys? Can Scott show the And it just got to where I was getting spread too thin, and I’m, and so I’m like, God, we got to write the book and just give them the book, and it’ll be like a DIY. Like I can’t keep telling everybody how to do it. And before the book had even got out, I was already running classes. Like we literally stopped when were two months out, and we’re we got to run a course. And I think there were 30 people, 30 attorneys and intake staff in the first.

00:07:56 Scott Berry
Course, because there’s such a huge demand for this. You get these opportunities, and people aren’t closing them well. And so that’s why I say that it’s just not always your first instinct, which is we got to have better leads, and we got to have more leads. And another thing people say when you’re not hitting your numbers, they’re what do you hear people say? The leads are bad.

00:08:26 Scott Berry
Maybe someone can explain why they say that. I think that’s the easy answer. The leads are bad. It must be the leads. It can’t be me. It can’t be my team. But if you really look in there, man, it doesn’t take long when you’re listening to phone calls to find out why the leads aren’t getting converted.

00:08:50 Ruby Powers
Something you said reminds me of an ad vendor I worked with years ago. But he said, “Ruby, like I can get the phone to ring, but it’s up to you what happens after that.” It sounds like what you’re saying. It’s like you can get the phone to ring, but if it just like falls flat because you don’t have the right script or you don’t have the right system and the follow through and the systems, then you know you could be spending thousands and thousands on ads and for what? And I mean I’ve.

00:09:25 Ruby Powers
I’ve gone back and forth. I usually keep marketing in-house and hire experts when it’s like a niche I need or like get up to speed on something that’s changed. But that’s always been something that really struck me. And so for those listening, like what’s if a firm’s generating plenty of leads but they’re not growing, what’s usually that disconnect that you’ve found when you know look into it?

00:09:51 Scott Berry
Yeah. I’ll tell you the first two places I look. So for starters, everybody ought to be recording the calls that are coming in, right? So maybe a service like I think VXT can do that. CallRail can certainly do that. And whoever owns the firm needs to be listening to those calls at least once a month. Take three hours and just listen to the calls coming in, especially if they charge for consultations. So we’re really big on charging for consultations because anybody can book a free consultation. Like it takes no skill to do that, right? But if you’re going because a lot of people give free ones, if you’re going to charge 100 bucks, 150, 200, 300, 400, your team better be able to sell against the fact that other people are giving them away for free, right? And so.

00:10:51 Scott Berry
The only way to know how effective they are is to listen to the recordings, right? The familiar “this call is being recorded for quality purposes”. So that’s the first thing is it’s vital that you listen to those. And so I’ll go in and listen to those, and I’m telling you, I don’t. After about five, I can tell you if there’s a problem. I can tell you if there’s a problem. So that’s why. The founder really needs to listen every single month. Just take an hour. More if you can, but just at least take an hour and listen to the calls. So I look there because if they’re not super effective at getting someone to pay, two hundred dollars for a consultation, then that person’s going to go and they’re going to hire somebody else. And I think a stat I saw is like eighty percent.

00:11:48 Scott Berry
I think I saw a statistic that around 80% of people will have hired someone within 24 hours or so. So even if that’s off a little bit, you know the point is I think we all kind of know within a day or two, boom, somebody’s hired, right? So you really don’t want them getting off the phone without booking. The second point that I like to know about is the consulting attorney. Is it the founder? Is it an associate? Or is it this third option that’s kind of started over the last couple years, which is a non-attorney?

00:12:24 Ruby Powers
Like a contractor? Yeah, like a non-attorney.

00:12:27 Scott Berry
Yes, a non-attorney salesperson. So there’s three: the founder, an associate, and a non-attorney salesperson, which seems to be a remote position. And what’s unique about that is they all have wildly different close ratios, right? So founders. If you’re a brand new firm, then maybe you don’t close really well as a founder. But if you’ve been in business for six, seven years or more, you close, or you’d be out of business. Like you’re not going to find a founder that has been in business for seven years and they can’t close. They find a way, right? So they can close. And depending on how you measure it, against opportunities that fit the firm,

00:13:15 Scott Berry
They could be closing at 50%, 45%. They’re usually very effective, but the problem is once you bring in associates, they close at around 25%. Right? So you’ll notice for intake things have already changed, right? And then if you bring in these non-associates, these guys can close at like 15%. So you know the leads are coming in and they’re the same leads, but depending on who’s trying to close them. The close ratio is wildly different and it affects your bottom line tremendously.

00:13:53 Ruby Powers
I mean, it would almost make you think, why would you have anyone but the named attorney do the consult? But then at the same time, they can only do so much. There’s only so many hours in the day. But I think my senior associates can. I know my senior associates’ conversion rates higher than 25%. But like, yeah, I remember learning a long, long time ago. This attorney had told me about some something called Rainmaker or something. I don’t know what it was. And he had a big family law firm. And he said he could he monitored the conversion rate per associate and by base what type of case they were consulting on. And he was able to figure out which ones should do which consults and who was better at converting. And that.

00:14:36 Ruby Powers
That in my head, like maybe a decade or so ago, more I’ve always kept that in mind too. So that if you need to move someone around or maybe just take them off consults if they’re not good at.

00:14:46 Scott Berry
Oh, no doubt. And listen, if you’re consulting, you got to fire them. In some cases, you got to fire them. I’ve seen firms, hire people and 30 days they’re gone, and then hire another one and 30 days they’re gone. Like if you’re being paid to be a consultant attorney and you can’t close. You’re costing the firm a massive amount of money. Like that, that is a very specialized job, being a consultant attorney, and the difference between you know 45 and 50 percent and what you’re able to contribute, is very significant. And I’ve seen firms that all of a sudden got into kind of financial cash kind of problems, and when you try to go through the financials, you’ll notice like, hold on a second, like this month you had a great month.

00:15:31 Scott Berry
And the close ratios were like 30% on average, right? And then this month they were like 10%. We’re like, oh, okay, hold on, what happened, right? And usually that means the founder didn’t do any consultations, something like that. And so I think a lot of us want to be the CEOs, right? We don’t want to do the consultations and stuff, so we’re we’re backing off, and then we’ve got that. And you can do that as long as you have consistent.

00:16:01 Scott Berry
Associate attorneys that can close at a high level because they’re not going to close as well as you. Nobody closes as well as the founder. Nobody. It’s your name. Your name’s on the outside of the building. Nobody is as motivated as you because you have payroll. I don’t care. Nobody closes. Nobody closes as good as the founder. So you’re willing.

00:16:26 Ruby Powers
Have all this responsibility.

00:16:28 Scott Berry
Yeah. You’re willing to say like, okay, so I can focus on these other things. I’m willing to accept that this guy’s not going to close like me, but it’s I can live with it. I can make money with this.

00:16:40 Ruby Powers
Like I’m, I was out of the office. Like I didn’t do consultations for three business days last week because of the conference we were at, and I even opened myself up to two one-hour spots on Saturday just because I felt guilty. Like, oh, we got to keep them rolling, you know. Oh yeah, because I wasn’t bringing in business, but I mean, my the rest of my team does. But so true. It’s so true about like I think that the founder and the conversion And just that sort of that parasocial relationship. I think also when you’re out and about or in the media or something and they see you and they want to talk to you too. And that’s part of that whole conversation of like how do you grow the firm beyond just the named attorney as well, which we.

00:17:25 Ruby Powers
We work on that here too.

00:17:26 Scott Berry
And you can do it. Just don’t forget who the best closer is, you know. And there’s financials and there’s math involved in that, right? So yeah, you got to keep it high. And I think the third place that I go looking for is if you let someone out of that consultation without signing the retainer, now you got to chase them, right? So think of it as kind of three moments of truth, whether or not you can get them to pay and book. Because they’ll show if they paid money, and then whether or not you can kind of close them on the spot, kind of thing, and then whether or not your firm is any good at chasing them and getting them after you kind of let them go, because you’re kind of having to win them back. If they’re like, well, let me think about it, let me talk to my spouse, let me see if I can find the money, all of those things that people say, believe it or not, they’re like they’re gone, right? So you got to kind of win them back.

00:18:24 Scott Berry
And I find that about 75% of the time, they come back like the next month, and sometimes even the following month, depending on the nature of the business. About 25% of the time, they’ll hire you that same month that they had their consultation in. So, you have to, which is a lot, but you need all of that. You need yeah. You need to win as much as possible on the spot. You don’t want to risk it. And then, if they get out of the consultation, man, you better be great staying up with them. And I got to tell you, for the most part, people aren’t. They don’t have like a team. They don’t have the systems. They don’t have the automation. They don’t have the sales techniques. They, they don’t even know where to go to get it.

00:19:22 Scott Berry
So that they’re effective at getting people to decide a week later or two weeks later. Yeah, I need to pull the trigger on that. It’s a little bit of a it’s a little bit of it’s kind of art and science. You can’t just you can’t call them up and just say, hey, did you make a decision yet? Like, that’s not very effective.

00:19:42 Ruby Powers
Well, this goes to my next question. We’re talking about hidden revenue leaks. I remember years ago that I first heard about. I know this sounds crazy now. I say this out loud, but like that I hadn’t, I wasn’t following up after a consult. Like no one had told me I was supposed to do that. I didn’t. I was so busy, and I didn’t add that as another thing. And then I remember being at a conference of speaking, and someone on my panel said that’s what they do at their office. I’m like, oh my gosh, that’s such a good idea. Why don’t I do that? I should do that. And it’s what you’re talking about.

00:20:19 Ruby Powers
But like you, ultimately, there should be like a map of like everything that happens, and you’re following up with everybody, and you know if they don’t hire, it’s because either it’s not a good fit, they don’t qualify, or something. But it’s not because you didn’t try. So where are the biggest revenue leaks occurring between a prospect’s first contact and an assigned retainer?

00:20:42 Scott Berry
I think you nailed probably the biggest one: follow-up. When I’m training intake teams, they usually raise their hand and go, “Look, here’s the thing we really need help with.” It’s funny because it’s they almost all say the same thing, like we need help with handling objections, right? And then follow up. And that’s you know that’s the stuff that people really want to learn about how to be good at. And I think because.

00:21:12 Scott Berry
Probably roughly, like 75% of the people that are going to hire you don’t do it right away. Follow-up is probably the hidden revenue that just really gets away from people. And I hear anywhere from, the smaller team you have, the less you can really follow up. Let’s be fair. Like I’ll have an attorney with a really small team, and I’m like, all right, like if they don’t commit on the spot, how much do you follow up with them? And I’ve heard as little as, oh, we definitely follow up. Like I’ll call them two days later and ask them if they’re ready to sign. And then I’m like, okay, well, what if they don’t say yes? Then they’re like, well, I’m busy. Like I’m doing you know something else. I can’t follow up again.

00:22:07 Scott Berry
So as little as one, probably effective, since it was the founder. But people normally will say three or four times, maybe five. But if you know anything about sales, like the right number, we call it like the rule of nine. Like you really can’t quit. You should not quit on that lead until they tell you I’ve hired someone else. Or don’t call me anymore, or you’ve made nine attempts. So we call that the nine. Now it doesn’t mean that you called them nine times, or that you know it’s a mixture of voicemails and calling them and email them, you know. But yeah, if you’re if someone because think about the money that you spent to get that lead, and then you booked it, and then you did the whole consultation and all the reminders.

00:23:06 Scott Berry
And you put your heart and soul into this person, making sure they showed up, and then you gave them your best feedback and your best close to try to win it. And then, like after two or three, you just gave up on them, you know. And it’s just you really need to see it all the way through, and it’ll make a difference in your revenue if you can plug that leak.

00:23:28 Ruby Powers
When you talk about follow-up, that tracks with my experience when my firm was smaller. Ten plus years ago, with like you’re you have less staff. Of course, now we have technology, more technology and things like that. But I’m just instantly thinking about like CRMs, and I know you mentioned a couple in your book. But I feel like that’s something a lot of firms don’t utilize fully, or there’s a case management software that has a CRM light type of thing, or they don’t even know what CRM is, or I think the ones that use it the most are PI firms.

00:24:05 Ruby Powers
Because they live and die by that. Yeah. But other practice areas are not as much. And I’ve been monitoring and using different CRM programs over, about a decade or so. But do you want to put a, mention, customer relationship management and just like how vital they are to this to the flow?

00:24:27 Scott Berry
To have an elite intake team and avoid letting opportunities fall through the cracks, I think a CRM system like we just got back from the 8 a.m. My case and CASEpeer. We just got back from doing that together. Systems like that are just vital for a lot of different reasons. There is automation built into those, which I think make a huge difference. You still make calls yourself, but there’s reminders, and you know.

00:25:03 Scott Berry
It’s tough to do all the reminders to show up for the consultation and then all the email follow-ups. You know you need to build recipes. These are sometimes called recipes. On the second day we send this email. You know on the third day we send this email, but it’s got this attached to it. You know and then we call on the fifth day and then on the seventh day we do this right. So having a recipe and some automation built into your CRM system, I think is just the bare minimum these days. Just the bare minimum. And I know that there’s more kind of AI things coming, but just we need to all be real careful with that. Being so lackadaisical about the relationship that you just like let the AI follow up.

00:25:55 Scott Berry
I think is not the preferred method. You think about it. You got somebody that’s going to pay you. They’re going to hire you. It’s ten thousand dollars. They’re having one of the most stressful times of their life. Just think about family law, personal injury, immigration. Most of the time when you get a lawyer, it’s not like the best time in your life. Like you got a lot at stake. It could be a business deal, you know. And so I just really like people to try to go easy on the AI stuff. Use this the CRM automation to remind you to you know that you owe a call today and you know and then but you can send out emails through automation. You write like just brilliant emails that are going to add a lot of value. Certainly not a just checking in kind of stuff. But yeah, I’m glad you brought that up because I think that’s the bare minimum. People that own software like that, but.

00:26:50 Scott Berry
If you don’t have workflows to make those nine contacts within about fourteen days, you’re really missing the boat. Really missing the boat. And there’s no way if you’ve got a million-dollar firm, there’s no way you should be functioning without that. Like that’s just a well.

00:27:11 Ruby Powers
I mean, it’s like if you’re paying for leads or you’re hustling and getting the call the phone to ring or you know. For lack of a better word, because we know it’s coming from all the different angles, and then you don’t have the right funnel, and you don’t have follow up with the leads, then you’re just losing those leaks. Are costing you a lot, and that’s why when I talk about it’s like, well, is the receptionist rude, or do they not have a good script, or do they not, explaining the value of paying for the consult, or, Is that you? You do you bomb it in the consult. Did you not follow up? Were you not timely enough? Like it, it could be anything, honestly.

00:27:50 Scott Berry
I don’t think people realize how much money they’re losing by not being effective in those areas, because it’s hundreds of thousands of dollars for firms, depending on how large it is. We actually created before we run a course. We have people kind of apply and we just want to talk to them first, just to make sure it makes sense. And we have a calculator that we put them through. And so they say, oh, here’s our revenue and this what we’re going to do next year. And this like how effective our intake team is. And so we kind of take them through that funnel you were talking about. It’s like, oh, we get about 400 leads, and then from those we’re able to book about this many, and then this many show, and then out of those.

00:28:34 Scott Berry
The attorneys usually figure out that like this many is a fit for us, and then we can close about this many. And then we kind of compare that against effective intake teams. It might be a client that we have in Austin or somebody that we have in San Francisco. Real, real, real teams. And the difference between where they are and where a team that’s performing pretty, pretty effectively, you can look at the difference. And it’ll tell you what the financial difference is between where you are today and where you should be. And if that’s twenty-five thousand a year, probably not a big deal. I wouldn’t worry about it. But if that’s a quarter of a million dollars, we’ve got a problem. And something needs to be done. So, I try to make sure that, like if there’s not a ten times return on someone taking the course, like we don’t even.

00:29:32 Scott Berry
Don’t even take it. Like, don’t even take it. That’s how big the financial difference is between someone who’s not focusing on it and they’re not really performing really well, compared to people that already have their stuff together. And I will say this: people think that their numbers are really great and that their people are really great and they’re not leaking in these areas, but, I say eight times out of ten, like it’s not anywhere near as good as you think it is,

00:30:08 Ruby Powers
Right, exactly.

00:30:12 Scott Berry
I hate to say it. I’m just telling you.

00:30:14 Ruby Powers
Because people probably think, “I’ve got this down.”

00:30:18 Scott Berry
That’s what they say. My people can sell.

00:30:21 Ruby Powers
Yeah. Yeah.

00:30:22 Scott Berry
And I’m like, well, can I play these recordings for you? And then they get livid,

00:30:28 Ruby Powers
You know. Yeah. Well, As we’re closing up with like advice and ideas. I think one of the first places to look would be like start pulling numbers. If you don’t have it all in one place, yeah. Like how many leads you get. Consults. How many consults convert?

00:30:44 Scott Berry
Yes. Systems like MyCase track that information, right? So because you’re following the leads as they go through the whole process through the consultation and the follow up. That’s what I love about CRM systems like that. It’s all there if you’ll just use the system. But you know it’s not just the receptionist, right? Like the if the consultant attorney can’t really close or isn’t even trying to close, then the whole thing breaks down. And you know I’m telling you, until you have listened to the recordings, like don’t think that.

00:31:28 Scott Berry
That your people are nailing it, because I was listening. Someone said, “I’m going to send you some recordings, and you tell me.” And not on a single recording did the, in this particular case, it was a non-attorney salesperson. Not on a single recording did he ask for the business. Really? Not on a single recording. He sent me five. Not one time did he say. May I send you the retainer?

00:31:58 Ruby Powers
Not one time. And I think so often when people are hiring law firm owners or whoever’s hiring at the firm is looking for a receptionist, they’re more like, do they sound okay on the phone? And I’m there’s so much more to this than that, you know. Like you need can they’ve got to they’re in sales, they’ve got to be able to convert the call into a consult or at least lead, and, Direct, sometimes there’s the ones who do more sales and some who are like traffic control and sends the calls to the right person in the firm. But if they don’t have that basic ability, and not everyone does, then that you that’s the beginning, pretty much one of the first places that you start your sales funnel. Besides getting them to initially contact you in the first place. But if you bomb that,

00:32:49 Scott Berry
Even if you’re a law firm founder, that doesn’t automatically mean you can convince people to hire you. Like I’m sorry. I hope that doesn’t come off as mean, but not everybody needs to have their own law firm. Like it might sound like a good idea, but once you decide, you know what? I’m gonna go open up my own law firm, and I’m gonna be solely responsible for bringing in all the clients, and I’m gonna make all the revenue here. Like.

00:33:21 Scott Berry
I’ve found that not everybody is great at that. You can be a great lawyer or a great staff attorney, but you have to be great convincing people to hire you, and that is not everybody’s, skill set. Because I’ve listened to them, and I’m like, oh no, oh this is gonna. I’m not even sure we can fix this. Like, because some people just don’t, because there’s a thought like. Hey, I give them the legal advice, and they’re supposed to hire me. My job—my job is not to sell them. My job is to give them legal advice, and then if they want to hire me, then great. If not, that’s fine. And I’m like, well, but you have bills to pay, and rent, and you have people. Like you now that you own the place, you have to get hired. So.

00:34:17 Scott Berry
What are we going to do?

00:34:19 Ruby Powers
So I know you suggest that marketing, intake, consultations, and follow-up should be managed under one system. And that’s like the ideal But what if your firm has separate functions and they’re not all connected Like what would be some practical tips for the listeners to like get in moving in that direction.

00:34:42 Scott Berry
It is a little tricky. When you’re small, the founder kind of got everything right, so it works fine then, right? Because everybody reports to the founder. But as it gets bigger, then how do you know how do you put it all underneath one? How do you keep all of it underneath one umbrella? It is difficult, I will admit, but it can be done. I recently was consulting with someone that was doing four five million a year.

00:35:15 Scott Berry
And they actually had an intake manager, which I love it when they do that. And when they hired consulting attorneys, the intake manager got to interview them and vote on them, right? But the ultimate decision was the managing attorney. But they got to vote and weigh in on it. And then once they were hired, the intake manager got to train them. And I thought that was brilliant because the whole, all the revenue was going right through those people, and the founder didn’t do consultations anymore. So, by once you name kind of an intake manager, which I think you ought to do as soon as you can, then you kind of loop in. All right, well, you’re responsible for the receptionist and how the phones get handled, right? And then, yeah, and then you’re responsible for all the follow-up and the CRM system.

00:36:13 Scott Berry
All you have to do now is just loop in the consulting attorneys and find a way to dotted line that, and then you’ve got it all underneath one person, right? Even if it’s just dotted line, so that because it doesn’t do any good to like when you have that meeting like every other week, like a huddle to talk about what our numbers are and we’re not closing and things like that, or we’re going to do role plays. You got. You have to pull the consulting attorneys in because they need to be thinking about how am I performing. Like everybody needs to see my numbers, right? If my numbers are now 20%, everybody needs to see those because I’m paying the bills around here, right? So if I’m not at 30 and I’m at 20, I’m costing us cash and it’s a big problem, right? It’s just a. It’s different, right? Like it’s a different atmosphere. So.

00:37:07 Scott Berry
I think it all needs to be looked at underneath one system, so that you have a chance to catch if they’re not dealing with people on the phone perfectly and getting those paid consultations booked, and if the consultant attorney is not closing, or if they’re spending too much time talking about the firm or their cases and things like that, if they’re not taking the time to Be empathetic, right? If they’re not taking the time to say, “Wow, that, man, that’s that is really tough. Like, how’s that affecting you? How’s that affecting your family? If this doesn’t work, what’s going to happen? If you’re not digging into that, then you don’t really have a lot to work with except price, right? So, well, why should I hire you? Well, it’s nine thousand dollars, right?

00:38:02 Scott Berry
Well, the answer is that when we were talking earlier, you were saying that if this didn’t work, you guys couldn’t get married. It was going to ruin your life. So that’s why you’re going to hire me, right? But I never took the time to ask those questions. So now I don’t have that information. So now it’s all about price. So, but if you’re not listening to these conversations, if you’re not coaching them up, if you’re not role playing, that’s those are leaks that you know are going to get away. And somebody’s got to be looking at that. All at one time, and that’s where I kind of like, treating it as one system, so that you’re looking at it accordingly. I’ve seen teams that meet for 30, 45 minutes every week, and they do role plays and record each other and stuff, and they’re brilliant. That’s awesome. I can ask them a lot of questions, and like, they got it all like that, man. They’re doing it all, and of course, those firms make a lot of money.

00:39:01 Scott Berry
They’re doing really well.

00:39:03 Ruby Powers
When you talk about the ideal to have an intake coordinator, director, whatever you want to call it, right? That’s keeping an eye on all those functions that part of the from the initial contact to being hired. But when I think about like a maybe a smaller firm who doesn’t have that, how can you create that idea? It makes me think about something I did. Like I had my marketing team talk with the reception. We call it like a reception team, not fancy title or anything. But what I wanted them to talk to each other because I realized like the marketing is getting the phone to ring, but if they just don’t know what’s happening afterwards, then they need to know what calls are coming in, what happens, and then we also need to bring in the attorneys that are doing the consults because they need to know. And so I started creating like meetings occasionally from all three of those groups to put their heads together and sort of see.

00:39:58 Ruby Powers
How to improve that? So even if you can’t have one person, a huge department, or whatever, you can try to sort of reimagine how to do that on sort of the scale that you have. But it could involve a lot of more communication between different groups that maybe you know it’s not very, it’s not segmented because it’s all it all flows together the whole client experience.

00:40:21 Scott Berry
Yeah, the founder can just do that and just say, hey, every other week we’re going to have a 30 minute meeting. I’m buying lunch, and I want the receptionist in. I want the consulting attorneys, and marketing, or whoever’s doing, post-consultation follow-up and stuff. And we’re gonna, and we’re gonna talk about revenue. We’re gonna check numbers. We’re gonna check performance, and we’ll watch videos. We’ll read books. We’re gonna make sure that we realize that our work is mega important.

00:40:56 Scott Berry
Like just when you think about it, if you read books and you study, you think about it. Like the whole revenue, the entire revenue flows right through those people for the whole firm. So if they’re off just a little bit, you might do you know one million instead of one and a half. Like it just can be devastating. That’s a huge difference. Yeah, it can just be devastating. It’s just so important, and it just gets overlooked, I think, a lot. And so. Just trying to bring, attention to that. Trying to shine a light on it because it just it works so closely with marketing. I think if you’re really going to grow, they have to be the same. Like they have to be. It’s got to be tongue and groove. It’s it. And we can’t be saying, well, the leads aren’t any, the leads aren’t any good because you don’t know any different because you’re not listening to calls and you don’t really know what’s going on with your own team. Like.

00:41:55 Scott Berry
You got to plug all those leaks first, and then you can experience some really fantastic growth. So, with all the cool things that are out there too, this is another thing. There’s a lot of shiny things going on right now, especially with AI. And oh, what about this? What about that? And I would tell you, man, you better make sure you don’t have leaks like in your own system like that, because fixing that would be, Much more important than trying out this new Claude thing, or this new AI phone answering thing. And meanwhile, you’re losing two hundred thousand because you aren’t checking up on people that don’t hire you on the spot. Like this is a great way to pick up on hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of business without having to test something new. Like this is just fundamental.

00:42:50 Ruby Powers
As we’re getting to the rapid questions, I just wanted to mention something that made me think about the keynote at Kaleidoscope by 8am and it was Jesse Cole from the Savannah Bananas. Banana man. The yeah, and I actually he has a book called Fans First. I’ve been listening to it ever since the keynote last week. But I just.

00:43:22 Ruby Powers
Someone told me later that day after the keynote, she goes like, “How? But how do we apply that to our firms?” And I was like, “That’s a really good question.” But I think the point of it is just customer service, basically. And like, he has like these five E’s, like eliminate friction. Well, that’s what you’re supposed to do anyway in sales and leads. And then he has entertain always, experiment constantly. He’s always trying to find ways to improve, engage deeply. That’s like empathy and making that connection and empower action, like empowering your team to be able to problem solve and things like that, and not that they have to wait for approval or something like. But anyway, I think like since we both were there and that had a big impact on me last week at the conference, I’m trying to find ways to incorporate those to.

00:44:17 Ruby Powers
Just that sort of—he takes a lot of his inspiration from Walt Disney. And having gone to Disneyland this summer, and I was like, “Oh, I get it! I get it!” And like, he keeps referencing it in the way. But I do—I just want to do a plug for that. Just like how we can—we don’t have to do things we’ve always done before. We’ve always done it that way. And just because someone told us to do it, doesn’t mean that has to be the way. We can reinvent the way we produce and provide legal services. And I think the and one of the premises he says is like the more we improve that experience, like the more it’ll just speak for itself, and we create the fans, and then they’ll be our best promotion. And so, anyway, I just I feel like it could. I’m trying to find a way to tie it all together here, but well,

00:45:04 Scott Berry
It totally fits law firms, right? Because we love referrals, right? And we can get them. And whenever you’re brilliant with clients and even potential clients, they’ll refer you. That’s the best part of it. It’s probably easier to get a referral as a law firm as it is for Disney, and Disney has been used as the standard for just gold, blow you away service forever. Yeah. And law firms can easily do that if you’re into that, right? Like if you want to be that great, you can be that great, and.

00:45:43 Scott Berry
I think it starts when the phone gets picked up. Start listening to that and decide if you’re Walt Disney-worthy.

00:45:55 Ruby Powers
I mean, and sometimes they would say it’s before the phone gets picked up because it’s how your image is projected out there in the world and what you’re doing to get them to even contact you in the first place, right? Yeah. But so, Scott, it’s been fun, but now it’s time for the rapid questions, and I already know what you’re gonna.

00:46:13 Scott Berry
I don’t know. You never know what I’m going to say. You’re suspicious, but I’m a little unpredictable.

00:46:21 Ruby Powers
Okay. Well, what is your favorite board game?

00:46:27 Scott Berry
Okay. See, you did know. Like I told you, I don’t play games, and I don’t play games. No funny games. Because I’m too competitive, and I, it gets competitive. I don’t know. I just I win a lot, and I win all the time.

00:46:42 Ruby Powers
It just sucks, man.

00:46:43 Scott Berry
You just I get tired of winning, and sometimes I’ll like, yo, what’s and it just people get angry, and if my wife isn’t on my team, it gets awkward, and finally I just you’re.

00:46:57 Ruby Powers
You’re a wise man.

00:46:58 Scott Berry
I quit. I’m like, this is not working for me anymore, and I quit playing games, and I mean that. I don’t play any games. So okay, hey, back in the day though, Ruby. Yeah. I played them all, and I was good at them, charades included.

00:47:16 Ruby Powers
Really? I can imagine that would be good for you.

00:47:19 Scott Berry
I was fun back in the day.

00:47:21 Ruby Powers
I could argue that you’re probably still fun. You just need to change your approach at this. What do you consider your superpower? You can interpret that however you want to. Yeah. There’s no tight definition on that.

00:47:37 Scott Berry
If we’re talking about work, I think my superpower is determination. I don’t know if I have like a personal superpower. My wife would probably be my personal superpower. But I’m kind of like a little bit like a pit bull. Like if I decide I want to do something, like I’m just rabid. Like I’ll I lock my jaws on it and I learn it. And I’ll be successful. Like if I decide I’m going to do it, then it’s going to get done.

00:48:08 Scott Berry
And I like that. I think it’s a competitive thing in me. It started very early on, where I would decide, oh, I’m going to learn golf, you know. And then I get like a hole in one, and I’ve shot like one over par before. And then I’m I’m going to learn tennis, it’s like, really. And then I’ll learn it, And I played tennis tournaments and won trophies and stuff. And whoa. Oh Yeah. And I’ve just, I just, when I just decide I’m going to do it, and you. And I told you I’ve jumped from airplanes, and I really like that. And I’m an assistant instructor for scuba diving, and I’ve done that my whole life, and a lot of amazing night dives with sharks, and I mean, just like all over the world, I’ve been diving all over the world, and I love that. And I just once I decide like I want to learn something and be great at it, I just can just dig in and like.

00:49:02 Scott Berry
Where’s

00:49:04 Ruby Powers
Your favorite place to dive?

00:49:06 Scott Berry
I love diving in Belize, and if people don’t know, that’s like just follow Mexico all the way down. It’s like the second largest reef system on the planet, and it’s shockingly clear, and the reef system is beautiful, and there’s lots of sharks, so it’s fun. But I’ve dived the Great Barrier Reef before. Which everybody knows, that’s the best reef system. And then the Maldives, I dove the Maldives last year, and that’s my new favorite. But it’s a long way away from people that live in the United States. But they’ve got those big manta rays that just. Yeah,

00:49:47 Ruby Powers
That’s what I heard. Yeah,

00:49:48 Scott Berry
Ridiculous, and you can touch them, but don’t.

00:49:52 Ruby Powers
But yeah, we know what happens to that. I did Roatan last December, to Great Barrier Reef this December, and yeah, I’ve like done like the UAE and Jamaica and Costa Rica and some other places. Yeah, that’s awesome. Maybe I should alter my questions. You should have done a scuba one instead of games. Yeah,

00:50:18 Scott Berry
And we could have talked about all the places I’ve been scuba diving and wrecks. That’s awesome.

00:50:26 Ruby Powers
What’s a favorite podcast or book you would recommend to listeners?

00:50:32 Scott Berry
Well, the I think probably the last book that wasn’t really about law firm growth and stuff like that, because I read all those, was by Eliyahu Goldratt. Super strange sounding name, but it’s called The Goal, by Eliyahu Goldratt. You should check it out. But I,

00:50:58 Ruby Powers
I think it’s in my house. I think my husband read it, so I’ll find it.

00:51:03 Scott Berry
It’s not like a huge secret. But it talks a lot about just growth and having bottlenecks and how to solve them. And because in law firms, there’s just a lot of bottlenecks. And so I really get that. Because especially as we talk about like making first contact, right? Maybe see you on the website or an ad or something, and try and not to have any bottlenecks all the way through until you get the retainer signed. Like you can’t hardly afford to have any these days. So that’s one that kind of a non-law firm book that I’m getting a lot out of.

00:51:47 Ruby Powers
I’m gonna go find it in my house.

00:51:49 Scott Berry
Yeah. Your husband’s a smart man.

00:51:51 Ruby Powers
That’s a good book. Yeah, he married me. Ha. That’s good. Yeah. Well, Scott, how can people find you and stay connected and keep the conversation going with you?

00:52:02 Scott Berry
Thanks for asking. Our website is MarketCrest.com. And I think you can see right here by my name. That’s the way you spell it. That’s probably the easiest way. People can just set up a strategy session and we can just chat. One of the things that people don’t—I don’t think—really realize or take advantage of is, I know a lot of people. You know a lot of people. We have a lot of friends in the business, and that people can just reach out and go, “Hey, man, can I just talk about my company? What’s going on with my law firm?” And I heard you at Kaleidoscope talking and stuff, and I just like to meet people and just talk about what’s going on with their company, and we can run some software tests and do some things, and I love doing that for people.

00:52:45 Scott Berry
We’ll do it. Talk for no charge, and so just yeah, call and just reach out, fill out a little form, and say I want to talk to Scott, and that’s probably the easiest way.

00:52:55 Ruby Powers
Awesome. And then where can they find your book?

00:52:59 Scott Berry
Yo, thank you. It’s on Amazon: The Law Firm Intake Playbook by Scott Berry and Gloria Dewar. And we have a new one coming out around January. It’s a companion to that. It isolates instead of the whole like first impression to sign retainer. It’s going to isolate getting the paid consultation sold and closing on the actual consultation. Because as we ran those courses, we just.

00:53:38 Scott Berry
People wanted more: more role plays, more ideas, and more opportunities to practice. And I thought, we need to make a book for that, like that’s what people just want more help with. And so that book is half written and be coming out somewhere around the January time frame. So be watching for that.

00:53:58 Ruby Powers
Oh wow, that’s awesome. Well, it’s great to have you on the show, Scott. And I think. We brought up a lot of topics, things that you know. I think sometimes a lot of the law firm owner, the managing attorney, are in the weeds, and they’re just practicing law, and they sort of don’t, we don’t really get a lot of this training on marketing and leads and things like that. It’s not most practice areas; they’re not as focused on all of this, but it’s so essential, and there’s better ways of doing things. And if we look to other industries, that’s where we’ll find a lot of the best practices.

00:54:34 Ruby Powers
There are a lot of experts out there, and we can learn from them. You’re a great resource for those in immigration and family law, and just I mean I think everything you’re saying is pretty much applicable to most law firms. Yeah. And you know you could even say most of what we’re talked about today could be applicable to other professional service industries.

00:54:54 Scott Berry
CPAs, probably the same way.

00:54:58 Ruby Powers
I’m looking forward to seeing you at the next conference, and I’m so glad that you got your book out and you’re sharing that with the world, and you got another one coming out. So thanks so much for joining us, Scott. It’s been great to have you, and thanks everyone for listening. And we’ll see you next time.

00:55:16 Scott Berry
Yep. Thanks. Bye,

00:55:17 Ruby Powers
Bye. Thank you for tuning in to Power Up Your Practice. I’m Ruby Powers, and it’s been a pleasure sharing this time with you. We love your reviews, so if you enjoyed today’s episode, please leave us one and share this podcast with someone else so they can know what you’ve been learning on our show. And make sure to check out the Power Up Your Practice book. It’s available in paperback and Kindle on Amazon. It’s packed with 25 chapters of strategies to grow and streamline your firm. And we also have the free Power Hub community on Skool to keep the conversation going in between the episodes. So make sure to keep powering up your practice, and we’ll see you next time.