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How Do You Create Raving Fans? Joining us today is Chris Earley, a Personal Injury Lawyer in Massachusetts who is a magnet for raving fans.
When it comes to marketing, there is simply no better lead than a referral. Why? Because people who don’t know you don’t trust you. But a prospective client will trust someone they can relate to you’re your former clients. But it isn’t enough to have a handful of 5-star reviews that you begged and pleaded for through mass, repetitive emails. Everyone has that.
In this podcast, Chris answers some of these questions:
- You are the master at creating raving fans. What is a raving fan?
- Why is it important to develop these kinds of relationships?
- Your attitude towards generating raving fans goes beyond simply having good reviews. You start with the person first and how you can help them. Can you expand on that a bit?
- How do you go about developing the raving fan relationship?
- How much time do you spend developing these relationships?
- How do you get your raving fans to leave reviews or send referral cases?
- What are some ways that you keep in touch with your raving fans after their case closes?
- What percentage of your client leads are referral based?
- Do you find it is easier to connect with a client who comes from a referral v one who comes from a cold call?
- Why do you think other lawyers might struggle with this initially and how can they overcome it?
Visit the Earley Law Group online here https://www.chrisearley.com/ and be sure to check out their extended family of raving fans here: https://www.chrisearley.com/client-testimonials.html.
See all episodes or subscribe to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute here: https://optimizemyfirm.com/podcasts/.
Transcript:
Lindsey:
Welcome to the Personal Injury Marketing Minute, where we quickly cover the hot topics in the legal marketing world. I’m your host, Lindsey Busfield. When it comes to marketing, there is simply no better lead than a referral. Why? Because people who don’t know you don’t necessarily trust you. But a perspective client will trust somebody they can relate to, i.e., your former clients, but it isn’t enough to have a handful of five-star reviews that you begged and pleaded for through mass repetitive emails. Everyone has that. What you need are raving fans who can’t wait to tell their friends, family, and random strangers how great you are and how much money you got them. You want the kind of fan who hears someone just say the word car accident from across the room, they drop everything and sing your praises. You want an army of walking billboards. Joining us today is Chris Earley, a personal injury lawyer in Massachusetts who is a magnet for raving fans. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Chris:
Thank you, Lindsey. It’s my pleasure. Thank you so much.
Lindsey:
Well, you are the master at creating raving fans. So let’s start by telling me a little bit about what is a raving fan.
Chris:
I am hyper focused and dialed in on doing the best job that me and my team can do to make our clients happy. I feel that clients, when it comes to lawyers, don’t ask for a lot. I don’t think the standard is so high that that does make them happy. But if you can over-deliver, if you can really impress them, they more times than not will become a raving fan. The more you dial in on customer service, holding their hand through the process from start to finish, from intake to end of the case, they remember how you made them feel. We’ll get into that about relationships. It’s not just a transactional attorney-client, cold relationship, it’s a warm, human relationship. That I try to humanize the relationship. I try to make clients feel really welcome. We call it here, our extended family.
It’s not just group of clients, it’s an extended family of people who trust us to handle their case. We take that very seriously and we really do focus on doing everything we possibly can, because I think that’s where the magic happens. You make a large group of people happy and you continue to do that over time, that compounds, that gets to be very favorable math for you in terms of growing a business, attracting more clients. That’s sort of a macro 50,000-foot view of how I approach client service and doing our darnedest to try to create raving fans.
Lindsey:
Well, that in and of itself is a great starting point, and creating that humanizing experience and not having that holier than thou where I know law and you know your accident kind of mentality. It’s not like a settlement mill. When it comes to personal injury law, it’s a little bit of a different type of clientele experience than if somebody were to go into a shop, or even go to another service industry and let’s say have a graphic designer design them something. It’s a very different type of experience because you are hoping to not necessarily have repeat clients, because that would mean that they’re in another accident or injured again. It changes that dynamic and it changes the importance of having a classic style referral where you’re hoping to get these people in the door all the time. That being said, where you’re not necessarily trying to get them back to you a million times over, why is it important to develop these kinds of relationships?
Chris:
Well, I read a book, I can’t remember the title, but the idea was everyone knows a few hundred people. That goes back to the math approach. If everyone knows a few hundred people, if you make a few hundred people or a few thousand people happy, that’s a lot of people you’re potentially impacting because everyone knows a large amount of people. That creates exponential growth. Good customer service drives the growth of a law practice. Conversely, if you provide bad customer service, it’s going to tank your practice. You’re never going to grow, it’s just going to flounder. Now you brought up other service industries and that’s really important, Lindsey, because people generally, as I said before, don’t like lawyers. Let’s just get in front of that and be real and honest about that. It’s just the way it is. Everything we do here is to rile against that, to reframe the perspective on how you perceive attorneys to really be. What brings them to our doorstep is an unfortunate event. There was some precipitating event, there was an accident, something bad happened. They’re not calling us because something good happened, so they’re low.
Lindsey:
Right. They’re not having a great day.
Chris:
They’re having a bad day, right. They may be out of work. They’re [inaudible 00:04:50] medical expenses. They may have kids. They’re stressed out, “How am I going to provide for my kids? What am I going to do?” No matter what kind of law you’re in, I don’t care if it’s divorce, real estate, personal injury, criminal, you have to be sensitive to fact that there’s a problem. Again, the more you can humanize the relationship, the more you can hold their hand, the more you can demonstrate, “We’re not your average lawyer. You have really made a good decision.” Lindsey, we do that. Once the client signs up…
There’s something called buyer’s regret. A lot of people say, “Did I hire the right lawyer? Did I buy the right product at store today? Did I make the right decision?” Doubt creeps in. So at the very beginning of representation, we get ahead of that. We will send an automatic email that says, “Welcome to our extended family. You’ve just made a great decision.” Just really starting the relationship off on a bright, positive note because the whole name of the game for me is to show up differently. We’re not your average firm, care about you, care doing good work. Because at the end of the day, it’s not really about the result you get, the amount of settlement. Whatever it is, if you give them a good service, if you communicate and just treat them really well and show you care, I mean, they’re going to love you no matter what happens. That’s what they care about, it’s how you make them feel, for sure.
Lindsey:
Absolutely. That’s a huge, I mean, selling point for choosing one lawyer versus another. You will always know that you have picked somebody by the way that they make you feel at the end of it. They won’t necessarily know, “I could have gotten four million versus two and a half,” because they won’t know how that played out. But they will absolutely know how you made them feel throughout the process. If you can give them a warm, supported, favorable experience all around, they’ll know that they made the right decision regardless. I love that you started off by assuring them that they have made the right decision, welcoming them in. What are some of the other things that you do throughout the client process to let them know that they are part of your family, and continue that supported feeling?
Chris:
I hate to beat a dead horse and say it again, but humanize things. I come from a very unusual background. I come from a family of homelessness, there’s addiction, and I bring that up in an email a few days into the relationship to explain, “Hey, this is my story. I may not come from the pedigree you may think I come from, the typical lawyer background.” Instantly that can create affinity for someone who maybe has someone in the family or knows someone who has had struggles. That really helps me to, again, get ahead of any negative perception that they may have lawyers. Say, “I’m different. This is my story and this is the kind of law firm that I have. This is the law firm that I’ve built, and that firm is built with team members who are really capable.” Then I kind of pass off the team member, because I’m developing the business, growing the business.
This is where, Lindsey, we have to have systems in place so those good feelings remain. Because no matter if you start off strong and the client’s like, “Oh, wow, this is great. This guy Earley, I just made a great decision.” But then if you fall off and the system are on in place, you’re not calling clients back, then we’re in trouble. That can’t happen. We got to have a systemized approach from start to finish. I think everything should be written down, process in terms of how we do things, never fly by the seat of our pants, and arbitrary Retimax, everything is organized, organized structure. That’s going to speed up the case, right?
Lindsey:
Yeah, I’m sure.
Chris:
That’s important for the client. The client ultimately… They care about the resolution, they want to get the case done. They don’t want to drag on, so let’s speed that up, make them feel good, show them we care. If we learn that the client had a death in the family, we send a card. If we find out there was a good event, a graduation, a promotion, marriage, whatever, we send a card congratulating them, just being sensitive to the moment and just showing up differently that, “We care about your success, we care about the struggle you may be experiencing,” whatever that may be in their life. I’m always preaching and teaching my team. “Send handwritten cards, take the time, send a card, show you care.”
What we’re going to do in the new year is to not just give clients updates about the case like, “Hey, Lindsey, just give me an update in your case.” More like, “Lindsey, how are you? How are you doing?” Checking in on you as a person, and then we can talk about the case, but the case is secondary. The primary thing is, “How are you? What’s going on?” Then getting into the legal case. I’m really trying to focus on that. Just try to take it up a level to just impress them that we care and we mean it. We talk the talk and we walked the walk, we’re legit. More times than not they see that and they respond really favorably. But we can’t make everyone happy. Not everyone is a raving fan. Not everyone’s like, “Oh my god, this guy Earley…” You can’t make them all happy no matter how hard you try, but…
Lindsey:
I love that so much. So many attorneys that we talk to tell us, “Yeah, we want them to feel like family. We want this to be their home. We want to make them feel supported.” But they miss some of the most obvious things. It goes beyond their case. It goes to that humanizing experience. You don’t know how many people are out there who haven’t had somebody genuinely ask them, “How are you?” and mean it. Not just want to hear an, “Oh, I’m fine,” and feel just pressured to skip over it. But have somebody actually care about how they’re doing. It’s an obvious thing for a friend to a friend, or a family member to a family member, but from a lawyer to a client that’s a step that needs to be taken seriously when you’re trying to make that genuine connection. But the other part of it that goes into it, the trade-off is time, because that must take a lot of time to keep track of people’s birthdays and graduations and deaths and checking in. How much extra time do you realistically see you and your team spending making these connections?
Chris:
Well, the birthdays are pretty easy because that’s tracked through the case management software. So that’s easy to stay on top of. Now in terms of anniversary, say like a wedding anniversary, we haven’t really taken it that step, a recurring anniversary, more like a big life event, “Congratulations.” But that’s a good idea that you’re causing me to think about, what you just said is, setting… Well, I’ve thought about that happy anniversary crap, but what if they get divorced? So trying to think of something that can sustain over time and not be subject to whims and changes in one’s life. But people really remember that stuff, the care touches them. Obviously we want to be in a position where if they hear someone who had an accent, we want to be the first top of mind. We want to be the person that they think of, because generally people want people to have the good experience that they had. They want to give that to someone else if they can.
I think people feel kind of like a hero in a certain… Not to be cheesy, but kind of a hero of helping someone to find a good landing spot for a legal need or car mechanic, real estate agent, whatever it may be. I think we drive satisfaction. That, I think, and I’ll probably get into this more, but just referrals. We want to always remind that we do want referrals. That’s how we’re built is on client referrals. That’s part of the culture here, it’s woven into the fabric, built on referrals. We have signs in the waiting area of our office. It’s in our drip email campaigns, it’s in our letters to clients. Always reinforcing the message that, “We’re here for you.”
Even if it’s not a person under your case, we have newsletters that go out and we say in there, “We’re your trusted legal advisor, whether it be a divorce, criminal case, anything. If you have a legal need, call us.” We want to be that hub. When a legal need strikes, we want to be the person you think of because we have a great network. If your cousin needs an attorney for some matter we don’t handle, we’ve got a nice Rolodex of attorneys we can connect. We want to be that trusted legal advisor so they always think of us when they or someone in their orbit needs legal help.
Lindsey:
Well, and this goes back to what you were saying and the idea that we just kind of brainstormed there about the sending out the anniversary card. If you do find out they’re divorced, “Well, so sorry to hear that this is going on, but here’s somebody that I can connect you with if you need some help.”
Chris:
Right, right.
Lindsey:
Obviously that would be a little bit cheesy to do it exactly that way, but if you are keeping regular tabs on somebody and they’re genuinely telling you what’s going on in their lives, you can say, “Oh, sorry that your pipe exploded. Here’s a great plumber that I know.” Or, “Sorry that your cousin is going through this divorce and she’s ending up at your house. I know somebody who might be able to help her out with that.” By keeping that constant flow of communication open and a genuine communication going, you’ll know what needs that you’re able to meet and how you’re able to help provide them beyond their initial personal injury case. But it does start with that communication piece and that humanization piece where I can relate to you, I can help you, you can me, and it’s a true, genuine relationship-
Chris:
Yes, yes.
Lindsey:
… built on support.
Chris:
Two-way street. Absolutely.
Lindsey:
Absolutely. So after the case closes, you mentioned the email drip campaign, you mentioned the birthday cards. Is there anything else that you do with your clients? Or we talked about referral partners a little bit. What do you do to keep in touch with them on an ongoing basis?
Chris:
As it relates to current or former clients, they all get a weekly email. I call it a weekly email blast, but it’s not spammy, it’s actually really well thought of, the subject line we put great thought into. We have a nice open rate somewhere in the low to mid 30s. So people open it, they generally don’t unsubscribe. We just try to give a positive message. I’ll have a quote in there, maybe a book recommendation, and a gentle reminder, “We love your referrals, thank you so much,” because we’re perpetuating a culture of receiving referrals. We never want to assume people… I would encourage anyone listening to this, never assume your clients know that you want referrals. They may not even think you need referrals. It may not have entered their brain. You need to be, I believe, intentional and educate clients always. Never assume that they know you want referrals, educate them about that need.
Back to your question, Lindsey. Basically unless they unsubscribe, they get 52 emails. I like to send it Thursday morning at 6:30 in the morning. Hopefully it’s the first email top of their inbox. Because Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesdays, people are kind of busy with life. It’s not Friday, we’re kind of already on the weekend basically, so Thursday I feel like is a good point that’s worked well for us. I also send out a newsletter. I would call it a very high quality newsletter. It’s not boring legal mumbo jumbo. So my family… My wife is named Rory, so we have Rory’s recipe, we have just a bunch of content, not about the law. Now I’ve written a book about car accidents, we have an excerpt there maybe about car accidents or an excerpt about slip and falls, always messaging and reminding those things that we do.
Lindsey, even if someone doesn’t become a client, if they raise their hand and they show interest but they don’t sign or we decline their case, we still put them into this communication cycle. I think two people have called and say, “I want off your newsletter.” That’s fine, no problem at all. We take you off immediately. But that’s the power of a CRM, that’s the power of the technology. I really encourage anyone, Lindsey, listening to this, always build out your list. Make sure you have nice software that you can segment people in your list, you can segment clients, attorneys, you can segment clients by type of case you handle for them. That’s 58 touches a year to the client, 52 emails, every other month newsletter.
We do for attorneys, I double down the emails I sent. The attorneys who are in my network, I send them that same email that the clients get on Thursdays, but I send them an email on Tuesdays just for attorneys. I call it my Weekly Practice Management Tip that I sort of riff on what works that I find success with business things, that I find to not work well with the business. They also get the paper newsletter in the mail. But additionally they get a attorney newsletter in the mail every single month. A lot of moving parts, a lot of direct mail, just constantly showing up. Because I just told a fellow attorney this yesterday, an attorney in my network is hearing from me like 130 times… literally 130 times, or 124, something like that. 124, 130 times a year. I’m trying to ratchet that number up on the client side, because the attorney communication is pretty high, which is what I want.
But there’s that pressure, Lindsey. You don’t want to just be… I don’t want to just give out bad content. I really care about this and pump out good stuff. I write differently for lawyers, write differently for my clients. But I think it’s time to probably get in contact with the former clients more, maybe 52 emails and six newsletters could be maybe tweaked upon a little bit. If the client refers a case, I always say to my team, “We got a referral from an existing client, he’s referred a bunch of cases. I’m going to send him a handwritten card today saying, ‘Thank you so much for once again sending us a case.'” I do it today so he’ll see the date. He’ll see I didn’t wait a week to send that card.
Lindsey:
Right. That it was a priority for you.
Chris:
It was a priority. I keep sending this guy cards because it’s like, again, we’re fostering, we’re promoting that gratitude, “We appreciate you.” I do. Just one final thing on that, Lindsey. People who referred by other clients generally are easy clients to deal with. They generally have at least a decent to possibly even a very good case. They’re easier to work with, easier to handle than someone maybe a call to call who just saw us online or a random. That is, I think, so important is to really… Because I got to make sure this client referred… I got to make sure that former client who referred that client to us today, make sure they have a awesome experience. Because if not, he’s going to look bad and I can’t let that happen.
Lindsey:
No, absolutely. Yeah, I’m sure that that relationship is so much easier to generate because there’s that inherent trust factor that’s already being transferred from your former client to your new relationship. That is something that no amount of marketing, no amount of content can ever buy, is that warm lead where you already have that foundation built in. So you’re working on getting referrals from former clients, you have referral partnerships within your legal network. How many of your… What percentage of your cases, I should ask, is coming from those referrals?
Chris:
Great question. Before I answer that, I can see that number keeps ticking up. The more we really dial in and focus on this more sensitive we are to the need to really drive that, the higher it goes. I think it’s around 10% right now. But that continues to go up with time. It’s like this snowball that it grows but you have to nurture, you have to work on it. You can’t neglect it. Right now I’d say about 10%. But that didn’t require any marketing dollars. That’s a referral. That’s just like gold. You were alluding to this just a second ago. They come pre-sold, they’re warm. They’re like, “Hey, I’m ready to sign. Let’s go.” There’s no sales required. They’re easy to convert. They are just easier to deal with. That’s just a perfect client. When I see a referral, it’s fantastic. I love it. It’s so important.
Lindsey:
Yeah. There’s something just so organic about that, and it’s like you feel like you know a piece of this person because you’ve already seen their friend, and you know that there has to be something in common there. I mean in general, this is just a much more human approach to practicing not just law but business in general. I know that there are a lot of lawyers out there who would like to have this kind of relationship, they would like to turn their law firm into something that is more of a family experience, a friendly experience. But so many lawyers struggle with that. Where do you think that struggle might be coming from and how can they overcome that?
Chris:
Well, I think if you’re doing what everyone else is doing, you’re average. I think sometimes we have to go against the grain, be a little bit contrarian. I mean, a lot of the stuff that I do is unorthodox because I really am hyper focused. It keeps me up at night thinking, “How can I improve the client experience?” I have a lot of peers who just neglect clients and they take them for granted, and their reviews just plummet, they go down. They get killed in those reviews, and I do everything I can. I would encourage any attorney on here, if you really care about growing a firm, I think it’s about culture. I have to set the culture. This is the kind of firm that I’m trying to build. Then the team members that I bring on feel the same way, they subscribe to that culture.
The way I treat my team members is the way they treat the clients. This is a cohesive culture of caring, of concern. I would encourage anyone on the call to develop your core values. Your core values, put into words your culture. Culture’s kind of hard to define. It’s a little bit amorphous and vague, but if you can reduce it to five or seven, no more than nine core values, put that on your website, put that in your reception area in your office, just always be focused on the culture. I’ve seen lawyers, they’re much further away, they’re much more advanced in their success than me. I look at them and I see, “Okay, those guys and gals have strong cultures. Their team members stick around for years and years, some decades. Their clients refer. Attorneys refer them because they’re trusted.” Build the culture and never let that be neglected; I think amazing things happen. It’s a constant effort every day. Making it better, keeping that alive and flourishing I think is a good idea. I think it’s how you can really run and manage a great firm.
Lindsey:
No, I absolutely agree. You can’t expect for your team members to be treating your clients like you would want them to be treated if you’re not actively treating your team members that way. You need to make sure that your team members feel like family, that they feel like people, that they don’t feel like they’re being talked down to or-
Chris:
100%.
Lindsey:
That energy will be passed on, and it will be a very genuine relationship as to one that’s kind of like fake smiles and bubbles.
Chris:
100%. Lindsey, I think it’s more important how I treat my staff than how I treat my clients, because I’m going out of business if my team just up and quit, right?
Lindsey:
Yeah.
Chris:
That’s not good. I need my team. So I put more focus in the team because they come to work every day, they bust their butts, so I’m focused, dialed in on, “How can I make this a better experience for you? How can I make this a satisfying experience? How can I make it so that you are excelling, that you are growing?” Then I focus on the client. It’s not all about the client. To me it’s about the team, then that’s how I think we get raving fans ultimately.
Lindsey:
That’s fantastic. Well, Chris, thank you so much for your time today.
Chris:
Of course.
Lindsey:
I really appreciate you telling us more about this raving fan concept, and showing us a little bit more humanity and a great way to approach the practice of law. I know that there are a few videos out there that you’ve made, and we’ll be sure to put links to those in there if listeners want to get some more information. But again, thank you so much for your time today.
