Richard James: [00:00:00] so people go to me, well, 180 minutes, that's only three hours, three hours in a workday.
That's all they're going to talk. Yeah. But that's again, if you think you're supposed to get your agent to talk seven hours or eight hours out of eight hours, it's stinking thinking, just doesn't happen that way.
[00:01:00]
Introduction to Building the Ideal Phone Team
---
Richard James: Okay. So we're getting a lot of questions about the ideal phone team. Now, I cover a lot of this information in multiple different modules and it's covered individually in great depth. I just want to give you a general overview of how to think about your people that are on the phone. Now phone in this world also means text messaging, it also could mean Emailing. So they could be doing multiple things besides the phone. But in the law firm in today's day and age, phone is still the primary driver for getting people scheduled into appointments for most law firms, not all law firms. So if your firm has 90% of your leads coming inbound via Email or social, then you've got a whole different metrics you've got to pay attention to. And you'll have to add that in and figure it out. But for the [00:02:00] purposes of this, I wanted to outline what your phone team should look like. And so 30,000 foot view, I've done deep dive training on each one of these things, and you can find them in the dashboard.
There'll be in the New Client Pipeline. There'll be in the Workflow Pipeline. There'll be in the Profit Pipeline, depending on where we are.
Understanding the Roles Within Your Phone Team
---
Richard James: The first one is obviously Inbound, so we have Inbound New Leads, it's pretty obvious where they come in via the phone or Email or whatever format you've got leads coming in.
If you're paying for a company to generate leads for you and you're paying per lead, they're going to have their way of sending them to you. Again, I've done deeper dive training on this, but this is the one thing that you would have a new agent do. Now, listen, let me stop here. This is for you.
Whether you have no agents and you're just getting started or you have one agent or you have multiple agents. This is true for you regardless of how many agents you have, all of these jobs are being done in your firm currently. Traditionally, they're just being done by somebody else or a multiple of [00:03:00] people.
And so I just want to get your mind clear on the different roles you would have somebody doing. So, if you're never brought a phone person on before, they're going to do all of these things in the beginning until we figure out what the capacity is based on the flow that you have in your firm.
If you've got five agents, you need to be figuring out how you're divvying up the work and where the capacity lies to maximize the conversion. This doesn't change depending on the number of agents that you have. It just changes how you're going to manage them. So, I want you to think about this depending on who you have in your team.
Okay. So again, Inbound, these are the inbound leads that are coming in. Unconverted Leads. Anybody who didn't set an appointment because we either didn't get ahold of them or when we did get ahold of them, they didn't set. And so Unconverted Leads, that's a list from, yesterday or today and yesterday, all the way to could be years ago, depending on your practice area of people that we're going to have to be calling and texting and Emailing and reaching out to.
And then we have Collections. This is the people that we're making proactive communication to people who are on a plan with us and our goal is to [00:04:00] keep them on plan and our collection dollar amount for that particular week. Red, Yellow, Green Calls are the client success calls that you're calling into your team, your client base on a monthly basis.
And you're just measuring their overall satisfaction. If they're Green, nothing happens. If they're Yellow, somebody is notified. If they're Red, the owner probably has to get on the phone with that client right away. And so that's just proactive Red, Yellow, Green Calls. And there is an order that you should think about this.
The Importance of Sequential Skill Development
---
Richard James: So, if you're just getting started, you should focus on Inbound conversion to maximize your set rate and outbound dials and communication to the Unconverted Leads. Those are your first two areas of focus. And then, once they master the first one. So once I master the 11 steps and the Inbound process and they're nailing it, then you can have them do the outbound dials, Unconverted Leads.
Once they master that, then you can move them on to Collections and then you can move them on to Red, Yellow, Green. Now, the reason I put that order is because it's in order of complexity, in order of [00:05:00] challenges to the firm. So the complexity is easiest than the Inbound leads. It gets a little harder when you have to make outbound dials in the scripting changes just a little bit. Collections is harder because you're dealing with dollars and cents and how they're going to get paid.
You have to set up systems to manage that and measure that. and, you know, so, it's a little bit more complicated, requires more on you. Requires more on them, depending on whether you're going to have them take a credit card, or you have to set up links for people to be able to pay. It depends on how you're going to do it.
And then Red, Yellow, Green is going to stir up the hornet's nest. If you've never called your clients proactively, you're going to start calling them and you're going to find out real fast people are aggravated. So, until you get this under control, that's not the first place you want to start.
Again, what I said something was really important. You should have them do one job until they perfect it. And they're not allowed to go on to the next job until they perfect it.
Applying Puppy Training Principles to Team Training
---
Richard James: This is the same as puppy training. Yes, if you're listening to this, maybe, you know me and you're in my world. I recently became a puppy dad, Maria and I became the ECIB and myself became parents to a new puppy, never had a puppy in our whole adult life. And we decided to [00:06:00] jump in and do it. And so in puppy training, it's a very interesting concept, where that you don't let the puppy move on to the next skill or the next difficult skill until they mastered the previous skill. So here's the general rule.
They ask them to do the skill, you give them a treat. You do it five times, if they perform the skill well, five times in a row, they move on to the next difficult skill. If they perform the skill three to five times, or let's say four times out of five, but not five, they still have to stay on that skill till they get five out of five.
If they have three or less, they really have to move down to the skill before and they got to go backwards and retrain the other skill because it meant that we didn't engage the training because they build on one another. And it's the same thing with your team. You shouldn't let them go onto one skill until they master the first skill.
So they should master Inbound 11 step appointment setting. Then they should master making dials to their Unconverted Outbound Leads. Once they master that, they should go onto Collections. And then once they master Collections, then go under Red, Yellow, Green. Now [00:07:00] you can have them do these four basic primary calling ideals. If you're a single person, you have one agent, then you have a smaller firm with not a lot of volume. It shouldn't be a problem, but I want you to pick up on something. I said, you're going to master the one skill. If you're a smaller firm and you don't have a lot of volume, that means you're paying an agent.
To master one skill and they're not working likely 40 hours a week. You're not getting all 40 hours from them. So, if you get aggravated about that and you feel like I'm wasting money, you've got stinking thinking, okay? Because you're going to have to pay this person to train and practice and not actually do the work until they master it.
And so there's a period of time it takes them to do that. It could be four days, it could be four weeks. I don't know, it depends on the complexity of your practice area and what you're asking to do and how good of a training system you have. But you need to let them master that skill before you move on to something else.
And if you don't, and you move on to something else because you're in a hurry or because you had poor planning or because your firm is [00:08:00] growing and you've just got to get somebody to help you. You can't get mad at them because they disappointed you and their ability to grow into that skill. You as a leader didn't train them well enough and you didn't give them the space they need.
Trust me, it's a lot better to train them right the first time and make sure they master it before you move on to the second task, okay? And so that means whether you have one agent or you have five agents, you've got to think this way about it. Now, there's a couple other scenarios here.
Optimizing Your Phone Team's Workflow
---
Richard James: So when you've got Inbound Client Calls, most firms don't have smart routers. Smart routers is what your voice over IP system will do. And it'll see that you have a client phone number dialing in and it'll send it over to your client service team rather than your initial phone team. Now, again, if you have one agent, it's still coming to that one agent, but if you have multiple agents and you have a client service team, then when you have smart router, the multiple agents from lead conversion, won't be bothered by those calls or you've bifurcated your calls and you've routed your calls one direction. Or the thing is, we all [00:09:00] know existing clients still Google you and they call your lead gen number and they end up in your new lead world, which is why smart routing is actually the way to go. But if you don't have that, know that your new agent is going to have to deal with existing client calls and you're gonna have to figure out a plan on how to deal with that.
I talk about that again in the workflow section and serving your customer or client, but just know that the basic rule of thumb is you're going to have to create space to meet with your new agent on a daily basis to help them understand how to deal with those client service calls. And you're going to want to make sure you're creating links for appointments.
And that's the other really important thing. The more work you do in house to make sure you prepare your agent in advance, the better off you're going to be. So, like, if you should be using a scheduling app, no questions. Don't give them access to your calendar and let them figure it out. Again, stinking thinking that's expecting someone to be really good at tech when you want them to be really good at the phones, don't have them do too much thinking, make it simple for them, grab Calendly or some other scheduling software [00:10:00] appointment core schedule once it doesn't matter. Connect them to your calendar and create multiple different links. One for New Perspective Client Appointment calls. One for Collection calls. If somebody needs a Collection call. One for Client calls so that you can block out time so you could talk with clients and make sure you have an appointment on your calendar so that your agent can actually schedule an appointment for you and them to sit down and talk on a daily basis.
And so you should have scheduling links for them to be able to manage. Think through this logically, the easier you can do this, make this for them, the better off they're going to be. Now, the next thing you want to make sure you're going to have to consider is Warm Hug Calls. These are also called reminder calls.
So when you set appointments, somebody's got to make an outbound call to the appointment for the new prospect on your calendar to remind them about the call. And we call them Warm Hug Calls, because they really should have access to the notes about what their hell and their heaven was. And they should be able to say, Oh, Hey, we know that you're just got a notice of foreclosure and we want you to be rest assured.
Attorney Smith is going to help you with that or, Hey, we saw you got a DUI or, Hey, we saw your husband took your kids on vacation and [00:11:00] we're going to help you try to get your kids rights back or whatever the story is, doesn't really matter. Practice area, fill in the blank. Warm Hug Call means we're having a warm hug conversation with them and reminding them about why we're the right firm.
Look, your competition doesn't listen to to your client the the prosepect and they don't do this. So you want to beat your competition. You got to make sure you do this, which means you got to make sure your agent does this, which is why you got to make sure you train. Now those calls happen and they can happen either by the single agent that you have, or they can happen by another team member. but.
Depending on who's making them, they've got to be considered in your ideal phone team, okay? So these are the six basic functions of an ideal phone team. I'm sure there are more you can think of, but these are the six primary functions. Now, if you've got one single agent, you've got a time block out their time of how they're going to manage this.
And you've got to give them some direction. And again, you shouldn't have them doing any one thing, until they've mastered the one thing you have them doing already.
Mastering Capacity and Efficiency
---
Richard James: Now little guidance on, [00:12:00] is my rep working to their capacity? So, once they've mastered all the tasks and once we've identified.
How much capacity they have, meaning we know that this is taking up all their time. Let's assume you've got one agent, you're a small firm, you're going to have them do all six of these things. Great, you've balanced out their time. What should it look like? So let's talk about how you're going to measure your agent from a capacity perspective.
So remember, you've got phone calls, you've got Emails and texts, right? And maybe you have some social media connections. So, you've got to figure out how much in percentage wise you're going to have them do. And what you're call cadences are going to train about that in another series, but basically measuring when your agent is at capacity.
If I was just dealing with an agent who did nothing but phone calls and didn't get into texting, didn't get into Emails or anything else. I will tell you, you should have about 180 minutes of talk time a day. If you're exceeding 180 minutes of talk time a day, great. You've probably got a really efficient system where you're using a dialer of some sort.
If you've got less than 180 minutes of talk time a day, it means your agent isn't [00:13:00] actually, either they don't have enough work, which is possible or they're not physically making the dials like we need them to do. They need to be actually working. And so people go to me, 180 minutes that's only three hours, three hours in a workday.
That's all they're going to talk? Again, if you think you're supposed to get your agent to talk seven hours or eight hours out of eight hours, it's stinking thinking just doesn't happen that way. The time in between dials, the way that it works, the interruptions, just life being a human.
The only way you maximize that, get the talk time closer to the eight hours is by using a dialer. And even then you'll be lucky if you get 60% or 70%, even if you had a full on dialer system with thousands and thousands of leads for them to dial on a regular basis. That would be a maximizing it.
And most law firms aren't going to do that. So, if you've got a very large law firm, by all means, consider using a dialer. If you've got a smaller firm, just realize when you're managing your agent, 180 minutes of talk time is about the right number. Now, if you ask them to do texts and you ask them to do Emails, that [00:14:00] 180 minutes of talk time is probably going to go down because again, they've got to be interrupted.
They've got to switch to a different system. They've got to think a little bit about what they're going to say or grab the template they're going to use. It just can get complicated, right? Now you can automate some of this with different systems and the more automation you can build in, the better your talk time will be.
But when you're determining, Hey, is my agent at capacity? If every day that you've asked them to do Inbound calls, you've asked them to make outbound calls Unconverted Leads, and they're doing Collection calls and doing regular Green calls and doing reminder calls. And they're dealing with new clients inbound, and you've got a smaller firm and they're doing all that.
And they're maximizing at 180, 190 call minutes talk minutes a day. And they're not getting through all their work. That's a signal to you, you need another agent and your firm isn't maximizing its capacity and your ability to grow. Because your agent is burned at the edges and they can't get any more done and you have to add another agent.
Now, if they've got all this on their plate and they've only got a hundred minutes of talk time, that means either your firm is still small. And you haven't clearly outlined the work they have to [00:15:00] do, or they're not doing the work, which is why you've got to make sure we understand, okay, you got to put the math to it, or how many client calls you have to make? How many collection calls you have to make? How many outbound dials you should be making for Unconverted Leads? And how many Inbound calls did we get in the course of a day?
How many reminder calls are there? And how many client calls Inbound did you receive in a course of a day? And you got to break that down and look at it, which means, yeah, somebody's got to be paying attention to this. Which is, oh my gosh. Yeah, that means there's work. And if you're being the lawyer and you're trying to run the business and you're trying to work with the clients and do a law at some point. This is why you have to charge the right amount so you can create some profits so you can create somebody to help you manage this, great person to help you manage this in the early days is just an executive assistant or a virtual assistant that can help keep track of all these numbers and work with the phone agent to make sure that they're doing what they're supposed to be doing to get you the report.
So when you meet with the agent on a weekly basis, you can review how they're actually moving forward, okay?
Conclusion: Maximizing Your Law Firm's Growth Potential
---
Richard James: So I hope this gives you some clarity as to the type of phone people that you should have and what the job should be? What it should [00:16:00] look like? How to progress through? Whether you have one agent or five agents, it doesn't matter.
And how you should then be thinking about capacity. Of course, if you have any questions, be happy to answer them for you. Hope you found this helpful.