Yani Smith:
If we're only entering the leads that we want, of course you have a 99% conversion rate.
Chris Dreyer:
If you're spending any money, I mean literally any money to make your phone ring, but you're not treating your intake team like a professional sales operation, you're basically lighting cash on fire. Welcome to Personal Injury Mastermind, the show where ambitious attorneys come to learn, implement, and get results. On these special toolkit episodes, we dive deep into conversations with the leading vendors in the legal sphere. I'm your host, Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankings.io. We help elite personal injury law firms dominate first-page rankings. Look, my company definitely has lower volume than most PI firms, but we have 17 salespeople, dedicated EDRs, we have a sales-enabled manager, we've got a head of revenue ops, we've got our closers, we've got a person quarterbacking the entire thing. Why? Because that's what it takes to actually convert leads into revenue.
Meanwhile, I'm watching PI firms drop millions on marketing while their intake team is running off an Excel spreadsheet, no CRM, no real training, no system and limited staff. There is a better way. Yani Smith at Legal Intake Pros shares literal gold with us today. We're covering everything: what your intake team should actually look like from 20 cases to 200 cases a month, the exact KPIs you need to track, how to build a tech stack that doesn't leak leads, and when to split your team into specialized roles. Plus she'll show you how to know if your referral partners are actually converting the cases you send them. Let's dive in.
Yani Smith:
It has to be scary, if you are investing in advertising, to do so without the data, without the resources, the sales enablement to ensure that you are maximizing on that investment and converting as many of those prospects into potential clients. Because you really don't know what's working, and you are so busy that when you're inside of the firm, it's really hard to tackle that on your own, but I have a lot of empathy for law firms who are huge advertisers. And when realizing that they're losing so many cases, I know that they don't want to, of course no one would choose that, but it's hard to handle that on your own when you're in-house, especially if you're the partner, you've got all these other roles. And to bring somebody in that's able to handle that, maybe they're good at that, but they don't really understand the industry. And I think sometimes there can be a little bit of resistance of having somebody come in who doesn't have experience, who's going to then tell the leadership team how to operate as a business.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, it's wild. Before we continue, just address something. It's like maybe some individuals have tuned out because they're like, "Oh, well I had to outsource my intake." From what you've seen the benefits of in-house versus outsourcing and just basically let's just address that notion there, why they should really be concentrating on this.
Yani Smith:
Regardless whether they're in-house, regardless whether you're outsourcing, the most important thing is that you have quality control in place. Do you know that they're doing a great job? Do you know how long they're spending on the phone? Are they overcoming objections? And do you know this because we are listening to calls every now and again, or do we actually measure it through scorecards? Are we tracking them? Are we coaching them? Whether they're in-house, nearshore, offshore, we need to ensure that we are holding these teams accountable, that we're providing them with the support that they need and that we have the quality control to know that our intake team is handling those cases the way that maybe we did in our first few years of running our practice before we had an intake team.
So, I'm not going to say that you should absolutely have in-house or you should absolutely do it nearshore or offshore. I think that there's great talents globally, and regardless of where the intake team is located, as so long as they have the training, the quality control, and the accountability in place, I think that it works out beautifully. But the responsibility of providing all of those things does start from, of course, in-house, so it's important that we're able to provide that regardless of where the team is.
Chris Dreyer:
Yani spent a decade in the trenches at a high-volume firm and they handed her what seemed like a simple task: fix the conversion rates. They were pumping more and more money in the advertising, but their case numbers weren't keeping pace. That's the exact nightmare scenario, right? Your cost per case is skyrocketing, but your conversion needle barely moves. Most people might blame the creative or the distribution, but when Yani dug in all roads led back to intake. She was able to increase the firm's conversion rates and even grow the intake department 3X. This is how she did it.
Yani Smith:
There was a big focus on data at the time. We used spreadsheets to track marketing data and our leads. We converted into an intake software system and ramped up the number of follow-ups, which triples the amount of outbound calls on a daily basis, of course, to chase and nurture those leads. And when we were scaling to keep up with the lead nurturing required, which then converted to increased cases, we would have team members that would alternate so that they would focus on processing the opportunities that came in through website chat, others that were doing those outbound calls, others that were processing those inbound calls in real time.
But everyone was focused on processing intakes. And there wasn't a parsed out role for one's focusing on just follow-ups. Everyone was following up with leads and processing intakes, but we would alternate times where they could do deep focus follow-ups across the team. So, what that looked like was just more people in those roles, but with that came a lot of training that was necessary, a lot of quality control, and after a while we started to pay attention more so to the cases that we weren't signing up and all roads led back to intake. So, I got very passionate about that, and it started my obsession with intake optimization and it led me to launch legal intake pros after having the privilege of working with other firms since then, so very excited. It's been a very rewarding journey.
Chris Dreyer:
How is Legal Intake Pros different than other intake services? We've had the third party that kind of do it for you, but how is Intake Pros different?
Yani Smith:
We talk core issues. We're not just providing scripts. We're not just providing the blueprint or training. We're really going in there and identifying all of the bottlenecks, all of the friction. We're having difficult conversations. And we can execute those solutions for them and take that off of their plates. We only work with personal entry firms, so we're really good at what we do. And what we identify is: what are the unique challenges for this firm so that we can address them? And we work with them in partnership versus an advisor.
Chris Dreyer:
I saw some unique roles and just wanted to ask you about some roles before we kind of do some brainstorming. One of the unique roles I saw, it's the quantitative researcher role. Can you explain that role?
Yani Smith:
So, our quantitative researcher is amazing. And their role is focused on really the audit period before a client starts to work with us. So, we study all of our clients for a month during a trial audit period where we are able to test their perceived challenges within their intake. They'll identify what they believe are the symptoms or what they believe they need. So, what we'll do is we'll test that. We'll test our hypothesis as well. And we are studying their team. We're studying their competitors, their systems. That's the signup process for the potential new clients. The phone handling process as well. We're looking at the data in its entirety and the integrity of that data as well. And we were able to come up with a very thorough report. Now it's almost 300 pages. We have a partner's version though, where we go through the first 40 pages with the partner that has the full analysis.
Chris Dreyer:
I would be on the side of the coin. I'm a DI, Yani, so I would be looking at that 40-pager, maybe delegate to my ops person for the rest. So, another thing from a marketing side, just a frustration for me is we generate all these leads and a lot of times the owner is involved in the marketing decisions. A lot of PI founders are actually solid at marketing, but it seems like sales is an afterthought. They've never listened to a call. It's like, "Ah, we got this third party, whatever." So, there's all this leakage. One role that I just don't see, and it's common in the agency space, is the sales enablement role. Basically deals with the data, the CRM and basically enabling the sales force. Where is that role? Is it just kind of those tasks that are thrown in the intake manager? Do people have a sales enablement manager? Am I just missing it?
Yani Smith:
Rarely, but it's so important. If you are advertising, if you're investing resources to attract potential clients into your firm, you need a funnel to nurture those leads, which means a software system, a team, that team needs training, they need accountability. We have to have the quality control, and you need the data to make data-driven decisions. Don't you want to know how much you spent on leads that you didn't want? Or if there is maybe a marketing campaign that's underperforming, so that you're able to then have those conversations to tweak that campaign. Also, we also want the data to know how we can support the team if they are underperforming in areas such as what we would call overcoming objections or empathy. This data does not become integral and accurate on its own. You have to have someone that owns the process of being able to audit that CRM or whatever the database that you're using, hopefully a CRM. But you have to have someone that owns that process to ensure that it's accurate, and foolproof it as much as possible through automations and integrations.
Chris Dreyer:
What do you see if someone does say, "Hey, I want to do in-house."? What about one point of that of a remote in-house team versus, say, paying the facilities costs? Have you seen those differences and a real impact there?
Yani Smith:
Yes. If you have an intake team member that's green, as in they don't have legal experience, they don't have experience working in a law firm, there's a huge benefit to cutting your teeth inside of the law firm because you're able to, one, hear other phone calls, you're able to experience the culture of the firm in a way that you really can't in a remote environment. So, if the firm is not 100% remote, I would say even if you're able to fly them in for a week, that would be great just because you're able to shadow in a way that you can't remotely.
However, if this team member has worked inside of a law firm or if they have legal experience, they've done intake before that they can work remotely, of course, with quality control in place, ensuring that we are measuring them with KPIs and that we're providing them the resources that they need to thrive. So, there's pros and cons to that of course, but if they have not worked in the legal industry, if they haven't done intake sales before, I think that it's worth having them work in the firm in-person, even if it's just a week, just to observe before going remote fully.
Chris Dreyer:
This next part is where most firms drop the ball. I hear, "Our conversion rate is great," but are you measuring every single lead? If you're only tracking the leads you sign, that's like measuring your batting average, but not counting the strikes. Listen to how granular you need to get to the real data.
Yani Smith:
The intake specialist should be measured on their wanted conversion rates. So, out of all of the total leads that they have processed, the ones that are qualified, essentially, how many of those move into the signup process is something that we should be keeping a close eye on. And then, of course, the lost cases as well, so those that they did not sign up. We should be looking at why. Having a way that it's easy to pull those numbers without having to dig into each one individually. We recommend setting a sub-status or a sub-phase, if your system has that. So, every reason why a lead could be lost, so: they hired another attorney, they were unresponsive, they wanted to go at it alone, they changed their mind. We want to build out at least a dozen of these, so that we're able to fully pull out, especially those that are due to hired another attorney, they decided to go at it alone or they were no longer interested.
We want to listen to those calls, use those as coaching opportunities, score them, because what I always say is that if somebody is qualified, which means they were injured and they meet the criteria for your firm for a personal injury case, and they contacted your firm, usually they're not just going to say, "I'm no longer interested, or, "I want to go at this alone." That's just the polite way of saying, "I don't want to work with your firm." So, those are opportunities to ensure that your team, one, are they empowered, are they in a place of authority during that call? Were they able to provide them with the guidance, the education, the empathy that that potential client needed to feel confident about the decision moving forward? And were they explained what the contingency fee looks like? Did they even know that there's no cost associated to this upfront or were they left to just read the agreement on their own and come to that line on their own?
So, it's very important that we are able to hold these teams accountable and that they are providing this level of experience for every single prospect that comes through. So, we're looking at wanted conversion rates, we're looking at those lost cases and why they were lost. And of course we also, and we recommend that everyone do this as well, is establish a lead management scorecard. So, if you have the bandwidth internally, you can scan all of the leads that were processed for that intake specialist that week, and you're able to break out a list of questions based on the follow-up, based on their response time, based on their ability to use a system the way that they should past two tasks. We want a KPI that's focused on productivity and focused on the overall lead management.
And then we have the interactions individually. There should be a separate KPI that's focusing on the scores, on the interactions that they're scored on, so that we're able to hold them accountable. And then there's so many more like, of course, missed calls. The time that it takes to convert a lead that requires an outbound call, so from the time that it came in to the time that they conducted that outbound call, that time period should also be monitored as well.
Chris Dreyer:
Love every bit of that. And then you can objectively measure the performance as opposed to subjectively, like, "I think So-and-So's doing okay." Say, you're an in-house single event, PI firm that wants auto accidents, and maybe you've got a pretty open criteria for the cases and you're getting 20 cases a month and you've been using a third party, what would the minimum viable in-house team look like to handle, say, 20 cases a month?
Yani Smith:
If we're handling 20 cases a month, let's also in this made-up law firm assume that they're getting at least 100 leads. One intake specialist and a backup is actually enough, if you have an optimized intake team, which means that we're not spending the extra time with maybe writing out follow-up messages because we've automated that process, so we've cut time on that.
Chris Dreyer:
Let's face it, being a great lawyer isn't enough. To succeed, you need to generate consistent leads. Personal injury is the most saturated niche. Competition is fierce, and differentiation is everything. When the deck is stacked against you, you need a comprehensive resource to beat the competition. My latest book, Personal Injury Lawyer Marketing, is your roadmap to consistent leads and exponential growth. It is a masterclass on marketing for personal injury firms. It's packed with actionable strategies on where to invest your marketing dollars for maximum impact. No more guesswork, no more wasted ad spend, just clear proven methods to transform your firm from good to GOAT. Grab your copy of Personal Injury Lawyer Marketing on Amazon. Link is in the show notes.
Yani Smith:
We've saved time by perhaps automating or streamlining how we send out agreements. So, instead of maybe filling out the agreements with all of the prospect's or client's information, after they've already provided that to us you map that to the agreements. And then you integrate that to your CRM, so those seven minutes to send out a signup packet turns to 30 seconds. So, if you streamline your operations to remove the manual labor that's involved, all the way even until signing up the case, if you can just post that and it's mapped to your case management system, you're saving so much time. So, if you have a streamlined system, one intake specialist and one backup is plenty for 100 leads and 20 signed cases a month.
Chris Dreyer:
All right, so let's 5X that. Let's say 500 leads and let's say now we're looking at 100 cases. And I'm just trying to... When you do a little player-coach with a backup in the beginning, but what's the next evolution look like?
Yani Smith:
Three to four intake specialists, at this point, having an extra backup is important. We want to ensure also that the quality of our leads in the areas that we can control are at at least 30%, that we at least want 30% of those leads, because we don't want to staff up our team to just reject cases, reject leads all day long. So, if we are getting a lot of cases that we don't handle, they're not injury related, if it's best to have 400 leads and maybe turn off some campaigns that we're not able to convert at the level that we need to in order for the intake team to focus more on cases that are of a higher quality.
Chris Dreyer:
Let's take this even further. So, let's say a high volume, is there a decision point to where you say, "Okay, well, this is my inbound team, this is my chase or follow-up team."? Does that occur or do you still like the full cycle model?
Yani Smith:
Once we're opening more than 200 cases a month, we need someone who's focused on referring out, rejecting, someone who's just focused on these outbound calls. Outbound means they came in as a web form. We have to now chase them. It could take five or six times to get ahold of them. And if we can have someone that's also focused on just following up on those retainers, which is very important, then we'll have someone do that. So, at this point when we're high volume, we have to really parse out these roles, so that everyone's focused on one thing and that they're able to do it well versus then having to balance everything.
Chris Dreyer:
Let's talk tech stack. Now, I'm not talking about just having a basic CRM that nobody uses, right? I mean the actual tools that make your intake machine run. In the B2B world, this is standard stuff, but in PI, we're behind, folks, way behind. Here's what a real modern setup looks like.
Yani Smith:
We have an intake team having a CRM that has an open API, which means we can feed integrations into it, so you should be able to post from third parties, listings, websites. Just all of your lead sources is important. So, having one that's customizable, so that you're able to build a high engaging funnel to nurture these leads is very important. So, it has to be customizable. Also, if we don't have call tracking, we need call tracking, and to ensure that the intake team doesn't also have to understand what GMB or GMP is versus LSA versus PPC, because if they're having to select that on their own you can't rely on that data. So, having a call tracking system that can integrate with your CRM is very important, so that it can auto attribute and we're able to create some foolproof data that we can rely on.
And of course, if we're not on eSign, I think that it's something that those firms that maybe are listening to this that are still having clients come into the office to sign up or just sending them a packet that's a PDF that they have to download and fill out. Have an eSign system because I think that that's something that's often overlooked is how much friction that creates for a potential client to sign up. It should be easy. We should be making that process to work with us as easy as possible, and catering to the potential clients, because your competitor is most likely setting an eSign and maybe removing some of the extra homework involved to sign up. Which goes into another topic of requiring too much information to sign up a case and the friction that goes into that. But having an eSign system is essential.
I can mention adding a system for... or text messaging, but ideally your CRM has that as well, so that you're able to email and text directly out of your CRM. So, when it comes to your phone system as well, a lot of clients are now using a cloud-based phone system that they're able to also connect so that their team can work remotely and make these calls. It should be connected to your CRM as well. So, those are very important, so that if anything happens, there's, I don't know, a hurricane, someone has to work from home, they're still able to make those calls. So, I would say that's the survival pack of what you absolutely need at a bare minimum, I think, to be able to fully operate at least a modern way.
Chris Dreyer:
There's a lot of great CRMs out there, whether it's Clio or Salesforce or Litify, et cetera, but I know you specialize and have a lot of experience with Lead Docket, so maybe to speak to it specifically.
Yani Smith:
I'm not trying to convince anyone to switch over to Lead Docket. I don't get paid by Lead Docket. We just find that it is the most customizable, which is fantastic. And it allows us to set up these features and workflows for law firms so that they're able to text, so that the capabilities to text, to auto attribute, to set up the integrations, the tracking to integrate eSign systems into the system, to build out custom workflows based on statuses and their sub-statuses, which means in the life cycle of initial contact to sign up there could be between 11 to 15 different stages. Those stages can have a range of just a handful to a dozen sub-stages involved. They said that they needed to talk to their spouse. Hopefully we could overcome that objection, but let's say they said, "I actually really need to talk to my spouse or my partner about this before moving forward."
We should be able to put them in a pending signup with a sub-status needing to discuss with family member or so, so that our messages and our follow-ups are very specific to that. And it saves time, so we're able to stay highly personalized, highly engaging. And it's a lot of work to customize it to that level, but Lead Docket provides us with the ability to do that. It provides the seamless process of referring out a case to a referral partner and tracking that, making it easy for that referral partner to update the status of that case as well. Your CRM provides those features. Tap into them. Spend the time to be able to really activate those and build them out so that you're able to make it easier for your team to manage leads and that we're able to engage with these potential clients at a high level and stay top of mind.
Chris Dreyer:
That's great. And I got one follow-up question on the referral. So, I've heard a lot of times that Lead Docket is good. And again, I'm not paid for Lead Docket or anything. I'm just asking specific questions for our audience. I've heard that it's really good for referrals. Speak to me like I'm a dumb-dumb. Why is Lead Docket good for referrals, like you get an out of jurisdiction lead or a practice area? What specifically makes it good?
Yani Smith:
I'm going to walk through what it looks like to send out a referral or to receive a referral from Lead Docket. Once you enter your referral sources, like your incoming and your outgoing referral sources, and we have let's say an email for each referral partner, you never have to leave the Lead Docket system to send out that referral. You're not going to your inbox at all. You're able to process that lead. And if we realize that it's out of jurisdiction or maybe it's MedMal and we refer out all of our MedMals, it's as easy as updating it to referred and selecting the referral partner from a dropdown and sending it to them. That referral partner receives that with the full lead details. And there's a few buttons that say, "I'm interested, I signed it up, I rejected it, they were unresponsive."
And each referral partner has a link embedded to every single email as well that takes them to their own personalized dashboard of every single lead that we've sent to that firm to date. That allows them to quickly update that. What that does is it just removes the back and forth emailing, it removes having the... just removes the lack of tracking also to follow up with those leads that are entry related when we're sending it to a referral partner. And it makes it easy for the referral partner to easily ask questions, update the status of the outcome of that that and lead that was sent to them.
And then there's workflows in-house for the intake specialist to then follow up with them if they haven't updated it to see, "How is it going? Did we sign it up?" All the way through to when it's closed out. So, that's why it's easier to use Lead Docket, in my opinion, for referrals, but I know there's a lot of great referral solutions out there that provide that in an isolated environment. So, there's a lot of solutions out there for referrals. Lead Docket does have the capabilities of keeping that within your intake management system.
Chris Dreyer:
Do many firms do live transfers? It seems like if I've got a hot lead that's qualified, I want to do a live transfer. I don't want to shove it over in an inbox in an email. Now, I guess you could live transfer, but then also while they're on the phone, send it through and I guess they receive the email and details on it. Is that the benefit? Can you speak to the live transfer scenario?
Yani Smith:
If you know that this firm, which is something that we should ensure, that they have a great intake system, I think a live transfer is fantastic and that we can absolutely do that. If this referral partner perhaps does not have a great intake system, maybe it's going to go to voicemail, sometimes it's best to send that information over, so that we guarantee that at least the first impression is a great one when they speak to the firm.
Chris Dreyer:
And litigators, we're talking to you. I'm sorry, but we are. Not all of you are bad. I just mean that the low volume, typically you don't have to worry about intake as much because you just don't have the volume. And the volume firms, it's like they're getting pummeled in the face to be conditioned to be a bit better just on average.
Yani Smith:
But that kind of just brings me to the point of having a referral partner that has a great intake system is important. It's not talked about enough because you've paid for this lead most likely to come into your firm and now we're referring those out. We want to ensure that our referral partners are also converting those leads as well. So, Lead Docket provides that level of accountability and just full transparency of where this lead is at in the process. If we do a warm transfer, I'd say go ahead and send it that way as well. That way we're able to get it in some sort of a follow-up system.
Chris Dreyer:
That wraps up this episode of PIM with Yani Smith. Getting the phone to ring is only half the battle. What Yani showed us today is that without a dialed in intake system, you're basically pouring marketing dollars down the drain. That's why I'm so passionate about both pieces of this puzzle. At Rankings, we're not just chasing algorithms, we're focusing on getting cases that actually convert. You can learn more about Rankings and all the resources Yani mentioned in the show notes. While you're there, pick up a copy of my new book, Personal Injury Lawyer Marketing: From Good to GOAT. And hey, if this episode helped you spot some holes in your intake process, help your boy out, leave me a five-star review on Apple or Spotify. All right, everybody, thanks for hanging out. See you next time. I'm out.
