Chris Dreyer:
A lot of firm owners think they have a lead generation problem. They think they need more traffic, more calls, more volume, but when we look at the numbers, the truth comes out. You already have the leads, you're just not converting them. Today, we're talking with Michael Patrick Strauch from Your Practice Mastered. We're breaking down how to build an intake machine that actually scales, how to run a 96-hour test for new hires, and why stepping out of the closer role is the only way to grow. This is Personal Injury Mastermind. I'm Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankings.io, the elite performance marketing agency for personal injury law firms. Let's get into it. Over the last five years, you've helped firms generate over $20 million in additional revenue just by optimizing intake and closing processes. So let's start with a win. What's a specific firm breakthrough that comes to mind that you'd like to share?
Michael Patrick Strauch:
So I've got one in my head. I'm not going to share the exact figure amount just because they've asked me not to disclose the exact figure, but we've got a criminal and an immigration firm down in Georgia. And they started with us at about a 30% close rate. And at the time, they had a very small non-attorney sales team. And we were working with them, and in the last six years of working together, they've now added multiple seven figures in additional gross revenue, which has been an exciting win for us. That's one that just comes to mind right off the bat. Incredible firm down there.
Chris Dreyer:
Let's go.
Michael Patrick Strauch:
Yes.
Chris Dreyer:
It's so amazing to get that fulfillment, right? You help the client make more money and they can see it. It's sometimes marketing. With what we do, the attribution can be murky. It's like, "Hey, is this brand? Is it this channel or that?" So talk to me about the lead gen side first. So most attorneys, they struggle with pipeline generation. Is it pipeline generation or is it just lack of clarity and maybe they're just not closing the actual opportunities they have?
Michael Patrick Strauch:
Well, it's the great question, right? Because a lot of the law firms we have conversations with feel like they've got a lead generation issue. They don't have enough leads. But then you run the numbers. We always say the numbers are the truth. That's your source of truth. And you run the numbers and it's like, well, let's just take a step back for a sec. We have enough leads. It's just we're not converting enough of the leads we have. I would say that 80% of the law firms we talk to fall into that category where they have the lead generation, but they feel like they've got a marketing problem because they're not seeing the net clients as a result of the leads that have been generated.
And so I think one of the thing that's always helpful, because firms always ask me, "Well, okay, that's great, so what should the numbers be then? How do I know if I've got a conversion issue?" And so the average benchmarks we've seen across just about all practice areas is you get leads, you should turn somewhere between, depending on if they're paid or free consults, somewhere between 65 to 85% of those leads into set consultations. We should get 65 to 85% of those to show up to their consultation. And then we should be able to close, of the people that show up to the consultation, 60 to 80% of those.
Chris Dreyer:
How would you frame that? Would you modify it a little bit for the PI attorneys, the auto attorneys? Because I hear those stats, the show rate's great, right? I'm in professional services, so if you could get close to 80%, then that's pretty damn good.
Michael Patrick Strauch:
Oh, you're loving it. Yeah.
Chris Dreyer:
I think we're in like the 70 percentile.
Michael Patrick Strauch:
That's great.
Chris Dreyer:
Right in the middle, right? And you got to keep that salesperson all the way in the updates. What do you see for auto, adjusting maybe the stats or just some general thoughts on the difference for auto?
Michael Patrick Strauch:
Yeah, no, you bring up a good point. So what we find that a lot of auto and even just contingency firms in general use is they use more of a hot transfer model. A lot of them that we see use a hot transfer model. Lead calls on the fly. We're kind of running a consult trying to get them signed up right then and there. And honestly, depending on the market, there is some validity in using that model because people are so quick to jump. Generally speaking, in fee-based firms, we never recommend using hot transfers. But in contingency-based firms and unique scenarios, it makes sense. And when that is the case, assuming we are using a hot transfer model, we usually find that we're usually closing 90% or above of the cases we want to take, if not 95% or above of the cases that you want to take and can take.
Chris Dreyer:
That's exactly what we see, right? We say 90% plus, I think 92 is what people strive for. And then you got some of those unicorns, the ones that are really rocking and rolling in that 95, sometimes squeak into 96. So that's awesome. So we're directly aligned there. Collecting the data, one of the things that you talk about, I watched some of the TikToks, is most of these business owners, you talk about you can't scale if you wear every hat and they think they have to be the Rainmaker trial attorney plus the person close, the intake attorney and you focus on helping owners step out of that closing mindset themselves. So how do you get these type A, control-oriented, maybe that are wanting to be super lean, to step out and hire maybe even a non-attorney salesperson?
Michael Patrick Strauch:
It's a really great question. So one thing we always say is we like to put the message out there for an educational tool to provide value to understand that this is a possible path for law firms. That said, we do not like to be in the conversion business, right? A law firm owner has to be at a point where it makes sense for them to even entertain the idea of replacing themselves in a sales role, to be able to really reap the rewards of it. No one's forcing anybody to do anything, right? But if you feel like you're doing it because you're pressured to do it or you feel like it's necessary, but you don't really want to do it, it's going to be tough for your predecessor, whoever that may be, attorney or non-attorney salesperson, to succeed in that role because there's likely a subliminal little bit of undermining that happens because it's like, "Well, wait, I'm the best in that role." Which may actually be very true.
But with those type A personalities particularly, and I can speak from it because I'm one of them, you have to recognize that you can keep it lean until you can't. So if you're trying to grow, you're going to reach a critical mass point where you now have to pick and choose between what grows. Are you going and doing the legal work? Are you going and managing the team? Are you running consultations all day and that's your role and you have someone else doing the legal work? The reins have to be dropped somewhere, but what often creates the friction point is it's difficult to drop the reins if we don't have the systems in place to train and keep those new roles accountable. So we have to simultaneously drop the reins and put the right systems in play and the right training to support those people because that's what it comes down to.
It's a little bit of a trust factor or on the opposite side, a little bit of a skepticism. Can they accomplish this the way I would want them to accomplish it? And the answer is, if they're provided the right tools and training, they can, and it might be a little bit different than you, right? Can it be 80% of what you do? And that's going to be done through the systems, the training, and the structure, but you're going to hit that critical mass point. So it's figuring out, do you want to hit that point and keep it small and keep it all? Which some firms do. They want to hit that maybe, it just obviously varies per practice area, but that 1.5 range, 1.5 million range and they're like, "You know what? I'm good there. I just want to keep things lean, keep it just as it is and maintain the lifestyle that I've built." And there is nothing wrong with that.
But if you want to scale beyond that, that's usually roundabout, sometimes a little bit before, sometimes a little bit after. That's usually that critical mass point where you've got to decide, are you going to grow and scale and go through the, quite frankly, the little bit of the hell that it takes to go from 1.5 to 3 to 3.5 and start to really generate the cash flow to bring more roles and to support the continued growth, or are you going to keep it where it's at?
Chris Dreyer:
Sounds a lot like you placing Michael Gerber's E-Myth under their pillow at night.
Michael Patrick Strauch:
Great book.
Chris Dreyer:
It's the classic E-Myth dilemma working in your business versus on it. When you're finally ready to let go of the reins and step out of the sales seat, you can't just throw someone in a chair and hope for the best. You need a system. Here's exactly how to audit your current setup and run the ultimate stress test to find the right person for the job.
So let's say they make that decision. What's the first step? Are you secret shopping? Are you doing some form of audit? How does your company dig in and evaluate this?
Michael Patrick Strauch:
Good question. First, and sometimes firms are like, "Can you shut up about the numbers?" I get it. But the numbers, that's number one. We have to know where the numbers stand first because are you in a position right now where actually the numbers are quite frankly great, but this is a matter of a time buyback and you're trying to buy back your time and you want to replace your metrics or is it a combo of both where, "Okay, our numbers are off, they're not in the ranges they should be, plus I want to buy back my time."? That's step one is getting a source of the numbers because to your point, that's like going to the doctor, they don't hear anything you say and they just say, "Hey, you need some pills to solve this. Well, I have a hurt arm, this, this, and this is going..." "Well, yeah, just take these..." Wait a second, right?
So we got to first figure out what's going on. And then once you diagnose that, now you have to figure out the right who. Who is going to sit in that chair and is there a who already there? And this is a matter of are we trying to evaluate if that's the right who and do they have the right system and structure? So how we've historically done this primarily in the sales functions, we call it the 96-hour test. And we do this for both intake agents and salespeople, attorney or non-attorney salespeople. What the 96-hour test is developed to do is really help you, through a skills assessment, identify, do you have the right who? And through that process, it's not literally 96 hours, it's four days, four days of going through and learning, are they willing and are they able to memorize and deliver the script and the structure confidently?
Because for us, that's what it all comes back to, is the script and the structure. Can that person step into that role? Can they learn the script? Can they deliver the structure and the script confidently? And if they can, by the end of that four days, you know you've got the right who in the seat through that guidance. And you also learn a lot about people through those four days. Are they putting in the work? Are they putting in the time? Do they actually care about it? Are they investing the extra time to put more reps in to learn the structure? So you get some of the soft skills from that person. And then assuming it's the right who, now it's like, okay, well, I got the right who, what's next? Well, now it's the system.
And now they were just learning that script and that structure. And that's one we use internally to help get the 65 to 85% set and show rates and 60, 80% close rates. Now it's making sure you've got a training system in place to ensure that that who has the support they need to continue to maintain those metrics, both training, support, and accountability. And that's the other area that we see a lot of firms fall off, is they'll find the who, they'll let them shadow maybe some consults and then they'll throw them in there and say, "All right, it's go time, go figure it out." And a lot of high achievers and go getters will go try to forge a path, but most people, even the best, need some accountability and some training to make sure they're continuing to hone their craft. That's kind of the process we follow.
Chris Dreyer:
I think it's a great process, the evaluation, given the training, the mentoring, the scripts, the opportunity. One of the things that I'd like to hear your thought on this is when I'm telling the PI firms that we work with, I tell them to hire at least two. First of all, your salary requirements, your OTEs are less for your intake specialists. And then just the way I look at it is if you have two, they can actually help each other out through immersion. They can ask questions and then you can kind of compare from a stat perspective, you can gamify things and then if one doesn't work out, you still got one.
Michael Patrick Strauch:
You're right about that. So if a firm has the resources to invest in two right off the bat, it does make sense because there is a lot of good that comes from two. To your point, they're able to collaborate and feed off of each other in the sense of questions, in the sense of examples, in the sense of role plays. They can do that with each other. And then the other thing is, to your point about gamification, it breeds a healthy dose of competition. And so they're trying to be the top. Usually, if you get A players that are really wanting to strive, you get two people that end up wanting to continue to outdo, not in a unhealthy manner, that's where you got to manage culture, but in a manner of, hey, they're continuing... Iron sharpens iron. They're continuing to try to push each other to see if they can one-up on the statistics and the numbers for that given period, whatever gamification period that may be, a week, two weeks, a month, whatever that may be.
Chris Dreyer:
You mentioned repeatable sales process. I think you said script. Where do you stand on the script versus the framework? Are you like, "Hey, read every single word, every time, question by question."? Or are you like, "Hey, here's the framework of an opening."? But if they say they're crying and something's happening, do you deviate and you lead with empathy? Where do you stand on the opening?
Michael Patrick Strauch:
Great question. Our stance on that, and this is... A lot of firms are usually like, "Really?" No, our stance is a step by step, word for word script, except here's where we add our nuance, so frameworks can work. We've got the structure that we follow, but then every structure has the word for word script behind it. Where we tell salespeople to add their flair is in tone, tone and pacing. So that's where you're able to add your delivery flair. What I always tell our sales team is, the way I deliver our script is going to be different than the way you deliver our script, but it's not because we're delivering two different sets of scripts with two different sets of words, it's because the way you communicate and the way I communicate are two different ways. And so you're going to have tonality changes, you're going to have pacing changes that are different than me.
You might have a word here or there that's just a little bit different than me in a transition. And so that's how we're able to add the flair of each individual person because trying to take multiple people and put them into the same script and get them to say it the exact tonality, the exact way, when it's not the way they communicate, is not going to get the result we want either, because now we're trying to force a square peg into a round hole and that's just not going to work. They've got to have their own communication flair.
Chris Dreyer:
That's great. You got the reps in, you're rocking and rolling. Maybe you get out of that wearing the multiple hats and the owner can be the CEO, be the owner. Let's talk about now the volume starts to uptick. Are you keeping them full cycle, intake reps? Do you segment outbound? Do you have a closers club? Do you bring in a rev ops manager? Which rev ops for legal still gets equated under the IT department, which is so weird to me. But explain to me about the evolution of intake as you grow.
Michael Patrick Strauch:
There's a difference here between sometimes contingency firms and fee-based firms, because most fee-based firms, their setups are appointment setters, closers, that's their sales team. Sometimes contingency-based firms are like, it's just intake team. And that intake team is, like I said, kind of running consults on the fly just because of the nature of the practice area. So I would tell you that with those contingency-based firms, you continue to kind of stack up intake agents. And where I find most firms, both fee-based and contingency firms run into an issue, is they don't get dedicated sales management early enough. Now, the revenue and the cash flow has to be there to support it, but if you've got even one appointment setter and one salesperson on your team, they need a dedicated person to go to for day-to-day management.
And if you're the owner, which for a given period of time, is likely you until the cashflow supports it, but they need someone to go to walk through situations that they're experiencing, to walk through rules of engagement, to pull consult or intake recordings, to listen to them, to figure out, "Hey, how are we doing? Are we following the script and the structure?" To help them through situations. And so what ends up happening is a lot of firms will bring these sales teams on and then not equip them with a sales manager early enough. And usually, it's around that range of that 2.5 to 3.5 where you're starting to enter that territory from a revenue perspective of, okay, we need to consider bringing sales management in so that way, now as the... I can truly free myself out of the sales process because that's another misconception, is we think we fully remove ourselves.
We remove ourselves from day-to-day consults or day-to-day appointment setting calls, but we don't fully remove ourselves from sales management and making sure that sales team is truly working at optimum. Once you put a sales manager in place, now you've got what we call an enterprise sales team, not enterprise in the sense of size necessarily, but you've got a fully autonomous sales team with a sales manager that can run without you having to be there.
Chris Dreyer:
I think also too, when you got someone that's 100% committed to one function, you're going to get more out of them. Even if you were a talented salesperson, as the CEO, you might be doing other activities. And if you're only spending 10% on sales, you're not going to be as good as the person who spends 100% of the time on it.
Michael Patrick Strauch:
No. And your focus just isn't always there. Simultaneously, usually, when you're on consults, you're also thinking about, "Oh, I got to file this. Oh, I got to go talk to that person on the team." And so you're trying to multitask while you're also running consults. It's just you're not at optimum. And so you're right, having a dedicated person, that's their core function. They're there to master that role and master the sales process.
Chris Dreyer:
Iron sharpens iron. Putting two hungry intake reps together naturally builds a competitive culture that raises the baseline for everyone. It forces accountability. But once you have the right people in the right place, you have to arm them with the right words. Next up, Michael and I talk about the great debate and intake, rigid scripts versus loose frameworks. It turns out it's not that simple.
Let's say you're the owner and you want to hold your people accountable and make sure they're doing a good job, what should the owner be looking at from a KPI perspective? Maybe not the sales manager. Sales manager is probably going to look at everything. What's the owner look at to really judge the performance?
Michael Patrick Strauch:
Yeah. And you're right, sales managers should be looking at everything. But generally speaking, I would tell you it still kind of comes back to the same numbers that an owner would want to see as well, which is from a sales perspective, on the intake team, what are our set rates? What are our show rates? What does that mean from an actual volume perspective of number of people? And then on the closing team, what is the close rate?
Chris Dreyer:
What about just hiring tips? Generally, when you're going to look for an intake rep, are you more Myers-Briggs or you do DiSC, iD, Di? Talk to me about what you're looking for to say, "Hey, these are some of the characteristics I look for when we're going to hire an intake specialist for a firm."
Michael Patrick Strauch:
So one of the keys for us, and I would say this would be the case for contingency-based firms too, I know there's not a collection of money at time of consult, but has this person had a sales role in the past where they have actually harvested a card, collected money, and overcome objections? Have they done those things? Because if they have not done those things, it's oftentimes very difficult unless someone is young, hungry, willing, it's very difficult to take someone who hasn't been used to asking for money during a consult and get them to be okay and comfortable with doing that. So that's why things like door-to-door sales, car warranty. I know sometimes people hear these industries are like, "Oh, I know what those type of people are." They're not all that way and it's a result of training usually on how they approach their role.
But car warranty sales, like phone distributor, AT&T, T-Mobile, servers even are sometimes good with this. They're a little less on the realm of collecting money. It's kind of a forced thing that they have to do. And then once they do that, skills test. Skills test is step one. They got to go through the skills test and skills assessment, make sure that they can actually perform the role. And assuming they can in that dedicated window, then I'll throw a shameless plug out there for who we trust and use from a personality perspective, Jay Henderson, Real Talent Hiring, highly recommend Jay. Jay actually has a skills assessment that is dedicated to a law firm intake specialist and how well they'll perform in their role. It's a predictive index. And I got to tell you, I can't name very many times that his reports have been off.
Chris Dreyer:
That's the second time I've heard his name in the last week. So I'm going to have to get him on the pod next.
Michael Patrick Strauch:
I would recommend it. He's great.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah. I love predictive index and we used it for so long, but I got cheapo and then I went back to DiSC because we're doing it with heavy volume recruiting and it was just so pricey on the predictive side. A couple final questions. Tell the audience a little bit about Your Practice Mastered, what it is you guys do. And then final question, the best way to reach out and connect with you.
Michael Patrick Strauch:
We were consulting, coaching, added some training. In the last two years, we made a transition to be staffing company first that offers specialized training for the staff positions that we staff for law firms. And we also have a consulting program called Partners Club, where it's kind of like a mastermind community of other law firm owners. And it's a wonderful program. If you guys would like to learn more about that, yourpracticemastered.com. And if you want to learn more about the non-attorney sales recruitment front, which is one of our core offerings on the staffing, same URL/nonattorney sales.
Chris Dreyer:
Amazing. Michael, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Michael Patrick Strauch:
Hey, thanks for giving me the opportunity. I appreciate being here.
Chris Dreyer:
You can't scale if you insist on wearing every single hat. At certain point, holding onto the reins isn't protecting your firm. It's putting a cap on your potential. Taking a hard look at the numbers this week, if you got the leads but the net clients aren't there, or if you're the bottleneck keeping the cases from getting signed, it's time to step out of the way and build a dedicated intake team. And once that intake machine is built, you need to fuel it. That's where we come in. At Rankings, we help elite personal injury law firms dominate their markets and sign more high value cases. We don't do empty guarantees. Excellence is our standard and we bring proof over promises. If you're ready to flood your new sales team with high quality cases in your market, head on over to Rankings.io. I'm Chris Dreyer. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.
