LHLM 101: Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Episode Notes

Transcript

Conrad Saam: Before we get started today, we want to thank our sponsors Clio, Alert Communications, Lawyaw and Posh Virtual Receptionist.

Gyi Tsakalakis: So Conrad, I got a story for you.

Conrad: Hit me up. Go.

Gyi Tsakalakis: I tried to contact my bank and the short version is they have a form on their website, but you can’t tell if they received your message.

Conrad: Because they don’t reply that message received?

Gyi Tsakalakis: No autoresponder, no —

Conrad Saam: Will you expect that at this day and age, Gyi?

Gyi Tsakalakis: You know, that’s just one example of like CRM horror stories gone wrong. You know, another one that drives me nuts is the star vertical bar, if name vertical bar star when you get that from a company and it’s like obviously their CRM just broke.

Conrad Saam: Yeah. You know, a good story about CRM? Remember last week, I sang to you for your birthday?

Gyi Tsakalakis: You did.

Conrad Saam: That’s a great use of CRM.

Gyi Tsakalakis: That is. Did your CRM remind you to sing for me on my birthday?

Conrad Saam: No, but Facebook reminded me to sing for you on your birthday. And you’re now in my CRM with your birthday’s in it.

Gyi Tsakalakis: And a good CRM might pull my birthday from Facebook.

Conrad Saam: Two weeks ahead of time so I can send you like a bottle of, I was going to say, a bottle of chocolates. Speaking of Happy Valentine’s Day everyone, coming up.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Happy Valentine’s Day!

Conrad Saam: Don’t be that person who forgets the chocolates.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Is this going to be published before Valentine’s Day? Too late. Sorry, if you missed it.

Conrad Saam: If you missed it, you’re in the doghouse. Gyi and Conrad because you know CRM new the Valentine’s Day was coming up and we’re prepared.

Gyi Tsakalakis: There we go. What are we talking about today?

Conrad Saam: So, big, big, big news coming out of the FTC that impacts everyone listening. So, wait for that and we’re also going to be talking really quickly about Tech Show, but most of this podcast is dedicated to the amazing practice of CRM.

[Music]

Intro: Welcome to Lunch Hour Legal Marketing. Teaching you how to promote market and make fat stacks for your legal practice. Here on Legal Talk Network.

Conrad Saam: Welcome to Lunch Hour Legal marketing. Let’s do some news.

[Music]

Hey, Gyi, you’re on the TECHSHOW board. Can you talk to us about Startup Alley finalists?

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yes, the Startup Alley finalists have been announced. You can check them out over at Bob Ambrogi’s Law sites blog. Lot of great companies there. If you’re on the fence right now about going to Tech Show, I highly encourage you to obviously on the board, so I’m biased but it is really a great opportunity to learn about new tech. It’s a great way to meet people, implement new things at your firm and I think you should go in persons, because I think there’s a relationship benefit. But don’t miss Startup Alley. It’s the first night, great tradition, really cool way to kick-off Tech Show.

And I find going to Startup Alley honestly, it is a really good way to open your mind about what’s possible with technology and the practice of law. I’ve been doing this since 2006 and I’m always inspired and sometimes horrified by people who show up at the Startup Alley.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Cool.

Conrad Saam: Moving on from Tech Show, the FTC is in the news about review gating this. This hit the press this morning. And so Gyi, can you tell our great listeners what review gating is, and we can get into what the FTC’s beef is specifically because this is a big news.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah, and it’s not just review gating, it’s the FTC release new guidelines about online reviews for the platforms, but also for businesses. So, let’s start with the review gating piece. And by the way, since this is just a quick news bite, go to nearmedia.co and check out Mike Blumenthal’s articles on this. He covers it really well. But on short version, let you sent out letters to specific platforms that Blumenthal lists. This is, “Hey, the way you’re describing, what you do? It’s review gating and if you do this you’re in violation of the FTC’s guidelines.”

We’ve talked about review gating in the past, but essentially what it is, is you’re only asking happy client. So you do something to like get feedback from a client if they respond positively, then you send them to leave a review. If they respond negatively then you don’t. So, the idea is there. They are aggregating the negative reviews from getting published.

Conrad Saam: In the FTC’s words, they say that they are concerned that consumers will be misled that the review displayed do not accurately reflect the view of purchasers who submitted reviews. Now, the interesting thing is they didn’t send this to Google. There’s lots of reviews.

(00:05:05)

Gyi Tsakalakis: Right. I thought the same thing. I was like, “Where’s Google?”

Conrad Saam: Maybe they got lost.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah, in fairness though, Google doesn’t get reviews. You can go to Google and leave a happy review, negative review its the layer before the review itself, right? That’s the thing.

Conrad Saam: It’s the lawyer who says, did you like our service? Great. Here’s a link to Google.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah, right?

Conrad: Oh, you didn’t. Oh, I’m sorry. Then let’s talk about this very privately on this non-recorded phone line.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Right.

Conrad Saam: Another thing though as you brought the Google thing that was interesting is this has been true for lawyers. I think under most State Bar rules at least l think it’s on the top of head even before these guidelines, but FTC is expanding it.

If you’re a SEO Company or your reputation management company goes out and creates fake reviews, you the business owner are liable for those fake reviews. Did you hear that?

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah. Would SEO Companies do that?

Conrad Saam: Oh, yeah. I mean, that’s the biggest problem. I mean, review gating is a problem, but this is the real issue now enforcement. Now the difference now is though. So in the past you had to go through all the gobbledygook to figure out like who the SEO company was and blah blah blah. Now it’s just like, “No, we had good evidence. This is the fake review. I’m just doing the business.” What if the SEO Company was dumb enough to do those fake reviews under their own name?

Gyi Tsakalakis: Right.

Conrad Saam: Say we’re like they write a VP of development at like a big, big provider.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah. My favorite is like when you figure out, like it’s one of them and then you go and you can just find it on every single one of their client’s site. So, it’s like, it’s just as bad as like a really bad link network, but it’s a review network and it’s not cool and officially against the new FTC guidelines.

Anyways, check it out. They also have some guidance on incentivizing. So you know whether you’re going to like offer a gift card for a review, or if you’re going to ask. They do say unlike Yelp, which Blumenthal mentions, “It’s okay to ask for reviews.” Even the FTC says, it’s okay to ask for reviews.

Conrad: But Yelp is going to hold out for a little bit longer.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah.

Conrad Saam: And now for the legal trends report minute brought to you by Clio.

[Music]

Client intake and client relationship management CRM software helps law firms develop enhanced client experiences, especially during the crucial intake phase of a legal matter. These Solutions make it easier for law firms to keep track of potential clients who reach out to the firm, ensuring streamlined operations at each step of the intake process. Online forms make it easier and more convenient for potential clients to share basic information related to their matter and online booking systems make connecting for an initial consultation simple. On the firm side client intake software, ensures all the staff know what stage is client is in within their intake workflow and allows staff to automate reminders and follow-ups. And this whole episode really was driven by this part of the legal trends report, right? Because it is amazing. How many different aspects that CRM can impact at your firm from a client experience standpoint?

And so, we’re going to go through that today, talk about a lot of different way they can impact that and talk about some options. To learn more about these opportunities and much more for free. Download Clio’s legal trends report at Clio.com/trends. That’s Clio spelled C-L-I-O. All right let’s take in a break.

[Music]

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Conrad Saam: Alright kids, it’s time for yet another class at Lunch Hour Legal Marketing. Welcome back to LHLM101. This week, we are talking about CRM. Professor Psalm, let’s start here. What is CRM?

Professor Psalm: So, it’s actually a really old software, right? And it stands for customer relationship management, and in the legal world. It’s been broken out into two really distinct components. One is what you guys are all fairly familiar with which is matter management, right? So, there’s this whole process about getting a matter from start to finish and there’s varying levels of automation and integration and invoicing and billing and time tracking and document management and all those stuff

The other side of it is become really, really hot, right? I think this is a widespread change in the market right now is what has been called intake management software. And that’s what Gyi was referring to. Is really talking about how can — and it does two things. The first is, how can we make the prospective clients experience amazing? Nordstrom level amazing when they’re first engaging with us. And the second part of that and it’s completely different and completely different function, but as important to me, especially the marketer, perhaps even more important is in the automation of that process. What kind of data can we develop about our marketing about our firm? What is the actionable stuff that we can actually be talking about? And the reason I think this is still a big Gyi is because you and I have been dealing with Nap and Meta descriptions and Core Web Vitals and all of this kind of technical miasma.

Some lawyers have learned it, most haven’t, most don’t really care but it’s not really business drivers, right? Your H1 tag shouldn’t really be a business driver and as a law firm, you probably don’t want to have business conversations around H1 tags, but you can’t have business conversations around things like, how often do we answer the phone, which my lawyers turns prospects into clients at the best rate, right? And that’s why to me the leveraging up of the experience at a law firm is really enabled by CRM, specifically in the situation intake management software.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah, I think back there’s two kind of like poignant things that I remember from my own experience on a midpoint in strong. But the first is, I think back to like my practice law eons ago for a very brief period of time. And I think about the expectations that we would set with clients, right? So like this we’re talking about like 2005 issue, will call it.

If a client wants to get a hold of me, they call the firm. The receptionist might answer the phone. If we’re doing an intake they’d call, receptionist might answer the phone, try to transfer it to the lawyer. We’d perform an intake and then we’d either be like next step, you know, you got to come in and we talked and retainer agreements and investigation or we’d be saying, “Hey, we’re just not. This isn’t a case if it some cases we think was a case, or sending a turndown letter.” And that whole experience from a client standpoint was extremely cumbersome, because, guess what, first they’d call up, we are going to take a message, because no one’s available to talk to anybody. Then I would get handed a piece of paper that said, “So and so called here.”

Conrad Saam: Written down like memos style?

Gyi Tsakalakis: Memo style have gone my desk and they do like, “so and so called here. Take this message.” Okay. So now while I’m working, when might going to call this person back, you know, yes in a perfect world. Be immediately. I drop everything I’m doing. How does that actually work out? No, I’m in the middle of writing a brief. So, I’d actually just let that message would sit there.

Conrad Saam: What if it fell off at the back of your desk.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Fell off of desk. That happened all the time. And guess what? In the meantime, that person who’s dealing with something serious in their life is looking to talk to a lawyer, regardless of how they heard about us. It’s probably like, you know, maybe I should get somebody else to talk to about this because I haven’t heard back from Gyi in a couple hours, or maybe they tried calling back a bunch of times or maybe they leave a voice message. Maybe they were able to find an email or something, but the point is it is extremely cumbersome process. I’d call them back. I’d leave them a voicemail because they didn’t answer their phone because they’re working during the day. We’d play phone tag for a little while. Finally, we get something on a calendar and we try to move the process forward. But the point is extremely cumbersome. Is that really struck me even back then? I was like, God has got, you know, this isn’t a really great way to do this.

So that’s one great way that CRM can help. The second one is, is then you alluded to this. But gosh, we see this all the time. I’ll remember this. Like it was maybe 10 years ago, and we’re doing talking to a prospective client at Attorney Sink, and we’d be like “Hey, how you’re tracking open case files?

(00:15:01)

Oh, we’ve got a yellow pad, right? I’ll fax over our yellow pad of open case files to you.” And I’m like, well, I’m not – I burnt one. actually, we did have way of digital fax then, we had like hello fax or something. So they could have technically fax it to us. But if they did, I wouldn’t be able to read, it would have been very organized and obviously they’re not doing very sophisticated tracking. So if either of those stories resonate with you and you’re still kind of doing it whether you’re serving clients that way, scheduling this is the episode for you.

Conrad Saam: Yeah. And I think one of the keys on this is the CRM software used to be in the domain of the big players who could afford it, right? It was expensive, hard to customize, pain in the neck, no longer the case, right? So, if you’re a solo practitioner, you can now run a much more sophisticated organization than most large law firms are doing just five years ago, as a solo, and that’s amazing.

The other thing that I was thinking as you were talking about that Gyi, this is something I still fight with and I can’t believe we’re still fighting with the legal industry about this. How did you hear about us? Right? Like that is the most awful component of an intake that you could possibly do. So, if you are still and now that I’ve consulted half of the listeners again, we haven’t insulted listeners for a while.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Since last episode.

Conrad Saam: If you are still asking your prospect how they found you, keep listening, this 

is very much worth your while.

Gyi Tsakalakis: So, we kind of defined what CRM is Conrad, table stakes features that any CRM software worth its salt should have.

Conrad Saam: Yeah, so there are a couple components to this that I think are very important. Number one, data openness, right? So the ability to pass data between systems. And so intake management software is really just a very small portion of f that prospect experience with you. And so, you need to be able to bring in phone records. You need to be able to export that into your matter management system. You need to be able to do things like take in Google analytics data. And if you run a closed system, you can’t do that, right? And there are some legal specific intake management software and management software that is a closed system because it doesn’t talk to anyone else. That is utterly stupid. Number two for me at the very least, there needs to be a field where you can do source attribution so you know where your prospects are coming from.

Now, that does not mean how did you hear about us? That means going to another piece of software somewhere and finding having the software tell you why they call these three or dynamic called dragon from Colorado for example, that would work. But better yet, what I really wanted to do is automatically populate. I want to automatically create that record and I want that data source, the source field of why that person found you to be automatically populated. Those things are just so unbelievably important.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah. From my perspective, I think I know that the lines get fuzzy between what we’re — because I know people are listening to this, it might be a little more deeper in the weeds here. They’re going to be. Well, there’s a difference between CRM and practice management and marketing technology stack. But for me, whatever is handling intake, if your CRM is going to be a form on your website, or as you mentioned, it’s going to your phone number or your email system is going to run through your CRM and I think it should it’s table stakes to have autoresponders set up so that you can actually stop the person shop. I think it’s Table Stakes to be able to have automation triggers whether that’s firing an automation through someone making a phone call or sending an email. The more sophisticated ones can actually do it based on visits to site and things like that. But that’s to me and you mentioned this but I think it’s worth really hitting that point.

The automation aspect of CRM is such a mutually beneficial tool. And you know, we talked about this on the episode of George Sahara so I tell you that. Check that one out again, but using your CRM to automate the parts of the process that lend themselves to automation is a mutually beneficial thing both for your potential clients, your clients, and for your firm. 

Conrad Saam: I mean, you brought up a really interesting thing. This is automation thing. I think or not think, there are more than a few matter management systems that have tacked on Mr. Potato head style, what they’re calling intake management, but it’s not. It’s just a field that says source. That’s not intake management. And so, a lot of the matter management software is out there, even though it’s built on a similar platform that you could really use for sophisticated intake management, not really there. And so, that automation is unbelievably important. And I’ll give you a really pragmatic reason why? If you are doing things manually, your front desk people are not going to bother to do data entry around the spam calls that they receive, because they don’t think it’s a good use of their time.

(00:20:06)

Actually, it’s really important data. So for example, if you learn that 80% of your leads that come from Google ads or spam, that’s really important data to have. And if your intake person is not entering that data because it feels like a waste of his time, you’re losing that information. And so, my take on this is the automation provides not just accuracy, but comprehensiveness in your data and in your performance and that is unbelievably important.

The other thing Gyi, you talked about this in terms of stopping the shop, integration with calendar. That was the third thing that I probably should have said. Integrating with your calendar. So when someone calls in and your front desk decides that they want to schedule that person with you, you can do that very, very easily. And by integrating with a calendar, if that’s integrated into your CRM system, you can now talk about your consultations, you can talk about your marketing in terms of the consultations that are generated. You can talk about how many consultations you have instead of how many leads. Who wants to talk about leads, when you can talk about consultations and clients, right? Much more important.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah, and that brings me to my final feature and in some ways you could argue, maybe it’s not Table Stakes because you can always export the data and build your own, but native reporting. A lot of lawyers out specially in legal contexts, a lot of them lawyers, they’re not Google data studio and Microsoft power, bi Wizards and so, having a native reporting system that can show you, new prospects by source and how they’re moving through a pipeline and ideally things like cost per acquisition of a client or return on an ad spend of a campaign like that. To me, has got to be Table Stakes. Like so many CRM providers that are like they cover a lot of those other basics and they’re reporting is just not so great. If you’re having conversations with CRM vendors, definitely ask about the reporting capabilities and just Conrad mention the integrations. I think that that’s just so, so important.

Conrad Saam: I would be reminiscing not warning be careful about letting your marketing agency to the reporting, because he’ll do everything they can to make themselves look good. Let’s take a break. And when we come back, we are going to get into some of the specific players in the CRM world.

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Gyi Tsakalakis:  Well, we’re back from our break. And as we periodically do, we got a review and the title of the review is legal marketing gurus. Conrad, I know you identify as a guru.

Conrad Saam: I write it all over the place.

Gyi Tsakalakis: This is for you. So, I think the key here is, if you call yourself a guru maven or ninja, your kind of you’re not. But if someone else does, it’s okay. Okay, let’s leave it like that.

Conrad Saam: Here’s our review. Capital ALL all the smart thing I need to stay current and so much fun than trying to figure it out. Myself love staying ahead of the curve with you guys. Thanks for all you do via Apple podcasts.

Gyi Tsakalakis: I’ll take it.

Conrad Saam: I think this is my friend Zach, I believe. Zach, thank you so much. Thanks for listening. Thanks for the kind words. We appreciate you. We appreciate all the rest of you. And if you’re a regular listener, please do go drop some feedback in wherever you like to review podcasts or hit us up at hashtag LHLM, even if it’s not on Spotify anymore. That’s okay. That’s all right. All right. Now Gyi, I know that you have a pretty close relationship with the intake management software world with Matt Spiegel from Lawmatics. Tell us about Lawmatics.

Gyi Tsakalakis: I do. I have to disclose that I am very close, I have a dog in the fight for Lawmatics, but one of the things I love about Lawmatics not even, because they’re not the only ones who did this particular aspect.

(00:25:03)

But I talked early on the Mat part of his vision was to focus on delivering the reporting. And that’s a long time ago when they first started. They had a lot of features, but they’re a great option right now I think. You know just legal specific and obviously I’m biased because I’m helping influence through the products there but you want to check. I’d put the Lawmatics reporting against a lot of the other players in the Legal Tech. 

Conrad Saam: Fair, totally fair. The other thing, I would say, I am not an investor so I can gush over Lawmatics genuinely. I wish I wasn’t an investor to be banned. So one of the things we haven’t talked about this kind of gives me the willies a little bit especially with this type of data. Lawmatics is completely independent. Now, they’re venture-backed but their data — so let me give you the ugly side of this. You’re dealing with very, very valuable data, so the information that Gyi and I have been talking about the data that we want you to generate to evaluate how your firms are doing, that’s amazingly valuable information and I get very leery of the ability of firms, agencies, or even a larger conglomerate having access to the things that make your firm go around.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Just to clarify there, there are definitely CRM providers that have agency leadership that that could become an issue.

Conrad Saam: Yeah, I would research the background of who you’re — So the point being Lawmatics totally independent, right. And bluntly, I think their technology super solid, their interface is really easy to work with. It’s sophisticated. We’re going to move on from Lawmatics but they are also independent which I really, really like. I think that is something, I mean, you’re really exposing your yourself when you’re sharing the data that drives the growth of your firm with a guy across the street through either your agency or the tool competitor. That’s scary.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah, another lawyer. That’s the one that really scares me too.

Conrad Saam: Clio.  Okay, we talk about Clio. Clio Grow. Clio Grow was a product called. Lexicata, which I believe was the second ever legal marketing specific intake management software that was purchased. I believe and I think this is accurate game, maybe you can correct me if I’m wrong. I think that was Clio’s first acquisition. Is that that true?

Gyi Tsakalakis: That is true to my knowledge.

Conrad Saam: If you and I both believe that then it is 100% true, and our listeners heard it on the internet, so it has to be true. So Clio Grow and Clio matter, it’s an easy choice if you use Clio matters, Clio Grows, and obvious an easy choice. I think the one ding I would have on that is the integration between the two is not as seamless as one would think it would be given that they’re both owned by Clio. And so, that’s my knock on Clio Grow, but it is a fairly easy to use tool and it integrates okay with Clio matters.

Anything else you want to add on that one?

Gyi Tsakalakis: No, I think it’s solid and the thing I really like if you go, just do some research on Jack Newton, talking about his vision for supporting the client from the time of first interaction with the law firm all the way through the journey to even beyond. You get a really good sense that one they’ve got a great leader at the helm. They’ve got a really strong Foundation. They obviously have a lot of market share. They obviously are well-funded. And so, again, I think that those kinds of things do play into your decision. One of the things I always ask vendors, “I’m like, are you guys funded?” Because if you’re going to invest the time to get something set up and configured, you better hope that it’s going to be their next two years, five years. It also speaks to the Innovation, because they got the resources to actually innovate, add new features, so great option.

Conrad Saam: Yeah, I mean, I can’t. So, the little anecdote on that of is it funded? Is it going to be around for a while? These tools when they are abandoned become obsolete very quickly. I mentioned, Ludify what’s this? That was the second legal talks any management system. The first was auto-ignite. We talk about it the last week.

Avvo Ignite was a great and actually, will go deeper on this because it’s enlightening. Avvo Ignite was a really good, albeit simplistic and manual process to try and do exactly this. And it was launched a long, long time ago. Two things. One, it was never supported, and so it very quickly became super, super difficult to keep up when you’re dealing with a very important internal process, changing the software, changing the process, changing the way people do things and that is a huge pain in the neck. We have a bunch of clients who held on to Avvo Ignite for a long time, but Avvo never updated it, and so it became increasingly difficult. And then, one day that we just got an emails like, “all right, we are turning it off on Thursday. Good luck.” Not great at all. The other thing and this is why I brought up the data concerns is Avvo Ignite was really good at gathering data about how Avvo advertising was working, as well as all of the other marketing channels.

(00:30:08)

It was designed to gather data about how other marketing channels were working for law firms. Super, super valuable data for Avvo to have in terms of their pricing and their value and what they should do. And so, I watched that happen firsthand and that’s why I am paranoid about your own digital marketing business intelligence. And I think everyone should be paranoid about that.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Yeah. People are not quite connecting the dots there. I want to try to give another analogy and again, I’m not suggesting that this is going on but this is a –

Conrad Saam: You are suggesting, it’s —

Gyi Tsakalakis: I think I’m going to frame it in a way that I think it’ll resonate more with people.

Conrad Saam: If it’s not going on the potential for it to go on is right there.

Gyi Tsakalakis: The potential is right there, but think about Google ads, if you feed all of your business data into the Google ads platform because Google will say, “Well, we can optimize your ad spend better to cost per acquisition or return on ad spend.” There are also the game that sets the price of the clicks. So, I’m not saying Google does that but that’s the analogy. If you’re buying ads from somebody and they also have all of your data it lends itself to them to be able to say, “Hey, we know what their margin is on these clicks or on this media spend. We could raise the price.” That’s the short version,

Conrad Saam: Or take those really great performing campaigns and bring it to the guy across the street.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Right.

Conrad Saam:  Right. And if you want to scare the shit out of yourself, go look on Zoop Recruitment for data scientists and look for all the legal marketing providers. A data scientist is someone who specializes in gathering a ton of data and finding patterns, right? And so, don’t think this isn’t happening. It’s 100% happening.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Who else on your short list? CRM Legal?

Conrad Saam: The other shortlist. I’m going to go with the two biggies that we like. They’re insanely expensive. They’re both built around the PI World. The lead docket and five line integration really solid, really expensive, and we basically have. Our clients were on it, who are spending a ton on it. They love it. And the other one to bring into this is Ludify. We also have a bunch of clients on Ludify, also extremely expensive. Ludify is built on Salesforce, so Salesforce was the original big boy in the CRM world. It is amazingly extensible, but it is a clunky pain in the neck to work with. And so, Ludify was built on top of Salesforce also, very well-loved among the PI world. It is also designed and heavily influenced by Morgan & Morgan and it is a designed to really pass referrals within that network. So, you can look at that with eyes wide open in terms of a good thing or bad thing, right?

Because you open the door for this Gyi, I’ll walk right through it and I appreciate you doing so, because I know you were leading me down this path that I want to talk about. Our take at the mockingbird side of things, we love HubSpot. HubSpot is not legal specific, so it requires an extensive amount of integration into a firm. Some of the beauties of HubSpot are the scalability, its price from $49. So, we have clients who spends over $3,000 a month on it because it does lots of different things and it can scale as you grow.

And the other thing that helps what is better than, I will say, better than anything else out there is they’ve added on to it so much. So, there’s so much more that you can do with it. The level of sophistication. If you are a really, really big spender, highly sophisticated firm and you want to do some amazing like absolutely cutting-edge stuff is really hard to do that within a lot of the existing, especially the legal specific stuff in HubSpot. It’s just built into what they do and it’s it is fantastic.

Gyi Tsakalakis: Right.

Connor Saam: That is our peak if I were to start a law firm myself and start from scratch, that’s where I would go.

Gyi Tsakalakis: And I’m going to throw one more non-legal specific one, just for folks that are shopping. Check out, active campaign. I would say it’s maybe you call it HubSpot light, but they do a lot of things really, really well as well.

Two other points I want to make here and then we’re going wrap up because we’re running out of time here. Actually, make one point and then we’re going to wrap up with our final question. One point is and I think this is a great idea for a future episode Conrad is you’re alluded to this idea of it only makes sense to invest heavily in the technology if you’re actually running A lot of a heavy advertising investment or having marketing investment going on. And I think we should do an episode on some of your formulas for the engine versus of the gas conversation and how to make a decision about that. That’s really important. But short version and help stop pitches this, it’s only as expensive as it’s not getting you from point A to point B, right? Just like marketing it. So it’s actually, if it’s helping you increase conversion rates, it’s actually making it more efficient pays for itself.

(00:34:55)

Conrad Saam: Yeah, it pays for itself. And I think this is why we like HubSpot, the flexibility of it. Your CRM should generate a lot more business and a lot more data and the value of that business and data is if done and allocated correctly, dramatically larger than the investment that you’ll make in CRM. And that’s what you’re talking about.

Gyi Tsakalakis: What’s your number one tactical tip for CRM?

Conrad Saam: This is hard and this is based on my experience watching ignite kind of flounder, but also our experience now working with law firms to get CRM deployed. Most lawyers will sit through a salesperson demo. They’ll see all these amazing reports. And they’ll like, “Wow, I can start running my business more like a business. This is awesome.” And so, they will take the CRM system and plunk it into their organization and then we’ll be pissed two months later when it doesn’t work. It doesn’t. It’s not doing what I thought that was going to happen.

The reality is CRM adoption is really dependent on a couple things. One is working with the people who do the work. right? You need to make their lives easier, otherwise, they’re not going to change the way that they do the work period. And so, the top down approach doesn’t work, it’s the bottom up approach. The second thing, especially for really sophisticated systems that have lots of extensibility, do this slowly, implement one thing, and implement the next thing. Implement that you will learn the system and learn what it can do and what it can’t do by doing that. Whereas, if all of a sudden, if you try and launch the perfect thing on day two, it will flounder, and you will not understand the software the way you think you do. And so, you ask for one tip I gave to.

Gyi Tsakalakis: As you say, I may have given as like 10, but mine’s going to be a lot shorter than yours but I think you’re provide a lot of good points in there and I empathize with a lot of those who have seen that happened to a lot with law firms.

Mine is nurture campaigns front end, right? So nurturing someone that reaches out to you that might not be ready to hire you, but maybe they want to download something from your site or they want to do something to get to know you better. CRM is a fantastic for moving someone from like, “I’m just kind of interested in this to what they need to know, to actually make a hiring decision and then nurturing on the back end.”

Every law firm we talked to, what are you doing to stay in touch with former clients? Nothing. This CRM handles that for you. It can automatically fire you out. Happy New Year message or happy New Year text. And again, it’s not yet, you got to configure it so you’re saying the right messaging to the right group of people. But nurturing on the front end and back end of that client journey makes all the difference in the world.

Conrad Saam: Hundred percent. And you guys all know you should do it, and you don’t because it’s hard. Make it easy with CRM. We sound like CRM sales people now.

Gyi Tsakalakis: We are joining the CRM Salesforce, “no pun intended.”

Conrad Saam: With that terrible pun.

Gyi Tsakalakis: That terrible pun. Thank you again, dear listeners and subscribers and followers. If you have questions, ideas for show, topics, please do reach out to us LHLM, drop us a review.

And if you just landed here randomly because you are hitting auto shuffle on your podcast then make sure you subscribe and get future episodes of Lunch Hour Legal Marketing. Until then. Gyi and Conrad though.

[Music]

Outro: Thanks for listening to Lunch Hour Legal Marketing.  If you would like more information about what you heard today, please visit legaltalknetwork.com. Subscribe via Apple podcast and RSS. Follow Legal Talk Network on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram and or download the free app from Legal Talk Network in Google play and iTunes.

The views expressed by the participants of this program are their own and do not represent the views of, nor are they endorsed by Legal Talk Network, its officers, directors, employees, agents, representatives, shareholders, and subsidiaries. None of the content should be considered legal advice. As always, consult a lawyer.

 

Podcast transcription by Tech-Synergy.com

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