By: Rich Sierra

As I read blogs and articles in legal marketing, I notice a great deal of emphasis in generating leads, tracking, and conversion. Although these are important components of any successful legal marketing program, an efficient lead management system is just as important.

For instance, you just hired a legal marketing consultant to optimize your SEO, PPC, Facebook page, and Avvo profile and just launched your first e-newsletter and video. You are excited, anticipating an increase in leads (as you should) based on the new marketing efforts. In a relatively short time you go from 10 weekly calls to 15-20 weekly prospective client calls. That is a 50 percent to 100 percent increase from your previous month. However, at the end of the month you realize that you did not retain the number of clients that you were anticipating. And you ask, “Why!?”.

There are a number of possible reasons why you may not convert a higher number of leads when experiencing a higher number of calls. Some of these reasons include the quality of the leads, the number of appointments made, lack of follow up, quality of intake interview, and the lack of an efficient Lead Management System (LMS).

A Lead Management System is the sequence of contacts that a prospective client goes through when they make contact with your firm, from the initial contact to client retention. If you are currently in practice, you have an LMS; it may not be codified, but you have one.

By optimizing your LMS you will generate more conversions. You may want to optimize how leads are handled, first, in order to have a clear plan on how to manage the increase in potential client inquiries; and second, to ensure that every contact made with the prospective client maximizes the probability of client acquisition. If you are going to invest additional resources in lead generation, you should also spend time and resources on preparing to receive and properly manage these leads. Otherwise, many of the leads could end up falling through the cracks due to a lack of planning on how to handle more inquiries.

When Optimizing Your Lead Management Process, Consider:

A. Telephone Inquiries

1. Who receives the call?
2. Is the contact entered into a CRM system?
3. Who handles the initial intake?
4. What is the objective of the initial call?
5. What is the time frame to return calls from leads?
6. Does the lead receive a “thank you” email for calling the firm?
7. Is the contact added to the mailing list?

B. Web Inquiries (Web Forms)

1. Who receives the form data?
2. Does the form automatically populate in your CRM system?
3. Does the form generate an automatic email response?
4. Who receives the lead and how is the lead handled when received?

This, of course, it is not a comprehensive analysis of the Lead Management Process. My goal with this article is to bring to your attention that the process of receiving leads is just as important as the process of generating them. I believe that when you combine an effective lead generation system with an efficient and optimized lead management process, you will experience a higher client conversion rate and more revenue.