Nick Werker: The Overlooked Power of Intake and Client Communication

In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Nick Werker discuss:

• The importance of proper phone handling in law firm intake processes
• How customer experience begins with an intentional communication strategy
• Shifting lawyer mindsets around sales and client engagement
• The evolving standards of professionalism and wellness in legal practice

Key Takeaways:

• Solo and small law firms often lose clients due to missed calls or lack of call-forwarding plans, which can be easily fixed with tools like rollover call forwarding.
• Answering services should align intake scripts with law firms’ CRM systems and help pre-qualify callers without turning anyone away, allowing for both client conversion and effective referrals.
• Intake staff should prioritize empathy and rapport over data collection, allowing callers to fully explain their problem before asking for details.
• Lawyers frequently lose potential clients not due to pricing or competence, but due to a lack of communication and failure to follow up after the initial contact.

“Don’t pressure people, but let them know that you have a solution to their problem and that and why you’re the best solution to that problem.” —  Nick Werker
Ready to go from good to GOAT in your legal marketing game? Don’t miss PIMCON—where the brightest minds in professional services gather to share what really works. Lock in your spot now: https://www.pimcon.org/

Thank you to our Sponsor!

Legalverse Media: https://legalversemedia.com/

Ready to grow your law practice without selling or chasing? Book your free 30-minute strategy session now—let’s make this your breakout year: https://fretzin.com/

About Nick Werker: Nick is the founding marketer and current marketing leader at Answering Legal. Since 2014, Nick has been working to help lawyers improve the way they communicate with their clients, strengthen legal intake, organize messages, create workflows for CRMs, and spread awareness on all things happening in the legal community.

When he’s not podcasting, building custom GPTs, or thinking about ways to spread the Answering Legal message, he is a strong proponent of self-improvement. He also loves helping friends and community members find business success using marketing strategies.

Connect with Nick Werker:  

Website: https://www.answeringlegal.com/

Phone: (631) 686-9700

Email: nick@answeringlegal.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholas-werker/ & https://www.linkedin.com/company/answering-legal-inc/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/answeringlegal/

Connect with Steve Fretzin:

LinkedIn: Steve Fretzin

Twitter: @stevefretzin

Instagram: @fretzinsteve

Facebook: Fretzin, Inc.

Website: Fretzin.com

Email: Steve@Fretzin.com

Book: Legal Business Development Isn’t Rocket Science and more!

YouTube: Steve Fretzin

Call Steve directly at 847-602-6911

Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You’re the expert. Your podcast will prove it.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Steve Fretzin: [00:00:00] Hey everybody. Welcome to be that lawyer, the podcast that helps you build the practice, the career, and the life that you deserve. Be that focused. Be that smart. Be that lawyer starting today. Enjoy the show.

Narrator: You are listening to be that lawyer, life-changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Each episode, your host, author, and lawyer coach Steve Fretzin, will take a deeper dive helping you grow your law practice in less time with greater results. Now here’s your host, Steve Fretzin.

Steve Fretzin: Hey everybody. Welcome back to be that Lawyer. I am Steve Fretzin, the host, as you probably know ’cause you’re here. And the idea behind this show hit me like a brick about five and a half, six years ago, that lawyers need to have a place to go to learn how to live the best lawyer’s life, to be that lawyer, confident, organized, in a skilled rainmaker.

You have found the right place to be, and I, [00:01:00] as bring on the best guests and I’ve got a doozy for you today. My good buddy, Nick, how’s it going, Nick?

Nick Werker: I am doing great. Thanks for having me. And I love the title of the show, be That Lawyer. It’s very intentional and, i’m just happy to be here.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah, I’m happy to have you and I appreciate your complimenting my background.

People that haven’t seen the show on YouTube or anything, just hear us. They don’t realize I’ve got a bunch of Seinfeld isms behind me, and the big one says Serenity now. And if you’re a Seinfeld fan, man, there’s nothing better than Serenity now. So

Nick Werker: Not at all.

Steve Fretzin: Good stuff. Listen, let’s jump in and get going.

We’ve got a quote of the show now. It’s interesting, the last show we did. Someone had a Nelson Mandela quote. I’m just wondering if we added up all the Nelson Mandela quotes, how many we would have. But here’s a good one. And it is. I am fundamentally an optimist. Whether that comes from nature or nurture, I cannot say part of being optimistic is keeping one’s head pointed towards the sun, one’s feet moving forward.

So again, welcome to the show and tell us why you love that quote so much.

Nick Werker: I love that quote [00:02:00] because I am fundamentally not an optimist. Contextually, if you think about that quote, it’s like a guy who was imprisoned his whole life and he’s saying, I’m fundamentally an optimist. I’m, I look toward the sun and I keep my feet moving forward.

And it just puts in perspective for me that like, I don’t live that way and I have this innate negativeness, I’m pessimistic. And so in trying to be intentional and changing that outlook and mindset, I have been looking at quotes like that. I read motivational books. Now it’s a whole thing.

It reminds me, look toward the sun. Keep your feet moving forward. If Nelson Mandela, a person who is imprisoned for like basically his whole life can feel that way, then I can be intentional with my perspective and be an optimist.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah. We don’t have it so bad, right?

Nick Werker: I certainly don’t.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah. You think it’s more nurture or nature optimism, pessimism.

What do you think about that?

Nick Werker: I gotta tell you, it’s definitely both. My parents, I hope they’re not watching this, are very negative people and I grew up where oh man, this is a problem. [00:03:00] This doesn’t work. Yeah. My business is, this person’s on my nerves and I learned to complain like that and look at things negatively, and I’d be like, oh, like my teacher is a jerk, so I hate school and I don’t like these things.

And I found myself being unhappy in life and, it’s part of that, like you’re taught that, but I think it’s also if you believe in generational trauma and genetics and DNA, like that, I’m a little woo in that regard. So I, that’s my belief in that.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah. And I think I’m been an optimist my whole life and I’ve gone through a lot of different challenges and tragedies and things that have happened, and I seem to find the cup half full most of the time.

I think it drives some people crazy because they’re like, what’s going on with you? But I also can be. Critical of people. I’m, I got that in Me too. I don’t know. It’s, I think we all have a mixture of it. I don’t think, and if somebody’s just optimistic and to the degree that’s all they are all the time, it’s probably pretty annoying.

Nick Werker: Yeah, I just also, I don’t believe it. There’s a lot of things. You know what I mean? Yeah. It’s one of those things that if you go on social media and you’re like, oh my God, I’m killing it. I do this, I do that, [00:04:00] but then you have a hundred thousand dollars in credit card debt. It’s like you’re posting a highlight reel.

Don’t show me the highlight reel. Show me the truth. All

Steve Fretzin: right. I’m smiling because I just thought of a great Seinfeld moment where Elaine is looking at this ugly baby and the doctor looks at the baby and goes breathtaking. Then a sunrise, breathtaking. And then he says it about her breathtaking or something like that, and she’s wait a second.

What’s going on here? Everything’s breathtaking. That’s pretty. And they have

Nick Werker: to go, is that they all have to go see the ugly baby and they don’t want to go see the Yeah, it’s an uncomfortable thing. If you’ve ever known an ugly baby, it’s definitely uncomfortable. Oh

Steve Fretzin: yeah. That’s gonna be rough. All right, listen, fantastic everybody.

Nick Worker is the marketing director at Answering Legal, and you and I have known each other a number of years. I think I’ve been on your show once or twice. We always have a good time and I’m just so excited to have you in and give everybody a little bit of a flavor of your background and then I want to jump in and talk about not just answering the phone ’cause that’s, on the basic level, but intake and just like everything that goes into starting off sales on the right foot.

So tell take us back.

Nick Werker: Sure. I like the way you frame that. I [00:05:00] come from a family where they owned a business. Like my mom worked in the business, my dad owned the business. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do with my life, so I had a friend who was starting this company. I had never heard of an answering service before.

Actually, the concept was so foreign to me that they explained it in depth and I was like, I still don’t

Steve Fretzin: do it. Gimme another shout at that.

Nick Werker: I really don’t understand. Like how you can answer somebody else’s phone. They’re like, doesn’t matter. Just come here. We’ll teach you. I actually started here in sales and we started growing so quickly as like a sales led organization that.

It became this weird thing where it was like I wanna see your website and you don’t seem that legit. And we were having so much contact with all these like law firm owners that it was pretty apparent that we needed to get into our own marketing and what our brand would be. And through a series of people losing out on opportunities, I was the next man up and they said, you’re a pretty smart kid.

Do you want to do our website, write a bunch of content [00:06:00] and go learn what SEO was? And I had no idea what anybody was talking about, and I just learned on the fly. Like I had a really, I had a lot of connections that gave me a lot of good advice. And and here we are 10, 11 years later, I I run all the digital marketing and traditional marketing for answer and legal.

I would say we’ve even evolved beyond. So like now I fully contextually understand what an answering service does, right? But. In doing this for a long time, I have a better fundamental understanding of how law firms operate and how we can align with their goals to help them achieve ultimately what they want to do.

Yeah. So I think that’s probably the best way to state why we’re valuable and what gets me outta bed in the morning is helping law firm owners build better firms.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah. And so you’re, there’s probably no one better for me to ask this question to, which is, where, what are the biggest mistakes that law firm owners make in dealing with intake?

Dealing with how the phone is handled, [00:07:00] because that’s the first touch people have to, am I gonna hire this firm? Am I gonna engage this lawyer? Whatever it might be is who’s picking up the phone, what they’re asking, what they’re saying, how that call goes determines Like, I can teach sales or sales free selling all day long, but if somebody isn’t handling that phone call they may never have that at bat.

Nick Werker: I was most likely invited to be on the marketing team here because of my poor performance at sales. I’m very,

Steve Fretzin: okay.

Nick Werker: I’m not one of those people who’s really good at trying to get you to buy something from me because something in me is I don’t want to convince you to do this thing. Yeah.

But I’ve learned that it’s a good thing, right? Like you wanna help people make a good decision.

Steve Fretzin: Yes. Lemme stop you though for a second that when I talk about sales free selling, and people don’t hear me talk about this on the show that often, it’s the idea that no one likes to be sold and no lawyer got into law to sell or convince or pitch people to buy business, right?

That’s uncomfortable. It doesn’t feel right. So the idea and the concept behind sales free selling is, so can we walk someone [00:08:00] through a buying decision to ensure that there’s a good fit and proceed forward If everybody’s on board, that’s a much more comfortable way to do it. So I think you’re the greatest thing since sliced bread.

I think answering legal’s the greatest thing in the world that would solve all my problems. Let’s move forward. You want that to be my idea as the lawyer or the law firm, and that’s the best way to sales free sell. I think that you would, you can appreciate that as much as anybody.

Nick Werker: Absolutely. I have a few specific beliefs about sales.

First, I think we started calling lawyer sales legal intake so that lawyers would feel less pressure about being salesy. There you go. And that’s where I think the negative connotation at sales comes from is pressure, right? Is I think Jordan Belfort says it in the Wolf of Wall Street, that the primary objective is to take.

Money out of your client’s pockets and put it into your pockets.

So I have a few things that I believe about like intake and sales. I believe that it is more important to focus on aligning with the person you’re [00:09:00] speaking TOS goals than it is to push pain points. I really hate when people say pain points, but the thing that I’ve learned most about intake, and this is true for a lot of things in law firms, and, it’s so funny to me. Like I said, I’m really bad at sales. I always get like a feather in my cap if I’m on LinkedIn. And somebody I really respect in legal marketing is check your phone calls because Cleo’s legal Trends report came out. And it’s something, I think it’s 62% of the way that the initial contact is made to a firm is by a phone call.

So it’s still largely important.

I would say the first thing that lawyers need to be focused on is the process. By which you handle your phones, and I’ve been saying this for years, is like you have to have a structured plan from, you can go from start to finish, right? You got, you have to know your touch points and your intake process.

But the first thing is, who is going to be answering that phone? Where is that phone going to be ringing? And I sound like a broken record. I know I’ve said this a hundred times, but especially like solo [00:10:00] law firms, like sole practitioners. Don’t have a plan. And the problem becomes, this is, say you’re in your office, right?

And your phone only rings in your office and that’s the number you advertise and you’re like, I don’t want the calls to go to my cell phone without giving out your cell phone number. You can do simple things like when you leave your office, you just forward the office line to your cell phone.

And then you’re on the go, as a sole practitioner. Simple free fix. And then you can go a lot further, which I won’t. I know you asked only one question, but you can map out the touch points. In your intake process and learn how to, like you said, sales free selling. Get aligned with goals, not push pain points.

Don’t pressure people, but let them know that you have a solution to their problem and that and why you’re the best solution to that problem.

Steve Fretzin: But even before we get to sales and solutions and goals and all that, there’s a misalignment of lawyers leaving the phone up to the front desk or leaving the phone up to voicemail or things that are not productive.[00:11:00]

For someone that has a you’re not calling a lawyer ’cause you had a bad day. You’re calling a lawyer ’cause you’ve got a legal issue. You got a matter that needs addressing now. And if the first thing isn’t handled properly, and I do this all the time, I call landscaping companies, I got voicemails and they’re done.

They’re done. I’m not gonna call them back. They’re not, I’m not gonna leave a message. I’m gonna move on to the next one. And I think lawyers don’t realize how much money they’re losing or leaving on the table because they don’t have a plan or a process. To your point, can you talk a little bit about what a process would look like?

Nick Werker: So the plan or the process? I would say it’s, to your point, it’s that the optimal way to handle your phones is to have nowadays is a little tricky, right? ’cause you can have AI for me. Especially with law firms, I prefer a human to human connection just because I don’t really trust the AI decision tree type of thing to handle complex problems yet.

I think it’s a customer service thing at all points. And I [00:12:00] think Jack Newton coined this term like a few years ago, like being client-centric in your law firm. And and I talk in terms of intention a lot because I think. If I have an intention, then I know the goal, right? And then it’s important to build the process to get there.

So if your intention is to provide the best client-centric customer service, customer experience possible, you wanna make sure that’s at the outset of their connection with you. So again I don’t pressure anybody, but I encourage law firm owners to have at least a front office receptionist and know where your phone is ringing, and then.

Once you map that out and hey, maybe calls are slipping through the cracks and I’m missing opportunities. And like we all, at the end of the day, we have to make money. We have to pay our bills. And it’s not a bad thing for a lawyer to wanna make money. That’s why you spent all that money on law school.

It costs a lot of money. What I recommend is the like lowest barrier to entry that we offer is something called rollover call forwarding. It’s conditional [00:13:00] call forwarding, whatever you wanna call it. It’s always on, and it basically means that your call will not end up here unless you miss the call or intentionally decline the call.

So if you’re busy, you’re in court, you’re out to dinner. It’s three o’clock in the morning and you can’t wake up and have a conversation with somebody, it’ll forward over to us. And that whole thing of somebody being able to speak to a representative of your firm is I gotta say, it’s, again, it goes back to intention for me, right?

Is that I’m reaching out, I have this problem, I wanna talk to somebody the whole. Perceived indifference of voicemail is like what you said with a landscaping company, right? You’re done. Landscaping companies do not answer the phone. My landscaper does not answer his phone, but I had, I’ll give you a really good experience and somebody that I would recommend and go back to, even though it cost me a ton of money.

I bought a new house in September. It’s my wife’s favorite house she’s ever seen. When we bought the house, they said the heating and AC [00:14:00] unit is 30 years old. Oh my God. You’d be lucky. It was bad. They’re like, you’d be lucky to get a couple other years out of it. It’ll be whatever, it’s on its way out.

It went in the freezing cold period on Long Island in December, and I got a recommendation from a friend for an HVAC guy. It was an emergency. My house is gonna freeze. My pipes are gonna freeze. Water’s gonna go everywhere. It was 11 o’clock at night and I called and somebody answered and they were like, is this an emergency?

And I was like, you know what? I’m not one of those people that like that can make waves. I was like, it really is an emergency. Like it’s, the heat is not working. It’s 62 degrees in here. It goes below 59. I know that. That’s like a whole thing. Can you send somebody out? Wait a minute. At 11 o’clock at night I got patched through to a technician.

The person came to my house temporarily, fixed it and had somebody out the next day to install a brand new unit.

Steve Fretzin: Wow. Nice.

Hey, PI attorneys. If you’re [00:15:00] serious about scaling your firm, there’s one event you can’t afford to miss. Picon 2025 happening October 5th through the eighth at the Phoenician Resort in Scottsdale, Arizona. PIM Con isn’t your average legal conference. It’s an experience. Learn how to take your firm from good to goat with some of the biggest trailblazers in the PI space.

Including yours truly as we share our elite marketing and brand building strategies. Tickets on sale now@pimcon.org. That’s P-I-M-C-O n.org. Or just hit the link in the show notes. Your climb to the top. Starts at PIM Con 2025. Let’s go from good to goat.

Hey, be that lawyer friends. If you’re looking for smarter ways to grow your law practice and wanna stay ahead of the curve in legal, tech, business and strategy, then it’s time to check out Legal Verse Media, the go-to hub for lawyers who want more. This international platform connects you with global thought leaders through articles, podcast, webinars, and interactive forums [00:16:00] that are shaping the future of law.

Explore everything with a free 14 day trial, including early access to tools, peer discussions, and a chance to build your brand as a thought leader. Don’t wait. Visit legal verse media.com and register for membership today. Hey everybody, it’s Steve Rezin as the, I’m the host of the Be That Lawyer Podcast, and if you’re serious about growing your law practice, let’s talk.

I’ve coached hundreds of attorneys to build bigger books of business without selling, chasing, or wasting time. This isn’t a sales pitch. It’s a real 30 minute strategy session to explore what’s possible for you in your practice. Just head over to Fretzin.com and grab a time that works for you and let’s make this your breakout year.

Yeah, it’s basic level communication that some people are missing out on, and I think if you have someone answering the phone or you pick up the phone yourself. If we wanna transition this conversation into what should happen, I’ll give you my take. You gimme your take and let’s slap ’em together and see where we go.

But I think first of all, it’s building a little [00:17:00] rapport, right? It’s, hi, how are you? Thanks for calling, you know what’s, what brought you to the, to call us today? Or what can I help you with? Something to get them talking about their problem. Not because you’re a lawyer, if you’re, some receptionist or you’re virtual.

Then eventually to find out like what’s going on and what’s the problem? Is there a matter here? If they’re just calling to say hello or they’re a solicitor, right? That’s gonna clear that out. But I think we wanna try to figure out like how do we treat people, right? And then how do we learn that they have a need and maybe even do a little qualifying?

Do you have something, some things to add to that?

Nick Werker: Yes. I’m gonna jump on the end of your point because what we do here is. So our primary focus is to not run up people’s bills. We charge by the minute, right? We don’t charge for telemarketers and we don’t charge for solicitors, whatever have you. Whatever you wanna call that type of of call.

So it’s in our best interest to get rid of those because we don’t charge for them. But it also is in the law firm owner’s best interest [00:18:00] if we qualify that caller a little bit. So we’ll ascertain if it’s a new or existing client, basically right away. If it’s an existing client, we let them talk a little bit about what issue they’ve got going on, but largely the law firm owner wants us to just get a detailed message, send it over, and then they can edit as part of their case and get back to them.

It’s usually like an update. If it’s a new client, I swear, these are the instructions, find out why they’re calling and let them talk. Because you wanna understand where this person is coming from, and that’s like an empathetic thing, right? Instead of being like, oh, what’s your name? What’s your phone number?

What’s this, what’s that? And I haven’t told you anything about my problem yet. That’s not really the best customer experience. So I would say especially if you’re a lawyer and you’re answering your own call doesn’t go to the answering service, right? I saw this great post on LinkedIn. I wish I could give credit where this person was talking about in their intake process.

They don’t ask. What were the injuries? Personal injury lawyer is does it hurt? And the person [00:19:00] is ah, no. Like it doesn’t hurt. It’s no, tell me about a time that this injury interfered with your everyday life and you felt embarrassed. And that stuff inspires me, man. ’cause that’s how you get the real story.

That’s how you get a real connection with somebody. And that’s how you get to the heart of their problem and start figuring out how you can get aligned with them to solve their problem.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah. The interesting thing, if we wanna go back to the sales conversation and sales free and all that, is the power is in the level, in the of the question and the ability to get information and to get someone to share an emotional, personal response with you.

It’s not about the power of the presentation, it’s the quality of the question and how you’re able to sit there in the mud and splash around a little bit and allow someone to be vulnerable and get vulnerable together like a therapist and a patient, a client. Getting the client and the patient to relax.

And that’s why people that go to therapists, like they start off playing games, like board games and stuff let’s just relax, play a game and talk. They [00:20:00] need the guard down. And so anything you can do to get the guard down and get someone talking and sharing and opening up. Now you’re not the lawyer, you’re a receptionist.

I think you want to get enough information. Then is it about getting that information to the lawyer or is it about setting up an actual appointment, like qualifying it to the degree that makes a lot of sense for you to meet with, Barbara, and let’s get an actual meeting scheduled and lock down the meeting.

Good, bad.

Nick Werker: Yes, we can do both. So it really is based on the law firm owners. Preference.

So we can schedule on any calendar, right? It’s just a link. It goes into our system and you click on the link and the calendar is managed by you. It’s a shared thing, like you manage your own schedule. We just, there’s a window.

We schedule it.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah.

Nick Werker: The thing that we tend to focus on is we want to match up with your intake process. So we’re the front line of defense to make sure that person doesn’t hit voicemail, go away and never be heard from again. We wanna make sure that you’re following up. Which I wish there was a way to [00:21:00] have accountability with that because it would just make everybody look better.

But so what we do is consult on the types of questions that we’ll ask during the intake. So let’s say you are, be that lawyer and be that lawyer wants to handle personal injury matters. What? We’ll have qualifying questions and intake questions. Obviously those match up to your CRM. They go in there, but there’s a couple things that can happen, right?

Is they can get pre-qualified and if they meet the criteria, then we can schedule like the the Calendly appointment or it goes into whatever calendar you’re using. Calendly is just huge. If they don’t meet the criteria, we don’t do we won’t turn anyone away for the exact reason that maybe that just means that it’s not a good case for you and you refer out that business to your referral network.

We can do both. You know what I mean? And I think the best firms that I’ve seen have a particular cadence, and I’ll say they map out their intake questions with us and they keep it as short as [00:22:00] possible. And we let the caller know what the process is going to be next. Like we establish next steps with them.

We’re like, Hey, we’ve done our preliminary intake with you. We’re gonna review your case. This person is gonna get back to you at this scheduled time to talk about this particular matter. Find out these things. If you can come prepared with these documents and this information, fill out this question.

You know what I mean? Like you can do any number of things, but if you are ending your touchpoint with the caller or potential client, whatever you wanna call it, at. They called you, you got some information. You try to call them back arbitrarily while they’re working because you don’t know their schedule.

Find out what the best time for a callback is, or do that mutual scheduling thing like you’re talking. Yeah.

Steve Fretzin: If I’m hearing you and playing this out with you a little bit, what I’m coming away with, whether it’s an answering service, like answering legal, whether it’s a receptionist, whether it’s the lawyer, my take on it is there’s some rapport building that should be done upfront.[00:23:00]

To get someone to relax. Number two, qualify. Is this someone that has a need or not? And if so, let them talk and let them, share what’s going on so they feel heard and listened to, and even repeat back. And this is like communication two level 2 0 1, but repeating back what someone says. And I’m doing that right now.

By the way, if you didn’t notice. Then if you can, and it’s all qualified and everybody’s on board, schedule it, get it in the calendar. Like why have another call with the lawyer or have another call to do it if it’s all lined up. Get the meeting with the lawyer, or the lawyer can say, Hey, do you have time now to continue this conversation?

Or did you wanna schedule a time and if everybody fits, just do it on the spot and lock that client down. They wanna sign up with you now. Why are you giving them an opportunity to go away and think about it or go away and talk with, someone else who could be a knucklehead. You’re the right fit, take care of it.

Nick Werker: I know you practiced what you preached because you sent me a follow-up yesterday to appear on here, and then a two hour [00:24:00] notice to appear on this, and I think, here’s what I want. I think over the last 10 years, the legal community has gotten really good at knowing a few things. They know by and large that.

They need some sort of marketing representation. If they want to get out there, help with managing their referral network. Because I think what they might not teach you in any college course or law school course is the power of a really strong network. And then, so like that comes in like coaching, right?

Like how do you manage people? How do you manage a referral network? How are you at handling relationships? So that’s marketing and that, I think the other table stakes thing is. Responding to the direct response that you’re getting from your marketing or your referrals or anything like that, and making sure that you’re taking care of the customer.

So I think that the next iteration of what we should be doing in terms of educating lawyers is how you follow up with people to give them the [00:25:00] best experience. Like I know for a fact the number one complaint to bar associations and the number one. Negative review that law firms get is from lack of communication with clients.

Yeah. He never got back to me. He rejected my case and didn’t even tell me why. Give people a reason that you’re not taking their case and say, maybe try this, or, this is why I think that you should do X, Y, and Z. I can’t come up with good examples on the top of my head, but I think it’s incumbent upon us to teach people or law firm owners really, that this is all table stakes, right?

But if you want to get to the next level. It’s not just about answering the phone, it’s not just about meeting with your coach. It’s about going deeper and really taking these lessons and applying them and taking the next step, right? Anybody, I’m sure you have clients like this too, that show up and you tell ’em a bunch of things.

You ask them a bunch of questions and they don’t really take the coaching call to heart. They just show up. You go through the motions and they don’t really get the maximum value out of it. So I think what. That’s the next step for me, right? Like [00:26:00] CRMs were huge, marketing was huge. And now that all of that is table stakes that I see, at least, I think let’s all get together on the next level and help lawyers provide a better customer experience.

Steve Fretzin: Yeah, but you think about where it starts, it’s the customer service, client service begins with that initial phone call. Then there’s the, the first meeting, second meeting, signing them up. Now they’re in, you’re working with them as an attorney. Great. What’s the level of, are you giving, are they getting the Ritz Carlton or the Motel six experience?

How are you following up? How are you communicating? How are you setting expectations? In my, I teach a class every Tuesday morning and we spent, a solid 30 minutes talking about client implementation. How do we implement a new client so that we establish rules of engagement? We establish expectations, we, here’s what you need to do, Nick, coming to get on this podcast.

This is what I’m gonna provide. How are we gonna, launch it together? What are the expectations on promotion after like that’s my exp my example, but with lawyers, it’s gotta be [00:27:00] a five star experience beginning for that first call all the way through finishing the matter, and then how you’re keeping in touch, adding value, and going beyond being a lawyer.

I was talking with one of my clients this morning about, are you a lawyer? Are you a counselor? He goes, I’m a counselor. I go, then. That means you’re doing more than just the matter. He goes, absolutely. He’s, I’m doing this, I’m doing this. I’m connecting them. I’m inviting them to things. I’m taking them to lunch.

I’m, I’m sending them articles that are relevant to their business, relevant to their life. Yes. All of that. That’s the experience that people are gonna want to give you a testimonial and they’re gonna wanna refer you. The landscape guy that I ended up hiring was an absolute disaster. He still is, and every time he says something, I look at my wife and go, that’s never gonna happen.

What he just said to me is never gonna happen. Or if it happens, it’s gonna happen in weeks, not in hours like I would expect. And we’ve, we’re dealing with it and we’re getting it finished, but it’s, the guy’s never gonna get a referral from me. It’s never gonna get a positive review from me. I’m never gonna say anything nice about him.

I’ve even [00:28:00] told a bunch of my neighbors, he’s a hack, right? So they’re never gonna use him, this guy has an opportunity to shine and he has no clue what he’s doing. Running a business that’s for damn sure. I wanna get into real, I’m gonna get into landscaping if this doesn’t work out for me.

Nick Werker: My friends always joke.

They’re like, if I put up a website, can you market it for me? And I could start landscaping. And I’m like, you don’t have the first clue about starting a landscaping company. And one of those zero turn mowers is like $10,000. So that’s your seed money. But

Steve Fretzin: if you, here’s the thing though. If you have any business knowledge acumen at all.

You could destroy in landscaping. If you know how to run a business, forget about knowing landscaping that you hire someone for that, right? You could just go out and set up processes, set up systems, set up marketing, and you’ll make a fortune because all of these knuckleheads running around on anything, that’s a separate story.

Let’s talk about Nick’s. Big mistake.

Nick Werker: Oh, my big mistake. I have two. I have a personal mistake and I have a professional mistake. I’ll try and keep them. I’m sorry. I’m gonna keep ’em tight.

Steve Fretzin: Keep ’em tight.

Nick Werker: I’ll keep ’em tight. My personal mistake was not taking care [00:29:00] of myself. I worked as hard as I could and I would go home and all I would do is continue to work, and I experienced what the technical term is, burnout.

I didn’t care about my mental being. I ate crap food. So it’s part of my new mission is to help people understand that there’s things like mindfulness eating right. Just cutting out processed foods. It’s insane what you can get addicted to, things like that. Yeah. Combating burnout. Yeah. The professional mistake I had, this is a doozy, is I didn’t account for the amount of spam there is out on the internet, and so I, without checking anything turned on the capi, the conversion, API for Facebook.

To my CRM, close that loop. And I was sending a ton of spam bot traffic conversions without an intermediary to [00:30:00] teach Facebook that I don’t like those spam leads. And I ruined a pixel that took me six months to retrain.

Steve Fretzin: Ah.

Nick Werker: And so do not. Turn on the conversion API, unless you have a system in place to weed all of those things out, or a qualifier in your CRM to do that should talk to people who specialize in setting up a CRM rather than thinking you’re the smartest person

Steve Fretzin: to do that.

Yeah. I’m terrified of technology and making a mistake. So I’m always very careful to not touch things or not do things without talking with someone. So that’s a lesson all lawyers and anyone listening can take advantage of. Hey man. Before we wrap up, Nick, I want to thank our wonderful sponsors. Of course, we’ve got legal verse if you wanna.

Check out articles and great information from around the globe. For exclusively for lawyers, go to legal verse media.com. Of course, we’ve got law, her podcast with Sonia crushing it for women. Check out her podcast. And then Picon Coming up in October, I will be on stage [00:31:00] with a bunch of other amazing podcasters to, really give everybody the first class experience.

I’m not gonna be in charge of the first class experience ’cause dryer is, but I’ll be a part of that. Ritz Carlton in this case, Venetian. Hotel experience. And Nick, if people wanna get in touch with you, they want to hear more about answering legal, get, work with you guys to get their phones in line and stop having to deal with it themselves.

Best

Nick Werker: digits, 6 3 1, 6, 8, 6, 9, 7, 0, 0 or email me. I would love to hear from you, nick@answeringlegal.com and then obviously answering legal.com.

Steve Fretzin: Now if somebody calls that number, are they gonna get a voicemail?

Nick Werker: Imagine

Steve Fretzin: they should not get a voicemail. That was the whole point of this whole show for Crown.

That

Nick Werker: would be, I actually. Don’t think we even have that capability. People will call and say if the client doesn’t want to talk, then can I send ’em to the voicemail? And we’re like, we don’t have that.

Steve Fretzin: Sorry. Yeah. There’s no voicemail.

Nick Werker: No. Alright,

Steve Fretzin: good. Either. And by the way, my phone never rings.

I’m all email and texts. It’s really odd. I’m fine with it. I don’t, I don’t think people and kids [00:32:00] and the kids coming up today and all that want, they don’t even know how to talk on the phone. Ah, anyway. Alright man, listen, this was great. I appreciate you coming to the show. I’m really excited about getting this information out to my listening audience.

And if, again, if you guys need Nick, he’s in your corner, great guy. He is. Got a great company check him out. All the information in the show notes as well. Thanks man. Thanks for coming on.

Nick Werker: Thanks for having me, Steve. Appreciate you

Steve Fretzin: a blast as always, and thank you everybody for hanging out with Nick and I for about a half an hour, just over half an hour.

Look, we covered a lot of ground and I think ultimately it’s up to you to make some really important decisions about having a plan and process for intake and how you guys deal with phone calls. Take it all to heart. Make the make good decisions, and I know it’s gonna help improve your sales and your business development, or whatever we wanna call it.

Take care, everybody. Be safe. Be well. Talk again soon.

Narrator: Thanks for listening to be that lawyer, life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. [00:33:00] Visit Steve’s website Fretzin.com for additional information and to stay up to date on the latest legal business development and marketing trends. For more information and important links about today’s episode, check out today’s show notes.