Have you ever heard the phrase ‘closing a sale is an art’ when salespeople talk about getting prospects to finally buy products or services?
More often than not, many people have interpreted this as something to do with the way you ask questions or try to get prospects into an uncomfortable position which leaves them no option but to buy products.
Now, sales has a bad reputation (which it sould not), and I appreciate the fact that there are some really good sales people out there. However, for lawyers who simply don’t have the time to master many traditional sales techniques or strategies (good or bad), it is important to understand that closing sales has nothing to do with artistry.
It is systematic and comes down to:
- Defining and undertanding your prospects’ needs and desired outcomes;
- Making it easier for prospects to identify you amongst all other options available;
- Freely educating prospects on how they can achieve what they want using articles, blogs, reports, webinars, etc;
- Communicating appropriately to show you understand their industry and the problems they face, and provide guidance to let them know what they need to do to achieve their desired outcome;
- Provide opportunities for two-way conversations that let prospects provide feedback and let you know whether they agree with what you have shared with them or the roadmaps you have outlined;
- Providing low-cost opportunities for prospects to find out more about the solutions they can implement to get them where they need to be, and using these to build the desire in them to want to buy more legal services;
- Providing a call to action to get prospects to make a decison about your legal servies.
Social media marketing, if done properly, will definitely ease lawyers through the steps above. The end result is that lawyers should get noticed more easily, seamlessly develop trust with prospects and win more business without having painful conversations with people they have not met before.
Lawyers are fundamental to the sales process. Rather than dismiss this, and social media, as a waste of time, they should ask themselves “what is the best way to engage with my target audience, and will social media help me do so much more effectively?”
If social media is seen, rightly, as an effective route to market, then lawyers would consider the following simple steps to build credibility and get more clients:
- Develop an online presence such as a blog which is optimised for specific search terms;
- Provide content (e.g. articles, videos, etc) which helps position you as someone that understands the conversations going on in your prospects’ minds and, more importantly, shows them how they can eliminate any pain they have;
- Use various social media platforms such as Twitter and LinkedIn to point people to the content you have available. This should show them the solutions to their problems, and should not simply be about you or the services you provide;
- Capture your prospects’ details so that you have permission to communicate further using multi-step contact strategies which help deepen relationships;
- Create what I call strategy products (such as reports, webinars or seminars) that give prospects a low-cost entry point to purchasing your high-end legal services, and which help them make an informed decision about approaching you for further legal services. Use social media platforms to communicate the benefits that would result from getting the strategy products, keeping in mind that people don’t buy experience, they buy solutions from people they trust.
- Use social media to communicate your calls to action so that prospects don’t procrastinate before buying your legal services. If you have effectively implemented steps 1 to 5 above, prospects should be in a better positon to realise they need to take action immediately;
- If you do need to talk to a prospect to close a deal, you should have enough information to do so from their perspective. Any intelligence you gain from the feedback they have provided (which you have made easier using your social media platforms) should help you adapt your conversation to the specific needs your prospects have identified, allowing you to focus more effectively on the benefits they get from implementing the solutions you have for them.
Once lawyers can get their head round the fact that any experience prospects have with their law firm impacts any decision made to purchase legal services, then it is easier to get around the view that selling is a specific type of interaction / conversation with a list of targets that may or may not have heard about the lawyer(s) in question.
Marketing makes it easier to make the final sale, and social media marketing makes it even easier to get noticed. This is more so given the number of websites one has to click on and the huge amount of content that has to be sifted through before prospects finally find what they are looking for.
It is much easier for most lawyers to have sales conversations with prospects that follow them via various social media channels. With relationships that have been developed, feedback provided and experiences shared using social media, lawyers will find sales conversations with prospects easier to have and, more importantly, should convert more prospects into clients.
Given the tough competition within the legal services industry, anything that helps lawyers close more sales is worth considering.
