Episode Description
Are you struggling with the “sales” side of your practice? In this episode, sales expert Ben Brown flips the script on everything you thought you knew about business development.
Discover why your analytical mind might be holding you back, and learn how to tap into a new level of client acquisition. Ben shares surprising insights that will challenge your perspective, including:
- Why someone who is unhoused might be a better salesperson than many entrepreneurs
- How your law degree could be sabotaging your sales efforts
- The simple mindset shift that could transform your practice
Plus, get practical tips on ethically boosting your conversion rates and connecting with potential clients on a human level. This episode has game-changing advice to help you build the thriving practice you deserve.
Don’t miss this opportunity to see your role in your law firm through a different lens. Hit play now!
Episode Resources
Master the Art of Closing the Sale by Ben Brown
Episode Transcript
BEN: [00:00:00] If I come into your business and I take away your laptop and I take away your cell phone. You’ll start thinking out of the box, you’ll start figuring out different ways. We’re lazy because of the tools that we have.
LAUREN: Welcome to A Different Practice. I’m your host, Lauren Lester, and I’m obsessed with all things business, well being, and optimizing the practice of law for solo and small firm lawyers.
I started my solo practice right out of law school, built it from the ground up, and now work part time while earning well over six figures. I’m here to share tangible, concrete tools and resources for ditching the legal profession’s antiquated approach and building a law practice optimized for profit and efficiency.
Think of this as grabbing coffee with your work bestie mixed with everything they didn’t teach you in law school about running a business. Pull up a seat, grab a cup and get ready to be encouraged and challenged. This is a different practice.
Welcome back everyone to another episode of a different practice. I’m so glad you’re [00:01:00] here today. Today we’re diving into a topic that many solo and small firm attorneys find challenging, yet it’s crucial for our practices, success, sales. Now, I know what some of you might be thinking sales. I’m a lawyer.
I’m not a salesperson. And I hear you. I felt the same way for a long time. But the truth is in today’s competitive market, having effective sales strategies can make the difference between a thriving practice and one that just struggles to find new clients. That’s why I was looking forward to chatting with my guests today.
For today’s episode, Ben Brown, Ben is not just a sales expert and author. He’s also a father of two young children. So he understands the importance of balancing professional success with personal fulfillment. With over 23 years of experience in sales, Ben has truly done it all. From cold calling to selling cars, gym memberships, and even medical devices.
He’s mastered the art of selling across diverse industries. And now he’s here to share his insights with us, focusing on how lawyers can ethically and effectively [00:02:00] grow our client base. What makes Ben’s approach unique is that he’s distilled two decades of sales experience into a proven 10 step process.
This isn’t about aggressive tactics or pushy techniques, because frankly, a lot I’m not down with those, but instead Ben believes that when done right, sales can be a pleasing process for both the attorney and the potential client. Ben currently works with small businesses facing sales challenges, so he understands the unique hurdles that solo and small firm attorneys will encounter.
His insights are tailored to help us navigate these challenges and turn them into opportunities for growth. I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did. Here’s my conversation with Ben Brown.
Welcome Ben to a different practice.
BEN: Good morning.
LAUREN: So I am really intrigued to have this conversation today particularly because sales is a four letter word, I think, in the legal profession in more than one way.
And so I’m excited to have your [00:03:00] expertise and break down what sales really is, hopefully demystify it a little bit for lawyers in particular. So I wanted to start with some common misconceptions that you see about sales, particularly with lawyers or kind of any professional service providers and how addressing those misconceptions can really help a law firm improve their business development, get more leads, increase revenue, kind of all the benefits we all want, but we get tripped up on that sales word.
We don’t, we don’t want to be salesy, right? We feel like it’s a little bit and doesn’t feel very good. So what have you seen? Why are we getting tripped up?
BEN: Well, first we’re going to go through a couple of tips that people can start utilizing right away. I always try to give some golden nuggets people understand because it is a skill.
So when we go through the next 15, 30 minutes, I’m going to give you some real tips that people can use right away. They can start using to implement in their life or style in their business [00:04:00] to help them because sales is everywhere. The key component that you said there in your conversation, which most people overlook is skill set.
So sales is actually a skill. It’s something you can implement. It’s actually a career for a lot of people, and most people don’t understand that. But there’s no career schools or academies or vocal or not implemented actually in colleges. It’s something that you get when you get on the outside. But it’s necessity for everything that does in business.
So I can actually do an actual course based upon what I do about six months curriculum, or maybe a year just in sales in a college to implement for people, body language. Voice, tonalogy, all these things are implemented when you start learning sales that you add on. You’re never 100 percent when you’re a salesman.
There’s no such thing as a top salesman. Either you’re getting better or worse per day based on your skill. It’s like being a sprinter, right? You watch the Olympics now. So, you know, every day you have to go out and practice [00:05:00] because somebody’s out always coming to get you, which is the customer. But sales is actually fun.
It’s a language. So, it’s just like learning a different language, you have to work at it, and most people try to acquire it just going out there and roughing it, which has a negative connotation most people have with it because they get beat up, they don’t have the skills, they don’t have the tools, because the biggest thing you could go up against is the word no, so you could train for three weeks.
Two months to go up against the same word, one word, no. It’s no skill for somebody to say no. So you have to understand why you have to tell people not to say no, because your job is to help people. And most people attach sales to the negative for not helping people. And that’s where it gets the bad taste in their mouth on that.
And, you know, I try to demystify that it’s a mentality mindset. So main thing is the mindset. Are you prepared mindset wise to be in sales? You just can’t go out there and just [00:06:00] some people said a natural, you could be a natural, but you still need a process. That’s really helpful. I think that mindset shift is really critical, especially for lawyers, because we don’t think of ourselves as salespeople, but we certainly think of ourselves as folks who are out there helping other people every day.
That’s the thing. The reason a lot of us got into this business, I think having that shift in perspective, make sales feel more in line with what we do normally. And then like you said, it’s just learning the skill set to be able to communicate that to a potential lead. So what are some of those tactics that you talked about that we can start to get our feet wet, get some more confidence with actually being able to communicate?
The key word that you said there again is confidence. So 80 percent of sales is confidence. Willing to go out there and fail is the key where most people shut down or try to pass it off or find more [00:07:00] marketing or get more leads. They find different ways to try to overcome that their confidence in, in talking to people is difficult.
You’re in a lawyer mindset. I’ve been in sales for many, many years and one of the top end hardest people to actually sell is one of the top I put in there as lawyers. Why? Because they’re analytical. Their mindset is totally locked down, unassuming, asks a lot of questions, so most of the time, working with lawyers, it’s not really the, the, what you provide with them, it’s the contract.
They’ll analyze that thing to death, slows down the entire process, and once that happens, and not say in all cases, but it’s very difficult on the top end because they’ll see it, like doctors, they’re not businessmen. It’s a total mindset to be a lawyer. It’s a total different mindset to be a doctor.
That’s why most doctors have an office [00:08:00] manager. She does the business side. I have to learn all these medical things. I don’t have time to change my mindset to think about business. I’m here to do operations, procedures, medication. I have to go to all of these webinars or all to keep my knowledge up.
Doctors are not businessmen. Lawyers kind of like the same type of deal, unless you’re a business lawyer, they’re very analytical, right? But they analyze things a lot. And so main thing I, you know, try to understand that it’s a skill and it could be fun, but lawyers are not fun.
LAUREN: Yeah, that is true. No, not, no offense taken.
BEN: Yes. We’re not, we’re not going to a comedy club with a lawyer. They won’t get it.
LAUREN: I think that that really takes a lot of the pressure off the idea that a lot of listeners have, which is they like being an attorney. Obviously, that’s why they got in this profession. And they have decided to run their own business.
[00:09:00] And I think we fall into the trap of thinking that the Business part is just going to come naturally, and we don’t have to make a conscious shift in the way that we are thinking when we have our lawyer hat on, we think a certain way, and we have to really take that off and put the business hat on and the business owner hat on and think about it differently when we are approaching business aspects of our firm.BEN: Some of the smart lawyers have what’s called on boarders, which are basically salespeople for the lawyers to bring people in because, you know, lawyers cannot be predatory by law. Imagine if that was the case, it would be rule. You know, sometimes you have a legal thing and you have mailboxes full of advertisement first to market, especially when it comes to auto crashes and road accidents.
You know, primary things like that. And so the law said, these guys are way too smart. We can’t, we can’t have them going out being predatory. You, you, you know, they have to seek you first. Like I’ve done it many times where I did a referral and I’m like, call [00:10:00] him. He’s like, I can’t, they have to call me.
Right. And so, you know, that’s the deal. Look at the books. Every time you guys do, you know, interviews and stuff like that in the back, your law books. I mean, it says encyclopedia Britannica times 20. I don’t know if people understand what I just said. Encyclopedia Britannica. The young ones gotta go look that up.
LAUREN: Go Google that.
BEN: Those are books that we used to use to refer.
LAUREN: That’s helpful to know if someone really is struggling with having the sales. Gear in their brain sort of kick on. And it’s not something that they are super interested in or they just don’t have space for it right now. Having a staff person potentially be that first line of interaction.
What if somebody wants to take that approach in their firm? What are some things that they should be thinking about if they’re having their staff? kind of be that main sales engine? How do they make sure that that person [00:11:00] is communicating the type of messaging information that the lawyer would want to have a potential lead learn about to learn about their business?
BEN: One of the keys that you said in their messaging, what is your process? And that’s why people always, in the last 20 years, spend so much money in advertisement, because it’s at bats in baseball. If I give you 80 at bats, You probably hit, you know, one or two. If I only gave you four, you’d probably get zero.
So advertisement is at bats. And most people don’t look at what is your conversion. Conversion is a process that’s measured. So what is your sales process? So the first thing I always come to people very simply and say, what is your sales process? Once they look at me in the deer in the headlights, there’s a problem.
There’s an accounting process to the legal process. There’s a marketing process and most people do not have a sales process. [00:12:00] What happened when the potential client penetrates the skin of your company, whether by email. Phone, walk in, Instagram, what do you start to say, what do you do, and what is the process for that?
And most people cannot answer that, they never digged into it. So, that’s why when I work with companies, I normally can find 20 40 percent more money because of the fact they don’t have a conversion, they don’t have a process. And most people don’t contact me unless there’s a problem with competition, a downturn in the market.
And that’s it. Or they’re looking to make more money. And that’s basically what sales is. Is there, in terms of that process, something that you would recommend for that initial contact? It should we be putting, I guess, a lot of emphasis on that initial response, once a lead contacts us, is that a sort of do or die kind of moment?
So we really need to make sure that we’ve thought [00:13:00] that through, or is it not that severe where. As long as the full process is in place and we’re nurturing that lead, we can, we’re not going to lose them if that first email, you know, wasn’t perfectly written or the first response wasn’t great. Is that like initial contact with the lead?
Like, I guess, how much emphasis should we be putting on that? You’re actually overthinking it. I know you come from that lawyer mindset. There it is. Well, let me figure this out. If I can analyze. No, it’s way simpler that my premises that I Sales is simple, but it’s not easy. Most people overthink it.
Lawyers are the same like mechanics. Doctors, what we are, entrepreneurs, same thing, keep it simple. We’re problem solvers. So when the client contacts you, there’s a, people buy based upon what they want, not what they need. So most people sell based upon the need, not the want. So emphasizing that, if I [00:14:00] come to you.
I mean, what you know that I don’t know the law. How am I going to feel? I talked to one of my clients. I own a limousine company. And then one of the ladies I’m helping, taking her to her lawyer, my, one of my drivers she’s freaked out. You know, her husband, 40 years. Just up and left. She’s like panicked me.
She’s like, I go to a lawyer, you know, do you know this lawyer, you know, and so you’re left open, you know, trying to figure out how this person can help you. And most lawyers are not really emotional, you know, they’re like just straight, she’s just straight direct with me. And I’m like, yeah, I understand because it’s very serious business that you’re dealing with when you go to court.
And most lawyers you want that sternness, but you know, mainly you’re still doing the same thing. You’re solving someone’s problem. The thing about it, doctors and lawyers at a higher rate, you’re talking probably a hundred to five hundred dollars per hour. So they take their job very seriously, [00:15:00] right?
They have to take certification. They have to get the bar. They have to do all these different things. And so they’re a little bit above the client a little bit. Sometimes meeting them eye to eye is kind of difficult based upon that type of statute. Would you say that that’s the thing that attorneys or any kind of professional, like you’ve said, doctors, sort of those higher level where they require a lot of education and training, those types of professions, is that where they struggle the most in sales is being able to communicate with the person sitting across the desk from them in a way that, that, that you’re meeting that person where they’re at.
Yeah, because main thing is most of businesses, 10 to 30 percent of your business can be generated through referrals. That really relies based upon the way you treat them. I mean, my limo business has been growing over years just because of that fact. I, once a week I get a call, somebody referred me.
Lawyers are the same way. When the inbound phone call comes in, that’s a lead that normally comes through your advertisement, through, you know, [00:16:00] whatever, but a lot of referral. Call this lawyer, right? Because anywhere you go, there’s bad doctors, there’s bad lawyers. We know that. So, when you get a referral, you know, it’s the way you treat.
One of the other businesses I work with is the book business for publishing, so self publishing. So, you’ve done this art of work that you’ve done. You’ve probably written and some other authors. We speak with, been working on this book for a year, two years, sometimes 20 years. Who do you trust to get it across the goal line?
You know, I’ve been in a car accident. Who do I trust to, to get me what I need? Because I know the insurance companies don’t care, right? Am I on a conveyor belt system where I feel like I’m just a number of people? Regular client. Do you call me? Do you talk, you know, the small little things that you do, some lawyers since baskets, you know, this and that.
So when somebody, Oh, I got in Carson, you know who you need to call. Right. And that’s mostly in a lot of lawyers advertisement. What do you need to call? What do you need to call? They [00:17:00] get at that call to action in there. Call me, call me, call me free, free, free, call me. Right. So, you know, that type of deals, what you do when you get the corporate law, there’s stuff that No emotion on that, but everything is an emotional buy.
Even B2B is the same thing. You have to figure out what that is. Is a secret to sales. What I’m hearing a lot is we have to remember the humanity of it that yes, we have a job to do and we run a business and we have a license and right. We’re doing all of those things. And we think very analytically. But there’s a human on the other side.
And maybe like you said, the B2B is slightly different, but there are still humans involved and they may come at it from a different approach but really remembering, especially on the consumer facing side, that there’s another person that we’re working with and how can we connect with them in a way that they feel like we understand what their problem is, and we’re going to be there to help them get across the goal line, whatever that goal is.
Let me give you a scenario. You call. You need a lawyer. You’ve been in [00:18:00] some type of deal. You got sued, whatever. You’ve been in an accident. You call the firm. The firm tells you, Hi, this is Ben Brown. Thanks you for calling Brown’s Law Firm. Press 1 for Corporate Law. Press 2 for Civic Law. Press 3. Leave your name and number.
We will reach you in the email. We can contact you right away. To actually look at your, and then if you call me like I do for my limo business, and when they call, I go, hi, this is Ben Brown. How can I help you? And you go, is this AI? And I go, no, I’m real. What’s going on? And they’re like, somebody answered the phone.
Some real person answered the phone. And we’re going to get more like that with AI and these different things. So I tell most of the companies I work with, get a virtual assistant, get somebody live to answer the phone. I’m Ben Brown. It’s so impersonal. I need help. I’m drowning. You send me a toothpick. I need a life preserver.
I need [00:19:00] something, you know, I’m calling you for a reason. And that’s the first line of defense is people get turned off based upon that. And you hear it from people. I’ve called, they’re calling, they’re checking Google. They’re doing it that type of way. So the first to the line normally, if you do right, will be the first to deal with that.
So I, I’ve been, my, my business for limousine, I’ve been in 14 years. I still answer the phone when I get a chance. I have somebody else. But I knew There’s a problem and it’s not life or death. It is a leisure type deal. So they can go with or without. They can take Uber. They could, they don’t really need me, a lawyer they need, right?
So there’s more urgency there. And you’re talking thousands of dollars in most cases.
LAUREN: I think there’s a balance between the systems, which I love and as a true solo, like I don’t have any staff, I really lean into how can I be more [00:20:00] efficient using technology and using systems and cutting down on the tension and having folks take 10 steps to get something done. But I had to take a step back as you were talking and go, there’s a balance that needs to happen there in terms of, is it too Robotic, like is it too systematized where the consumer, the client, potential client calling isn’t getting that human touch and little tweaks.
BEN: It sounds like you’re saying you can make that really will make a difference in terms of their experience. I’ve worked with lawyers. The main thing, it normally is about three months for me to change that little mindset that they have take them down a peg and then teach them how to change because you’ve been automated by based upon what you’ve learned to, to be robotic and learn that you can have two different, you can be bilingual.
So it’s a, it’s a taught skill to be bilingual, to turn directly into sales, because you could turn it on like that. And sales is everywhere. So if you have children, [00:21:00] so I will ask you to, what is the purpose of a sale?
LAUREN: To have a dialogue and communicate with a potential lead about the value you provide.
BEN: No. Try one more time. I know you’re going to reach in your head. Come on.
LAUREN: It’s a conversation. Oh, I’m failing today.
BEN: I mean, you do it every day and you’ve been doing it most of your life. The purpose of a sale is to get someone to move. It’s not sales is simple. It’s not easy. So when you, a child comes and ask you, pick me up, pick me up, pick me up, pick me up, pick me up, pick me up, pick me up.
It’s a close. They don’t care what’s in it for them. They don’t have to do a sales pitch. They’re just closing you. Relentless until you give in. So what happens? In Western civilization, we teach our children not to ask. That’s rude. I already told you no. Stop asking me. So you go through, and in society, we teach our children, if you [00:22:00] want something, you need to go to school, get you a job, so you can pay for it.
You don’t ask for it. Don’t negotiate. You’ve earned it. Whereas when you go overseas, You’ll find if you go to third world countries, you go to the markets, people feel uncomfortable because people are constantly asking them. There’s no prices out there. There’s no discount, no coupons, and that’s the way the world used to work.
And that’s the way it does work. But we have the convenience of having a system now where you can buy what you want based upon your education and what you earn. So you don’t need to be uncomfortable. People know there’s two things you’re uncomfortable with. Buying cars and houses. It’s all negotiating, all this stuff, all that.
But a sales process is as The salesman going through all of the headache to help solve the problem for the client, give them an extra push on finding out what they want. And so sales is everywhere. And so when I teach people, I give them the matrix, you’ve been living in the wrong world. [00:23:00] It’s around you all the time.
You just never understood it. So once I get you to understand what that looks like, then I can work with you. It’s the mindset. Oh, I’m getting many clients 30 days later. Like now I get it. The light comes on. I’m like, now you understand what I’m trying to teach you. Cause most of the time I was teaching people, but they couldn’t get it.
LAUREN: So I had, now I have to change the mindset first, which you understand what a sales is. Now you can stack on top of it. The steps that you want and the skills and it becomes easier and easier the more you practice. It is a skill so you have to practice, but you don’t practice on clients. Once that mindset does shift, what are some of the key metrics that you look at or that you look for?
You have your clients look at for their business to sort of know that the needle is moving in terms of their sales process, their conversion rate. Like what are some of those key indicators that really tells you, okay, we’re, we’re doing something here. [00:24:00]
BEN: I love talking with lawyers. You put the answers directly in the questions. It is the matrix. It is real. The conversion, the closing rate. It is those things that you visually see. I love doing what I do because it’s not marketing. It’s not theory. So we line up exactly. We, we assess what you’re doing through, how many people you’re letting go. And then as we assess, one of my clients I use I always say, from everything that we start from now, we mark down based upon what you’ve learned and show the increase in sales based upon that as we progress.
And one of my clients, easily, in three months, 160, 000 just based upon what they learned. Cause they’d never done it. They didn’t understand it. Now they’re closing. They’re understanding. Okay. I let that one go. I messed up on my side. Most salespeople are tried. People try to do sales blames. Whom Lauren, who do they blame?
The lead, right? Who do you normally supposed to believe? Ourselves, [00:25:00] right? Who’s most important, the salesperson or the client?
LAUREN: I’m going to say the client.
BEN: No. Okay. No, you provide the solution. They don’t. Your job is to provide solution to as many people as you possibly can. I’m very important because I like and love the product that I provide.
I can’t help everyone, but I need to convert them so I can help them. Right? You come from this, this mindset of helping, If you don’t, that’s where you get the rip off artists and everything else. And those guys are really good because they really don’t care. But they’re talented. They don’t care. They’re just converting and closing.
You know, you know who those people are, right? You’ve probably been in court with some of them. And that’s where I think to where we started the conversation. Why sales I think has such a negative connotation is because folks like that who are really good at the system and the sales process, [00:26:00] but they don’t have the empathy or compassion or sort of virtue behind it to actually help someone with their service.
They just are very good sales people. And you can kind of feel that when you’re, when you’re talking to them. Okay, so I have four of the best salespeople in the United States. I gave you one was a child. Number four that I use is a homeless person. Now, nothing against a homeless person with an illness or bad downturn.
We all can be in that situation at any given time. There’s no given time. So they’re the same people as us. I always give that caveat. So, a homeless person on the street corner with good mentality and energy, do you know how much on a street corner, asking how much they can make per day out on the street corner, Lauren?
LAUREN: I’m going to guess it’s far more than I would anticipate.
BEN: Throw a number.
LAUREN: A hundred bucks.
BEN: They can make normally anywhere between three to seven hundred dollars a day. They’re out there, right? They’re making three to [00:27:00] seven hundred dollars a day. What separates them from an entrepreneur? That has a business, a website, a building, a fax machine, and everything else.
Other than those things you listed? I don’t know. Their focus. They don’t care what they look like. They don’t care what people are saying. They don’t have coffee breaks. They’re focused on what they want and what they need. Either it’s food, shelter, or something that they’re addicted to. So they don’t really care what people are telling them.
They don’t care about friends, family, what’s going on in the news, what’s going on in the Olympics. And Most of the fact, they don’t care about rejection. They don’t care what they smell like. They don’t care anything. And how many entrepreneurs do you know out there with small businesses that can pull down 300 to 700 a day?
So homeless people are better salesmen than entrepreneurs. Plus the fact, here’s the caveat that I love giving people. What is the homeless person selling? What do you get in your hand when you give them, give them money? Nothing. They were making 300, [00:28:00] 700 a day, selling what? Nothing. That’ll stop you in your tracks.
LAUREN: I’m, I’m, I’m feeling speechless. I’m like, dang. Yeah. That’s pretty powerful to think of it that way.
BEN: And they have no overhead. They might have a cell phone. They don’t have bills. They don’t have it. That’s why they’re not out there every day. They don’t need no more than 700 that day. They only need that, right?
But it’s the same process. But entrepreneur come in, they’ll come sit down. They’ll talk about all things in the weekend, the children, oh, it’s coffee time. Oh, we have to check this. Oh, let me go to I got to get these new headphones that I got. I’m going to do this website. I’m going to do. Business cards, I’m going to send up this advertisement, do all this.
Oh, my girl just called me. Oh, we got a wedding coming. Oh, this is just on and on and on. What’s business. Oh, we’ll talk about that. We have a meeting at one. We have a zoom call. Homeless person’s just selling. Constantly. Don’t have any distractions about a website. They don’t have an inbox, chat box, [00:29:00] Instagram.
And I think actually that’s really helpful. Cause I think we can easily get caught up in, All of those, yeah, I have to have a social media presence and I have to have a website and I, yeah, need to go to this networking event and at the end of the day, do we really need those? They’re all tools that we got when I started sales back in the day.
I won’t tell you how long ago that was. It was a black phone and a notebook. No computers, fax machine, where everybody used 120 people in one room on the phone all day. No looking at no screens, no emails, no text messages, just on the phone. 140, 180 a day. That’s where I came from. So, and we were closing, I mean, just credit cards just started kicking in around that time.
They’re, you know, we had cell phones, didn’t even utilize them. And then years later, we got computers who were pissed off. We didn’t even want them. Slowed us down. I got to type an email. I ain’t got [00:30:00] time for that. It’s announced in the next call. I ordered a database. I got to check in a database and fill this thing out.
I don’t have time for that. It’s all about the action. And so now people use those as their primary tools. When most businesses I come in, I can find money that they’re missing because I get them to jump on this. Pick up the phone and call him. We’ll send him an email. If I come into your business and I take away your laptop and I take away your, your, your cell phone, you’ll start thinking out of the box.
You’ll start figuring out different ways. You will figure out mailers, you’ll figure out landline in, in, in you’ll go back, you’ll revert back, you’ll get a fax machine, you’ll figure out where the fax machine coming, you’ll start going into DEF CON mode. We’re lazy because of the tools that we have, and if I just put enough stuff on social media, if I just do, if I, if I, if I, if I, if I, rather than saying, I should, I should be calling, I should be doing this, if I, if we do this, and so that’s why marketers make so much money in the last 20 years.
Because people love a little [00:31:00] hanging fruit. The more you send me, the more I can convert with my lack of sales skill.
LAUREN: I’m thinking about for attorneys, like we sort of talked about, right? We can’t just pick up the phone and say, Hey, I heard you were an accident. Let me help you. We have some constraints with our ethics requirements that maybe don’t lend us to be the best for that, like action- oriented approach. So how can attorneys without relying on those tools, because I do hear the benefit in that. And I can see even myself having done that. How do we bridge that gap between I can’t just pick up the phone and cold called people because I’m not allowed to do that. But also I don’t want to act like I’m doing a bunch. Look at all my social media posts, but it’s not really the action I need to be taking.
BEN: Good question from a lawyer. How do we le legally be proactive in our sales? Mr. Brown. Alright, I love that you have former clients that you still can contact, right? You have a newsletter list, you have a [00:32:00] database. Most people just sell ’em and keep moving.
They don’t go back through. Do you have a referral met program? Do you have a referral bonus program? Are you legally able to do that? If somebody sends you a referral, are you able to do something for them? Yeah, that’ll depend on the state. I know here in Colorado we can’t, but some states do allow for that, but knowing, knowing if that’s an option for you.
The main thing is, is actually doing that. You’re selling your events that you’re going to. Everything is a sale. What’s going to put me in front of the most people? Am I speaking? Am I doing speaking engagement? You know, everybody, every lawyer, you know, in every town you go, the bus is covered with a lawyer.
The bus stop is covered with a lawyer. I mean, everything that billboards is covered with the lawyer, it’s like, what is, what are you doing to reach people where your name gets out there? You’re selling all day, but you’re just paying big bucks for it. We know those billboards. As soon as you come in Tampa, man, boom, there it is.
There he is. I know most of them. I’m like, man, he’s still got that [00:33:00] same billboard 20 years later. So there’s always different ways, and that’s another thing working with a sales component, what you’re legally able to do. So when you hire a sales consultant, you know, instead of a marketer, I only work with people if they can benefit from it.
Unless they just want to learn the skill itself, which is two ways. Either we can analyze what you’re doing, consultancy side, or I could be a coach to teach you how to change the vernacular. A lawyer’s doing it in court. If they’re doing trial lawyer, they’re asking. So here’s, here’s the golden nugget. The difference between a good and a great salesperson.
There’s a number of questions that you ask. Which we’re really good at, so that should give us all a little hope. That’s the thing that you have to understand. So lawyers are already doing it, but they’re not doing it personal well enough.
LAUREN: So it’s a little tweak, a little tweak there, which I could definitely see.
This has been so enlightening. I feel like I’m going to be marinating on this conversation for a few weeks now. I’m like, shoot, different mindset.
BEN: Yes. Yes. And then the [00:34:00] law mode, you guys have blinders. You guys are like locked in, you know, you’re the cream of the crop when it comes to you. That education has locked you in, you know, PhDs.
And it’s very difficult for people because they’ve been trained. They don’t never been trained. Yeah. Thought there was another way, you know, you’re a little bit above everybody based on your education, so you can’t normally look down on people, you know, but that’s normal, that’s human, that’s the way we are, that’s the way you have to be, because you have to compete against what, other lawyers in the system.
LAUREN: Yeah, our education has been a blessing. But as most things, there’s a other side to that coin that it definitely is limiting and makes us rigid and gives us such a narrow perspective. And if we’re going to run a business and be a lawyer and an entrepreneur, we have to broaden our perspective and include all of those business mindsets that we need.
Thank you so much for your time and giving us so much insight and helping shift [00:35:00] our perspective, broaden our perspective. If anyone is interested in learning more about you or your program, where can they go?
BEN: Well, I have the bookmaster, I would close in the sale, which is a very simple thin book. They can go through the understand this.
10 steps of sales. And then you, on my website, which is 360 Sales Consulting, and on there, you can also click a link where you can schedule a free call for an assessment based upon that and helping people get what they want. So I tell people, if you like what you do and you love what you do, sell it.
LAUREN: Perfect. We will link both of those in the show notes so folks can easily access them. Thank you so much, Ben, again for your time today. This really was enlightening.
BEN: Thank you. Have an awesome day.
LAUREN: I’m over here giving you a virtual high five because you just finished another episode of A Different Practice. For more from this episode, head over to adifferentpractice. com slash podcast for the show notes. If you found this episode helpful, I’d love it if you’d share it with someone who might like it too.
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