When lawyers think of growing their law firm, they often underestimate the power of a good sales process fueled by efficient intake tactics. Unfortunately, that oversight can mean lost revenue. Here are intake hacks that could help your small law firm’s sales take off in the right direction.

1. Multiple points of contact. Every law firm should provide potential clients with more than one way to contact them—consider email, telephone, and contact forms. You can also have an online live chat on your website where a live service representative can talk to the potential client about what they’re looking for. But for every intake point of contact you should have a complete process behind it which will help the potential client go from lead to customer.
2. Relevant contact forms. If you’re allowing potential clients to reach out to you via a contact form, make sure you request the relevant information.  In addition to the basics such as the client’s name, phone number, and email address, you may ask what type of legal issue they’re contacting you about. For example, if you run a family law practice you might provide multiple choices for identifying their legal issue—divorce, child support, or custody. This will make it easy for you organize intake information and provide appropriate information when you contact the lead.
3. Minimize the use of voicemail.  Everyone knows that leaving a voicemail doesn’t guarantee a return phone call. This is why many people don’t leave voicemails. Potential clients who get your voicemail may hang up and move on to the next lawyer. To avoid this, consider using a live answering service that can take messages for you or a virtual secretary who can actually book appointments on your behalf.
4. Employ rapid responses. Never leave potential clients waiting for more than 24 hours to hear back from you.  The faster you can respond to a potential client’s inquiry the more likely they will do business with you. Otherwise, waiting 48 or 72 hours to call someone back could mean that they will move on to the next lawyer.
5. Track your intake leads.  Create a system that allows you to track your intake leads. From the first time they reach out to you, keep track of why they called, how long it look you to respond, and whether or not they eventually did business with you. You should also track any following up calls or emails you made to the lead. Once you’ve collected enough data, you can get a good look at how many intake leads actually convert to clients and what you had to do to make that conversion happen. This is good to review when you’re analyzing what has been working effectively for your small law firm and what marketing efforts are paying off.
6. Automate follow-up emails. If you’re responding to clients via email, create a set of premade emails that will be automatically sent to leads after a certain amount of time. For example, you might have one type of follow-up email that is automatically sent out to any lead that hasn’t become a client after 30 days and another email that’s automatically sent out after 90 days.  This will save you a lot in labor and time.

Putting in place a good intake process can help streamline your sales system and increase your revenue.

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Jane Oxley is President of Smokeball, a productivity and case management software provider that increases efficiency and profitability for solo attorneys and small law firms. Jane’s worked in the legal field for her entire career, spending over 20 years engaged with small law firms. She has a strong affinity with small law firms and the crucial role they play in the communities they serve and is passionate about helping them work towards more productive and less stressful practices.