Patience Is a Virtue

Many follow-up conversations go awry due to a general lack of patience on the part of the attorney or lead screener. A claimant will often forget a specific diagnosis, medical term, or prescription, but this is no reason to become frustrated, as it could result in a lost potential and adversely affect the credibility of your firm. If a claimant encounters difficulty remembering a condition or treatment, calmly offer assistance based on the information provided.

• Lawyer: So David, are you currently taking medication for your condition?
• Intake: Yes I am.
• Lawyer: Do you know which ones?
• Intake: I don’t remember what they’re called, but I know they help with the pain.
• Lawyer: If you don’t mind, would it be possible to check your medicine cabinet and let me know what the labels say. This way, I’ll know exactly what your doctor is doing to treat your condition.
• Intake: Just a second. I’ll go check.

Contrastingly, many claimants suffer from debilitating illnesses, but fail to treat regularly due to a lack of adequate medical coverage. For this reason, you should maintain a list of local clinics and community health centers in the area. This is by no means required, but compassion and good citizenship should sustain your motivation to furnish some degree of altruistic support, even if you believe the case to be lacking from a legal perspective.

Handling an Angry Lead

As you acquire more experience with internet leads, you will occasionally encounter individuals annoyed by your contact attempts. If you do chance upon an irritated claimant, attitude is everything. Instead of feeling disheartened and frustrated, view it as an opportunity to showcase the tact discussed at the outset of the chapter. While a lead may become disgruntled for a variety of reasons, it often results from a mistaken belief that sensitive information has been compromised. When this occurs, simply remind the claimant how the information arrived in your hands: A web form was completed for a free case evaluation and was then sent to your firm for review. Reiterate the fact that you are offering a case evaluation at no charge and that the claimant’s personal information is secure. If either party decides not move forward with the claim, make it known that you will discard the contact information in an appropriate fashion. In an age of identity theft and cyber insecurity, respecting a claimant’s privacy should remain paramount during your follow-up effort.

Very rarely, you may chance upon a claimant whose behavior transcends irate. Again, this does not ensue often, but when it does, you should always maintain a patient, professional demeanor. Recognize the potentially stressful physical and financial position in which the claimant may be and how this can affect one’s temperament. Basic measures, such as listening to a claimant’s concerns and explaining exactly why you are calling, will be indispensable to your ability to resolve leads efficiently and successfully.

One common complaint that we hear from attorneys and disability advocates pertains to a claimant’s belief that the contact form submitted on a lead generating website was actually an official application for disability benefits. This confusion is likely induced by the frenzied manner in which a claimant may complete an online contact form. Desperation and melancholy often supersede a claimant’s need to peruse a website’s content thoroughly before entering contact information. Further, the lead may falsely assume that the first result produced after a search query is the intended one, namely the SSA’s website. Accordingly, it is imperative that your website clearly state that submitting a contact form does not constitute an application for disability benefits. Language such as Evaluate My Claim or Speak to a Lawyer Now, displayed in a large and prominent fashion, should alleviate any misconceptions. Though a lead may become hostile upon the discovery that an application was not submitted, such rancor is easily deflated through the reassurance that no personal information was jeopardized and that the case evaluation is free.

Summarizing Tips for Success

From our experiences in dealing with attorneys and disability advocates across the country, we have noticed that the firms who contact leads in a prompt and persistent manner tend to have more success than those who do not. Even if you purchase exclusive leads, it is crucial to make the first contact attempt as soon as a lead arrives in your inbox and ideally within a few minutes of receipt. Usually, the best chance of reaching a claimant is immediately after that individual has submitted the online form (i.e., 1-2 minutes). If contact cannot be established during the first attempt, many larger firms who purchase leads from us will make about 20 outbound call attempts over the course of a couple weeks before deeming a lead unreachable. These claimants may not always demonstrate the most proactive behavior, so making only a few call attempts and relying on the claimant to return your call will likely lay the foundation for failure of most online lead generation campaigns.

When assessing the pros and cons of internet leads, many lead buyers lament the degree of follow-up that is required for success. We do not dispute this observation, but simply note that once you overcome this obstacle, great success can be attained. You should expect to contact 70% to 80%, namely, for every 100 leads received, you should be able to speak with 70-80, provided that you are employing a follow-up strategy similar to that previously described. It is unrealistic to expect a 100% contact rate, but you should strive for perfection and put forth your best effort.

Not all firms are equipped to implement this degree of follow-up. Such instances may merit outsourcing to a third-party call center. As the case with lead generators, not all call centers are equally cost-effective, so perform your due diligence before committing to any long-term agreement. Some utilize third-party call centers, but it may make more long-term financial sense to train your own staff to perform follow-ups. This will render more transparency in assessing performance and greater flexibility in modifying the case evaluation process. However, third-party call centers may be advantageous in handling leads received overnight, on the weekends, or whenever you do not have on-site staff to conduct follow-up.

Overall, perfecting your follow-up methods will prove vital to your ability to maximize your signed rate and to receive the greatest ROI from internet leads. While these suggestions are by no means comprehensive in scope, we believe that they provide a solid foundation upon which further improvements can be built. However, every firm is different, so we recommend implementing the advice that seems most applicable to your setup.