Transcript
Al Ludwig (00:00)
When you start working with a a law firm, what’s kind of the the number one mistake that that you see or you expect to see?
Seth Alcozer (00:07)
It is attribution and not understanding the importance of attribution. They go yeah, we know how many certain case types we’re getting. That doesn’t necessarily help as much if I don’t have a a what convert setup or crawl rail, something along those lines.
Al Ludwig (00:19)
Seth Alkozer, welcome to the Law Firm Brand Builders Podcast.
Seth Alcozer (00:22)
Thank you for having me, sir.
Al Ludwig (00:25)
talk today about intake structure and sales for a law firm. And we were offlining a little bit about some of this just a minute ago. But before we do that, I want to give everybody your background because you’ve sat in a lot of seats in the legal world, which gives you some unique experiences, especially leading to what you do today, running your own kind of legal consulting company. So go ahead and give us a little bit of that background.
Seth Alcozer (00:48)
So I I have been working in the legal industry since I was about thirteen. Started doing intake for my father, who’s actually a personal injury attorney in Bell County, Texas. So started working for him and there’s not quite you know, some people say, nepotism, but it’s like, no, there’s there’s a little bit of pressure whenever you walk in the door and he’s like, Hey, we need three cases today. I need you to bring him in.
Al Ludwig (01:09)
Did he have other intake professionals there that you were working a little bit?
Seth Alcozer (01:12)
Was it was it was that we had paralegals. so the firm at the time, now he’s kind of downsizing on straight really social security disability, PI and and and probate. But at the time they had family law, complex and general civ litigation, social disability. So it was a little bit everything, but they were paralegals. He’s like, Look, I need them to work and I need you to answer the phone. That’s what you’re here for. So I’m at the front, tending to clients, putting them where they need to, and then I’m answering the phone. So it was it’s a great way to learn.
Al Ludwig (01:39)
It’s fantastic. And
and hopefully your voice was as deep it as it is now back then because I
Seth Alcozer (01:45)
It was pretty close.
Al Ludwig (01:46)
I feel like if I call law firm and and I’d hear a little a kid, I feel like what the what what’s happening?
Seth Alcozer (01:51)
What is it? Yeah, squeaky voice. Kinda going, Man, what it what is is is this an establishment that’s actually professional or not? So I started doing that for him and then I’ve also held I was a paralegal and social security disability for a few years, but took over his marketing in when I was eighteen. And so this is in the you know, the early tens where SEO was really taking off, right? P P C was really there was some bigger budgets, people were coming in kind of overspending in the markets and so we had to learn how to
How to do well in a in a in a big be in a a small fish in a big pond, right? In Texas, highly competitive area there. But I did that and then I had I met my now wife when in twenty eighteen and she was in Austin at the time and I was in Belton, which is an hour north, and she I told her six weeks into dating that I was gonna marry her and she said, Well, I don’t even know if I like you yet, plus I think you’d need to live in Austin. So I said, S you don’t need to say anything else. And that was in December of twenty eighteen. I got a job at True Green Lawn Care in twenty nineteen.
Did that for a little bit and then worked in as a freight broker for a little bit of time during COVID and then joined my wife’s firm in two thousand twenty one, was their COO for a few years, had a short sin as a VP of marketing of a of a nationwide PI firm and then in October, November of twenty twenty four started started my company Legal Logistics Consulting.
Al Ludwig (03:10)
And w what type of law firms do y’all work with?
Seth Alcozer (03:12)
So
I a practice area agnostic. but my kind of unique, I guess, portion is I only do one personal energy firm per state, one non personal energy firm for each major metro. I that originated back in in, you know, twenty ten when I remember Fine Law at the time was the was the big one and and they just kind of dominated the market and I talked to some of their sales reps and they would talk about the number of clients that they had in different markets and so I’ve I just never felt like you could invest time fully.
In in somebody if if you had those kind of conflicts of interest, right? In my opinion. And so that’s where that’s where that originated and that’s why I made my my firm kinda unique.
Al Ludwig (03:50)
Interesting. Well, and I think what what also makes your firm unique is you think intake should live under marketing, not operations. Is that correct? Yes. And you know, most firms have it the other way around. I’ve I’ve worked with many firms across the country over the last, you know, twelve to fourteen years, however long it’s been. I was in house for a long time at a very sophisticated operation. And yeah, I’ve never seen it under marketing. So make your case. Why does why does that reporting line matter so much to you?
Seth Alcozer (04:18)
Yeah, so I I think it’s it’s twofold. Number one, I think understanding when you if you’re a great marketer, you understand intake, right? I think that all of us can agree there. Now, when you’re really when you have intake team is really strong, that can also inform a lot of the marketing. Meaning if you’re on the phone with somebody, you’re listening to them, you know, and and and let’s call I call the big three personal injury, cr criminal law, family law. If you’re listening to what the clients are asking
on in listening to those calls, your intake team is going to understand how to overcome the objections. All right. They’re going to understand how to sign more cases. And as the marketing professional, when you’re leading the team, you’re able to go, okay, what do I need to put on my website maybe to help help my team maybe not have to have to work quite as hard on that call. Maybe they already did some research, right, on the firm. And you’re also going to have a better understanding of the cases that you’re retaining, right? Of, okay, we signed up all these cases, but
But it it doesn’t necessarily matter if you have to withdraw on a PI case because it’s, you know, you find, hey, we’re comparative fault state. So we’re looking at we’re gonna be fifty-one percent fault and the and you have to then withdraw, right? What matters is those retained cases. And I think that you’re gonna have a better understanding of how to retain the cases starting at the front end, whenever your team goes, okay, we’re we we’re talking to the most qualified leads possible. And if your qualified leads match that r those retained leads, let’s say on a three month lag.
then to me you’ve done a great job on the cross the marketing funnel, your marketing various marketing mediums to go, hey, this is what we do, this is how we do it. And I I just think that an as a marketing professional, you have to understand intake inside and out because that that’s the that’s the lifeblood of everything that you do. And upper legal operations, all of that, that that’s fantastic. But if you don’t understand how to sell, how to market the firm from the moment you pick the phone up, then you’re in my opinion, you’re just you’re not gonna you’re not gonna win in this
highly competitive age.
Al Ludwig (06:11)
Yeah. So in in that structure, the intake manager themselves lives in the the marketing world like under a CMO or a marketing director or something like that?
Seth Alcozer (06:20)
Yes. So the and and my thought is as the marketing person, you have those direct reports, right? You’re you’re looking at all of the intake KPIs, right? We all they’re and practice area specific. And that intake person then goes to the marketing person a and takes, you know, all of the problem solving if necessary, right? What’s the structure we need? Do we need to hire some additional personnel? I just think that you you as the marketing person, you need to be leading the charge there. And quite frankly, I think if if
You need to be able to potentially get on that call and help too if you’re short staffed. I remember I I did that in the last firm that I was with. I I got on there, we were short staffed a couple of times, people sick and and I’m willing to jump on the phone and and help sign up cases. That’s kind of the way that it should be.
Al Ludwig (07:02)
Yeah. That’s it’s interesting. The the last part, I I know that when I led marketing, I I did have a person or two on my team that could jump in when needed ’cause we never know. Like sometimes people would just show up at our marketing office, right? They they they they had a case and we
needed people to understand how to how to do it, right? I know me me personally, I s I sucked at it, right? I for some reason I could do the marketing, I could do the interpretations, I could I I could structure everything. And I w I would just hate to jump into the intake calls. And part of it was because I didn’t do it often enough. Right. If I was doing it every day or a couple of times a week, right way more confident in the in the ab skills and ability of it. So I’m thinking about my, you know, my past life and how we structured
everything and and what left where we were very connected marketing and in intake for sure. and we had all these dashboards and collaborations and all that to make sure that marketing was learning from intake and vice versa. Do you w when you coach your your firms, do you do you coach them so that the intake conversations are informing the marketing that they’re doing out there? Do you
Seth Alcozer (08:12)
Yes, absolutely. And and I wanna know what what are what are potential clients saying on the phone, right? If if they get if it’s a referral source that sent them, what what are they what do they know? What are we known for, right? If you’re a a firm that does, let’s say, estate planning and probate work, a lot of your pro referral sources are sending probate work, then you may need to lean in and go, Okay, referral sources, do they understand the breadth of our offerings, right? And and that you have to understand those because then it’s gonna inform the strategy overall, right? So I
I mean, you’ve been in this a long time. I I I agree that the the being able to, you know, move use that a couple of times a week, but I I bet that you know the marketing well enough because and and you understand the practice areas well enough, right? Of okay, how do you market for a car accident case? Now how do you also market for a dram shop case and a wrongful death and you’re learning all of those, you have to have the content that makes sense on the statute of limitations, the sources of recovery. I bet you understand it well enough for you, like, hey, I can get if I need to, if that’s what if it’s what it comes down to to sign up a case.
Then you can jump in there. And I think that marketing professionals, when they understand the everything that that it takes to bring in the cases, right? And understand when that case comes in, if there is a great source of recovery, we’re gonna the law firm is gonna be is now training the all of the the head of the managing partners, training the associates to push through litigation, how do we need to get there, right? You’re gonna understand those things and you’re gonna be a better marketer.
Al Ludwig (09:34)
Okay. Well, if you can, walk me through kind of your ideal intake process and then the the feedback loop between marketing and intake.
Seth Alcozer (09:43)
Yeah. So I obviously you have your intake personnel taking in calls if there’s an AI structure, right, depending upon the tech for for different firms, if you’re high volume. I I in most cases in non PI, I think that one or one person, maybe two, is is is pretty sufficient because it’s just not not quite the same volume, right? as you’re dealing with a a more high volume PI practice or mass torts as well or employment practice. And from there, if you have
If you have the infrastructure for it, some you know the funds to be able to invest in intake manager is great because they’re typically gonna be on the phone and also managing scripts, understanding what what calls are coming in, what types of of cases are coming in and and the marketing sources that those cases are coming in from. You know, intake coordinator, intake manager, I think are ideal. Or if you have if you have somebody that can dedicate time within the firm, then maybe two arg intake coordinators are great, right? Again, practice areas dependent.
And from there, if there’s a direct report, let’s say it’s a managing partner in the firm, they’re bringing those all of those reporting on a weekly basis to the managing partner on weekly and monthly basis, assessing those KPIs and and determining if there’s number one, I think you always need to be mindful of as marketing does well, do we need to hire more people or do we need to bring in another another add-in, another platform to our tech stack?
I think too often people are so consumed with the numbers and looking at what’s doing well, what’s not doing well, and not also keeping in the back of their mind, do I need to add infrastructure in place because we are growing and doing well in marketing? Right. You have to balance. That’s where the that kind of gets hard if you’re the marketer and you’re the one overseeing marketing if that if that comes in, right? So overseeing those. Now I do think that within this workflow, if you are the one over overseeing intake, you need to spend, you know, in in your time at least every other day looking if it’s call reel.
looking in there, seeing seeing the calls, seeing what’s being answered and unanswered, right? Get helps helps inform. Again, going back to that initial point that I made of of there of the infrastructure, listening to calls, understanding if you need to train your person, your your personnel a little more, right? Do you need to say, Hey, we we have this objection. This is how I would overcome it. Right. Look listening in on those in particular, making sure they’re adhering to the scripts that you have in place overall.
and providing that feedback, don’t wait because your your your conversion rate’s gonna suffer very quickly if if you wait. And if you are also in in that person overseeing the marketing and the intake, and let’s say you’ve also run out a a a new a new campaign or whatnot, that needs to factor into those those day to day workflows of looking at that, ensuring that you don’t need to add in more resources.
more time or energy into into that campaign in particular because if let’s say it’s a P P C campaign for somebody that hasn’t run it, you need to make sure that you’re you’re staying on top of those things and you’re not losing spend very quickly. So those workflows need to be coming in of intake, handling everything day to day. You need to be as the as the manager in there looking at it at least every other day in my opinion. Take it doesn’t take a lot of time if you know what your scorecard is, what you’re checking. Just it it
the the blocking and tackling, if you will, of looking at make sure it’s in in the right place. Have that weekly meeting as well, look and or at minimum looking at numbers and providing thirty it’s takes thirty minutes to talk to your intake team. You have a you have your agenda, you touch base, you’re looking at KPIs, it it’s a it’s it’s a it’s informative and keeps your team dialed in. Then you’re doing that kind of a longer longer monthly meeting. And again, when you’re doing that kind of both marketing intake, having having that all together, you can then you then have a really good sense of if your campaigns are working.
or not, or if you need to make some tweaks there. You have you have really good insights. It’s not going to take as much time. If anything, it’s going to make you more efficient with that workflow overall. And you’re going to probably get back more time on your marketing because you don’t have to sit there and wonder if it’s working or not.
Al Ludwig (13:26)
Yeah, and and having those those checkpoints, I think, are always so very important. And I and I’ve seen it play out. I mean, the one thing on on the intake side is w when you’re doing this job, whether you’re new or seasoned, you’re typically following a process that has been developed out for you and you understand like everything’s being recorded and if the process is there’s a stop gap every couple of days, once a week, something where someone’s listening to the calls and that then they’re gonna have a a practice session.
Like, hey, we’re gonna listen to to Barbara’s calls together, right? everybody performs a little bit better, right? When they know that, wow, you know, my my example can be pulled out and I want to do the best that that I possibly can do. And so I definitely having that that leadership in place that’s that’s making sure that’s happening is is critical. When you start working with a a law firm, what’s kind of the
the number one thing or mistake that that you see or you expect to see. It’s just like common thread. I’m walking into a law firm with ten, twenty, thirty people or and and growing, like this I suspect they have this one problem.
Seth Alcozer (14:34)
It is attribution. And not understanding the importance of attribution. They go, yeah, we know how many certain case types we’re getting. But for me, I’m going, Okay, well that doesn’t necessarily help as much if I don’t have a a what convert setup or call rail, something along those lines. I’ll use that for a high high volume call or high call volume practice. Because to me I tell them, Look, if if I if my team knows that, this is going to the marketing and intake as one, if I’m the marketer, I know that in that
Yeah, internet lead, speed delete matters, right? If it’s a PPC campaign, organic, whatever that may be, right? And so I I know those things. Meta ads, I know that it’s speed delete matters. Well then if I know, if my team also knows and they’re utilizing Lawmatics, right? Let’s say they’ve talked to the client and then they’re going, they’re trying to get them signed up and they happen to go back, click into Lawmatics and the call rail attribution is already there. They go, okay, that makes more sense there, why that person asking so many questions and it’s a meta campaign that we have.
Those types of of little nuances, right? Or on call rail if it’s the whisper where you can hear it. To me, that helps your intake team go, Okay, this is a Google ads lead. I’m gonna have to work a little harder here. This isn’t somebody that was referred to me. It went to our G V Page and our look ’cause our local SEO
Al Ludwig (15:47)
Referrals have more patients, more trust all of that already. So
Seth Alcozer (15:51)
Of those things. You you you have to worry you have to the more that I know is the intake person or the salesperson, the better that I can be on that call and I can anticipate objections that I need to overcome. So then I do that in my opening line of when I initially talk to the client. That’s that is something that I see often. and when you explain it to all firms, you go, okay, that makes sense. Let’s do it. What do we need to do? Especially because it’s a nominal cost in the grand scheme of things.
Al Ludwig (16:16)
Do you ever run into an issue with attribution where it’s it’s there, but it’s not necessarily trustworthy? And I say that because, you know, the the name of the podcast Law Firm Brand Builders, right? And the larger larger larger you build your brand, the harder attribution gets because it’s no longer there are direct attribution points, right? But the majority of it is is a multitude of exposures over a long period of time.
Do you run into that issue with some of the firms you work with?
Seth Alcozer (16:46)
Absolutely. Particularly I’ll use this example. I just said G V P because I have started to see if a firm is let’s say they to to the to your point there of the brand, they’re they’re finding their G V Page, right? They’re going into maps or they’re looking up where they’re located. And so oftentimes I or not oftentimes, a lot of times lately I’ve been seeing that G V P will increase as we’re getting more brand awareness.
within the community. Meaning a referral strategy that we I cultivate with my clients of, hey, this is what we need to do, the numbers we’re putting in place over a time. Right now, let’s say it’s in that three to six month time frame, we’ll start to slowly see G B P leads go up. But what I’ve started to tell the intake team is, hey, look, when you see when you hear that on the call rail whisper or you see those form or contact come in, it’s a voicemail, make sure that you’re staying to the script and asking how they heard about us because what we’re starting to see is that they say, I I was
So and so told me about you and then I looked you up and called you. So that can also inform that attribution can help you, right? Now there’s going to be some times where you just can’t, like to your point. If you’re have a great brand and you’re in the community, you’re doing a lot of community involvement, you’re just going to be known and somebody that they could say something along the lines of, well, I called you I I think I saw you guys at this event, or you know what, at the baseball game that you sponsored, my l my son’s little league team, or my daughter’s little league team, right? That that may happen.
But that’s where I think you have to understand your marketing campaigns as well and understanding what you’re doing to where you may not even be at that point yet where your brand is not very well known. You just need to be very aware of it and very
Al Ludwig (18:16)
with yourself. Yeah. And I I’ve had those those issues, right? Where it’s it it the attribution shows one thing and there’s even maybe a journey associated with it where it was a a multi touch. But then you know, how’d you hear about us? And this completely throws it off script based off of what it looks like the journey was. Yeah. Or or
Seth Alcozer (18:36)
Or let’s say TV and you’re like, we haven’t run TV ads in years.
Al Ludwig (18:39)
Or or or the reason they came to us, right? Like w there’s certain things they might say in the context of that, looking at that that path, okay, well, I can’t give full credit to Google or or to the or to Meta or to anywhere else, right? Because their their nuanced answer told me otherwise, right? And and Yes. And so I always I always believe in creating some type of formulas market by market, depending on kind of how much marketing you’re doing, where you’re at, T V, billboards, elsewhere, right? And that’s
you gonna typically be more of the the PI attorneys, but I I even run I’ve run multi million dollars to a security disability T V campaign. Right. And they were they were hugely successful and we definitely saw every attribution go down when the T V budget went down or when we had a week off air. because there is a direct response nature to it. And the the one that always got me was I constantly did tests with P Max.
And it would show up like you turn on a PMAX test, and no matter how how rigid you are about it, man, it it starts showing up everywhere as credit. But then I’d you know, we’d ask, How’d you hear about us? We’d look at the zip code, like the zip code didn’t even align to the the the target area that was very tightly restricted. And then they they called us because of a word of mouth referral from a friend or a former client, right? And it’s like, well, how how did this journey happen? And so
I I think directionally it it’s it still ne it needs to be there, right? And directionally it’s giving you the information that you need. It’s fun it’s fun to get caught up on the on the exceptions and the ones that you’re like, Well, th this can’t be true, right?
Seth Alcozer (20:15)
Yeah. But I think those are that also informs you to where if you had dependent upon the strategy you have in place and what you’re executing within the strategy, you also know that. So you’re gonna know, hey, we’re gonna have probably an uptick in some of these outliers or nuanced ones where we just don’t know we don’t know exactly where they came from. And we just need to be mindful of that and also understand that
We have a percentage, you know, percentage amount of leads that we go, hey, this is these are likely gonna be, you know, if it’s five percent rate, whatever that is, you need to add that into your strategy. Yeah. And going back to the how we started here, if if you’re within marketing, you’re not understanding the intake team, listening in, going to those and training your team and talking to them and having those real conversations in real time, you may lose the pulse. You may lose your thumb on, okay, we’re getting the scene to uptick in these, which means
We need to go, okay, what is working in our branding? What have we been doing differently over the course of the last several months, whatever that lag is, and go, okay, maybe maybe this is the it’s great. We’re having a big uptick in qualified leads and sign ups. What have we been doing? And do we want to tinker to run a little test to to see to your point of when you turn social new disability off? Well, it’s the same thing with my my father’s firm. When we would change spots, right?
during football season or during baseball season and we changed certain spots and we decreased it or changed them up, went from thirty second spots to we increased fifteen second, man, we we it would it would almost be overnight it felt like. But you have to be mindful.
Al Ludwig (21:41)
We we recently tweaked media buys for a couple of law firms based off of you know our our blueprint and the the stair stepping manner that it should be for social disability, for personal injury, all that. And w I think today I got the third notice from my VP of Ask Services that another law firm had that that we
took that over and implemented just a new media strategy and a slight update to their creative record month for the last three years for for PI, for disability. And there was an there was another one in there that I can’t quite get. And it it just shows you the the importance of the media buy, right? And the difference between what that placing in in sports and high value programming does versus some of the more direct response placements in daytime where people are more actionable and
That gets lost on some people, I think. And every now and then, you know, I I feel like I’m getting convinced and one one away. But it it’s it’s very nuanced the situation, right? for these firms, the recommendation was very different than a firm that was in the market spending three million dollars, right? It’s just gonna be vastly different because they’re in different stages of their growth. But every time I start questioning myself, like, hey, maybe it needs to pivot, we end up with the new case study. I’m like, okay, not yet. And I I don’t
Seth Alcozer (22:56)
Yeah. No, no. Interesting.
Al Ludwig (22:59)
For law firms that are growing and have substantial marketing investment, I love doing these mini tests that you kind of described there. Mainly because it gets hard to know what’s actually giving the best inputs into that user journey. We might be testing one thing and it’s looking great, but because
I’m working on the inside of it and I know the full picture of everything that’s happening and I know the first party numbers and all that. I go, it might be worth me stopping that for this month or reducing it significantly, even though it’s showing positive signals. Because once you grow to a certain level, there’s going to be things you things are just gonna look good because you’re doing so much. And it’s like, is that the thing that is making it good? Or is that something where you’re just paying an extra premium?
for that user journey that you could have got for 20% cheaper, but it added 20% to the to the CAC because it was showing positive indic indicators. And that was always tests that that I would like to run. And it it gets difficult. When you start running, you know, eight figure budgets, it gets very, very difficult. But you start looking at that holistic number, right? Because once once you’re at that level, you want to see the broad strokes numbers for number of cases, types of cases.
CAC, dump rates, things like that. And if all those are going in the right direction, then it’s like, okay, well, we made a couple more good decisions over the last quarter that are compounding. And if it starts going the wrong way, it’s like we may we may have made a bad decision. Or let you know, let me look at the environmental factors that that may have affected this quarter compared to the previous one and year over year.
Seth Alcozer (24:44)
Yeah. Well and and know, I think I think the other thing too on that is you need is I I know sometimes people when you know in the ideation phase, right? and you go, okay, well, we’re gonna do XYZ and who’s owning that and we’re going from there. Well then I think you also have to go, okay, what what end what small decisions did we make within that strategy to where we can go back to look at our notes or if you keep it in a platform wherever and you go, Okay, th this is also part of that what we were executing on. It was that one little thing that
Maybe you change within the media buy you’re talking about, okay, well what did we change within those commercials? And what is that demographic that is actually calling? Right? Of sometimes people like to people like to have a you know, when they see an attorney advertising during a Thursday night football game, they may go, Man, the FOMA this is baked up.
Al Ludwig (25:31)
I I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told I wanna be an ex because another lawyer is an ex. I wanna be in the football game because I’m seeing the other lawyer in the football game. But the other lawyer has been in the football game for ten years and spends eight times more for for their their full schedule. And there’s actually been instances though where it’s they get that FOMO, but then I go look at that that
that law firm schedule, you know, okay, well that’s that’s great. They’re in Thursday night football and they’re in Sunday night football and they’re in this and they’re in that. And but they’re not getting much much frequency in the market because they’re spending all their dollars on this high profile programming. Our opening is to go to this other space and create action for actionable people and not just build brand, right? Because that that spot at 7 PM on a Thursday are or
6 p.m. on a Sunday, that is brand marketing. And I always have the argument, well, well, I’m trying to do brand and direct response at all times. But that definitely leans 98% brand marketing because people aren’t taking the action in that moment, no matter how much you say, I’m open 24-7, you can call us anytime, et cetera, et cetera. But Monday through Friday from nine to five, they’re taking action. And so I I like being there and I and I’m there for a lot of lot of clients, but also like to make sure we’re we’re taking care of that.
that blocking and tackling when it comes to to the marketing, whether that is the blocking and tackling that needs to happen on on TV or on Google Ads or on Meta and and elsewhere, it’s just it’s gonna be very important that you’re recovering those bases and educating our law firms that we work with, the reason why we’re doing it like this.
Seth Alcozer (27:12)
Yes. Well and I think the other thing we’ve said it a couple of times, but the word growth, right? Of what if what if your firm is not in the growth stage for building the branding? Maybe you need to allocate more funds on networking for referral sources. And then you’re going, Hey, I’m spending a little bit on I’m making a long play going into my my my SEO and I need to get some cases in the door right now, so I’m gonna spend a little bit on on digital ads and you find something that’s working.
Well, guess what? You can’t build you can’t do branding. You can’t build that unless you have some funds. And like you said, that that that firm that’s been there been outspending you. Well, they may just be doing it because you kind of rest on your laurels a little bit and you go, Hey, this is you you kind of worry about, you know, killing the golden goose. So guess what? You may have a a strategic advantage in the market available to you because you’re not just sitting there going, Hey, we we’ve done this for years, we’ve changed up the ad
copy and the and or change up the the the spots that we’re using. We shot completely new content, but you may have an opportunity in the market because somebody else has just been staying there going, hey, this is what we’ve been doing. And some and fear is a big driver in this in this market FOMO, right? And you you have to realize what part of growth that your firm is in. And I think that’s another thing that
Oftentimes, sounds like you guys discuss that, but oftentimes agencies don’t discuss that with their firms to understand their cash flow, understand their growth, because at the end of the day, if it’s me coming in doing and working with fractional CMO and and agency work or or wherever, if I don’t come in and help the firm grow and help them make money, then I’m not gonna have a I’m I’m not gonna have any money coming from them either. So that’s the other part that has to be discussed is what part of growth are you in and realistically setting those expectations.
Al Ludwig (28:55)
Yeah. And when something’s working, continuing to double down on it. I’ve had conversations with numerous law firms that are like, you know, hey, I’ve grown three hundred percent over the last three years. It’s like, that’s pretty phenomenal. All right. Whether it’s growing from from five to twenty or from ten to forty or from a hundred to four hundred, right? It’s phenomenal either way. How how did you do that? And then they tell me how to do that. I’m okay, so what do we want to do now? It’s like, well, I want to I wanna start doing X, Y, and Z. It’s like,
Have you made sure you’re tapped out in the things that gave you 400% growth over the last three years? And typically the answer is like, no. And so I’m like, well, let’s maybe we finesse that. Like, hey, how can we do that? Let’s first examine it. How can we do it even better? And then how can we invest more funds in it so that we get more signals and understanding if it’s plateauing for us and we do need to start incorporating other types of marketing? Or if we can continue on this, on this trajectory with
with what we’re doing, let those ones snowball so that further down the line you can fund some of the other things. Or you can start funding it simultaneously as opposed to just capping yourself arbitrarily because, you know, if you’re having success, keep having success. Yeah.
Seth Alcozer (30:07)
I I’ll I’ll use my wife’s server as an example. When we got everything, we were kind of felt like we were flying the plane while while or we were building the plane while flying it, right? It was that that feeling. Which is a great feeling, right? Which is part of the reason that I’m sure you’re helping law firms build. I’m out in this like we some of us get addicted to that feeling, right? Which is that’s a whole nother podcast episode. But what what I found was in in July of twenty twenty two to December of twenty twenty two, I met with a hundred and one people. Just me. We were a small group.
I was taking people to coffee. There was days out where I did early morning coffee, late morning coffee, early lunch, late lunch, and then afternoon coffee. I did I would do that once or twice a month where it’s just like I wanted to volume and that was the easiest way for us to invest our time because referrals were just key, right?
Al Ludwig (30:53)
You were you were meeting with like other law firms in different practice areas and
Seth Alcozer (30:57)
Well, other law firms but also then meeting with financial advisors because estate planning, probate, fiduciary, litigation, guardianships. I was meeting with also other financial advisors and understanding what I built out a whole demographic of what I wanted and how many numbers I needed to hit for outreach to be able to get to my people responding to then get to number of people to meet with, so on so forth, right? Yeah. CPAs, tax advisors or property tax advisors, anybody that met with people that needed what we provided.
So that I you know how many clients I got out of it? One. I got one client from all of that. Now, fast forward, however many years it c it started to compound. Well, guess what? They’ve grown now from back then we were a team of five. Now they’re up to a team of thirty one. Now they have a beautiful office, right? We had a we would we were you know in in Louisiana, I know it’s like this too, but Texas football’s king. And so we’re we would be, you know, we’re a eighth of a eighth of a mile a mile from the University of Texas
Stadium, so we would do tailgates and they would just come into the office. That was the easiest thing we could do at the time. Well, now my wife had built this out with her her some of the marketing people they have in-house that they have what they call coffee and council. They’ll bring in somebody from a different, you know, let’s say it’s on guardianships. I’ll talk about that and they talk about it from the legal side. They now they built that out, but to your point, we couldn’t do we were gonna be able to do that four years ago. We didn’t have the budget. Now they have the budget, they have the they have the people.
And they continue to lean into that. No, we do they do some other things. Their their website is doing incredibly well. PPC is is is is is going well. We’re going to do some other things, but the referral where you started, it hasn’t been tapped out at all. And Austin is a huge market. So lean into it, double down, don’t just stop, double down into it and make it more unique. And guess what? It continues to pay off. And I think to your point, firms get they feel like they’re going to miss out on something. Like, we got to change it. I I tell firms all the time look, if it’s I don’t care if it was another marketing agency.
If I come in fractional CMO and the agency’s done well in the past and all of a sudden it’s gone downhill, it’s like, well, let me talk to them. Maybe we just need the it’s a mix up in communication and we’re s we don’t want to kill the golden goose. Let’s just make some changes and that we can double down and make it grow. Yeah. You have to be willing to do that.
Al Ludwig (33:07)
Absolutely. And I mean a a a lot of that too is if you give me capable people, like we’ll have success no matter what happened in the past, ’cause sometimes the issue is there wasn’t the facilitator at the top making sure that those people that were capable were doing the things that need to be done in the manner that need that that you need them done. Right. And ’cause I I’ve I’ve worked with numerous agencies and the best ones were the ones that I came in and I saw early on, okay, they’re fully capable. They have the people, they have the knowledge, they have the skills. It’s just I need to tea I need to basically orient them to my systems, my expectations, my know-how based off of my experience and the nuances of this particular law firm and in these markets. And then once we did that, it was, I mean we we were riding high. Like things were just performing well. You had you she was shifting gears a little bit, you had said
a sales process with within marketing, business development and intake will make your firm better overall. Is this re the the referral things that we just touched on, is that the sales process that you’re referring to or is it or is it b bigger in scope than that? It’s
Seth Alcozer (34:15)
It’s it’s bigger in scope than that, but that that is a a lever within it, right? Of I think people when they think networking, they’re gonna go, Okay, I’m gonna go to I just use that word. I did met with a hundred and one people. But guess what? I figured out I was like, okay, I’m gonna reach out to XMR of people every week. Then my percentage that I’m gonna have of people that respond to me, because LinkedIn can become a, you know, a cesspool of AI stuff, right? Even even ha four years ago that they go, Okay, we’re going to now I want to or have these people that reach out and then from there
the number of people that then potentially become go into the category of okay, follow up with or sometimes you meet with the I’ll use that extension, a financial advisor that I had a guy tell me, he’s like, hey, I send all my work to this person and and I will until they retire. And it’s fair, right? That’s that’s the kind of the candid conversations. But guess what? That’s the that’s the relationship that I want because they’re loyal and they’re gonna be honest and transparent. So I’m like, hey I’m gonna I’ll follow up with you when it happens, but I appreciate
Al Ludwig (35:10)
It’s proof of the footing, right? It shows that those relationships are out there. Yes. And you need to find that person so that in in fifteen years they’re still like, I I’m referring to this guy until he dies.
Seth Alcozer (35:21)
Yes. Well and and I keep I kept all those notes and I left them here. But I think it becomes even the the next step in that process is I’ll use this. I figured out that over time that next year, I was like, okay, who do I follow up with? How do I get even more strategic with this? What I figured out is that the people that are the the advisors or attorneys, whomever, that played golf, I would try to take them. And so what I found was this is over about a it’s a small sample size, right? It was in the ten to fifteen people. I can’t play golf very well, all right.
People are gonna beat me, but anybody that played well that’s just a major, right?
Al Ludwig (35:54)
That i it would it would be my nightmare. Like bringing someone to play golf. I can’t play golf. I just I I never got into it. And it which is weird because I’ve worked with with law firms and in a law firm, a lawyer where everybody golfed and I just got into it, right?
Seth Alcozer (36:10)
Well I I I what I’m I mean, I can shoot ninety one but then the setting the next day I’ll shoot one ten, right? It’s just it’s just gonna fall off.
So I I figured out that I could do one thing really well. I’m swing the I swing the golf club incredibly hard and I can hit it, I can get it into the three hundred range, right? Two ninety plus. Okay. What I figured out is I wanted to make myself rememberable and I want to do something that maybe those guys that are really good at golf they couldn’t do. So what I had found was that if I hit three drives of of two ninety to three hundred, somewhere in there, if I did three drives, it ended up where the amount of time it took me to get a client decreased by
Anywhere from four to six months. I was literally tracking this information because I think it’s because
Al Ludwig (36:53)
What a fantastic metric. Yes.
Seth Alcozer (36:56)
And I was like, okay, there’s there could be other variables in there, but I couldn’t think I couldn’t I would take notes, right? I’d put in exposure, I’d take notes of every interaction I had. And I wanted, I was like, okay, this is an interesting one to me. And what I found what I my my theory is that it’s just something different that you don’t see all the time where I say that and I’m like, hey, I can outdrive you, but guess what? You’re gonna beat me and that’s fine. And it’s it becomes this thing where I think people don’t want to apply metrics into human interaction because they don’t want to deduce people to numbers, which I agree with. And
If you have, okay, if I meet with 10 people and that could prefer me cases and I’m also following my steps to make sure that I am following up, I have a great SOP overall with referral gifting and and I’m memorable and I’m leaning into relationships, I’m being a people person, then you’re gonna know how many times it takes to meet with people to get a case. Like it just there’s gonna be some some numbers in there. And so that sales process has to apply, right? Of when I take true green lawn care.
I would do a hundred to a hundred and fifty door tags before I went to the office. And then when I went to the office, I I called I did two hundred to two hundred and fifty cold calls. And I knew that out of that, I was gonna have a pipeline built up every single week. And it’s that blocking and tackling that I think people don’t want to necessarily apply to business development. And that sales process is hard, right? And I just don’t think attorneys don’t necessarily know what they don’t know about it.
Al Ludwig (38:20)
I I think the the one question that’s on everybody’s mind though is how much does the conversion rate drop for every yard short of two ninety? It’s about
Seth Alcozer (38:28)
Bad. It’s bad. It’s bad because because what also happens there is I was also shooting pretty you know, upper nineties and these are guys that are you know, shooting in the eighties. It is it was almost it was almost non existent. Some of those guys didn’t didn’t even ask me back to to play golf. So it just no it was it was almost zero.
Al Ludwig (38:44)
My absolutely my favorite marketing metric of of the year so far is to reality of of close rates to how long my drive is for
Seth Alcozer (38:57)
I again, I well I I think it could be I could be wrong, but that was that’s what I went with. Yeah I
Al Ludwig (39:03)
I I wanna with our last few minutes just make sure we’re touching on a couple of important things here. When when someone works with you from let’s say a fractional intake sales manager aspect, in those first thirty days, what are what are y’all doing? What’s that person doing that the firm couldn’t do themselves?
Seth Alcozer (39:18)
Yeah, so I am obsessing over the numbers, trying to find if they’re any of those strengths, right? If something’s going well, what are we doing well? Looking at reviewing SOPs. Do we have SOPs in place in in some places that that is the case? I’m sure you’ve seen those. And going, okay, what in the marketing strategy, do where do we want to go in the marketing strategy? What are the growth goals? And do we have the in fact intake infrastructure in place to be able to accomplish those goals in that three month mark?
The six month mark and then the twelve month mark and forecasting out, are we able are we able to accomplish all those goals? Because if somebody comes to me and they say, Hey, I want to have 40 clients, the estate planning client, and I want to have 40 clients per month. And at that and at that goal, I can get to the all the revenue I want. Well then we’re looking at numbers and we’re going, hey, that’s actually three standard deviations from the mean from what you’ve had for the last eighteen months. I don’t know how we can do that. So let’s take a step back here and start with.
what how do many how many leads, qualified leads, do we need to get? And do we have the team in place to get there? And do you have the time to devote to referral relationships, all the above, right? So merging that that gap that often exists between intake and marketing and determining if we can do it, if we can, how are we going to do that and why are we going to make some of the moves that we may need to make?
Al Ludwig (40:37)
Okay.
Seth Alcozer (40:37)
That’s a good answer. And also will go I also go out and and I’m actually headed to California tomorrow.
To meet with a a a client I newly signed up and and I believe in yes, I do this remotely, we do Zooms, but I believe in those inter inner face to face interactions. And I go out to clients typically once once or twice a quarter to to build those and I’m a very social person. I need to do that. I need to get out and meet
Al Ludwig (40:58)
This month I was in Chicago, Baltimore, and Canada for different for different meetings. So I I get it. It’s just something something that you can’t recreate over over this, you know. Rapid fire questions. Biggest lie in law firm marketing right now.
Seth Alcozer (41:14)
That you have th that you can’t you can’t do certain XYZ because of spend.
Al Ludwig (41:19)
One number every managing partner should be able to say out loud without looking it up.
Seth Alcozer (41:24)
Case per case per sign up or cost per case sign up.
Al Ludwig (41:28)
They sign up. All right, if a firm says they can only fix one thing this quarter, intake or media buy.
Seth Alcozer (41:33)
intake. And why? That’s the that’s the best way to c improve your conversion rate. Right. In my opinion.
Al Ludwig (41:38)
Most overrated thing agencies sell to law firms. P and and why do you say PPC?
Seth Alcozer (41:41)
PC. They’ll
that’s the first thing they want to go to. And in my opinion, it’s because SEO takes a long time and they want to get results and they don’t want to acknowledge, hey, this is a long term relationship. Let’s own that. And so they go, Hey, here’s SEO, but we can do the P P C up here because we can get you cases and set and that may not be the best thing for that particular firm from a cash flow bank from
Al Ludwig (42:03)
perspective. The practice area, nobody’s marketing well yet. Who?
Seth Alcozer (42:07)
Estate planning and probate.
Al Ludwig (42:08)
State and probate. You feel like the competition there is is just low and and or at least obviously you think people aren’t doing it too well, so there’s a white space to just come in and do it okay and and take the market?
Seth Alcozer (42:20)
Yeah, I I think I think they they look too much at referral relationships instead of going, Hey, we need to look at the whole all of our marketing mediums and we can really attack this and take over the marketplace if we do it right.
Al Ludwig (42:33)
Right. And finally, where can people find you and who is legal logistics actually built for?
Seth Alcozer (42:38)
Legal logistics consulting dot com. I picked the longest possible and it’s built for law firms that are wanting to grow and not have to have a whole an entire marketing team in house and wanna have somebody that’s not gonna be helping all of their competitors in the same market. Love it.
Al Ludwig (42:54)
Well Seth, thanks for joining the Law Firm Brand Builders Podcast.
Seth Alcozer (42:57)
Thank you for having me.