When They Don’t Hire You:
Steps to Take After Hearing 'No Thanks' or 'I Have to Think About
It' from Prospects

Ali Katz:
When you're selling something you really believe in, when you're selling something that you know really makes a difference in the lives of the people that you're selling it to, well, selling isn't about persuading anyone to do anything that they wouldn't want to do. It's actually the art of helping them to decide to do what they want to do and supporting them to make the right decision for them. So there's never any persuasion. There's never any convincing.

Ali Katz:
Welcome to the NewLaw podcast for entrepreneurial lawyers. Here at Personal Family Lawyer, we want to help more families and business owners make eyes wide open legal and financial decisions. But we cannot do this without you. Which is why we started this podcast to find those of you ready to offer a better way to serve your clients.

Ali Katz:
So if you are a legal professional who wants to help improve the legal and financial wellbeing of your clients and offer a service model that differentiates you while meeting the needs of your community, and rest easy knowing that you are running your law practice like a real business, then join us on this journey by subscribing to the show and find out how you can use a new law business model to love your life as a lawyer.

Ali Katz:
In today's episode, I'm going to be talking about what to do when they don't engage. This question came in from the Estate Planning Professionals Facebook group, and I thought it was so good and important to talk about on the podcast. All right, so what do we do when they don't engage? I remember the very first time that I had clients that came in and didn't engage my services, and the rejection pain was really intense. I was brand new in my law practice and I had thought that it would be pretty easy to get clients that people would, of course, want to work with me. I came out of one of the best law firms in the country. I had just started my law practice. I was speaking at local moms groups, and I was speaking to moms who surely needed the estate planning services that I was offering.

Ali Katz:
And so of course, they would come in and they would meet with me and they would hire me, right? Wrong. It turns out there was so much I didn't know about getting hired. And so when I began to meet with people and tell them about my services, and then I would hear, we have to think about it. We're not sure, we want to shop around. Ugh. It was really difficult for me. Really difficult for me. I think that the biggest thing that was difficult for me is the underlying rejection feelings that I felt.

Ali Katz:
Looking back now, I can see that it was triggering some of my rejection trauma from high school, feeling not good enough, feeling that people didn't like me. And that was scary because I really didn't. I really didn't know how to deal with that. The way that I did deal with it is that I spoke to some friends of mine who had gone out on their own and asked them how they were getting clients. And what I began to realize is that I needed a system to be able to take people through so that they would ultimately hire me. It took me a few months to put this system together, and eventually I would come to teach. It was the very first thing that I began to teach.

Ali Katz:
I called it the client engagement system. But it took me some time to put it together because I knew quite a bit, actually, about sales, because my dad had been in sales his whole life, and he, in fact, taught me sales by having me work in his company when I was a teenager. But I didn't think sales applied to being a lawyer. So it took me a while to make that connection of, oh, I'm actually doing sales. I'm actually doing sales. And it took me a while to be able to feel good about that and realize that sales is not about persuading anyone to do anything that they don't want to do. I had kind of inherited that belief from my dad because he wasn't selling things that ultimately were really good things. But when you're selling something you really believe in, when you're selling something that, you know really makes a difference in the lives of the people that you're selling it to. Well, selling isn't about persuading anyone to do anything that they wouldn't want to do. It's actually the art of helping them to decide to do what they want to do and supporting them to make the right decision for them. So there's never any persuasion, there's never any convincing. And I had to unwind some really deep beliefs that I had inherited from my father in order to really understand that sales is service when done right, and to understand that I would need to deliver a service in order to shift from hearing. I don't know. I have to think about it. I want to shop around to recognizing that my process for selling was really a process for helping people make the right buying decision for themselves. And even if that meant that the right buying decision was that they didn't hire me, because sometimes that would be the case.

Ali Katz:
But if the right decision was for them to hire me because I really believed in what I was offering and that it was right for them. Then my job is to help them make the decision to hire me and to help them choose the right fee for them. So then if I hear, if I get a "did not engage" now the whole context for "did not engage" changes. So what I responded to the gal who asked the question in the estate planning professionals group was, well, what you do, where they did not engage is going to depend on why they didn't engage. In my office, when someone didn't engage, we would always send a letter and that letter that "did not engage" letter or DNE letter would oftentimes result in the people coming back and engaging me. But when we send that letter is dependent on what happened at the end of the meeting. If they didn't engage because they don't need my services or because I don't want to serve them, that "did not engage" letter is going to be very different than if they "did not engage" and they did need my services, but they decided they couldn't afford my services or didn't want to pay for my services. Those are two very different letters right? Now, what she responded was that typically they are not engaging because they can't afford it or they don't have the money for it.

Ali Katz:
Now, if somebody is not engaging because they cannot afford it or they don't have the money for it, those are two very different things. And your "did not engage" letter is going to again depend on did they say they cannot afford it but they need it, or can they actually not afford it and not need it? So ideally, your engagement process is set up such that you are helping people identify do they need your service because the cost of your service is actually less than the consequence of not hiring you. Let me repeat that because it's so important. Your initial meeting, which should not be a free consultation, but a working meeting, up to two hours, you could do it in an hour. If you get really efficient, we call it a family wealth planning session or a life and legacy planning session. This meeting has a name, a purpose and a value. The purpose really is to take people through the cost benefit analysis of hiring you or not hiring you. So if they can't afford it, well, that means you're not using my affordable premium pricing model.

Ali Katz:
You can read about that in my book, New Law Business Model Revealed. And with the affordable premium pricing model, they will only hire you if the cost of hiring you is lower than the consequence of not hiring you. Which means that you need to guide them through that process of determination. When you do that, you never have to convince or persuade anybody that they should work with you. And they never walk out saying that they can't afford it because they realize through the process that they can't afford not to work with you. And if they can't afford it, maybe they don't actually need it. Maybe the cost of doing nothing is lower than the cost of doing something. And if the cost of doing nothing is lower than the cost of doing something, they shouldn't hire you.

Ali Katz:
So if they did not engage because they didn't understand the consequence of not hiring you, then that's your job. Your job is to structure your initial meeting such that they understand the consequence of not hiring you. And in the most optimal situation, they're actually telling you that because of how you've structured that meeting. That's one of the things that I end up coaching on the most in our mastering client engagement calls is how do you structure, how do you ask the right questions such that the people you're meeting with tell you the consequence of not hiring you? They tell you the cost of not hiring you so that you can then help them choose the right option for your services.

Ali Katz:
Would you love direct support to help you grow your law practice into a business you love? Go to newlawbusinessmodel.com/show and sign up for a call with one of our trusted law business advisors. Each of our advisors has been trained directly by me over the past five years plus to help you chart your path from wherever you are now to where you want to go as efficiently and effectively as possible. You're ready to grow. We are here to help.

Ali Katz:
Okay, so now what happens if they do not engage? Well, first of all, if they do not engage, you need to understand why. Why did they not engage? If you didn't find this out at the end of your meeting, then you want to call them. You want to call them and say, hey, following up from our meeting, wanting to check in, see what questions you're sitting with, see if you've had any time to talk, see what decisions you've made, and make sure that I've fully done my job to make sure you're as clear as possible on your next steps, what's happened since we met, and then for you to ask the questions that will uncover why they didn't hire you. Now, if you know that they didn't hire you because of money, then you may need to go back to them and say, I understand that you didn't hire me because you don't think that you can afford the service. But that tells me that I perhaps didn't do a great job of helping you understand the consequences of not getting your planning done. And I'd like another chance to do that. I'd like another chance to sit down with you and look at what will be the cost of not planning, what will be the cost of you becoming incapacitated, what will be the cost of in the event of your death. And let's compare that to the cost of doing nothing.

Ali Katz:
Now, if you already did that and they still say they cannot afford it or that they want to shop around, then it may be that you didn't differentiate your service. Or maybe you don't have a differentiated service. If you don't have a differentiated service and they can shop around and find exactly what you do cheaper, then you might need to differentiate your service. If you do have a differentiated service, but you didn't explain your differentiated service well enough, then it might be that you can send the "did not engage" letter and in the "did not engage" letter you can reference again your differentiated service and really help them to understand your differentiated service better. And you may need to be able to better explain your differentiated service. You might need better structure, better words. This is another thing that I coach on a lot, is how to really illustrate the differentiated service model that our Personal Family Lawyer Firm Leaders have. Because I hear a lot of lawyers that will fall back into things like we have a lifetime relationship with our clients.

Ali Katz:
Well, clients don't want a lifetime relationship with their lawyers unless they understand why they need that lifetime relationship, that requires illustration. You may not be illustrating it. You might be using lawyer words or you might be taking for granted things you understand that your clients don't. So we coach on this quite a lot. Finally, if they truly cannot afford it and you see their financials, if you're doing the planning right, you've already seen their financials when you are in the planning process. And if that's the case, then you know if they can afford it or not. I had a single mom come in and work with me and pay $3,000-3,500. I think those were my fees for a single trust based plan back in the day and put it on a credit card because they felt it was that important to them.

Ali Katz:
And sometimes people might put estate planning on a credit card because it's that important to them, because the consequences of not doing planning would be that dire for their children. So it really comes down to oftentimes how important is the planning to them. Now if you see that they have a bunch of money sitting in their bank account. It might be just that they don't actually care that much about the consequences for the people that they love and not doing planning, or you haven't helped them to see the consequences sufficiently. And in any case, you definitely want to send out a "did not engage" letter and you want that "did not engage" letter to come after you really getting clear on why they didn't engage following up by phone. I know that can be uncomfortable inquiring and again, really remembering that your job is to ensure that they understand the consequences of not planning in a way where there's no convincing, no persuading, just invitation with real understanding of what matters to them the most. And if you do that, then you send your "did not engage" letter and they may still come in.

Ali Katz:
And then if they don't come in, you continue to follow up. They get your email newsletter every week, ongoing. And you may even run what we call a "back from the dead campaign" once a year where you invite the people who did not engage you back in. We have a whole little structure for that that brings people back in. Thank you, dad. Learned that one from my dad many years ago. And you keep following up. Sometimes we have people that come back in three, five, ten years later because we maintained consistency, we followed up and you can do the same.

Ali Katz:
All right, if you do not want to have to reinvent this wheel. If you want done for you "did not engage" letters, the done for you "back from the dead campaign", the coaching, the support, the systems, the training. Go to newlaw.co/show and apply to talk with a law business advisor. I would love to help you directly with more engagements, more systems, more love for your clients, more love from your clients and turning your law practice into a business you love. Go to newlaw.co/show and I'll see you on the inside.