In my job of helping lawyers and other professionals to get more clients, I see a lot of firms who focus all their efforts on bringing in new enquiries (marketing) and pay little attention to how well they are turning enquiries into clients (conversion).

This is a bit like trying to collect water in a leaky bucket by just turning on the tap more fully. You will have more water (enquiries) coming in, but a large proportion of it will still be ‘leaking out’ because your system for converting them into clients (your bucket) has too many holes in it.

So it makes sense to fix your conversion system (aka improve your success rate at getting clients to instruct you) before spending more money and time on marketing. (Find out exactly how to do just that here)

One of the key parts of your conversion system is your initial consultation or meeting with a prospective client. Whether it’s a free session or paid for, this is a key step in turning an enquiry into a client.

There are many reasons why professionals often don’t get as many clients from these initial sessions as they’d like, but they mostly relate to the fact that most of us don’t like to ‘sell’ and almost no-one likes to be sold to.

So what happens is that many professionals avoid selling and instead try to ‘impress’ the client into hiring them during their initial meeting. The result? Clients who leave the meeting feeling like they now know what they need to know saying “I’ll call you if I need you” or “I’ll think about it”. But too often they don’t…..

If you don’t want to sell, and don’t want your prospective client to feel like they are being sold to, then you need a different approach.

What if your initial consultation was all about helping your prospective client to know why they should buy from you? How would that be different – in terms of how you would feel, how the client would feel, and the results you’d get?

My own experience of making this shift was that my success rate at these meetings doubled. I got twice as many prospective clients saying ‘yes’ to working with me. And it felt more comfortable, more ethical and more professional.

It took me a long time to learn how to do it this way and to get these results. But now I want to share my 5 step process for these meetings with you. I’ve created a simple two page guide that shows you, step-by-step, how to prepare, deliver and follow up on your initial consultation or meeting in a way which gets results without doing anything ‘salesy’ or unprofessional.