7 Tips for a Successful Discovery Call with a Potential Attorney Client

Hi there, Linda Artesani from the Accountants Law Lab. To continue on our series of the questions you want to ask your first attorney-client, I'm going to give you some tips on the discovery call because I think that that's something that as we do more and more of them, we get more comfortable with them for certain. And there's just some things that I wish I knew the first time I started doing these calls because That initial contact with the attorney, that initial conversation you have is so critical. It's your first impression. You wanna make a good one. So let's dive into the questions that— not just the questions, but the tips I wanna give you. So my first tip is the timing of the discovery call. How long should the call be? I like to have it on my calendar for 15 minutes. You're probably wondering why 15 minutes. That seems kind of short. Well, that is. You— we try to do 15 minutes and just see if we're a good fit, and it doesn't take much longer than 15 minutes to figure that out. If the client's a good fit, we'll go longer than 15 minutes, and that way we can get into more details. So you don't want that call to be too short. In fact, most of them go about 45 to 50 to an hour long if it's a good fit and a good client. My second tip alludes right back to what I mentioned earlier. God gave you two ears and one mouth for a reason, so don't talk too much about yourself in a discovery call. That's a big no-no. You want to listen to your client, listen to their needs, hear their story, and take a lot of notes. My tip number 3 is you want to ask the right questions. And if you want, you can go back to my earlier topic that gives you the questions, and you can use the cheat sheet. But one of the things I notice when people are new to this is they make a rookie mistake of asking potential clients only service-level questions. So they get more into the weeds of bank reconciliations and how many transactions, and they don't really get in, dive in deep, deeply on exactly what the client is looking for. At the end of the day, they don't want to get into the, the, the, the needs and weeds of all of the minutiae of the job. They just want to know the result. So keep that in mind as you're asking the questions. Number 4, the tip number 4 is not understanding the scope and the time expectation. Of course, that goes back to not listening to the client. But we wanna go deeper than those surface-level questions. We want to really understand the scope and the time commitment, and you want to set that parameter really early in the conversation with the client. You wanna make sure that that client understands that there's gonna be a commitment, a time commitment from them, and it's gonna be needed, especially in the early onboarding of the job. If it's a cleanup, for sure, you're gonna have a lot of questions. And even in a new job or a new accounting service with a firm, bookkeeping services, you're gonna have questions. And make sure that they allocate some time and make sure they understand that you're gonna need documents. And those are all things that will hold up a job. So you want to make sure that that's understood in the very, very get-go, in the earliest conversation. Remember, we're setting that great client relationship up right in this discovery call. Tip number 5 is not being prepared for the call, not knowing anything about the client, which sometimes will happen, but also not taking the time to really investigate that client's website and knowing a little bit about them before the call actually happens. Especially if it's on Zoom, you wanna be prepared, you wanna be dressed appropriately, and you want to put on a good— You wanna put on a good professional look and know your stuff. So having even notes on your screen so that you can have that available so you don't get stuck and you stay on point with what you're asking. You don't wanna give out free advice. You're not there to help them do the work and correct the work. You want to be there to help them and understand their needs, but you're not there to help them balance their books right there on that call. Remember that. We're such giving people. We love to help everybody, but This is not the time to be helping them with their books or get answering a lot of questions about how you do your work. Stay very focused on the questions and the task at hand. And I think as we go a little further, you know, you want to make sure that you don't focus on the small details. That's important. Don't get into the, the deep weeds of, of the discovery calls. Keep it high level. Keep in mind what you're going to return to them, and then Stay focused, positive, and confident. Those are all things that will help you get through that first discovery call. I like to say fake it till you make it if you're brand new. And if you stick with these questions and really stay with understanding where the attorneys tend to have problems, go back to those questions and stay with those questions and ask. And if you don't understand everything, let them know that this line of communication's not gonna end with a discovery call. There'll be some more back and forth and that you're, you're gonna be there. And if they have more questions after the call, feel free to come back and reach out to me, or if I have questions, you know, help me understand your needs so we can get this project off on a good note. And on that note, I hope this is helpful. If you want to learn more about this kind of topics or want to help build your practice around working with attorneys, we've got a couple of options for you. We have a course called Fast Track Legal Accounting, and if you want to do it yourself, if you want to do it in a group setting, we have a great a great mentorship program. It's a mastermind group. Everybody there is wonderful, helpful to each other, and it's called the Accountant's Law Lab. More details and more notes are inside the article that's attached to this video. Thank you for watching. Bye now. Bye.