Do you have any lead magnets to bring leads into your funnel?
A lead magnet is something of value that your ideal client wants and is willing to offer up their name and email address to get it.
Sometimes it is overwhelming to think about even trying to create something like this. It’s so much work, I don’t know what people would want, I don’t have time to make anything..
All of those excuses have stopped others from creating lead magnets, but if I’m honest, creating a lead magnet doesn’t have to take that much time and it doesn’t have to be hard to come up with.
Block out some time in your day to really think about some of the questions your callers ask you. What are the really pressing matters they’re asking about? Are they trying to understand why they need you? Are they looking for information on what makes a successful case? Take one of your most common questions (or many of them) and answer them. Type out your answers, and try to be as in-depth as possible. Then all you need to do is title it with a catchy title and bam, you’ve got a lead magnet!
Remember, done is better than perfect. You can always refine it later.
Let me know how it goes,
Kory
Check out the other articles from this month’s newsletter:
https://backofficebetties.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Back-Office-Betties-Primary-1.svg00Emilyhttps://backofficebetties.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Back-Office-Betties-Primary-1.svgEmily2021-02-26 22:48:292023-09-22 12:28:50Marketing Your Law Firm
Donna first started at Back Office Betties in 2017 and we have been so lucky to have her! Her strong customer service background began when Donna started working at Walt Disney World at age 16 as a member of the opening admin team for Epcot. Prior to working at Betties, she spent 10 years working at the Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress Resort as the Hotel Assistant Manager / Control Supervisor.
Donna’s favorite thing about working with Betties is her coworkers. She enjoys the supportive relationships and loves laughing and having fun with her fellow Betties. Donna looks forward to coming in to work every day, and really enjoys interacting with our clients and their callers.
Donna is from sunny Florida and has one son, Josh, who’s about to graduate as a Mechanical Draftsman. When she’s not working, Donna loves spending time with her family. In addition to her son, she has nieces, great-nieces, nephews, and great-nephews who she lovingly refers to as her “kids”. Donna is all about HGTV, tiny houses, and skoolies. She’s been spending her pandemic free time making renovations to her home, which she’s dubbed, ‘Rona Renovations’.
Check out the other articles from this month’s newsletter:
https://backofficebetties.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Back-Office-Betties-Primary-1.svg00Emilyhttps://backofficebetties.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Back-Office-Betties-Primary-1.svgEmily2021-02-26 22:47:202023-09-22 12:29:04Meet The Bettie: Donna
You multitask every day – you may even be multitasking right now. You’ve talked on the phone while driving or listened to an audiobook while making dinner – that’s multitasking. Because multitasking involves doing more than one thing at once, as long as only one (or none) is something that takes specific effort or focus.
When you hear people talk about the benefits of multitasking, keep that in mind. Task switching, however, is a wolf in multitasking’s clothing.
Physical things like opening an app, wrapping up work to put on hold, or getting distracted with other things tacks on time between each task.
A study has even shown how people getting sidetracked while task-switching lost 25 minutes of their time by stopping to complete 2.3 other tasks before returning to the original!
Switching tasks takes 16 seconds on average, and people switch tasks 12 times on average every half hour. That right there is 10% of your time… and you can find it out the window.
There are mental aspects to task-switching as well. Your brain takes time switching gears moving from one set of rules to another. You aren’t immediately engrossed and focused when you sit down to go over a document or fill out paperwork. Getting into a productive state takes time. And repeating this process over and over is so time-consuming, that even short mental blocks can cost as much as 40% of someone’s productive time.
You can take a lot off your plate by hiring an answering service, but there is even more you can do to help end the time-wasting:
Put an end to task-switching by blocking out your calendar and giving your full attention to one thing at a time per time block. Log out of social media, turn off your ringer, and really focus on the task at hand without interruptions.
This is really effective when you stack multiple of the same tasks together. For instance, you need to prepare documents for court for 3 different cases. Stack them up and tackle them all during the same block of time. Need to go through your email? Same thing! Set a block of time and go through all your emails at that time only. Need to meet with your clients? Set up all of your meetings to be the same day so that you can focus solely on those instead of breaking up your workday and losing time.
Check out the other articles from this month’s newsletter:
https://backofficebetties.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Back-Office-Betties-Primary-1.svg00Emilyhttps://backofficebetties.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Back-Office-Betties-Primary-1.svgEmily2021-02-26 22:46:282023-09-22 12:35:11Finding The Time To Make More Money
If you’ve been following the recent news, you’re probably aware of the massive winter storm that hit Texas and caused many power outages, lack of water, and some pretty critical conditions that Texas wasn’t equipped to handle.
At Betties, our team is distributed between California, Arizona, Florida, and Texas. Many of our team members were part of this storm and lost power and water for varying periods of time.
Thankfully, everyone on our team is okay now! Our communities banded together to help each other and our Texas team is no longer without power at the time of writing this. Some of us (okay, I mean me) subsisted on margarita mix and frozen taquitos between power outages – the grocery and water situation is still pretty dire over here – but it could have been so much worse.
Meanwhile, the hard-working team members outside of Texas kicked it into gear and held our company together so that our clients wouldn’t feel the effects. I have to say, the Betties are truly rockstars!
With that said, if you were also affected by the storms in Texas, please let me know if there is anything that I can do to help you. I wish you all warmth and happiness!
xo, Emily LaRusch
Check out the other articles from this month’s newsletter:
https://backofficebetties.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Back-Office-Betties-Primary-1.svg00Emilyhttps://backofficebetties.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Back-Office-Betties-Primary-1.svgEmily2021-02-26 22:45:092023-09-22 12:29:19Letter From The CEO
https://backofficebetties.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Back-Office-Betties-Primary-1.svg00Emilyhttps://backofficebetties.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Back-Office-Betties-Primary-1.svgEmily2021-02-26 22:43:072023-09-22 12:29:32Betties Favorite Recipe | Roasted Red Pepper Pasta
Officevibe is an online tool that enables you to keep track of employee morale through anonymous feedback.
You can create custom surveys with polls and text-based questions or use Officevibe’s pre-made templates. Surveys are sent to employees by email and are answered anonymously. For text-based questions, however, you can give your employees the option to answer anonymously or not.
This tool helps management stay aware of employee morale and the effects it has in the workplace. Allowing your team to speak candidly about problems and experiences makes for better employee retention and relations.
Track responses and engagement rates over time, broken down into 10 key metrics. Officevibe also allows you to schedule 1:1s and provides guidance for managers on responding to feedback and growing within their leadership roles.
Snagit is a screen capture and recording software.
Snagit is a great tool to create video tutorials and how-tos. You can record your screen and audio or take and edit screenshots. Their editing features include drawing tools, text boxes, arrows, directions, etc. Use their templates to transform your screenshots into step-by-step instructions or manuals.
These features save you time and confusion explaining processes and training new employees. New employees, especially, take in so much information that it’s impossible to remember every detail. Video and image tutorials make it easy for them to go back and review. (And you won’t be interrupted with questions either!)
Pricing: One-time fee of $49.99/user with discounts for more users.
Similar to Snagit, Screencastify is a Google Chrome extension that allows you to record your screen and create instructional videos.
You can record your tab, whole screen, or webcam only. A great feature is the ability to embed your webcam anywhere in the recording. (Hello to your talking head in the corner.) Screencastify also has great annotation tools such as mouse spotlighting, a drawing tool, and click highlighting.
The videos are easy to share and save. Recordings auto-save to your Google Drive, and you can export them as MP4, MP3, or even animated GIF! If you want to upload directly to YouTube, that’s an option too.
Pricing: $0 with a 5-minute recording limit or $49/year for unlimited.
UberConference is an online video conferencing software.
UberConference simplifies video conferencing – no pins, passwords, or downloads required! It’s easy to switch between camera and voice only during the call, and individual callers will be highlighted while speaking. You’ll never have to ask, “Who just said that?” again. Screensharing is quick and easy, and settings can be toggled to allow any caller to share.
After meetings end, UberConference provides you with a detailed summary of what happened and a link to the recorded meeting. The summary will include who was on the call, action items, and voice transcriptions of everything said. You can even search through the transcriptions for keywords.
Teramind is a computer monitoring software with a multitude of features.
The main purpose of Teramind is to record and collect data from employees’ computers. Teramind also serves as a way to protect private information and put in place restrictions and permissions.
The following are only some of the features that Teramind offers:
Monitor Recording – Watch employees’ screens live and access the recordings later.
Administrative Access – Take full control of monitored computers at any time. This feature is fantastic for troubleshooting tech problems with your team.
Audio Recording – Record audio picked up through the computers’ microphones and listen live or access recordings later.
Keyboard Monitoring – All keystrokes and copy/paste operations are logged – including passwords. Use this feature to ensure strong passwords are being used and not repeated.
Email Tracking – Save all email information and set up alerts to notify when mail is sent to non-corporate or suspicious hosts.
File Transfer Tracking – Track files’ movement through systems and block access to certain folders or locations. This is a first-line defense against data leaks!
Printed Document Data – Collect information on printed files and print requests. Set alerts for attempted printing of sensitive data.
Productivity Evaluation – Monitor active vs. idle time and create custom productivity indicators. Analyze how your employees’ time is spent by minute-to-minute activity monitoring.
Website Monitoring – Create notifications for when entertainment, off-limits, or suspicious websites are accessed.
All of the information tracked and monitored is easy to search through with a variety of metrics.
Coassemble is an online platform designed to create training courses for your employees.
Coassemble lets you easily create online courses for anything you need. Split your courses into sections and add quizzes or checkpoints throughout. Embed videos, images, and audio anywhere you want. And don’t stress too much, you can make updates and changes at any time.
There are 40+ templates to choose from when creating each question or presentation page. Coassemble lets you completely customize your courses to your brand with headers, logos, background colors, and more.
It’s easy for your employees to enroll themselves through a direct link, or you can assign them courses through Coassemble. You’ll have access to all the data you need, including reports showing completion rates as well as grades and checkpoint completion.
Paperform is a flexible online SaaS platform that provides you with all-in-one tools for various business solutions.
Paperform combines both thoughtful design and serious digital smarts. From conditional logic, guided mode, and calculations to rating, rank, and appointment fields you can create solutions for all your needs.
The drag-and-drop functionality, in-app editor, and 25 question types offer you the opportunity to create from scratch. Designed to be as simple as writing a document, you don’t need to be tech-savvy to customize backgrounds, tweak colors, change fonts, and add or edit images and videos anywhere on the page.
Don’t want to start from scratch?
Design fully customizable forms, quizzes, and surveys, take payments, schedule appointments, and perform complex calculations using one of their 500+ templates. If you need it, they have it.
Forms can be embedded in your website or shared directly with a unique URL. You can use your form to process payments through Stripe, PayPal Business, Braintree, and Square. Paperform even has its own scheduling software that integrates with its forms.
Pricing: From $20/month when paid annually for their essentials plan
Design Pickle is a flat-rate custom design and illustration service.
With Design Pickle’s flat-rate plans, you can request unlimited designs with unlimited revisions. All of your requests will land in a queue, and you can rearrange their order at any time. Design Pickle promises a 2-3 day turnaround on all requests. For their Graphic Design Pro plan, they promise same-day delivery.
Create unlimited brand profiles and work with one designated designer who will get to know you and your vision personally. Design Pickle’s clean and simple interface makes it easy to request designs and communicate with your designer.
Pricing: $400/month when paid annually for their basic plans
Acuity is an online scheduling system that makes managing your calendar easy.
Acuity offers a highly customizable experience and a clean interface. On the back end, you can organize your appointment types by color and set custom automatic reminders by email and/or text for each appointment. On the front end, your scheduling page can be customized with background colors, and pictures and descriptions linked to your appointments.
Clients can schedule themselves through your customized scheduling link, or by a direct link to each appointment. Your calendar will auto-adjust for time zones, and clients can pay for appointments and add-ons and fill out paperwork during the scheduling process.
Trello is a free online collaborative productivity platform.
Trello lets you create boards with lists and cards. Work by yourself on a private board or invite team members to collaborate.
Create a board for your team and assign tasks to each member by creating their own list. You can set a list to ‘watch’ and get notified when changes occur. Each card is customizable with formatting, to-do lists, and pictures. You can also add deadlines and customized labels.
Simply drag and drop cards from one list to another. As a bonus – their mobile app is excellently adapted making it easy to stay on track on the go.
Stripe is an API software for customizable payment solutions.
With Stripe, you can create easy-to-navigate payment pages for everything:
One-time checkouts
Recurring payments or subscriptions
Usage-based billing
& more
Their software is optimized for any device and carries from one to another seamlessly. Customize invoice templates to match your brand with color choices, and all the fields you need for one-time charges or recurring payments.
Clickfunnels will help you build beautiful pages with an easy drag-and-drop builder that guides your visitors through your website and prevents them from getting lost or leaving. Clickfunnels helps you lead your customers through the sales process by:
Introducing your business
Demonstrating your services or products
Bringing them to a landing page with the information they need to contact you.
OneDrive is a personal cloud storage system by Microsoft.
Access your files from any device. Your phone, laptop, desktop, tablet, etc. Create shared folders to collaborate with coworkers and avoid zipping and emailing large files. OneDrive will also keep everyone’s files safe in case of unfortunate events such as lost or broken devices.
Pricing: $1.99/month with OneDrive Standalone with 100GB or Included with Microsoft Office.
15. Sticky Notes App (Microsoft Windows)
The Sticky Notes app on Microsoft Windows is a virtual sticky pad.
It’s simple, and maybe doesn’t sound too exciting, but don’t overlook Sticky Notes! Perfect for taking quick (or long!) notes during a meeting, phone call, or while working on projects. Virtual sticky notes have some advantages over your tried-and-true paper notes.
Make them any size you want – 1 or 2 inches to full screen.
Tuck them away for later – Closing your note doesn’t delete it. The Sticky Notes app keeps a handy list of all your past notes that you can pull from at any time.
Add pictures – Embed pictures right in your note.
Easy formatting – Just click to switch to bold, italics, underlined text, strikethrough, or add bulleted lists.
Change colors – A great way to keep notes organized is color-coding!
DocuSign helps gather signatures in a seamless and secure way, then sends copies of the signed documents to both parties. Easily manage your contacts and client agreements without the hassle of printing, scanning, or faxing.
You can upload your own documents, or you can create new documents and agreements within DocuSign with their templates and brand personalization. With the Business Pro plan, you can also easily accept payments at the time of signing, cutting out yet another step for your clients!
With 62 apps in total, Zoho has everything you need to run your office.
Zoho organizes those 62 apps into 8 categories:
Sales & Marketing
CRM – Everything you need to manage clients and customers.
Campaigns – Send marketing emails to your leads and clients.
Bookings – An online scheduler that allows clients (or coworkers!) to schedule meetings that integrate with Zoho Calendar.
Meeting – Meeting is a video conferencing software that integrates with your Zoho Calendar appointments.
Email & Collaboration
All of your office suite apps such as Mail, Writer, Sheet, Docs, and Calendar.
Cliq – An online messaging platform that lets you stay in contact and collaborate with your coworkers easily. Create groups by department, project, or simply one on one to streamline communication and keep your team just one chat away.
Finance
Books – Similar to Quickbooks, Books keeps your finances organized with a clean and easy-to-navigate interface.
Human Resources
People – Organize your hiring and onboarding process, track attendance and PTO, and manage your company’s departments.
IT & Help Desk
Customer Service
Desk – Organize customer or client conversations and tickets and assign tasks to your team members.
Custom Solutions
Business Intelligence
Zoho has multiple bundle plans, so you can choose the best fit for you.
Pricing: $30/user/month for the all apps included bundle: Zoho One.
https://backofficebetties.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/974287_Giant-List-of-Tools-Blog-RB_Opt4_032521-04.jpg5281000Rachel Bauerhttps://backofficebetties.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Back-Office-Betties-Primary-1.svgRachel Bauer2021-02-23 12:00:072024-03-01 11:14:27The Giant List of Tools That Run Back Office Betties (That Can Help Run Your Law Firm Too)
Are you feeling like there just aren’t enough hours in the day? Do you have way too much work on your plate and too many tasks on your to-do list? And most of that work and too many of those tasks aren’t even billable?
It’s not presumptuous to assume so, considering attorneys report that only 31% of the work they do is billable. No wonder you feel so stretched. You’re busy all day but only able to squeeze in a couple of hours of billable work!
Assuming an 8-hour workday, that’s 5.5 hours or $1,650 lost every day!
Your time is too valuable to give away for free! So how did you end up here, doing just that?
Of course, you know you’re spending too much time doing administrative work, but it still feels like there’s time disappearing into thin air.
The task-switching required to balance this variety of work is a likely culprit.
Task-Switching vs. Multitasking
You multitask every day – you may be multitasking right now. You’ve talked on the phone while driving or listened to an audiobook while making dinner – that’s multitasking. Because multitasking involves doing more than one thing at once, as long as only one (or none) is something that takes specific effort or focus.
When you hear people talk about the benefits of multitasking, keep that in mind.
Task-switching, however, is a wolf in multitasking’s clothing.
Physical things like opening an app, wrapping up work to put on hold, or getting distracted with other things tacks on time between each task.
But you think you have the willpower to stay on track?
Switching tasks takes 16 seconds on average, and people switch tasks 12 times on average every half hour! That right there is 10% of your time… and you can find it out the window.
There are mental aspects to task-switching as well. Your brain takes time switching gears moving from one set of rules to another. You aren’t immediately engrossed and focused when you sit down to go over a document or fill out paperwork. Getting into a productive state takes time. And repeating this process over and over is so time-consuming, that even short mental blocks can cost as much as 40% of someone’s productive time!
Taking phone calls is a common task-switch that’s worse than many, as you don’t know when the calls are coming.
Your brain is in an anxious state knowing that you could hear a ring at any moment, and won’t let you give your full attention to other work.
Just a couple of unscheduled 5-minute phone calls could take upwards of 2 hours from your day… Considering attorneys’ average hourly rate of $300, you could be spending $600 on something a receptionist could do in 20 minutes!
What Can You Do?
The options to overcome the time-sucking task-switching cycle are few:
Stop working on cases.
Stop doing administrative work.
Of course, you can’t stop working on cases. So, you need some help!
If you could afford the help, you’d already have it, right? Intuitively your brain is telling you that money spent is money lost.
But that’s not the case here.
When you spend $20 an hour paying for someone else to do your administrative work, you will see that $20 gone… But when you spend that hour on billable work yourself, you’ll bring in 10-15x that amount.
And neither you nor your receptionist will watch time disappear due to task-switching.
Of course, hiring in-house isn’t the most cost-effective option. Hiring a full-time legal receptionist, for example, would cost you approximately $4,123.60 per month when you factor in employer taxes and benefits. (We did the math.)
Using a virtual legal receptionist service is a great alternative:
You will never have to worry if that call that got missed over lunch was your biggest opportunity this year.
You’ll rest easy knowing every call you get will be answered, and every potential new client will complete the intake process.
You’ll save anywhere from $2,000-$4,000 a month compared to hiring in-house.
You’ll make more money by doing billable work instead of wasting your time on administrative tasks.
You will eliminate the task-switching cycle and take back your time.
You’ll take in more clients and scale your firm thanks to the time you got back.
The take-home is: You can’t afford to spend your valuable time losing money when you could be making it; so you can’t afford not to save money by outsourcing your administrative work!
https://backofficebetties.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/961822_FindTimeMoney_V3_031221.jpg5281000Emilyhttps://backofficebetties.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Back-Office-Betties-Primary-1.svgEmily2021-02-02 20:35:462023-12-04 18:18:33How To Find The Time To Make More Money
Do you have any lead magnets to bring leads into your funnel?
You multitask every day – you may even be multitasking right now. You’ve talked on the phone while driving or listened to an audiobook while making dinner – that’s multitasking. Because multitasking involves doing more than one thing at once, as long as only one (or none) is something that takes specific effort or focus.
If you’ve been following the recent news, you’re probably aware of the massive winter storm that hit Texas and caused many power outages, lack of water, and some pretty critical conditions that Texas wasn’t equipped to handle.
The number of virtual tools you can find online is nearly endless.
Are you feeling like there just aren’t enough hours in the day? Do you have way too much work on your plate and too many tasks on your to-do list? And most of that work and too many of those tasks aren’t even billable?
