Hey guys, welcome to the Path to Warren Podcast Episode 340. Today is a beautiful Wednesday afternoon. I’m going to show you where I’m at. I’m in downtown Atlanta near the Lenox Mall. I’m in the hotel room and a nice Marriott here, but the sun is going down. I wanted to just share what today was like and some of the business development, marketing tips and tools that happened. It was a very productive day. Got out here around lunchtime. I went and had a nice little poke bowl at a neat place I had spent yesterday afternoon narrowing the list down. So I’m calling on attorneys and insurance adjusters. For those that don’t know, we do forensic engineering work. And right now during this very long COVID-19 pandemic, all of the insurance adjusters pretty much seem like they’re working from home. All of the big offices are closed. So where I used to would have just walked in there and talked to somebody and got in the door. And that didn’t work anymore because nobody’s in these big offices, everybody’s working remotely. However, lawyers are a different story. So I focused on marketing to these attorneys. Well, yesterday before I left the office, I had on my list of things to do. I wanted to make sure I made my map. So I make an easymapmaker.com I’ve shared about this before, but with Easymapmaker.com, you can create a simple map by dropping Excel Documents cells from Excel into this Excel spreadsheet. So I took our list of over it’s right at 1000 people, 1000 contacts. I took that list of 1000 people and narrowed it down to run around 200, 250 people. Now who did I pick? Which ones did I decide to go with? I chose the law firms that were like Johnny’s Law Firm, the ones that are not five names lined up in a row. A lot of times the smaller law firms that are like, if the guy’s name is Billy Smith, Smith Law Firm. A lot of times I can get in the door very easily with those law firms. Even if they’re plaintiff firms, those can be very easy to just walk in the door, start talking to the attorneys and have a good conference with them. So I’m back at the hotel room now, but I just wanted to share with you how that went. I had two really good meetings that were just walk in meetings with attorneys. I narrowed the list down. The part I want to talk about is this process. What process did I go through to decide where to stop out of 1000 people on our spreadsheet? I mean, literally it’s like 900 and some people I narrowed it down to these 200 people because it’s like, which ones am I going to be able to walk in the door and talk to somebody? So that was a big criteria was if it was a mom and pop type law firm, a smaller law firm that I can actually get in the door pretty quick. I walked into the first law firm, and there were four attorneys on their website, which that’s a crucial part of this whole thing, is to look up on the website and see who’s there, who does what. I normally like to take the time to do that, because if I’m going to walk in the door, I want to be able to know which attorneys are doing personal injury work, which of the ones are doing workers comp work, which guys are doing insurance, defense, and so on and so forth. So I looked up and there were four people at that law firm, the main person, the main attorney who’s on the building obviously I would love to talk to him, but my experience says you very rarely get that person. So I always like to lead with somebody that I find on the website that looks approachable. Or when I look at their BIOS, there’s something in there. Like, maybe they went to Clemson University, which is where I went. Or maybe this one lady was an insurance adjuster. And I was like, oh, I could talk to her about the insurance companies that we call on. So I walk into this first law firm, and there’s a receptionist, and this is in a real big skyscraper in Atlanta. And I walk into this law firm, and I asked the receptionist, I said, hey, can I speak to Katrina? And she’s like, yeah, sure. 1 second. So she goes to Katrina, and I could hear them. It’s always fun because you hear what they say. Sometimes I can hear her talking to somebody. She’s like, Matt Warren is here. Matt Warren, with Warren Engineering. And the paralegal, you could hear her open the lawyer’s door. And it was like, Matt Warren with Warren Engineering. And she was like, So the paralegal comes out, and before the paralegal comes out, the receptionist says she’ll be right out. Somebody to be right out. So the paralegal comes out and she’s like, yes, Hi. And I said, Hi, my name is Matt Warren. We do forensic engineering. And I handed her our paperwork. It’s some blogs in a black book. We call it our black book. It’s got our team of experts in it. And I was in the area. I was working with Michael right down the road. Michael’s an attorney. Do you know Michael? She’s like, I’ve heard of him. I said, okay, we were working with him. He had an injury involving a commercial dryer that hurt somebody. We have a injury case with him, and I just thought I’d come by and say hello. I saw that you did insurance adjusting prior to becoming a lawyer. That’s great. I said, we call on insurance adjusters as well, and we help them with their cases as well. She’s like, okay. So I was still talking to the paralegal, but it didn’t take very long. The paralegal said, Hold on one second. Let me go get Christina. I think her name was let me get Christina. And so she tells me to go sit down in the conference room. And so I kind of wait in the hallway, and she goes and gets the law your lawyer comes right out. And she says, oh, hey, come on in. Let’s go sit here and talk. So the paralegal kind of screened me a little bit and saw that I was legit. The lawyer comes out, we sit down, we start talking about how she does a ton of car wreck cases. And I talked to her about black boxes and how black boxes, when somebody gets in a car wreck, these black boxes, you’re able to see the last 5 seconds of data right before the car wreck. You could see if the person slammed on the brakes. You could see if they swerve left, if they swerve right, if they did nothing. You could see all of that with this black box, if the car has it. And she’s like, oh, yeah, that’s right. And she was talking about all these different car wrecks she’s had. And she said, well, what else do you guys do? And at this point, she was looking at our expert card, and she flipped it over, and she was looking at all that we do. And she says, well, I do a lot of premises liability work. And that’s where somebody slips, falls or trips and falls. The idea there is that you’re blaming the premises for a problem with their restaurant or their curb or whatever. If they’re plaintiff attorneys, they call it premises liabilities cases because they’re blaming the premises owner, the defendant, they’re blaming them. If it’s a defense case, you call them tripping falls, or you call them slip and falls because that puts the onus on the person that fell. So we started talking about these premises liability cases, and I talked to them about how we have an expert, Steve Hunt, who does that work, and he’s been doing this 40 years. So he’s being very selective about his cases. But I said, let me show you what his bio looks like. And I pulled him up on my phone, and I said, he told me not to market him, but if you’ve got premises liability cases, Steve Hunts the right person for that. And she’s like, oh, that’s great. Yeah. And she said, the problem with these premises liability cases is getting enough damages where it justifies hiring an expert. And I said, totally. I said, there have been some cases, though, where this old lady fell in a parking lot at, like, a CVS, and they were blaming the manager because he knew about it. The big hole in the asphalt in the parking lot. He knew about it but didn’t fix it. It was written up on his management report where they had done a walk around per month or per week or whatever. And the owners of the place didn’t fix it. Don’t quote me on that. But I was able to talk to it enough. Like, we had had those kind of cases. So that was really neat. But we had a good 20 minutes. I was able to give her the lawnmower story. I talked to her about how Jeff, my father, started the company, and he was a young boy, wanted to cut grass. I went through the whole lot more story. I don’t want to get into all that right now, but I told a lot more story. I always do that if I feel like they like us. And it’s a good emotional story. It’s trauma. It’s where my dad lost his finger in an accident when he was cutting grass with a young boy. And that’s a machine safeguarding case. But it really leads into how he turned into being a forensic engineer, helping people keep people from getting hurt. I really try to tell that on all of my plaintiff cases. And that was a really good stop. We left there. I gave her a tape measure that’s got Warren on it. It was just a really good call. Then I went down the road, and my next stop was this other law firm. And let me just say this. So after I stopped for lunch, I told you I got a Poke bowl. I then walked right next door to this coffee shop. I had a 1:30pm call with our Meagan and my tax Lady, Meredith. We’re trying to set up a SEP IRA for Meagan for retirement. And I needed a place to sit down and pull up a document. So I found this coffee shop. I did that right after lunch. It was at 1:30. And from that until about 2:15. I did my numbers, updated my numbers on my spreadsheet, and I sent a few emails that needed to go out because I got some emails while I was driving to Atlanta. I did my emails. But then the important part I want you to know about business development is what I did was I pulled up the easy map maker that had already made the day before. I was able to look on my phone, see where I was. I saw 285 and some other road. And I was like, okay, I’m right here. So the closest law firm for me to go to would be this one, this one and that one. And I write up my number. So I got my Journal in the coffee shop, and I put the law firm. I draw square around it, and I put number one. Then I pull them up on the website. On their website. I see. Okay, this law firm has three lawyers. One of them does workers comp. I’m not going to talk to her. The other one does employment issues. I’m not going to talk to that one. But this one does personal injury, and this one does auto wrecks. And this one does product defects. And so I’m able to write down the Attorney’s names at that law firm under that law firm. In my Journal, I narrowed down the active lawyers at that law firm. Well, why do I do that? Well, for a couple of reasons. I want to get real time updates on who’s there and who’s not there. Their website normally has that live current information, but then I’m able to see who does what based on their website. So a lot of times I’m able to see their picture. I’m able to see if they’re smiling, if they look like they’re kind of an angry person, if they’re a happy person, if they’re bubbly, able to see if they’re a flashy person, if they have a pin striped suit on, that’s the person that will see me. I’m able to see if they’re big and tall and gruff or if they’re small and light and weak. I’m able to see if they’re a female, a male, if the female looks like more of a bean counter or if the female looks like she’s a powerhouse. All of those are crucial red flags or crucial targets. I can look at them. And real quickly, I looked at this law firm and was able to pick out Katrina. And I’m telling you the reason why I’m doing this podcast. I’m telling you that I’ve got a skill for that. I’ve got a knack for that. I’ve done that for many years, not just with this firm, but with my solar business, with my pine straw business. I can tell which people will meet with me based on what they’re wearing, how they’re smiling, what they look like. You could just tell if they’re a people person or if they’re not a people person. I could just tell if they have a pen striped suit and they look cocky and their hair is gelled back. They’re an influencer. They’re a quick decision maker. A lot of times to stroke their ego. They’ll meet with me because somebody important is coming to see me or somebody is in the lobby for me. If it’s a bean counter, if it’s somebody that’s been there for 20 years, most likely they’re not high on change. They don’t get excited about people to come and see them. I don’t go to those people. If they look like they are plain, and they’re wearing plain clothes and more of the accountant type lawyer. I don’t go to those lawyers. I go for the flashy ones, the bold ones, the young ones. A lot of the younger ones want to meet new people. And so it’s like, hey, if somebody is in the lobby for me, I’m going to go meet them. I’m going to go see them. So I picked a younger attorney, African American. She was an adjuster. So I felt like I could talk to her because I talked with adjusters all the time, and she does what we need to do. And she wasn’t the main dude. It speaks something when you don’t go and see the main dude, because he always is the one that gets called on. Sometimes if you win points with the other lawyers, if you go see them and not the main dude. And plus, the main dude is always busy. He’s always got young lawyers in his office. He’s always on calls. He’s always busy because he’s the main dude. But the best foot in the door is to go after those young attorneys that are willing to talk to you and grow and learn and add to their database. So I went to the second law firm. The second law firm I had found that when I was at the coffee shop. What I did once I went through these three law firms, I actually had four on my list. But once I got off their information off the website, then I went to our Claritysoft. That’s our software we use for our customer, our CRM, where we keep all our customer data on marketing and business development. And I was able to see where the second law firm I’m going to stop at the second law firm. We had opened up a case in 2008 and with one lawyer, a young lawyer. And in 2020, we had opened up another case with the main lawyer. I was like, yes, this is perfect. That was the ammo. That was the permission I needed to stop by there. The first law firm. I didn’t need permission. I just stopped by there because I’m right down the road and just wanted to say hello. It works sometimes. It doesn’t work sometimes. But if I have a reason because I’ve done business with them before they’ve called us, before they know about us. The first law firm didn’t know anything about us. The second law firm knew about us because they had hired us before. So I was able to go in there and ask to speak to the main dude first. And I told the receptionist, I said, we’ve worked with Michael on a case involved in a commercial laundry that injured somebody washing machine or something. And she said, oh, really? Oh, that’s great. I said, I just wanted to say hello. I was in town. Just wanted to say hello to him. Is he available? Yeah, he’s here, actually. Let me back up. What I actually said was I went for the young lawyer first. I asked for the young lawyer, and she said, oh, he’s out on a run right now. And I said, okay, well, I just got this stuff to drop off to him, and Mike, the owner. I said, Mike is not here. Oh, actually, he’s here. Yeah, he’s here. Let me go get him. So she goes upstairs and gets him. He comes back down. We had a 30 minutes conversation in the lobby standing up about all these forklift cases where these clients are losing their legs because they get pinched up against the wall and forklifts. He had a crane case. He had a pressure cooker case. He had all kinds of cases. And he’d been using local firms but also firms out of Chicago had crazy high bills. He said they charged him $100,000 on one case to work for him to do the engineering work. And he was kind of stand off as he walked down the steps. When I first got there and this was all about rapport building. And he said, oh, it’s been a while. I said, yeah, what brings you to the area? I said, I’m just in the area knocking on doors saying hello. And then he said, what kind of cases you guys are working? We’re doing all kinds of stuff. What kind of cases do you have? And I started out with auto cases. I said we’re doing a bunch of car wreck cases because plaintiff attorneys always have car wreck cases. And he said, no, I’m not doing much of those. But he’s like I am doing a lot of crane cases and forklift cases, lift cases and pressure cooker cases that burn people. So we had long talk. And the next step is I’m going to have our expert John Phillips reach out to them about these forklift cases tomorrow. We could have gotten on the phone today but I was just brain dead. I’m just going to have John reach out to him and talk to him tomorrow. But I’m back in the hotel now going to find me something to eat. I just thought I’d share a little bit about the business development. I’m really good. I’ve determined that. I always loved B to C business but I love B to B business to business. I really have got a lot of history with B to C business to direct consumer talking directly to the client. But I love dealing with the businesses. So we’re like dealing with these attorneys that are then dealing with the client. Our client is the client that works for another client. Anyway, it was a great day. I’m tired. It’s been a long day. Just wanted to check in. I’ll give you one more view here of the city for those that are on YouTube. The old Sun’s going down downtown skyline of Atlanta. Hope you have a great night. Thanks so much for listening. And remember Mama always said make a contribution. Have a great night.
