When a patient needs an operation, a good surgeon gets as much information as possible from the patient before recommending a course of action or providing a quote. By taking this approach, the surgeon can provide a better, more informed experience for the customer and avoid being sued for malpractice.
Meet with the Right Person
Occasionally you may have IT professionals or sales representatives who schedules an initial consult with you and just wants a quote. This is a trap: the IT guy is price shopping. Never take an initial consultation with just an IT professional. They are not a decision maker, they don't have budgetary authority, and the expertise you demonstrate will not be relayed to the decision makers. Do everything you can to avoid meeting with only an IT professional.
In the event that an IT professional books an initial consultation with you, inform them that your leadership requires that you meet with a decision maker from the firm and you'll need to reschedule. The IT/sales guy is welcome to attend - you're not trying to be difficult - but those are just the rules you have to follow.
You should only take meetings with the Managing Partner or the Firm Administrator.
Take a Consultative Approach
In the migration business, firms don't pay you for what you do, they pay you for how you make them feel:
- Do you understand their old system?
- Do you understand their data?
- Do you project confidence?
Don't rush to get a quote in front of the client. Instead, take your time and meet with the firm at least twice before providing them with the quote.
Before Meeting 1: Introductory Email
In your early conversation with the client, tell them:
- You look forward to meeting with them
- You're going to send them an NDA via HelloSign/DocuSign so you can have an in-depth conversation about their data
- On your initial call, you'd like them to walk you through their existing software and how they use it.
After your initial email, determine if there is anything special you need to know about their source app.
The UniversalMigrator.com website will help you speak confidently to your prospect even when you're discussing apps you haven't migrated FROM before.
Here's how to access that information:
- Go to UniversalMigrator.com
- Click on Migrate From
- Choose an App (like ProLaw)
- Notice the list of everything that migrates FROM the application.
- IMPORTANT:
- This the list of all the data Universal Migrator backs up.
- This is not everything that restores into the destination system.
- Scroll down and notice the list of apps you can migrate TO. Skip this for now.
- Scroll to the "What a Migration Specialist Should Know..." section
- This section has key information you should know about the application you're migrating FROM.
Meeting 1: Introductory Call
During this call, you want to meet-and-greet the firm and their data.
- Ask them to talk through the deficiencies in their old software and their goals for their new one.
- Ask if they've decided on the final destination or if they're still considering other options.
- Have them walk you through the key areas they use in their old software so you can make sure everything will be fully mapped correctly.
- If they are coming from a web-based system, ask for a login so you can review the data with an engineer.
- If they are coming from an on-premise application, ask for a backup so you can review the data with an engineer.
- Are there any key areas of their data they want to cleanup/reorganize as part of the migration.
Additionally, you should answer the following questions:
- What data migrates?
- What should be migrated?
- When is the best time to migrate?
- How long does the migration take? How long will they be unable to work?
- What order does the data migrate?
Depending on how the conversation goes, you might also want to cover these topics:
- What happens if something doesn't migrate right?
- Can you just migrate documents?
- Do you really need a migration workstation?
Let the client know that, after they provide access, it will take a few days for you to review their data and provide them with a migration quote.
If they are hesitant to share a login or a backup, let them know the review was helpful but you need to look at things in the backend to give them a quote.
After Meeting 1: Take a Preliminary Snapshot
After this first meeting:
- Use Universal Migrator to create a preliminary snapshot of their data
This will allow you to perform a technical review of their data and provide an accurate quote.
Meeting 2: Post-Data Review
Once you have reviewed the data, you should set up another meeting with the firm. On this call, you should discuss how much the migration will cost and why.
Any quotes you provide must comply with the pricing requirements.- Start by telling them they have a lot of data and the project is complex.
- Then tell them how much the migration will cost.
- Finally, tell them why the migration will cost that much. You should highlight the following things:
- How many total records
- How many contacts
- How many matters
- How many custom fields
- How many documents
- The work involved in any cleanups they want done.
These notes should be recorded in your playbook.
Once you have discussed the above
- Ask the client to pick a migration date
- Create the migration calendar items.
- Ask the client to pay your initial deposit.