Yesterday, I talked about using a special offer to get prospects on your list to hire you instead of another attorney. But what if they’re not ready to hire an attorney? How can you persuade them to do so?

Send them to school.

In your blog posts, newsletter, seminars, and private conversations, you must educate people about why they need an attorney, and why it should be you.

If they don’t know they have a problem, they’re certainly not going to do anything to resolve it. If they aren’t aware of the seriousness of the problem and the potential consequences, they still may not do anything. And if they don’t know the options that are available, they may think they don’t have any.

Your job is to continually make them aware of these problems and your solutions. But you can’t simply tell them, you have to show them, by telling them stories

My eighth grade history teacher made history come alive by telling stories about the people who lived it. Hearing about George Washington’s life, his struggles and victories, we not only learned about that period in our nation’s history, we were affected by it. We not only understood what it was like, we felt it.

If your prospects don’t feel something, if you simply deliver a steady stream of facts, they will eventually tune out. The facts are boring. Talk about people.

Pepper your messages with stories about people who are similar to your prospects. Give them a face and a name if possible. Describe their background. Talk about their problem and the pain it caused them. Or about the opportunity you helped them take advantage of. And then, talk about how this relief from pain or pleasure from gain. . . made them FEEL.

Because if you want your reader to do something (i.e., hire you), you have to transfer to them the feelings of other people who were in the same boat.

If you are allowed to use testimonials, do so. But a well told story can achieve almost the same effect.

But wait. You’re not done. In addition to stories of relief from pain or achievement of gain, you need to tell stories about people who didn’t take action, or took the wrong action. They did nothing, and lost. Or they delayed and missed out. Or they hired the wrong lawyer and wound up worse than when they started.

Success stories and tales of disaster. You need both.

And yet they still may do nothing. Why? Because. . . they don’t want to.

In “The Seven Reasons Prospective Clients Don’t Hire an Attorney,” I said that of all the reasons people don’t hire an attorney the most difficult to overcome (and the most frustrating) is, “No Want.”

If they don’t want it, they don’t want it. Why is that? I really don’t know. And as the late Jim Rohn used to say, “I wouldn’t enroll in that class.”

Keep them on your list. Continue to educate them. Keep telling them stories. One day, they may see the light. Maybe when someone they know encounters the very issue you’ve been warning them about. It’s like people who won’t do any exercise or quit smoking until their brother or best friend drops dead of a heart attack. That’s a story they can’t ignore.

In the mean time, don’t worry about it. Focus on the “easy to get” clients.