Make It Stick

Eight Strategies to Make Your Business Development Training
More Effective

On average, law firms are losing $74,100 in revenues per lawyer each year. Today, lawyers are billing nearly 160 fewer hours than they did a dozen years ago. This stark reality was revealed in the recent state of the industry study by The Center for the Study of the Legal Profession at Georgetown University Law Center and Thomson Reuters Legal Executive Institute. The slack in demand is being driven by a variety of factors, all of which have been well-documented. But one factor that is not being talked about is the state of the business development training and coaching that firms use to build their business development capabilities in the firm.

While there is a renewed focus on business development in general, there is not much of a focus on the training, learning and development required to assure the success of this growth strategy. A recent survey of 30 large law firms conducted by eLegal Training found a myriad of challenges and inefficiencies in the current state of business development training in law firms. We took those findings and our own experience reviewing and designing business development training programs to recommend a number of steps law firm leaders can take to improve the quality and effectiveness of their business development training and coaching programs.  

Conduct a training needs assessment before designing the training program

People are different, have different needs and learn in different ways. They have different styles of learning, preferences for learning, start at different levels and have different time constraints for learning. Before designing a training program, perform a needs assessment to identify the unique training requirements of each main practice area in the firm and the lawyers targeted for the learning. Identify and map out the practice area’s unique business development methodology and processes and then design the training program to those specifications. Then, survey learners for how they want to learn, how they want to access the training and what mediums they prefer to be trained through as well as how best to reinforce the training throughout the workday. Deliver the training in the modalities that the various groups of learners prefer.

Focus on skills, not just knowledge

Telling is not training. Knowing what to do is not the same as being able to do it. Just ask anyone who has been told how to parallel park but hasn’t actually tried to parallel park. They learn quickly that knowing what to do in theory doesn’t mean you’re able to do it in practice. It takes practice to learn to parallel park well. The same is true of business development.

Training that gets results builds knowledge and skills. Knowledge tells you what to do but skills tell you how to do it. Knowledge can be tested but skills must be observed. Practice, role playing, exercises, group discussions and other techniques can provide skill-building opportunities to hone the skills of business development. Coaches and mentoring can also be good ways to provide, not only post-training reinforcement, but also the forum to practice applying the knowledge the lawyer gained in the training.

Understand the Differences in Methodology Between Practices

One size fits all training doesn’t fit all. Practice areas are different and tend to emphasize different strategies that work best to attract clients or win engagements. The litigator’s marketing dilemma, the idea that ‘you can’t encourage a company to get itself sued’ is an example of how the marketing of a litigation practice is different from the marketing of a transactional practice. The urgency of the need for legal services and whether or not the solution is optional for the company affects the business development process.

For instance, legal solutions can cause disruption to business processes that requires internal stakeholders to weigh in on the decision. A major law suit may not require much consensus among the stakeholders – the company has to respond. But an acquisition or a change to a contract can require more review inside the company before the decision is made to hire a lawyer. Understanding the client decision experience and designing the business development training to accommodate the client’s informational needs and decision points is particularly important in the legal industry and will make the training much more effective for the lawyers in each practice area. 

Design a Supportive Experience for the Learner

Business development is a social skill. Social skills rarely become expert skills in isolation. Lawyers interface with numerous others throughout the learning process including practice group leaders, firm leadership, professional staff and administrative assistants. Those that can influence or support the lawyer’s learning should get exposure to what the lawyer is learning, especially the program’s learning objectives, methodologies and strategies. Language is the most important determinant of culture. The language that evolves in a business development training program often becomes a mental shortcut for otherwise complex concepts. Teaching the support personnel and leadership these concepts helps to expedite the learning, improve results and build a business development culture in the firm.

Incorporate Instructional Design into Your Training

Instructional design simplifies learning for the learners. Through careful planning, it identifies the critical skills and the easiest and most effective ways to teach learners the information and skills they need. As a result, the learning process is shortened, objectives are met more easily, and resources are optimized. Good instructional design improves the return on your training investment.

Too often, law firm business development training programs don’t undergo a rigorous instructional design review process. That means that the training did not articulate clear learning objectives to guide development and instruction of the program. It can also mean that the specific skills required to accomplish the learning objectives have not been clearly identified and the proper instructional techniques such as exercises, quizzes and case studies have not been incorporated to ensure the skill is taught. Frequently we see training that has not been sequenced into logical learning paths where higher level skills are built upon lower level skills. An instructional design disciple also will require that the program clearly states how outcomes will be measured, an important component to build support and demonstrate results for the investment in training.

Provide Multiple Training Modalities to Appeal to Different Learning Styles

The vast majority of training in law firms is done in lecture-style workshops, typically created in house and done within an hour. It mirrors the training styles ingrained in law school. But successful programs incorporate training delivered through multiple mediums and accommodate different learning styles such as in podcasts, video or eLearning as well as lecture-style workshops. Multiple mediums enable people to take advantage of the training in a way that works best for their unique learning style and preferences. And putting the training online enables learners to access the information as much as they need it or even just when they need it.

Incorporating learning styles into your program’s design extends the appeal of the program and its effectiveness. There are seven different learning styles, all of which should be incorporated into your training program. Most learners access several learning styles but tend to prefer one or two over the others. The learning style preference can change over time. If your learning style is:

·        Visual (spatial), you prefer using pictures, images, videos and spatial understanding.

·        Aural (auditory), you prefer using sound as in listening to a podcast.

·        Verbal (linguistic), you prefer using words, both in speech and writing. Verbal learners learn best by reading.

·        Physical (kinesthetic), you prefer using your body, hands and sense of touch to experience new information. Role playing, mock situations and other techniques can accommodate this learning style.

·        Logical (mathematical), you prefer using logic, reasoning and systems-thinking to learn new information. You want information that is logically sequenced and factual.  

·        Social (interpersonal), you prefer to learn in groups or with other people.

·        Solitary (intrapersonal), you prefer to work alone and use self-study.

Design Post-Training Reinforcement into Your Program

Have you ever crammed for an exam only to forget most of what you learned 30 days later? That’s because the brain holds information in short-term memory and does not automatically feed it to long-term memory. The brain has to be told to store that information in long term memory.

Reinforcement is how you do transfer information from short term memory to long term memory. Training reinforcement happens when you provide strategic content as a training follow-up to help the brain recall and reuse information. Doing this several times helps to transfer that information to long-term memory. Without training reinforcement, the brain’s natural cognitive processes flush that information away.

While there are several factors that go into the amount of forgetting that happens and the speed in which it happens, the body of research indicates that people forget approximately 50 percent of training within just one hour, and 70 percent after 24 hours. Within 30 days, that amount of forgetting increases to 90 percent unless something is done to help learners retain the most important information.

Reinforcement needs to focus on the most critical, block-building information and occur sequentially after the training. Most learning professionals advise reinforcement happening immediately after the training, again in a few hours after, two weeks post training and again after four weeks. The repetition and engagement designed into a reinforcement program will multiply the retention of the information.

It's not difficult or complicated to add post training reinforcement to your training program, it’s just not often done and certainly not done in a way that reinforces the most critical skills and knowledge in the training. Types of post-training reinforcement content can include:

·        Quizzes with multiple choice and/or short answer questions

·        Surveys and polls

·        Short videos on similar topics

·        Case studies with questions and comments related to the material

·        Emails and messages with facts, statistics, tips and techniques related to the materials

We don’t have data on what law firms do to reinforce their training. But we do have information on the non-law world. The statistics there don’t paint a pretty picture. In companies with a sales force, less than half of all companies provided post-training reinforcement. But companies that did incorporate post-training reinforcement saw a 34% increase in the number of sales reps that achieved their sales quotas. According to Richardson, a leading sales training company, companies who use post-training reinforcement are able to increase the retention of the training content 87%.

Integrate and Align Coaching with Business Development Training

Coaching and training are not an either/ or proposition. You need both. And lots of it. But too often, one or the other is missing or not fully utilized. The biggest problem however is that the two are rarely integrated together. This results in two or more methodologies being taught often resulting in conflicting priorities and divergent strategies.

Business development methodologies taught through training should be reinforced in the coaching sessions. And coaching programs should be integrated with the business development training to ensure it reinforces what is being taught in the training.

The disconnect is especially problematic and more difficult to control when different outside resources are used for training and coaching. Sometimes multiple vendors are used. Too often, their methods have not been vetted against an approved program. This can lead to confusion, conflicting priorities and poor results.

A well-designed training program can improve the results of the training tenfold. And that translates directly into the revenues and profitability of the firm. Without it, you might as well forget about training because, well, it’ll be forgotten anyway.

About the Author

Eric Dewey, MBA provides marketing and practice development consulting, business development coaching and training, elearning and course development, instructional design and LMS system management to law firms throughout the U.S. As the former chief marketing executive in four large law firms and a consultant to dozens more, he has successfully coached hundreds of lawyers to help them focus their practice, build competitive advantage and attract profitable clients. He launched eLegal Training, LLC, an online business development training, coaching, resource and referral community for lawyers with Quimbee.com at the start of 2020. The platform features 50+ learning modules, a knowledge library, gamification, custom dashboards, automated reporting and reminders, and coaching to help lawyers achieve their goals faster and more efficiently.

Study Identifies 8 Business Development Training Challenges

Business development is a top growth strategy for most law firms. But to be successful, firms need to build a ‘culture of business development’, something aspired to by many but rarely achieved. A culture of business development requires instilling in the firm a shared client development process, developing the necessary skills (not just knowledge) and coordinating efforts across individuals, practice areas, industry groups and client teams. That’s no easy task. A comprehensive training and business development program that ensures everyone in the firm knows how to grow their individual practice is the first step to achieving that desire business development culture.

Key findings of the survey found that: •           Nearly 70% of firms reported a preference for onsite, classroom type training programs, despite the cost and lack of results •           Only 12% use some form of measurement to track the success of training initiatives •           93% believe business development training programs shouldn’t run more than an hour or less. •           70% of law firms use coaching (group and/or one-to-one coaching) as a form of training. •           50% depend upon the marketing staff to provide the training; 12% use lawyers; 15% use outside consultants; and 15% use professional development staff.

One recent study, however, concludes that the current state of business development training in law firms is woefully underdeveloped compared to other industries. The study of 30 large law firms confirms the need for a comprehensive approach to business development training. Business development training is clearly a top priority. Eighty percent of law firms surveyed planned to offer business development training in the next 12 months. But the study also found a myriad of challenges and inefficiencies in the current state of business development training in law firms.

After completing the written survey, we conducted interviews with numerous marketing and training professionals in large law firms to gain a deeper understanding of the survey results and the best practices in law firms. From this survey data and the in-depth interviews, we arrived at eight key insights.

1. The vast majority of training initiatives are ‘one and done’ programs.

Complex skills and capabilities are rarely developed in a single learning session. Capability requires intentional practice that is repeated over and over again. An isolated, one-time training program will not achieve the same results as a program that can be revisited and reexperienced in the context of real-life situations. Furthermore, skills should be reinforced using a variety of instructional techniques. Many training programs do not use role playing, recorded practice, group discussions, exercises and quizzes to reinforce the skills they are trying to instill in their lawyers.

2. 97% of law firm business development training programs are offered during traditional work hours (meaning the training program must be done at the expense of potential billable hours).

Training during the work day adds a host of hidden costs and challenges including the lost opportunity costs of the billable hours spent in training sessions. It also sacrifices client responsiveness, presents scheduling and attendance challenges, and incurs travel and other costs associated with lawyers taking classroom style, in-person training programs. But is face-to-face training more effective? Research indicates it is not. The Research Institute of America found that eLearning increases retention rates 25% to 60% while retention rates of face-to-face training are very low in comparison: 8% to 10%.

3. The vast majority of training programs have not been formally designed to ensure proper instructional techniques, properly sequenced learning paths or that clear and achievable learning objectives have been met.

Telling is not training. Too often, law firms leave the development and execution of training programs to people who are not themselves trained in teaching. Often, rainmakers are asked to share their knowledge of how to build a practice. But these senior lawyers frequently can’t identify the specific skills they have developed that result in new client engagements, let alone understand how to communicate and measure those skills in others. Generational differences and ignorance of the context in which these senior professionals built their practice can compound the disconnect.

4. Training topics, techniques and methods are rarely coordinated with business development coaching resources, techniques and methods.

The lack of a formal connection between the training curriculum and the coaching program leaves learners without the ongoing support to fully develop the techniques and skills being learned. Practical application in real life situations enables the training to be internalized. But these two important components are frequently developed and implemented separately leaving the potential of each under-realized.

5. Formal metrics, reporting and tracking systems tend to measure attendance or activity but not skills development.

Most training programs do not include the types of instructional assessments which enable training performance to be evaluated and improved. Frequently they monitor attendance or activity levels but don’t assess whether new skills have been learned through the training program. Doing isn’t knowing. Even though ‘activity’ may sometimes result in a new client, knowing how the skills lead to better results is the only way to achieve consistently better performance.

6. Training programs generally do not accommodate generational learning style differences.

Younger lawyers have developed learning styles markedly different than their older counterparts. Millennials are more comfortable consuming new information through videos, podcasts and on online discussion or chat groups. Older lawyers tend to be more comfortable in classroom style lectures.

7. The scarcity of lawyer time forces firms to pack too much information into hour-long presentations.

Because so much information is taught, it can be difficult for instructors to utilize multiple teaching methods that, when used together, can help to ensure learning. Often, time constraints allow only for teacher-centered training but not learner-centered techniques or participatory learning techniques. Furthermore, it is often difficult for lawyers to access the knowledge when they need it in the heat of a client interaction because the information has not been captured and made available internally.

8. Training programs are often one-dimensional and lack the resources and activities that reinforces the learning and skills development.

A survey of 2,500 companies found that those with “comprehensive training programs” have 218% higher revenue per employee and 24% higher profit margins. Yet, most law firm business development training programs don’t provide the multimedia, multi-instructional techniques and resources that build and reinforce learning.

As the eLegal Training study demonstrates, law firms continue to rely on costly, classroom-style instruction led by people without formal training or instructional design knowledge. The importance of a good business development training program can’t be understated. The cost today to deliver a comprehensive, multimedia training program has dropped considerably while the features and resources have increased substantially. Law firms can save 50% to 70% or more in their training budgets and provide a more comprehensive training program by looking to online and mobile learning options.

How to Choose a Specialty Practice Area

I coach lawyers and am often asked how a lawyer with several practice specialty areas should decide which specialty area they should focus on for marketing and business development purposes. Most lawyers know that a specialty practice area can do marketing wonders. And many have multiple areas that they could legitimately claim experience and expertise. But your knowledge and experience isn’t all you should consider. Demand, work sources and competitive rivalry are also factors which will influence whether or not you can get traction in the specialty area.  

For instance, I recently coached a securities litigation lawyer who had particularly strong experience in five areas. He wanted to figure out the two or three that he should focus on and asked my advice on how to narrow the selection- without giving up potential work in any one of the areas.

I suggest attorneys rank each area on four different factors: Experience and Expertise; Demand; Referral Source Flow; and Competitive Rivalry.

Experience and expertise. This is easy. How many matters have you handled in the area, what were the results, what was unique about each and what expertise did you gain in each case. You should be able to demonstrate experience and expertise through case studies, client names, client comments (testimonials) and the content, the articles and thought leadership you can post related to each specialty area. If you can align lots of objective evidence of your experience and expertise, give it a high ranking.

Demand: Probably one of the most important criteria is demand. If the demand is soft, it shouldn’t be an area of focus. Look at the current and your projections for demand in the area. Identify the reasons for the future demand by listing the emerging issues that will lead to work in the area or by citing the specific forces (economics; competition; legislation; etc.) that will cause the future demand. Also name the sources of that demand. List the lawyers or sources of referrals for that work. Give demand a high rank is you see both strong current demand and strong future demand.

Referral Source Flow: Next, look at who in your network are in positions in which they will likely come across cases of this type to refer to you. These are other attorneys, referral or affiliate networks or people who are in positions which may have visibility in matters developing in the area. Rank it high if you get regular and consistent referrals from these sources and you feel educational efforts directed at these sources would continue to feed opportunities.

Competitive Rivalry: Lastly, look at the other lawyers who do work in the specialty practice subject area both in your geographic area, who you know in affected industries and the firms with strong reputations or internet presence in the area. Rank the competitive rivalry high if there are numerous respectable competitors in the specialty area.

Use your judgment. The ranking system is meant simply as a guide to help you think through which specialty practice area has the most potential. 

The Corporate Transactional Lawyer's Non-selling Sales Technique

H

ave you ever wondered why a company fails to engage a lawyer (any lawyer) to fix a problem for which they clearly need a solution? Or, why a company doesn’t follow through on an easy opportunity you’ve presented to them? Have you wondered why you win some engagements quickly while others take forever to get signed? Have you ever suspected that there are politics at work going on inside the company that is keeping you from getting the engagement?

If you’ve been active in business development in the corporate legal industry, you’ve had these questions and experiences.

Selling is hard. Brutally hard. Caring, nice, smart, experienced, business savvy lawyers who proactively reach out to well qualified prospects with proven solutions still fail to close new engagements nine times out of ten. The questions above point to the frustration of selling. But they also provide a clue to an overlooked part of the legal business development process, the legal services buying process.

Legal services buyers have their own unique internal dynamics that must be addressed before they are ready to begin the legal services buying process. In some cases, and with certain practice areas, the process that a company goes through to be ready to buy a solution to an issue, problem or opportunity (IPO) occurs quickly. But in numerous other situations and legal subject areas, the process occurs slowly, in fits and starts, or forces company decision makers through a great deal of internal wrangling and politicking.

Businesses make decisions to hire outside counsel in ways that are unique to each individual business. A company's decisions can change course, stop suddenly, speed up or switch to new partners without warning. We assume that companies who are seeking help with their legal problems are ready to engage the lawyer when they find one that suits their needs and can solve their problems. But for a lot of selling situations, that’s simply not the case. Buyers sometimes use these sales discussions to gather information, think through their own internal challenges and gauge risk and opportunity.

As outside counsel, we don’t have a clear view of this internal company decision-making process. But if we did, it would explain why some engagements are signed quickly while others drag on unsigned; why some work comes from people we hardly know; why you only get small scraps of work and not the big deals; why a company doesn’t respond to genuine offers of assistance or why companies don’t seem to understand what the company actually needs in terms of legal assistance. Most importantly, a view inside the company would expose the myriad of political calculations, business decisions, and historical learnings that shapes a company’s readiness to engage outside counsel.

Not all legal work comes with the same set of motivations and objectives. Some legal work is non-discretionary. That is, the company has few options but to engage outside counsel to assist with the matter. Examples of these situations include ‘bet-the-company’ litigation, corporate filings, regulatory work or investigations. The impetus for this work comes from forces bearing on the company which gives the company little choice in how it will proceed. And in these cases, it must typically act quickly.

On the other hand, some work is discretionary. Sometimes even optional. That is, the project must be prioritized and assigned resources in the context of the business’ other pressing needs and opportunities. Outside counsel’s ability to understand these internal priorities and strategies are limited and often distorted.

​Because of this, legal business development training does not address the earliest phase of the sale funnel, the phase which occurs inside the company before it has decided to engage outside counsel. Conventional training ignores the company’s buying decision process. In doing so, several important opportunities are missed and questions left unanswered which, not only makes us less effective, but inhibits our ability to learn and improve selling methods.

THE BUYING DECISION PROCESS

The complexity of decisions drives the speed in which a company can make a decision. Companies facing complex choices must decide on the strategic importance to the company of the problem or opportunity and tease out the breadth and complexity of the implications any potential solution will have on the company, its operations, customers, partners and resources. As an example, an offer to revise clauses in a technical contract may appear necessary, even simple. But the consequences (or unintended consequences) of revising those clauses can have far reaching affects on the company. Both the lawyer and company stakeholders must carefully consider those implications before they can engage someone to revise those clauses.  

When lawyers call on their business contacts, they don’t typically consider the internal dynamics and criteria that must align to be ready to find and vet solutions and providers. Without this internal alignment, even the most rational and simple decisions can languish in company politics, analysis or budgeting delays. The saying ‘paralysis by analysis’ speaks to this very problem as it describes the competing interests inside the company trying to negotiate consensus and direction.

One assumption of conventional business development training is that lawyers have little influence on the buying-decision process. Instead, they focus on the buying process itself, assume all legal needs require solutions and have buy in, and apply a selling framework without regard to where the company is in their internal negotiations about a solution. That’s a mistake. But take heart. It is a mistake made across numerous industries which sell their dynamic solutions into highly matrixed corporations.

Decisions whether or not to address an issue, fix a problem or seize an opportunity must be balanced against the available resources, the risks and priorities of the company. From the company’s perspective, those that see little risk in a situation or who find the implications of an issue narrow in scope may not be motivated to act. Conversely, problems which have strategic or existential importance for the company and narrow, well understood implications are more likely to be dealt with quickly. Issues or matters which are both strategically important and which have complex and wide-ranging implications for the company will require careful study and consideration. Conventional sales programs don’t start with this understanding and instead apply the same sales formula regardless of how the company may view the problem, issue or opportunity relative to its goals and strategies.

It may seem obvious that companies require each legal need to achieve an ROI or make a ‘business case’ in order to move forward on the project. It is not so obvious that lawyers can help in this process. But they can. And in doing so, they can significantly increase their closing ratios and reduce the number of other lawyers they compete with for that work.

A new selling method offers these and other benefits for professional selling situations and is especially relevant for corporate or transactional lawyers. Decision-Strategy Selling™ is a complement to selling skills training programs and helps attorneys better understand, facilitate and navigate the prospect’s engagement decision and selection process thereby improving the attorney’s selling process. It gives lawyers a framework to better adjust their sales pursuit strategies to accommodate the unique buying experience of their practice area and of their target company prospect. And it teaches lawyers how to stay 'tuned in' to the company's engagement decision process showing them how to shift roles from decision coaching, consultative selling or contractor negotiation roles to move engagements to signature. In most cases, Decision-Strategy Selling™ does not replace the need for consultative selling skills training. It guides lawyers in ow to refine their pursuits in real time to maximize their selling effectiveness and close engagements faster. However, the method is frequently effective in winning engagements without the need to advance to a consultative selling role because, in coaching company representatives through their internal decision process, they become trusted advisers with unequaled knowledge of the unique cultural hallmarks and operational needs of the company. In this sense, it is a form of selling that doesn’t require ‘selling’.

Lawyers who learn Decision-Strategy Selling™ techniques earn trusted adviser more quickly because they learn how to facilitate decisions and avoid using consultative persuasion techniques until it is appropriate. They learn decision coaching techniques that reveal more about the company’s operations, internal relationships and strategic priorities than lawyers who only use consultative selling skills or research tools. And they gain the insights required to formulate pitches that closely align with company needs and priorities, often times eliminating the company’s need for competitive bids. Most importantly, lawyers learn to avoid creating ‘sales pressure’ that leads to adversarial rather than authentic relationships.

Law firms are not known for their business development savviness, let alone their ability to innovate sales methods. But Decision-Strategy Selling™ provides a methodology that is a natural extension of a lawyer’s innate capabilities such as questioning and discovery skills. And creates a new awareness of the phases of selling and the best techniques to navigate the sales process.

Conventional selling skills training suggests building authentic relationships as a condition for sales opportunities. But the byproduct of ‘selling’ is sales pressure which is destructive to authentic and trusted relationships. Decision-Strategy Selling™ eliminates the sales pressure that forms in consultative selling situations because it focuses the lawyer on coaching skills, skills that enhance relationships rather than challenging the relationship.

Decision-Strategy Selling™ provides a simple methodology for quickly evaluating the complexity of a legal services selling situation and enables lawyers to fine tune their business development strategies. It explains the buying decision process and teaches lawyers new skills and questioning techniques that will enable them to move through the three main phases of a legal selling situation more effectively. Lastly, lawyers who use the method will gain greater confidence in business development abilities through a heightened awareness of company buying decision process and their role in sales conversations and the pitch process.

Cultural Fit is Leading Us Further From a Solution to The Lateral Hiring Problem.

A recent report by ALM Legal Intelligence provides some eye-popping statistics on the performance of lateral hires among the AmLaw 200. According to their latest research, lateral recruiting is a risky growth strategy. Laterals among the AmLaw 200 have as much as a 47% failure rate, are only 50% likely to stay five years and failed laterals cost the industry an estimated $2 billion a year! The report goes on to estimate that the average cost of acquiring a lateral partner in 2018 was $2.3 million, including one year of compensation, recruiter fees and other internal costs. Multi-year guarantees are even more expensive.

The research, based on interviews with law firm leaders, suggests that firms don’t do a good job of figuring out cultural fit. One law firm leader commented that “the group didn’t think about how these people would fit in,” As such, the report suggests that cultural fit needs to be amplified in the due diligence and integration processes.

Personality and culture are fuzzy concepts. What’s more likely is that the industry is struggling to identify the metrics which truly drive lateral success. It’s hard to imagine a lateral who brings the majority of their book of business to a new firm not fitting in. ‘Culture’ sound more like a explanation than a cause. With stakes so high, we need to understand the causes of failure and the drivers of success. A focus on ‘cultural fit’ as opposed to practice and client dynamics is leading us further from a solution to the lateral hiring challenge. Culture follows rainmaking. Not the other way around.

In my work with laterals, and as the creator and original co-author of the ALM Legal Intelligence Lateral Hiring Report in 2015, I’ve come to the conclusion that success is best predicted by the practice and client characteristics of the incoming lateral’s book of business. The industry needs a common set of metrics to evaluate the potential for client mobility. No due diligence process in any other industry would be considered complete without this analysis.

A whole new view of the viability of any candidate can be gained by examining the lateral’s client relationships; each client company’s likely risks and motivations for making a move; the cross-servicing depth and entrenchment characteristics; the economics and incentives available to encourage a move; the client company’s reliance on the lateral or other practice areas, among other criteria. The indicators of client mobility, while not yet scientific, do lend a degree of objectivity to the analysis. The above considerations are just a couple of the analysis points that need to be considered for a complete due diligence analysis. This type of analysis requires not only deeper, probing questions by the recruiter but an understanding of business fundamentals, business decision making processes and, to an extent, an investigative curiosity.

Further complicating our due diligence is the fact that what we look for in laterals is also, often times, the qualities that make it hardest for clients to switch firms. For instance, we look for laterals with a large book of originations. A large book is often the result of laterals who have cross sold numerous services into their client companies. That’s a good thing, right? Yes. It’s terrific for the firm who enjoys those deep ties throughout the firm. But not so good for a firm looking to buy those ties. Each additional practice area divides the chance that client company will follow the lateral. A single use practice is much more mobile than a practice which has tentacles into several different practice areas. This common-sense reality is rarely included in the analysis or due diligence process. But it is the reason that groups of laterals are more successfully lifted out than a sole lateral is from a firm. Shouldn’t these factors be included in the Lateral Partner Questionnaire and in candidate interviews?

Who conducts the due diligence interview can also a problem. We might like to think that Partners are the best practice and company diagnosticians but that’s simply not the case. In my years of coaching the most senior partners in the largest law firms in the world, I’ve found that lawyers often have a very difficult time seeing the structural challenges inherent in their practices. They have an even harder time identifying the best strategy to overcome those challenges. The value I bring is as an objective, informed outside observer who can provide the perspective that can help them cut to the strategic focus they need. Why would we think they could adopt the diagnostics necessary for a thorough lateral due diligence process of a potential partner? They don’t. And it is not practical to think they can. The potentiality of a partnership creates its own biases and blindness.

Many firms view the challenge of lateral recruiting as a challenge of finding a supply of qualified candidates. That’s only part of the problem and really a problem that should be dealt with only after a sound vetting strategy is already in place. Fewer candidates that actually work out and meet revenue expectations is a better course of action because it has the added benefit of improving client satisfaction, an enhancing the firm’s recruiting reputation and improving the firm’s investment ROI.

The due diligence process I have long championed requires a deep dive into the lateral’s client mix, relationships and practice synergies. These are objective criteria that can be easily evaluated through the candidate interviewing process. I leave the cultural evaluation to the partners since that is something difficult to see from the outside but is also a self-fulfilling prophesy that bears little on the lateral’s critically important early success in moving clients.

Laterals are counted on to solve all kinds of problems for law firms from entering a new market to boosting revenues to infilling expertise. It behooves us to find a better solution framework. Maybe a loss of $2 billion on revenues of $17 billion is an acceptable cost of doing business. But lateral failures have hidden costs that may be even more costly to firm morale and client satisfaction. It’s time the industry take a more thoughtful approach to lateral hiring and force a more detailed conversation inside the firm about the data points that can predict lateral success.

The Most Important Phase of the Legal Sales Process is Being Ignored – The Legal Services Buying Process.

Have you ever wondered why a company fails to engage a lawyer (any lawyer) to fix a problem for which they clearly need a solution? Or, why a company doesn’t follow through on an easy opportunity you’ve presented to them?

Have you wondered why you win some engagements quickly while others take forever to get signed? Or, have you offered to do a small piece of work, a free assessment or offered to give a second opinion only to have the company ignore your calls and emails?

Why is it that you sometimes get a large engagement from someone who hardly knows you while the person with whom you’ve developed a strong relationship doesn’t hire you for the big deals? Or, why you get the scraps but other equally or less qualified firms get the meaty projects?

Have you ever suspected that more is going on inside the company or that there are politics at work in a prospective company?

If you’ve been active in business development in the corporate legal industry, you’ve had these questions and experiences.

Selling is hard. Brutally hard. Caring, nice, smart, experienced, business savvy lawyers who proactively reach out to well qualified prospects with proven solutions still fail to close new engagements nine times out of ten. The questions above point to the frustration of selling. But they also provide a clue to an overlooked part of the legal business development process, the legal services buying process.

Legal services buyers have their own unique internal dynamics that must be addressed before they are ready to begin the legal services buying process. In some cases, and with certain practice areas, the process that a company goes through to be ready to buy occurs quickly. But in numerous other situations and legal subject areas, the process occurs slowly, in fits and starts or forces company decision makers through a great deal of internal wrangling, politicking and effort.

Businesses make decisions to hire outside counsel in ways that are unique to each individual business. A company's decisions can change course, stop suddenly, speed up or switch to new partners without warning. We assume that companies who are seeking help with their legal problems are ready to engage the lawyer when they find one that suits their needs and can solve their problems. But for a lot of selling situations, that’s simply not the case. Buyers sometimes use these sales discussions to gather information, think through their own internal challenges and gauge risk and opportunity.

As outside counsel, we don’t have a view of this internal company decision-making process. But if we did, it would explain why some engagements are signed quickly while others drag on unsigned; why some work comes from people we hardly know; why you only get small scraps of work and not the big deals; why a company doesn’t respond to genuine offers of assistance or why companies don’t seem to understand what the company actually needs in terms of legal assistance. Most importantly, a view inside the company would expose the myriad of political calculations, business decisions, and historical learnings that shapes a company’s readiness to engage outside counsel.

Not all legal work comes with the same set of motivations and objectives. Some legal work is non-discretionary. That is, the company has few options but to engage outside counsel to assist with the matter. Examples of these situations include ‘bet-the-company’ litigation, corporate filings, regulatory work or investigations. The impetus for this work comes from forces bearing on the company which gives the company little choice in how it will proceed. And in these cases, it must typically act quickly.

On the other hand, some work is discretionary. Sometimes even optional. That is, the project must be prioritized and assigned resources in the context of the business’s other pressing needs and opportunities. Outside counsel’s ability to understand these internal priorities and strategies are limited, and even then, often distorted.

​Because of this, legal business development training does not address the earliest phase of the sale funnel, the phase which occurs inside the company before it has decided to engage outside counsel. Conventional training ignores the company’s buying decision process. In doing so, several important opportunities are missed and questions left unanswered which, not only makes us less effective, but inhibits our ability to learn and improve selling methods.

The complexity of decisions drives the speed in which a company can make a decision. Companies facing complex choices must decide on the strategic importance to the company of the problem or opportunity and tease out the breadth and complexity of the implications any potential solution will have on the company, its operations, customers, partners and resources. As an example, a simple offer to revise clauses in a technical contract may appear necessary, even simple. But the consequences (or unintended consequences) of revising those clauses can have far reaching affects on the company. Both the lawyer and company stakeholders must carefully consider those implications before they can engage someone to revise those clauses.  

When lawyers call on their business contacts, they don’t typically consider the internal dynamics that must align in order to have the consensus necessary to be ready to find and vet solutions. Without this internal alignment, even the most rational and profitable decisions can languish in company politics, analysis or projections. The saying ‘paralysis by analysis’ speaks to this very problem: it is the label we give when companies can’t resolve the disconnects, gaps and competing priorities that prevents internal consensus and a company’s readiness to buy a solution.

One assumption of conventional business development training is that lawyers have little influence on the buying decision process. Instead, they focus on the buying process itself, applying a selling framework without regard to where the company is in this internal consensus about a solution. That’s a mistake. But take heart. It is a mistake made across numerous industries which sell their dynamic solutions into multinational or highly matrixed corporations.

Corporate law firms with dozens of practice and sub-practice areas often find that a single business development method is difficult to adapt to every practice area's selling situation and client type. The litigators of the firm often bemoan sales training because, well, you can’t persuade a company to get itself sued. Indeed, litigation services is a different selling situation than transactional services, which is a different selling situation from advisory services. From the company’s perspective, those that see little risk in a situation or who find the implications of an issue narrow in scope may not be motivated to act. Conversely, problems which have strategic or existential importance for the company and narrow, well understood implications are more likely to be dealt with quickly. Issues or matters which are both strategically important and which have complex and wide-ranging implications for the company will require careful study and consideration.

It may seem obvious that companies require each legal need to achieve an ROI or make a ‘business case’ in order to move forward on the project. It is not so obvious that lawyers can help in this process. But they can. And in doing so, they can significantly increase their closing ratios and reduce the number of other lawyers they compete with for that work. Some estimates project the improvement as high as 600%!

A new selling strategy offers these and other benefits for professional selling situations and is especially relevant for corporate lawyers. Decision-Strategy Selling™ is a complement to selling skills training programs and helps attorneys better understand, facilitate and navigate the prospect’s engagement decision and selection process thereby improving the attorney’s selling process. It gives lawyers a framework to better adjust their sales pursuit strategies to accommodate the unique buying experience of their practice area and of their target company prospect. And it teaches lawyers how to stay 'tuned in' to the company's engagement decision process showing them how to shift roles from decision coaching, consultative selling or contractor negotiation roles to move engagements to conclusion. In most cases, Decision-Strategy Selling™ does not replace the need for consultative selling skills training. It guides lawyers in refining their pursuits in real time to maximize their selling effectiveness and close engagements faster.

Lawyers who learn Decision-Strategy Selling™ techniques earn trusted adviser status more quickly because they learn how to facilitate decisions and avoid using consultative persuasion techniques until it is appropriate. They learn decision coaching techniques that reveal more about the company’s operations, internal relationships and strategic priorities than lawyers who only use consultative selling skills or research tools. And they gain the insights required to formulate pitches that closely align with company needs and priorities, often times eliminating the company’s need for competitive bids.

Law firms are not known for their business development savviness, let alone their ability to innovate sales methods. But Decision-Strategy Selling™ provides a methodology that is a natural extension of a lawyer’s innate capabilities such as questioning and discovery skills. And creates a new awareness of the phases of selling and the best techniques to navigate the sales process.

Conventional selling skills training suggests building authentic relationships as a condition for sales opportunities. But the byproduct of ‘selling’ is sales pressure which is destructive to authentic and trusted relationships. Decision-Strategy Selling™ eliminates the sales pressure that forms in consultative selling situations because it focuses the lawyer on coaching skills, skills that enhance relationships rather than challenging the relationship.

eLegal Training, LLC is offering free one to three-hour workshops for corporate law firms interested in exploring the selling concepts of Decision-Strategy Selling™. Workshop participants will learn a simple methodology for quickly evaluating the complexity of a legal services selling situation and how to fine tune their business development strategies. They’ll be able to explain the buying decision process and will gain new skills and questioning techniques that will enable them to move through the three main phases of a legal selling situation more effectively. And lastly, they will gain greater confidence in business development abilities through a heightened awareness of company buying decision process and their role in networking, sales conversations and the pitch process.

Eric Dewey, MBA, is the Founder of eLegal Training, which creates, produces, manages and hosts short form ‘eLearning’ courses for the legal services industry. He is the creator of Decision – Strategy Selling™, a pre-sale, non-selling process designed for business lawyers that complements and energizes conventional sales training programs. For more information or to schedule a workshop, coaching session or speaking engagement, contact eric@eLegalTraining.com or  visit www.elegaltraining.com.

Decision - Strategy Selling. A Revolution in Legal Sales Techniques.

Two companies have the same legal need. Both companies end up speaking to the same lawyer however they came to that lawyer through two different paths. In the first situation, the company searches for the lawyer to solve their problem. They do an internet search, find the lawyer and hire her almost immediately to solve their problem.

In the second situation, the lawyer seeks out the company who has the problem that they can solve. He speaks to his connections and referral sources, gets an introduction to the company, secures a meeting, and makes a very well-received presentation to the company’s decision maker.

The first situation, in which the company searches out the lawyer, results in a new engagement roughly 30 to 40% of the time. The latter situation, in which the lawyer searches out the company, results in a new engagement less than 10% of the time. The problem is the same, the needs are the same, the solution is the same and the lawyer is the same. Why does the success rate differ so much between these two situations? What does this tell us about what is wrong with selling legal services? 

Conventional business development training programs follow a familiar path: Make connections; build relationships; identify needs; differentiate your service; overcome objections and close the engagement. The process begins and ends with the assumption that identified legal needs lead to engagements.

As popular as this process is, it can’t explain fundamental challenges that we see so often in our business development pursuits. For instance,

·        why a prospect stalls or disengages from the selling process

·        why lawyers with a strong company relationship are not always selected

·        why some engagements get signed quickly and some take months, and

·        why some prospects recognize a legal need but don’t solve their problem.

These situations are the source of frustration for anyone actively engaged in selling legal services. Without a good explanation for this seemingly erratic behavior we conclude business services buyers are, at least sometimes, ‘irrational’ - a characteristic of buyers of consumer goods, but not corporations. Businesses are anything but irrational.

Unknowingly, we have adopted certain assumptions that obscure the fact that our process, and not our lawyers, is fundamentally flawed or, more accurately, incomplete.  We assume that:

·        When companies recognize a legal need, they are inclined to find a solution.

·        The selling process is linear (think sales funnel) and follows specific steps that, if followed skillfully, will advance a prospect to an engagement.

·        Selling is a numbers game. The more contacts we make, the better our chances.

·        Buyers do business with people they know and like. As such, relationships are a required context for the opportunity of new engagements.

·        There is one decision maker. A key to success is in appealing to this person.  

·        There is a single sales method that works for all selling situations, practice areas, industries, buyer types, buying circumstances, etc.  

Conventional business development methods ignore an important part of the legal services selling process: the legal services buying process. Companies have buying processes just as we have selling processes. And those buying processes are the source of much of what frustrates us. It include much more than simply the recognition of a problem and the selection of a provider. It includes a unique, internal process that prioritizes, builds consensus and project outcomes for the array of possible solutions. This internal decision process happens before a company can find a solution or provider. And so far, we’ve ignored that part of the buying and selling transactional process.

We can’t fully understand how buyers buy until we have insight into how buyers decide to buy. We think carefully about what we should do to persuade a prospect, differentiate our services and negotiate the best terms and yet nothing about the company’s receptiveness to our proposed solutions. If a company does not have internal consensus on a solution, no amount of selling, relationship building or negotiation skills will move them.

When a company is ready to buy and has decided on the provider, the only thing to do is to negotiate the terms of the engagement. If the buyer is ready to buy but not set on the particular provider, consultative selling skills can help you to identify needs, differentiate your service, and close the engagement. But we currently don’t have a way to know where the company is in their buying decision process and whether they will be receptive to lawyers educating them about a problem and selling them on their solution.

To illustrate this point further, consider when a company is slapped with a large, bet the company-type lawsuit. In that situation, the company needs to fix their problem and the internal decision to proceed is made quickly. Companies typically know the best lawyers for these problems. The well-known lawyer that fixes those problems won’t need to sell that much. The buyer knows what they need and that the lawyer fits their needs. The lawyer simply has to negotiate the engagement terms and price.

In other situations, the company recognizes that they have a need but haven’t yet determined the best solution or the best provider. Internally, they’ve decided on a course of action, they just haven’t determined yet the specific steps to take. For example, think about a company which has undergone strategic planning and determined that it needs to find a company with whom to merge. The company has aligned behind the need but not the particular solution or provider. The lawyer in this situation can use consulting skills to influence the selection in her favor.

Lastly, let’s imagine you are pitching a financial technology company to redraft contract language for new regulations. In order to be ‘ready to buy’, the bank will first need to answer a host of questions to determine the implications and impact of these changes and align internal (and sometimes external) stakeholders behind a solution. They have technology considerations, human resource issues, legal questions and budgets that all must be addressed in order to come to a ‘Go. No go’ decision. Without a decision in how to proceed, the lawyer is selling a solution before the bank is ready to buy.

It's not hard to understand why addressing the internal buying decision process has been left out of the selling process. Your lawyers are on the outside of the company. They are not privy to the internal politics, the relationship dynamics, the cultural norms and values, the history and hard-fought lessons that determine how the company operates, how it makes decisions and how it selects providers. It’s hard to see how they could influence decisions.

But they can help facilitate the decision process from outside by helping their contacts inside the company ask better questions, get better information, understand all the stakeholders and more clearly understand the resistance to the changes some legal solutions will cause inside the company. As the example illustrates, not all legal selling situations need buying decision facilitation. So, a system to know which do and which don’t will help you know which skills are best for each situation.

Expanding our definition of the selling process to include the company’s buying-decision process sheds light on the internal dynamics, motivations and time frames companies have about solving their legal problems.  This revelation led to a new business development process called Decision-Strategy Selling™ that provides lawyers with a framework to evaluate where the buyer is in their internal buying decision process and presents a new set of skills to help find the quickest path to an engagement decision. It complements existing sales training because it helps lawyers know the situations in which selling skills will be most effective and which opportunities are truly worth pursuing. And it builds relationships more quickly because the lawyer starts the relationship as a trusted advisor and not a sales person.  

It’s time to start thinking differently about what works and what doesn’t work in legal sales. Most importantly, we should ask why our sales methods used on a qualified prospect with a specific legal need fails nine times out of ten. It’s because we are not selling to where the buyer is going to be. We wouldn’t accept such a low success rate in our legal work. And we shouldn’t accept such a low success rate in our business development efforts either.

Eric Dewey, MBA, is the Founder of eLegal Training, which creates, produces, manages and hosts short form ‘eLearning’ courses for the legal services industry. Contact eric@eLegalTraining.com or visit www.elegaltraining.com.