Five Obstacles to Business Development Success, Part 4

Every year law firms spend millions of dollars in marketing, client development, training and technologies to attract more clients. Law firm leaders understand that business development is the life blood of the firm. Or do they? An argument can be made that a law firm that puts business development as one of the top drivers of the firm’s growth would do a better job of addressing the most common challenges that are obstacles to the success of most attorneys. Many law firms survive on the client development effectiveness of a small group of the firm’s partners making law firms generally extraordinarily fragile. But eliminating these barriers could produce significant returns and spark faster growth in the firm.

What are these obstacles? This is the fourth in a five part series outlining the obstacles to business development in most firms.

Obstacle Four –Allowing "Self-Limiting Beliefs" to sabotage your efforts

Attitude is everything. Bad attitudes damage the individuals but self-limiting beliefs damage the firm. Everyone knows which attorneys in the firm have the bad attitudes. These attorneys are like pot holes in the road that most try to avoid. Self-limiting beliefs, on the other hand, are personal and much harder to detect and address. As such they can do more to inhibit the success of the firm and its attorneys than just about anything else.

Self-limiting beliefs manifest themselves in subtle ways, often bleeding into the folklore or culture of the firm. For instance, associates often complain that their mentors already know everyone worthwhile in town so there’s no way to build their own book of business. Or, attorneys equate ‘sales’ with used car sales people and, as such, close off all possibility of learning new ways to attract clients. Or senior partners warn of the unattractiveness of ‘self-promotion’ but fail to clarify what is self-promotional and what is important communication regarding the successes and achievements of the firm’s attorneys.

Each of these are ways that attorneys create obstacles and barriers prior to a fair assessment of the many strategies, tactics and skills necessary to develop a successful practice. I call this ‘contempt prior to investigation’ and it is incredibly limiting and destructive to a firm’s ability to develop substantive client development skills and processes.

If I can help you alleviate the obstacles to business development in your firm, call Eric Dewey at 502.693.4731. You'll find that I am an eager resource and that it costs nothing to talk.

Five Obstacles to Business Development Success, Part 3

Every year law firms spend millions of dollars in marketing, client development, training and technologies to attract more clients. Law firm leaders understand that business development is the life blood of the firm. Or do they? An argument can be made that a law firm that puts business development as one of the top drivers of the firm’s growth would do a better job of addressing the most common challenges that are obstacles to the success of most attorneys. Many law firms survive on the client development effectiveness of a small group of the firm’s partners making law firms generally extraordinarily fragile. But eliminating these barriers could produce significant returns and spark faster growth in the firm.

What are these obstacles? This is the third in a five part series outlining the obstacles to business development in most firms.

Obstacle Three –Failure to adhere to a consistent and productive sales routine

Most law firms today lack the performance standards to guide the growth of the firm. There is a wide variety of client development and marketing activities, each with varying degrees of effectiveness. But firms tend to equate all activity as mutually beneficial. As such, attorneys are allowed to focus on low payoff activities such as calling on the wrong people, not preparing for the sales call, participating in value starved community activities or consistently calling on the same low revenue clients. In other words, attorneys are allowed to confuse activity with productivity.

Law firms and attorneys rarely follow a consistent sales routine which pre-qualifies prospects, plans the client development strategy, researches the competitive and organizational conditions of the prospect, and implements business partnership building processes. They tend to react to opportunities as they arise whether or not they present a meaningful opportunity. What’s more, they cocoon in their comfort zones of conference attendance, cocktail parties and concerts and rarely work to optimize their sales processes to generate bankable results. And firms, starved for anyone willing to do any kind of client development, chalk ineffective activity up as comparative progress under the guise of ‘relationship building’. But in fact, these activities are friendship building activities, not business partnership building activities.

If I can help you alleviate the obstacles to business development in your firm, call Eric Dewey at 502.693.4731. You'll find that I am an eager resource and that it costs nothing to talk.

Five Barriers To Business Development Success, Part 2

Every year law firms spend millions of dollars in marketing, client development, training and technologies to attract more clients. Law firm leaders understand that business development is the life blood of the firm. Or do they? An argument can be made that a law firm that puts business development as one of the top drivers of the firm’s growth would do a better job of addressing the most common challenges that are obstacles to the success of most attorneys. Many law firms survive on the client development effectiveness of a small group of the firm’s partners making law firms generally extraordinarily fragile. But eliminating these barriers could produce significant returns and spark faster growth in the firm.

What are these obstacles? This is the second in a five part series outlining the obstacles to business development in most firms.

Obstacle Two –Lack of knowledge of sophisticated complex sales techniques

Legal sales are complex sales processes. They are fluid, dynamic processes that require a consistent, strategic partnership approach. This approach must address the multiple buying criteria clients use in the selection process while evolving the offering to fit the dynamic needs of the client. Unfortunately, many ‘legal sales consultants’ have heavily borrowed their tactics and processes from traditional product sales. Product sales are based on static product features and benefits and often use manipulative sales techniques to influence clients.

Sophisticated complex sales processes require a much different tact. Success relies heavily on needs discovery, solutions development and relationship building to affect the sale. Services are created through the sales process as opposed to sold as a static offering, like they are in a product sale offering.

While most attorneys have strong relationship building skills, use of many of the traditional product sales techniques actually dampen the pace of relationship building.You may play well together, but the minute the attorney forces a square peg in a client’s round hole the relationship begins to erode and credibility is damaged. Complex sales require consistent and regular sales training and coaching. As one sales expert is quoted as saying, “You cannot put a man in a cave, leave him there for twenty years and have him walk out with a geology degree!” Consistent and on-going training in complex sales techniques is critical to leveraging the relationships inherent in the firm.

If I can help you alleviate the obstacles to business development in your firm, call Eric Dewey at 502.693.4731. You'll find that I am an eager resource and that it costs nothing to talk.

Five Barriers to Business Development Success

Every year law firms spend millions of dollars in marketing, client development, training and technologies to attract more clients. Law firm leaders understand that business development is the life blood of the firm. Or do they? An argument can be made that a law firm that puts business development as one of the top drivers of the firm’s growth would do a better job of addressing the most common challenges that are obstacles to the success of most attorneys. Many law firms survive on the client development effectiveness of a small group of the firm’s partners making law firms generally extraordinarily fragile. But eliminating these barriers could produce significant returns and spark faster growth in the firm.

What are these obstacles? This is the first in a five part series outlining the obstacles to business development in most firms.

Obstacle One – A wing-it mentality towards client development

Most law firms have a poorly defined sales process. Even where attorneys have been instructed in effective sales techniques, they typically fail to follow the process consistently. A sales process is analogous to a professional football team playbook. Without a consistent offense, a consistent defense and a consistent agreed to set of plays, what you have are great players who can't get the ball in to the end zone because they just don't know what their next move is. They become purely reactive to the opposing team, in this case the prospect!

Many firms have enjoyed extraordinary growth for the past several decades. This growth has primarily come from increases in work volume which is quickly receding. The next decade will surely be a decade of market share competition and growth will have to come at the expense of other law firms. Firms which take a more proactive approach to business development will undoubtedly win out over the long run.

If I can help you alleviate the obstacles to business development in your firm, call Eric Dewey at 502.693.4731. You'll find that I am an eager resource and that it costs nothing to talk.

360 Degree Client Satisfaction

It's surprising the lack of sophistication one finds in evaluating client satisfaction among law firms. Where client service IS evaluated- and this is by no means a given- the survey or questions tend to focus on the technical quality of the services provided. While that's certainly important, it really is just the 'tables stakes' to get in the game. 'How' the services were provided is equally, if not more, important. Let's call this the 'emotional satisfaction' that clients have in working with their outside counsel. In the case of doctors, this distinction is similar to the distinction between the medical outcome the Doctor provides and the Doctor's bedside manner. Managing the technical and emotional services levels of the firm is managing 360 degrees of your client's satisfaction with the firm.

Just to clarify, I'm defining the 'technical quality of the services' here as the quality of the work product; the attorneys understanding of the issues; his creative legal strategy; the attorneys knowledge of the client; his business and industry; the timeliness and quality of their communications and bills; etc. Obviously, all of this is critically important in the client relationship.

I define 'how services are delivered' as the emotional satisfaction clients have with the firm. Firms focused on improving 'emotional satisfaction' with the firm focus their training on: how the secretary is treated; how quickly phones calls are returned; how associates are treated in front of a client; how pleasant and engaging the attorney is; how quickly problems are resolved or complaints addressed; how easy the attorney and firm make it to do business with them; etc. This is an all-incompassing view of the client's experience with the firm. And, most importantly, that view has to be from the persective of the client.

While emotional satisfaction is much harder to track and evaluate, it is often more important in maintaining and deepening the client relationship. There are lots of good quality, technically proficient firms and lawyers to choose from. But surprisingly few firms that distinguish themselves by delivering extraordinary and consistent service levels across their population of attorneys in the firm.

One of the primary reasons why cross selling is difficult to make happen in law firms is that many lawyers simply don't trust their partners to deliver 'how they provide the services' at the same level at which they themselves deliver services to their clients. What's more, it's nearly impossible for them to control for others' levels of service toward their clietns within the firm. The technical quality of the services is rarely the issue. Lawyers can more easily assess the technical proficiency of their partners. It is far more difficult to determine how services are delivered and who is courteous, accessible and responsive.

To be honest, even the technical quality of services isn't an overly common topic of law firms. Lawyer up! conducted a study of the top 50 largest law firms in 2011 (based on attorney count) to see which of them state their commitment to client satisfaction on their main site pages. The study also documented which of these firms backed up their pledge with objective evidence, either by describing their procedures or citing awards and testimonials or other means. Among the top 50, less than 10% had any meaningful content describing their commitment to client satisfaction. And few, if any, addressed the softer yet more potent side of client satisfaction. I doubt the results have changed much two years later.

Pay attention to the emotional satisfaction your clients have with the firm. It is the secret sauce that can bind your clients to the firm.

If you would to improve your client’s satisfaction level with your firm, Call Eric Dewey at 502-693-4731. You’ll find that I am an eager resource and that it costs nothing to talk.