I recently attended a LA LMA chapter meeting titled “Breaking Through: How to Build a Successful Sales Initiative in your Firm." If it comes to your area I urge you to attend. It was not only inspiring but incredibly informative (and highly entertaining).
In his fast-paced, interactive session, Alvidas Jasin of Thompson Hine discussed some of the critical barriers that he broke though with his lawyers to build successful client teams and a successful sales effort:
• Lack of understanding legal sales
• Lack of commitment
• A lack of any model for legal sales
• Limited time, resources and access to information
• Busy attorneys, skeptical partners
• Untrained attorneys and staff
Enlist your attorney's support team
Jasin discovered if you enlist the assistance of the attorney’s support team—their secretaries, the library staff and associates—you can break through these barriers and develop a cohesive team that becomes invested in their attorney’s key clients. By working together, like two sides of a zipper, the team can help their attorney grow his/her practice.
Use client surveys
Confidential client surveys were also cited by Jasin as important to the success of business development programs. Clients are typically more willing to speak candidly when the relationship partner is not involved. Once again, by delegating work to staff, attorneys can focus on successful client engagements and building their practice. This is a process and will require persistence coupled with ample time to collect data and report back to make a case for program successes. By encouraging your attorneys to delegate the program work to their staff, they are able to stay on top of important client relationships.
Build an experience database
Another highlight of the presentation was one of the most simple solutions I’ve ever heard for capturing new business before it walks out the door from a lack of simple knowledge in client service. How many times does the phone ring in one of your attorneys’ offices and an existing client asks, “We have this very unusual case regarding FIFRA.” At most firms, the responding attorney would say, “Gee, FIFRA is so unique that I doubt we have anyone with experience much less expertise in that area.” The result is that your income goes out the window, down the street and around the corner to another law firm. What Jasin did was to work with his IT department to build a simple matrix database of law experience and expertise by area. Attorneys were asked in what areas do they consider themselves an expert as well as such simple questions as: Have you ever handled a case of this nature? How many cases in this area have you worked on? How recently did you work on a case in this area?, etc. There was also space to add areas of law left out of the matrix.
The resulting technology was a simple yet highly effective tool that would allow attorneys in every office throughout the world to enter in an area of law and with the click of a mouse see a list of all the attorneys with experience and who considered themselves experts in the area. Attorneys even had access to the descriptive information their peers provided. Eventually attorneys were able to create custom matrixes for their key clients so that they could inform them in advance of issues that might affect their businesses. What appears on the surface to be a simple database is in practice a robust tool to keep business within the firm and to help keep firm clients satisfied. Now that’s what I call ingenuity, progress and building a successful business development and client service initiative for your firm.
Alvidas did it. And, so can you! I won’t give away Alavidas’ brilliant closing exercise. You simply have to attend one of his sessions to experience it.
