As an artist, Andy Warhol showed that he was a master of taking one basic element and replicating it with great flair. Warhol’s successes didn’t come because he tried something new at every turn. Picture Warhol’s Marilyn series as an example; with one photo, repeated in several different colors and shades, the artist was able to appeal to a broad audience. Lawyers focused on business development will find that a similar focus can improve their closing skills.

Business development isn’t about selling something new in every pitch. Therefore your focus shouldn’t be on what you have to sell. Working with a business development consultant can help you better focus on your prospects and clients.

When you approach business development and developing a strategy for growing your legal practice, work with a consultant who can help you to focus on:

1. Considering a broad curricula.
2. Initiating and growing relationships.
3. Identifying what “understanding the client/prospect” really means.
4. Turning rejections into opportunities for legal sales.
5. Creating value for your clients and prospects to offer them a greater benefit when they choose your services.
6. Actually asking for the work.

This way, business development training allows you to develop a more effective strategy, hone your skills, and replicate your success.

Navigating the Red Zone can be as challenging for NFL players as it is for attorneys; this is a big part of the reason that there are always low-scoring games and why many teams settle for a field goal when they can’t get the touchdown. Scoring six touchdowns in one game – particularly in the snow – is a tremendous accomplishment.

The New England Patriots are a team that thrives in the Red Zone. They do it by working with their coach, consistently practicing their plays and by carefully studying their opponents to determine how the other team will respond. Lawyers with a similar strategy – and a business development consultant who can coach them to success – will find themselves at a clear advantage.

Before you get to the Red Zone of attorney marketing, it’s important to have your own playbook. Likewise, it’s important to know as much as possible about the others in the room – your prospective clients. Focus your study on:

• Discovering who the final decision maker(s) will be.
• Determining whether the decision maker(s) are facing pressure to cut costs or settle quickly.
• Understanding what could strain a relationship with your clients and prospects.
• Identifying how the prospect’s business is faring in the current economy.

The more that you know about your prospects, the easier that it is to anticipate what will happen when you make a pitch. Anticipating your prospects, practicing your skills, rehearsing your pitch, and reviewing your past performances will help to ensure your success in the Red Zone of law business development.

In football terminology, the Red Zone is the last 20 yards before the goal line. A team’s performance in the red zone is one of the most critical measures of their success. Their performance indicates that they’ve learned from past experiences, developed a strategy, learned the key plays, and taken the time to identify the strengths, weaknesses and tactics of their opposing team.

For legal sales, Red Zone successes are equally important. After all, it’s in the Red Zone where the attorneys are face-to-face with their prospects and trying to make the sale. The Red Zone is all about business generation and closing skills.

Many attorneys – along with their firms – don’t focus on their performance in the Red Zone. Instead, they focus on things like marketing and business development. In this case:

• Marketing is the process of being noticed, getting found and keeping their name out there. It’s about ads, websites, publishing articles, speaking, being involved on committees, and making contacts. While these activities can be useful, they rarely bring in business by themselves.
• Business development is the process of identifying prospects to target. These efforts involve conducting research and preparing proposals, but don’t involve the players (the lawyers) coming up against the defensive line (their prospects and clients).

Marketing and business development are important, but unless you’re prepared for “business generation” – sitting down with your prospects, giving your best pitch and utilizing your closing skills – you won’t have success in legal sales. The Closers Group has long-focused on the Red Zone and helping our clients to improve their closing skills. Our commitment to closing was supported by the results of our recent nationwide study in which an overwhelming number of respondents wanted their law firm marketing consultants to emphasize closing. Over the next few weeks, keep an eye on our blog for more commentary on the Red Zone and developing an effective business generation and closing strategy.

Law business development can be a challenging endeavor – at this time of year, driving past lawn décor of a witch stirring her cauldron may even have you wishing there were a simple potion or spell that could be cast to attract new clients to your firm. In many cases, even magical Oz-worthy ruby slippers would be enough, as long as they would help to secure more business.


While securing new clients to grow your practice may never be as easy as closing your eyes, clicking your heels and repeating your objective, business development training can help you dramatically simplify the process. The right business development consultant can help you develop an advantage over your competition.


Working with a business development consultant can help you understand what your clients and prospects are looking for and work with you to identify strategies that will enhance your pitch and help you close the sale. Whether you need to be more aware of what your client’s business is or you’re looking to add value to your non-promotional collateral or you’re trying to identify co-marketing opportunities, getting the right training and support will help you make it happen.

Halloween stories are filled with ghouls and goblins – characters that create mischief and torment others. And for many lawyers feeling tortured by their business development consultant pointing out the same information time and time again, their biz dev consultants may seem more like tormentors than the partners they truly are.

A business development consultant’s job is not to be a goblin that torments you with information that’s already available – your consultant should be the one who helps you identify winning strategies, to develop closing skills, navigate sales meetings, and to increase your closing rate. You can avoid the torment – and benefit more from the relationship – by making an effort to harvest resources that are already available.

A well-designed firm intranet is one way for firm partners and associates to communicate effectively. With a firm intranet, it’s possible to focus on success stories, recently published articles, speech topics, and important decisions and legislation, as well as policies that impact everyone from associates to the most senior partners. More importantly, it ensures that everyone is able to access key information before acting on business development opportunities – before preparing an RFP response, before attending a conference, or before going out to pitch to a prospect or client.

Having access to success stories and key firm information is crucial when you’re developing new business. When your business development consultant is able to do more than point you to this information, you’ll be able to focus on taking action and closing more sales, changing your tale of terror to a story with a happy ending.

One of the great things about Halloween is that it reminds us that most things aren’t simply what they appear to be. The most scary ghosts and goblins often prove to be some of the cutest kids in the neighborhood; to know what you’re really looking at, you need to look beneath the surface.

As you start working with a law business development consultant, part of the process involves looking at your practice and identifying hidden opportunities along with ways in which law firm staff could get a greater benefit from their efforts. More often than not, the substance behind these investigations proves to be cross marketing – one of the most talked about but least well-utilized legal sales tools.

When it comes to making legal sales, one of the most important things that you can do is to talk with other attorneys in your firm. Getting to know what your colleagues in other practice areas are doing to benefit their clients is one of the most effective ways to discover what you can do when marketing yourself to your current clients and prospects and to ensure that your sales efforts pay off.

A business development consultant can help to foster a better understanding of the benefits of cross marketing within law firms and can help to ensure that each lawyer understands his or her responsibility for educating partners and associates in their practice specialties. Additionally, you’ll find that working with the right consultant allows you to collect a wide variety of “treats” – tips, tools, and strategies that will help you to close more legal sales.

No matter how many times Spider-Man was knocked down, captured, delayed, or rejected, he found a way to get through the situation and to win the fight.


Maximizing Rejection is an extension of this lesson – one that this business development consultant emphasizes to clients. Just because your proposal is not the one chosen doesn’t mean that you don’t still have a future prospect.


Instead of giving up when you don’t close the sale, try the following:

• Analyze your process to determine the reasons why your law sales effort was less than successful. Learn from this experience and use the knowledge you gain the next time that you’re making a pitch.
• Follow up with the prospect after 3-6 months have passed. Asking how the engagement is going will let them know you still want to work with them, and that you’re interested in keeping in touch.

Regular contact helps improve your chances of being retained in the future. Don’t give up: remember, Spidey eventually got his man – and you can close more business if you follow his lead, and continue to pursue your prospects.

John Daly, a great PGA golfer, was once asked to describe his style of play, The Lion came back with “Grip it and rip it” – a philosophy he expanded into a book focused on helping would-be golfers perfect their stance and grip so that they could hit the ball further than before. The book’s premise boils down to the thought that with the right training and practice, reaching a goal is as simple as going for it.


When you have a sound strategy for making legal sales and you build on your experience to the extent that it becomes second nature, you’ll find that Daly’s approach works well for law business development. The message is simple: concentrate and close. As you gain confidence, you’ll be able to take the next steps – focusing on four objectives:

1. Identifying more opportunities
2. Building a higher attack/pursuit rate.
3. Developing a pipeline.
4. Creating more business builders.

When you’ve developed your skills in these areas, closing sales naturally follows. You’ll be able to stay out of the rough and get to the green in fewer strokes.

Just as an athlete will take advantage of coaching to improve his skills or help her learn new techniques, many lawyers and law firms will benefit from bringing in an expert. If you’re in the process of looking for a law firm marketing consultant – a coach who can help you learn the ins and outs of closing sales – it’s important to define your goals.


During these intensive training sessions, the goal should be to develop your skills. You’ll want to work with someone who teaches attorney selling tactics that you can comfortably commit to and that will grow your business. Some of the business development skills that you’ll focus on will involve communications – learning what type of communication your clients prefer and how often you should be in touch. Other skills will involve focusing on providing quality service and getting results, building relations, and asking your clients for additional business.


Athletes don’t go to exercise camp before the start of a new season – they go to training camp. When you work with a business development coach, stay focused on your goals. When you’re ready to identify, pursue and close clients, there are multiple sales approaches you can take, but to get them to work for you, you can’t just talk about them. You’ve got to practice and focus on improving.