As one year draws to a close and another begins, “Year in Review” lists are showing up everywhere – the top movies, the tech industry, and, of course, in the news. Similarly, many businesses and firms are reviewing the results of their efforts and making plans for action in the coming year.


Business development consulting may be in your future, especially if your focus is on improving legal sales leadership and closing more business in 2010. Closing skills don’t begin when you place a contract in front of your client or prospect; acknowledging this will prepare you to address key questions like:

• Do your client relationships need reinforcing?
• What other firms do your clients work with – and how does your team stack up?
• Who is the final decision maker for your clients?
• Where are additional openings for your specialties?
• What internal pressures on your client might impact their receptivity to additional engagements?
• Are there opportunities for you to cross-market with your colleagues?

Effective law firm marketing is based on the answers to these and related questions before pursuing a client or prospect. Addressing these questions and constantly reinforcing relationships will strengthen your closing skills and help you create a great 2010.

Restaurant menus often group food options into categories – appetizers, salads, main courses, and desserts. This organization lets the customer focus on finding what they’re looking for – whether it’s a light bite or something far more substantial.


When you’re looking to grow your law firm, you should have clear options as well. Look for a legal sales consultant who presents a menu of tactics that will help you to reach your goals.


For example, a menu of business development tactics might include:

Building contacts into leads.

• Evaluating and joining community, nonprofit, and/or legal associations.
• Becoming more involved in pitches and proposals.
• Testing new approaches with prospects.
• Brainstorming with clients and prospects to look ahead into 2010 and 2011.
• Rehearsing, practicing and evaluating presentations.

Whether you make one selection from the menu or make a la carte selections that combine tactics or add to the list, working with the right business development consultant will help to ensure that you are satisfied. And, once you’ve practiced and perfected these techniques, you’ll be able to move on to other menu areas such as closing skills and client retention tactics.

After several weeks of sloppy play that was anything but productive, the New York Giants weren’t taking anything for granted – even going into a game against the Washington Redskins. Their coach practiced fundamentals all week, the offensive game plan focused on bringing out the team’s powerful running game, and the defense worked to pick the Redskins’ line apart.


By getting back to basics and assuring their strengths, the Giants had a decisive victory over an NFC East rival. This same sort of concentration should be practiced in law firm marketing.


Don’t add new methods of prospecting to legal sales until individual attorneys have achieved success with the tactics that work for them. Brainstorming with a business development consultant can ensure that tactics for pushing experienced lawyers toward client retention take advantage of the skills those lawyers already have. These sessions will also ensure that needs, opportunities, and challenges are identified before designing a game plan to win more business from current or recent clients. The best game plan will recognize “blocks” that may come – the economy, competitors, pressure from the “C” suite, etc. – so that you can plan for them, prepare to overcome them, and make the best approach.


Up until the recent Monday-night matchup, Washington had the best NFL record for preventing touchdowns in the Red Zone but they couldn’t stop the Giants. By preparing your playbook for contact, pursuit, and closing skills, practicing your strengths, and designing your plays to overcome business development challenges when you’re “in the Zone,” you’ll be posed for similar success.

During the past few years, the Closers Group has been pushing our firm’s clients to clearly define their business development training objectives. The objectives identified fall into four categories – all of which enhance legal sales:

1. Revenue growth.


2. Brand recognition.


3. Enhanced visibility.


4. Increasing profitability.

A forward-thinking lawyer marketing program develops tactics that combine all four of these objectives. As 2009 comes to a close and 2010 gets underway, look for our next series of posts that will detail the most successful business development tools – those that will help you navigate the Red Zone of legal sales and emerge as leaders within your firms.

Relationships lead to successful legal sales. In the annual 2009 Inside Counsel Survey on Legal Department Operations (PDF) builds on the importance of understanding business. The survey found that the top three attributes that in-house counsel find most important to managing their departments are business acumen, legal department knowledge, and financial acumen.


Want even more proof of just how important relationships are to successful legal sales and ongoing relationships? Consider something Janet Langford Kelly, Senior Vice President and General Counsel for ConocoPhillips recently said in a Special Section to Inside Counsel (December 2009): “My direct reports who serve our business divisions have dotted reporting lines to the heads of those divisions and sit on their management committees.”


Relationship building and gaining and understanding of a client or prospect’s business are areas of law selling that aren’t often fully explored. However, they are key elements of the business development training workshops and seminars presented by The Closers Group.


Having spent many years working for in-house counsel and as a trial consultant, I was fortunate to learn how important understanding business is to the client selection and client retention processes. “Go, Read, Know” may be the traditional marketing bromide, but when you get to “know,” make sure that you’re not just learning what seems like key information about your clients and prospects. Focus on getting to know their business, learning what your clients and prospects need to know about their industry, and take the time to know how they serve their clients.


Good fences might make good neighbors, but business development success takes forging strong relationships – and developing a keen understanding of business.

“Leadership is Not Management” is the topic of an article written by Mark Beese and Suzanne Lowe for the October, 2009 issue of Marketing the Law Firm. Lowe expands on the topic in her new book, The Integration Imperative by saying, “. . . today’s professional firms aren’t effectively integrating their marketing and selling functions.”


In part, this is the result of the “old guard” of management’s unwillingness to transition their work and provide more active training and more opportunities for younger partners and associates. Rather than leading by example, they continue to focus on management – simply telling those under them how it will be.


This is a major obstacle that I and many of my business development consulting colleagues find when we start working with a new firm.


The single greatest asset a services firm has is its people. A common vision and objective needs to be stated and followed. Integrating not only marketing and business development, but also human assets – including team members from tech services and forward-focused paralegals – is essential. A greater emphasis needs to be placed on co-marketing and cross marketing which have the byproduct of vastly increasing an individual attorney’s knowledge of each others’ skills and how to relate them to clients.


How can marketing partners better lead others in the firm?

• Bring younger associates to pitches.
• Include associates on client service teams.
• Have paralegals and new associates draft proposals.
• Require attorneys in the firm to become active in pro bono or charity organizations.
• Invite attorneys and staff who are new to the firm to critique and refine marketing materials.
• Ensure that younger partners and associates are getting into second chairs.

Remember that a leader must demonstrate that legal sales are the way to a strong future and that future success counts on the firm’s primary asset – the attorneys and staff who are committed to that success.

The top performing quarterbacks of the NFL – Drew Brees of the New Orleans Saints, Peyton Manning of the Indianapolis Colts and his brother Eli of the New York Giants, Donovan McNabb of the Philadelphia Eagles and, of course, Tom Brady of the New England Patriots – have earned a reputation for practicing more than most of their teammates. Even with all of their natural talents, these players recognize that they need to always be “on top of their game.” As a result, they arrive at the training facilities earlier, watch more films of past games, study more play options, critique their own actions, and often remain on the field long after many on the team have already called it a day and hit the showers.


Top players in the NFL Red Zone lead not just with their skill and experience; they show their commitment and focus on repetition of those actions that are sure to bring results. Top legal sales leaders achieve success in the same ways.


One of the key elements we emphasize in Red Zone business development training sessions from the Closers Group is the importance of preparing for common situations. For example, when you’re preparing for face-to-face meetings with clients and prospects, it’s essential to practice your presentation or dinner conversation. By taking this time, you will:

• Be able to anticipate questions.
• Identify and better understand the current and recent patterns of the prospect’s business.
• Have your primary takeaways refined.
• Establish what you need to plan ahead for your next contact.

Preparation is essential. It will prepare you not only for your sales meetings, but also for conducting a review and “post mortem” of the meeting once it’s finished. Remember the old joke, “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” The answer to the question “How do you achieve success in the Red Zone” is exactly the same: practice, practice, practice.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is a great example of how an underutilized asset was finally recognized and put to its best use. All it took was one foggy night and, as the song and story tell us, Santa looked at his resources, recognized the asset that he had, and found a way to use that asset to overcome the challenge and get his job done.


Legal sales leaders at firms of all sizes benefit from taking a similar approach. That’s why when we work with clients and conduct our Rapid Assessment to identify specific actions that firms can take to improve business development results, we look for underutilized assets.


Many firms are able to maximize presentation opportunities by taking the same presentation to other settings or by repurposing the content. Reproducing an article written by a partner or other colleague to use as a handout – and placing the article on your firm’s website – is a great way to increase the exposure and reach of your attorney marketing efforts.


In addition to having legal sales leaders making more presentations, don’t overlook younger attorneys or even paralegals. Consider pitching a continuing education presentation within your community as a way to expand your firm’s name recognition and to provide a low-risk opportunity for future leaders to establish themselves as speakers.


By working with the right business development consultant, you’ll have the opportunity to find your “Rudolphs” – to identify assets that you may not even be aware that you have – and to develop a sales strategy that puts them to work to grow your business.

When you find yourself in the Red Zone – that legal sales area in which lawyers are directly in front of their clients and prospects – you’ll need to have the right strategies. It’s essential to have a plan for dealing with all of the people you may encounter.


During our business development training workshops and one-on-one advisory, coaching and strategy sessions, one of the most frequent questions that I am asked is, “I have a friend who could introduce me to their counsel. How do I ask for an introduction without risking the friendship?” The answer is quite simple.


For law business development, the recommendation that we give is to address your friendship directly and ask if you can make contact. You can approach your friend by simply saying, “I really value our friendship. Would it be alright if I call you in your office next week to set up a meeting?”


Every single client who has followed this advice and asked for a meeting has had a positive result. Better yet, after you’ve done it once, your comfort level for attorney selling will grow! Just ask.

Since 1957, Dr Seuss’ Grinch has stolen Christmas only to discover that, despite his best efforts, the spirit of the season remained. Ultimately, not even the Grinch could deny the spirit of the holiday. Let’s hope that those in legal sales leadership, like the Grinch, are able to do a turnaround.


For many of those legal sales “leaders,” it’s been easy to blame the economic situation for lower success rates. Some firms, in a cost cutting panic, have taken major reductions in their marketing and business development programs. Yet in doing so, they overlook a very basic question – how should they be spending their remaining budget to maximize marketing efforts?


In a recent survey of the AmLaw 200 that appeared in the ABA’s Law Practice magazine, the responses to one question demonstrate that many law firms don’t realize what practices they can already implement. When asked what they plan to do that is innovative or radically different for their firms in 2010, the most common responses involved:

• Identifying new, enhanced ways of marketing
• Focusing on business development efforts
• Using client-centered business development
• Using social-media
• Developing new ways of using information in business development
• Taking advantage of business development and sales training for lawyers.

The report’s authors, Burkey Belser and Sue Allison stated, “The categories of responses that resulted from this question may do more to define what “radical” means in the traditional law firm marketing context than what “radical” means in marketing per se.”


But in my opinion, when it comes to business development, the answers are already there and they are not radical: they are what the firms should be doing all along, and with even more effort during an economic downturn. Our experience as business consultants for mid-size and smaller firms is the opposite than their larger counterparts. Smaller firms don’t have the same bureaucratic mindset of the larger firms. Even with reduced budgets, their attorney marketing has focused on these very activities large firms call “radical.”


Don’t let “Grinches” stand between you and developing new business. There’s nothing radical about it. Focus on learning and using proven skills, maximize your efforts and watch your practice grow.