Most firms that approach us looking for business development and sales training want fast results. Many of them are surprised when we say that a dedicated 5 minutes per week is all it takes to put a plan into motion:

• It takes 5 minutes a week to make a phone call to touch base with a client or prospect.
• 5 minutes a week is long enough to send an email to a client or prospect.
• In five minutes, a meeting can be arranged.
• The commitment to writing an article – and jotting down a list of possible topics – can be made in 5 minutes.

The actions themselves will take longer, but by dedicating just 5 minutes per week to generating new business, you will be setting a course marked by true efficiency and will be on the path to business development success.

Many firms devote a great deal of time and effort into creating individual marketing plans for their attorneys. Most firms that have them acknowledge that there is little response to these plans – and even less follow up. What if the time, energy, and money that go into creating these plans could be better spent?


Would it surprise you to learn that these plans could be greatly condensed? What if I told you that, at least for the first iteration, these could be reduced to a mere 5 lines? Many firms would be at an advantage if, at the beginning of a quarter, each attorney were required to commit to 5 business development actions taken from a list like the following:

• Holding meetings with new prospects or current clients who may need additional services
• Delivering speeches
• Writing and submitting articles for publication
• Performing follow-up via phone or in writing
• Attending conferences
• Participating on a panel discussion

With just five actions taken by each attorney, a firm of 100 would have 2,000 contacts, leads, and opportunities generated in just one year. Do your current efforts provide those results?


Rather than individual marketing plans, why not consider asking the attorneys at your firm to make a Business Generation Commitment? When done quarterly, the five-line commitments (or ten, if you include an additional five lines for a review of what was accomplished during the previous quarter) would:

• Shift the focus from marketing the firm to developing new business, and
• Provide the firm’s management with a simple tool to review, support, and advise each attorney with regard to his or her actions or non-actions

Business development goals should be SMART goals: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-based. A business generation commitment system is very smart. Need help getting started? Request more information – we’d be glad to help.

In our previous entry, we touched on the first stage leading up to the Red Zone: the importance of getting to know your clients and prospects. Today, let’s explore the remaining stages, which builds on the concept of “Go. Know. Read.”

Meet ‘em and Get ‘em: Meeting Your Best Prospects and Winning New Business

On one hand, “meet ‘em” refers to the importance of sitting down with your clients and prospects to increase business – getting to the Red Zone. On the other, it means getting out there and making connections once you’ve identified your best prospects. Go to their industry conferences where you will be more likely to encounter and meet in-house counsel, business executives, and human resources administrators who have significant problems that need to be solved.


Meeting new prospects doesn’t end when you seal one contract. In order to continue to “get ‘em,” you need to continue meeting new prospects. Know who your clients know and you will create multiple new prospects. Perform your best work, and be sure to ask your clients to introduce you to their colleagues, business unit executives, and even peers at non-competing organizations. Arrange lunch meetings with several clients and prospects to brainstorm about the future of business, creating success in a tough economy, and related topics to foster relationships, get a fresh prospective, and – ultimately – show your commitment to helping them solve problems. Further cultivate future clients by inviting them to attend conferences or panel discussions that would interest or help them.

Keep ‘em: Client Retention as Business Development

In addition to knowing your clients and providing ongoing benefits to them, client retention relies on your ability to know and understand the ongoing challenges they face. Read their industry journals in addition to legal journals to make sure that you understand what they are facing. Look for opportunities for co-marketing such as asking your client to co-author an article for publication or to conduct joint presentations – either at their in-house meetings or at conferences. These opportunities and others like them demonstrate your commitment to your clients, encourage repeat business, and increase the likelihood of receiving referrals.


The list of tactics that lawyers and firms can draw on is practically endless – but the basics that drive all of those tactics are simple and direct.

At the Closers Group, we talk about our Red Zone approach to business development and ensuring that – at the time of meetings with clients and prospects – lawyers are ready to close. Winning new business, however, means building on four steps:

1. Find ‘em: Identifying and finding your best prospects.
2. Meet ‘em: Meeting your best prospects.
3. Get ‘em: Winning clients and developing more prospects.
4. Keep ‘em: Keeping your clients – and building on the amount of business they bring you.

These four stages build on the “rules of three” touched on in our previous post. Today, let’s tackle – at least generally – the first of these steps. When we talk with our clients about the “find ‘em,” stage of attorney marketing, what we’re really talking about are the three sources of new business development: clients, referrals and new prospects.


Whether you are looking at a list of your current clients and considering ways to ask them for more business or referrals, or you are looking at a list of prospects, having their names isn’t enough. You need to identify where the contacts are really coming from.


To find and understand your best prospects, research the companies and agencies. Identify senior counsel – if present – and chief executives. Understand their business. Identify pressures that they may be facing. Learn more about their competitors.


The more you know, the more you’ll be prepared to “meet ‘em” – and follow through.

When it comes to business development, there’s an old rule about the importance of keeping your name in front of a prospective client 3 times a year. As a business development consultant, I’ve often noticed that rule of three works in other areas. I’ve noticed how new business tends to come from 3 sources – clients, referrals, and new prospects – and that the oft-reported theory that developing contacts has three components: go where they go, know who they know, and read what they read.


The more that I’ve thought about it, the more that I’ve noticed even more ways in which it seems there’s something powerful about the number 3:

• When you hear an ad on the radio, the contact info (whether phone number or web address) is almost always repeated 3 times
• There were three musketeers, not two
• Genies in magic lamps offer three wishes
• The third time, not the second or fourth, is the charm
• Goldilocks encountered 3 bears
• While Larry and Moe shared the screen and their antics with Shemp, Curly, and Curly Joe, people still always talk about the Three Stooges
• The Big Bad Wolf was foiled by the 3rd of Three Little Pigs
• In sports, there’s often talk of the “triple threat”

Many of these connections may be coincidental, but I do know this: when Closers Group clients send articles, legislative updates, unusual verdicts, or a simple note to their clients and prospects just 3 times each year, legal sales happen. Their profile remains high, and the likelihood of receiving a call triples.

In life, there are no guarantees. In my role as a business development consultant, I’m often asked about the likelihood of success for various attorney sales approaches. Rather than offering a definitive answer, I often draw on Jay Abraham’s responses to hypotheticals:

• Will everything work out as well as we expect it to? Hardly.
• Will some of the things we hope for not happen or turn out worse than we expect them to? Undoubtedly.
• Will there be some things that turn out better than expected? Probably.
• Are there more opportunities that will be uncovered as things progress? Again, probably.

The final question that is often posed offers a bit more flexibility: Will you do everything in your power to make the result of this business development opportunity an outstanding success? If your answer is yes, the response is “Absolutely.”


Law firm marketing is no different than any other service or task. Put the effort in. Plan for the worst and hope for the best. And then work, work, work until you see the results.

At the Closers Group, we talk a lot about our Red Zone approach to business development. We focus on the importance of having your strategies and tactics practiced and ready so that, when you meet face to face with your prospects, you’ll be ready to close the sale. Jay Abraham, who we’ve been talking about in our recent posts, has offered a similar extremely effective program that he called “Competitive Combat Coaching.” It’s considered to be a more aggressive and productive way of looking at growing law firm successes, and builds even more on his 2000 book Getting Everything You Can Out of All You’ve Got.


Every firm and organization has a number of tools that they aren’t using effectively. The more that you look at your own organization – with or without the help of a business development consultant – the more you’re going to find:

• Underperforming assets


• Overlooked opportunities


• Hidden assets


• Under-valued relationships


• Under-utilized collaboration opportunities

As the competition for legal services intensifies and client budgets fight to stay stable as time goes on, doesn’t it make sense to look within your organization and build on what you already have? The cost is low – and the effort can make your legal marketing far more effective. This isn’t just something we encourage here, in our blog. In our Rapid Assessment work with clients, these are among the first tactics we use to strengthen law firm business development efforts.


When you’re fighting for new client engagements in the Red Zone, it’s important to recognize that you are participating in a form of sophisticated combat. Draw on your training and strengths and you’ll be prepared to engage and win new business.