Let’s add the following to the list:

* Populate the business development program with targeting and pursuit efforts by specific practice groups, sub-groups, offices, individuals.

* Have each take one step at a time, at first, and finally, wherever there are lawyers who really want to be engaged.

* Assure that business development training sessions are practical, not academic.

* Keep the firm ahead of economic and industry trends and build this knowledge into every client contact.

* Make decisions on under-performing activities by either abandoning them or improving your approach in each case.

Where will all of this effort get you? For the 55% of firms with strategic marketing plans and the 87 percent with marketing budgets, you still need to get your attorneys face to face with clients and prospects.

The best way to hit a target is to take a shot. If you miss, you learn and do it again.

* Designate partner-leaders for each client target that the lawyers have been keeping in the back of their minds. Stop calling it “low hanging fruit” and pick it already!!

* Establish and manage timelines for each step toward the final closing.

* Provide success reports to firm management.

* Provide greater strategy debates before investing in responses to RFP’s or in making new initial contact.

* Constantly review the failed business development efforts in formal post mortem meetings. Codify the next steps that led to successful new business acquisition.

More business develoment best practices and the follow on steps will follow in future columns.

RESPONSE – The bigger you are, the more you need to focus. Begin with a few promising practice groups and use their successes as a model.

RESULT – Practice groups in London will begin envying proactice groups in New York, or vice versa. It’s a dynamic that requires some political sensitivity on the part of management, but it’s another great problem to have.

None of the new emphasis on sales and busines development should minimize the ongoing commitment of resources to marketing. Law firms need their marketing departments to keep the media informed, encourage the relationship-building process, build the brand, keep their research methods current, conduct client service surveys, create new ads, sponsor events and conferences, and all the rest of it.

This concludes our “Pandemic” series. We’ll begin talking about best practices next column.

RESPONSE – Of course it does. You’re already spending money on business development at one or more ends of the spectrum. You simply need to collect that data and find out what you’re already spending. That’s your budget.
RESULT – Getting a hold on your current actual spending will allow you to focus resources where they will clearly do the most good.

6. PROBLEM – What do we do with our up-and-comers?
RESPONSE – A true pipeline incluses ideas for deploying junior partners and associates. Take them to sales meetings. Encourage them to get their names out there via articles and speeches. With yournger lawyers, the key is to encourage business development without undue pressure. Whatever they bring in is gravy, and you’re making a great investment in the future as well.
RESULT – Some firms are creating a true sales culture, from top to bottom. You can too!!!

4. PROBLEM – We missed the major new litigation!
RESPONSE – Don’t dwell on any one matter or even on any whole genus of legal business. Look to the pipeline to deliver a stream of alternative possibilities, some of which may not yet be on your radar screen.
RESULT – You’ll need to start making decisions about which kind of business to go after and which to let some other law firm go after. That’s a wonderful problem to have!

1. PROBLEM – Our firm has no pipeline!
RESPONSE – Manage your speakers, greeters, authors, communicators, trainers, marketers, etc.
RESULT – Properly assigned, with concretely defined roles, the firm’s staff will become a kind of conveyor belt, with all of their designated tasks funneling toward the actual sales moment. The pipeline thereby remains engineered to support the one final moment – the closing – that justifies its existence in the first place.

2. PROBLEM – I just lost my largest client!
RESPONSE – Setbacks should catalyze action, not cause paralysis. The firm should monitor and evaluate all such occasions where clients fall by the wayside to ensure that the lawyers responsible jump back into the Business Development fray with a new three-month action plan.
RESULT – A crisis should spell opportunity. Losses should pump the collective adrenaline. If that kind of response becomes ingrained in the firm’s culture, odds are that the bottom line will actually improve at a reasonable point in time after every loss.

The key to success is “keep the end in mind.” The really good firms are fortunate to have some of their staff with longer-range marketeer capabilities; that is, taking a view of the desired end result, landing new work, and incorporating these goals in their support.

The newly emerging interest in bizdev, if properly implemented and managed, should focus on and take advantage of client targets that are already on the minds and on the lists (written or otherwise) of the firm’s professionals and partners. Financial and management consulting firms remain salutary models for law firms, as historically they have been much more focused on specific deliverables and closings. They take to heart the axiom, “Always keep the end in mind.”

Next time we’ll disuss Pandemic Issues and suggest fundamental solutions that lead to measurable results in business development.

We actually separate the categories into three, not two:

* Marketing (getting found)
* Business Development (targeting, research,
and proposal preparation)
* Business Generation ( getting selected)

Some have all 3 skills. A few departments are structured to support their lawyers in all 3 related efforts. Hopefully more firms will “get it” and begin producing greater revenue.

But client needs are a moving target. The time you spend listening and attending to complaints could be the difference between keeping a client and losing them to another, more attentive firm.

If you have heard any other myths, send them along.

Keep your resume to yourself and let the potential client do the talking. Adopt the old IBM 60/40 sales training rule — keep them talking 60% of the time and spend the remaining 40% asking good questions based upon your research. Pay attention to your client’s verbal cues, and refine your pitch accordingly.