Where Are the Lawyers?... The Key Business Development Players Are Still Missing in Action
by Allan Colman
originally published in the November 2006 issue of Of Counsel
Take a look at a recent ad for a "Senior Business Development Manager."
"Duties include: Managing media and public relations for regional market penetration…Coordinating with the Firm’s national public relations manager, coordinating business development activities with the partner in charge of sales, including preparation of proposals, RFPs, PowerPoint presentations, and other sales propositions… Assisting in the execution of marketing strategies for large account teams… Preparing market research for business development activities; developing and producing collateral materials; managing other business development activities as required. Identify, plan, and coordinate new events for generating awareness and interest in the Firm’s regional office and in the expertise of its attorneys. Assisting in the implementation and maintenance of the Client Relationship Management data base in the regional office."
In reality, all these "duties" have been performed for years at law firms by skilled, experienced, and successful marketing department staffs. The only new feature here is that this firm has added "Business Development" to the position title. What does that addition provide and how does it maximize support for the firm’s lawyers, if at all?
- Will it provide a greater focus on pursuing closing opportunities? It should. Marketing is all about getting recognized and found. But there is a huge gap between being found and being hired. The implicit mission of "business development" is to close that gap.
- Can it assist the firm’s partners to recognize their role in new client acquisition? One can only hope – and for a similar reason. They hear "business development" and they think bottom line, their own and the firm’s. For them, that’s a more persuasive message than "marketing."
- Does it send a message to the competition that the firm is at the top of its game? It might. Actually it should, if the competition is smart enough to care.
- Might it be a reassurance to equity partners that the firm is doing everything it can to bring in more revenue? It can’t hurt, again because partners often see marketing as a cost center and business development as a profit generator.
- Could it enhance the marketing department’s ability to perform its firm-wide support function? I’d tend to think so, insofar as the marketeers will feel less compelled to justify their expenditures on a bottom-line basis.
All well and good indeed! But you’ll note that this little Q&A is based on perceptions and reassurances. There are two further questions that have a little more to do with concrete results…
- Would a practical, effective business generating training program evolve? Uhhh…who would conduct the training?
And the $64,000 question…
- Would new bottom line revenues actually result? Maybe, but there’s precious little reason to count on it.
The problem with this business development job description and paradigm is that there’s something essential missing. Aside from one cursory mention of a "partner in charge of sales," the lawyers are missing.
Playing Quarterback
Just as marketing and lawyers don’t seem to often blend into actual engagement-oriented activities, lawyers also appear to be absent from these newer business development efforts being tried by their firms.
Whether looking to building relationships or stimulating cross-selling, business development practitioners are generally frustrated with the lack of participation by their internal clients – the practitioners who will actually manage the work that is being developed. In a previous article for Of Counsel, "Stop Planning and Start Closing," I discussed the need for a changed cultural focus. The focus should be centered more on bringing in business, not just supporting lawyers willing to pursue opportunities.
Let’s take it a little further now and that shift primary focus to the need for active firm-wide lawyer involvement. To address that need, we would recast "business developers" as "Business Generators." In today’s marketplace, "development" is already too slow a concept.
Why are lawyers needed in the Business Generating process? Larry Smith, in his book Inside/Outside: How Businesses Buy Legal Services (American Lawyer Media, 2000), quotes Dan Fitz, in-house counsel at Cable & Wireless. ". . . When I deal with big firms, I deal with individuals within that firm. It comes down to the personal relationship I have with certain key partners. I work with small-and medium sized firms on the same basis."
In that context, the convergence of the lawyer/marketeer and the business development staffer is a key ingredient. It is generally accepted in the professional services that the best business generating tool is high-quality work leading to client satisfaction and referrals. In fact, the recent ALM/Brand Research Annual Law Firm Business Development Practices Survey, which had 157 law firm respondents, reports that more than 50 percent of respondents focus over half their business development budgets on existing clients.
The second is follow-up by the lawyers with those clients even when – or we should say, especially when – they are not currently engaged with them. Further, prospective clients expect to be contacted by partners and senior lawyers, not by business developers or outside sales consultants, with whom some firms have experimented. Typically, lawyers do neither and the available opportunities are squandered.
The ALM/Brand Research Survey goes on to note that more than a third of the responding firms spend over a million dollars per year on business development Meanwhile, the average number of BizDev staff members has grown to an average of 4.2 among those firms with established business development employees.
By definition, these business developers are engaged in developing actual new business. Unfortunately, we have to wonder if they are doing any such thing.
Chronic Issues
Some firms, which have created sales teams that include lawyers and business developers, have met with success. But all too often the rest of their firm reacts by saying, "Save me from the sales people – please!" The initiative only results in more resistance to active involvement.
The mounting failures of these reconstituted law firm business development managers are directly due to the persistent alienation of many partners. The hiring of these managers cannot address systemic problems. In particular:
- Partners refuse to make the time.
- Partners refuse to team up with each other because of a faulty compensation system.
- Fear of the process stymies many partners. They don’t know how to begin – and they don’t ask.
- They’ve failed before and are unwilling to be burned again.
- Partners won’t cross-sell because they fear losing their client to another firm member.
When the symptoms are so fundamental, how can any business development program succeed simply because it’s no longer called "marketing."
Potential Solutions
All that said, there are practicable strategies that firms can successfully utilize for Business Generation that speak directly to the enhanced commitments of the lawyers. Their implementation requires strong and active leadership to identify, organize, and pursue revenue- generating opportunities.
Leadership needs to come from the managing partner, business-generating Partner, CMO, and a redefined "Business Generator" position, which would be someone who works directly with the practice groups, offices, and other interested parties to identify, organize, and pursue revenue generating opportunities.
Firm-wide leadership needs to actively encourage individual effort by insuring that selling is recognized, rewarded, and compensated. Junior partners should be urged to sell with the active assistance of the Business Generation staff. When a new client is engaged, there should be an award system wholly separate from any recognition of or commitments to the lawyers who generate more business from existing clients.
The firm needs to actively support and place articles and speeches by their partners. Funding of Business Generation must be available to those lawyers willing to identify, pursue, and win new work. An ongoing analysis of competitive wins and losses should provide the most up-to-date post-mortems to guide ensuing efforts.
Rather than spending time building or updating a business development plan, the Business Generators should begin pursuing identified targets. In other words, just do it! Energize partner/leaders for each target that practitioners have identified, both in the forefront and back of their minds. At the same time, the Business Generators should lead business strategy debates before investing in RFPs or initiating new contacts.
Timelines for each step toward the final closing of a new engagement should be tightly managed and monitored. Look for successes to spread to other practice groups and offices, and jump on any requests for guidance as a cue for you to take collectively beneficial action.
Where lawyers resist "sales training," the Business Generators should provide the skill and support. It is a recipe for success. As Richard Levick says in his preface to Inside/Outside, "[s]ales training, because it allows the seller to crystallize and address the buyer’s underlying business problem, results in a sales process that helps the buyer whether or not a sale is finally made. It makes it worth his or her time."
The Business Generators can link the marketing department’s research and analysis capability to the lawyer’s skill and focus as support in the pursuit of a specific target. The linkage is a real win-win proposition, since it concretely confirms the bottom-line value of marketing (rather than just encouraging a vague perception that somewhere there’s a direct road from marketing to the final goal line, which is new revenue).
Once these efforts generate revenue, the crucial next step is to draw in current firm resources and conduct an updated assessment of all marketing and PR programs that can lead to expanded revenue production. At the same time, the Business Generators can begin preparing for the next round of prospect identification, resource organization, and new revenue pursuit.
The aggregate successes will lead to the most glittering prize of all: a long-term pipeline that, if actively maintained, will generate new business on a long-term basis. Finding the nexus between lawyers, high-quality marketing, and business development that fits the firm’s culture should capture the Business Generator approach as something distinct from, and better than, current business development programs that are just renamed marketing programs – but are still burdened with the same baggage that has plagued law firm marketeers throughout the last three decades.
The next appropriate areas for inquiry would include specific assessment and evaluation tools to move from planning to action as well as even deeper drill-downs, such as presentation planning and core tactics for associates. We’ll get to those next time.
Stay tuned.
--Allan H. Colman
