Ben Paul* No matter if you’re part of a large traditional law firm, boutique firm, or an alternative legal provider, one thing you’ll all have in common is the need to have a steady stream of clients. There is a great deal of competition within the legal industry, so to ensure you have a healthy business, it pays to dedicate time and effort to business development.
Nowadays, there are several different methods of generating new client needs and building relationships, which range from traditional networking to completely digitalised/online approaches. Although these options present us with choice, it can also create more confusion to understand the best way to generate, develop, and maintain client relationships.
To help remove this confusion and stress, it’s vital for lawyers to have a clear and structured process to follow, such as this practical BD Playbook for professional services. However, the 10 steps below will also provide you with an essential how-to guide:
The 10-step Business Development Guide for Lawyers:
- Be Unique – Understand the value your service brings, and what makes your experience (or how you deliver it) unique. It’s key to have a good understanding of your value proposition, or value propositions. It may be that your legal service provides different benefits depending on what your clients’ needs are.
- Contact ‘Buckets’ – Understand your contact buckets. By this, we mean defining your contacts into relevant categories. For example, you could split them into ‘clients’, ‘referrers’, and ‘prospects/targets.’ You can then allocate your time to these categories, depending on their importance to your practice.
- Structure the Intake Process – Streamline the intake process (as much as possible). Implement a standardised intake process that captures all relevant client information in a structured format. In the early stages, use emails in place of longer proposals in order to get clients to agree to services. You should, of course, follow this up with engagement letters. But initially, most clients want short and simple overviews of what is proposed to be delivered.
- Business development – Carve out time to do BD. This is not just about the meetings you have, but instead, the time you allocate into generating those meetings and actively keeping in contact with your clients. Doing this for 18 minutes per day, even just twice per week, can generate a real impact.
- Use scripts – Create scripts or templates that will help you secure meetings. While these will need to be tweaked for each contact, having a clear structure and message pays dividends. This shouldn’t be your value proposition. Instead, it should be focused on the issues and challenges your client is currently facing, and then offering a conversation to discuss your solutions with them.
- Agendas – Once you have secured a meeting, always send an agenda. Sending a small, suggested agenda means both you and your client will be comfortable, and know what you will be discussing when you meet. Whilst getting to know your client is important, if you only have small talk, it’ll be harder to get the second meeting.
- Focus on outcomes – In the first meeting, I wouldn’t try to sell my services or close the deal. It’s unrealistic, and places too much pressure on the person you’re meeting for the first time… Instead, book a second meeting or agree to joint actions like sharing information, which are both better and more realistic outcomes. In short, you want to keep the conversation flowing post meeting.
- Fee Arrangements – Consider offering alternative fee arrangements. For example, fixed fees or contingency fees to make it easier for clients to budget for legal services and to align incentives between lawyers and clients.
- Understand the client – Form a deep understanding of your client. If you can start to understand you client’s objectives, and not just around the matters they may instruct you on… It allows you to open up your networks with them in a meaningful way. It also means you’ll understand where the matters you work with them on may fit into their wider priorities.
- Follow-up – Always follow-up, after every meeting. A short note can be sent ideally that day, or the next, capturing bullet points of what you discussed and what you agreed to do next. It looks very professional and is appreciated by your clients.
Conclusion
In summary, engaging in effective business development activities is essential for building a sustainable revenue stream, and a thriving legal practice.
It’s crucial to establish a clear and comprehensive process for acquiring and nurturing clients from start to finish, as I have laid out above. By consistently practicing these activities, they become ingrained as natural habits, which certainly pay off in the long run.
Author
Ben Paul is the CEO The BD Ladder, a consultancy specialising in growing Legal firms. He has held senior BD and marketing roles in leading law firms and has over two decades’ experience in business development and marketing.
