Posted In: Business Development
Law Firm Business Development: Pick Up The Phone! Meet With Your Clients!
It’s really quite simple and yet over and over we continue to hear that of all professional services firms, law firms—specifically the legal professionals, are absolutely the worst at meeting with clients on a regular basis. Add up all the money spent on conferences, seminars, and other marketing activities and think of how many clients partners could visit, with just half of those dollars. Yes, we know that lawyers test the absolute highest among professionals when it comes to autonomy (working quietly and mostly alone) and skepticism (my clients won’t really care about that; my clients are too busy to be interrupted). Despite these traits, lawyers who find the time to visit clients proactively, to discuss clients’ business strategies with them, and to find new ways to add value to the relationships, will always have a higher percentage of client retention and growth than those lawyers who do not take the time to do this. If the firm does not have a copy of their top clients’ strategic plans; they do not have relationships at the highest levels, or they do not understand their top clients’ growth strategies, then go meet with the clients and ask and find out.
Consider: a flat market for years now and most firms have some business development focus on new client acquisition, client retention and growth. The business will come from other firms less focused on their clients.
Or, perhaps another consideration is higher highly-skilled salespeople who know how to steal market share, or build new business quickly and protect the firm’s client base from stealthy competitors. Free the lawyers up to do what they do best—practice law. Leave the selling up to the skilled professionals who will know when to bring in a lawyer to close the opportunity.
Either way, someone needs to pick up the phone, book a flight and meet face to face with important or could-be-important clients—quickly!
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