Remember, when people
buy drills, they actually they buy holes. So when people come to lawyer they
need a solution, not product features. Of course it’s important to show your
ability to solve any legal problem, but keep focusing on client needs and
offering right solutions instead of talking how big your law firm is, how many
offices you have, which law school you attended or what are your practice
areas.
There are several strategies that could help to
achieve better results on sales and they are pretty simple if you use them.
- Up-Selling
- Cross- Selling
- Re-selling
- Making law product that could
be sold more than once.
Moving from
transactional client to constant client
Another issue is that usually clients have 1
problem and then seeks who could solve it. After things are done client moves
away because nobody from the law firm takes responsibility to develop
relationship, ask for more work and cross selling opportunities. It’s also
because of the attitude that clients usually comes from referrals rather than
active sales. When a lawyer is done with client’s case, he knows that there
will be another new client, so he focuses on serving new client.
Also if your positioning is based on some niche
expertise it might be not clear for your client that you still have more people
with different specializations in your law office. So after completing the
assignment don’t miss a chance to introduce other lawyers to the client and try
to seek more cross selling opportunities. Don’t wait to long, because the
client will your competitor to solve his another problem if he is not familiar
of other law practices you do.
Small and medium size law firms usually do not
use modern client relationship management (CRM) software, so they have
difficulties tracking the progress in client relationship and see when the last
activity was carried for the client. It’s worth to think about simple function
– look at your recent cases for 6 month period and if there are any clients
with no activity at least for 2 or 3 months you should contact them and remind
about yourself immediately. The best way to do this is to call and offer a
meeting, or just make a phone call, but keep in mind that less effective is
e-mail communication (but of course it’s better than nothing).
Client can be satisfied during the process of
buying legal services, but today it is very important what client experience
after the purchase is made and legal services already rendered, so called
Post-purchase experience. If we forget to contact the client after the
transaction, it’s possible that he will not think about us too much. If we take
a moment to ask how things are going, we can build good sense of client care
and extend client’s positive experience. And it’s one of the most important
factors choosing re-purchase or recommendations to others.
1-2-4 rule in legal sales
It is four times harder, and takes four times
as much effort to get a totally new client, than to develop and get work from
an existing client. It is two times harder to get work from an ex or “orphaned”
client, even if you only worked with them some years ago. The easiest is to get
work from your current clients through up-selling, cross-selling and referrals.
Generally law firms do their business
development the wrong way round. They spend their time, energy, nerves and
budget trying to get totally new clients (via networking, cold pitches etc),
while neglecting current and ex-clients. This is a tragedy. They could make
their life easier by first focusing on whom they know now, then whom they used
to know, and then on the new people.
Who should do the
sales?
By default partners are the source of the
clients in law firm. Sometimes senior lawyers over the years of working with
firm’s clients get their trust and they start to refer their peers directly to
senior lawyers, not partners. But these are very rare cases. On the other hand
more and more modern law firms have specialized non-lawyers sales professionals,
so called professional business
developers (PBDs).
Julie Savarino, Managing Director at Business
Development Inc. say that PBDs are beneficial because they save billable time;
conserve opportunity costs; identify, respond to and generate major new
matters; coordinate firm-wide client contacts; and create efficiencies in the
business development process. She also claims one interesting thing that most
effective PBDs are lawyers, but not necessarily lawyers who are practicing law.
Or we can add, that most successful are those, who are not practicing anymore.
“What I've learned along the way—most
successful salespeople are lawyers who don't practice anymore,” says John
Hurley, former Chief Business Development Officer at DLA Piper[1]. According to Mr. Hurley these people can
build instant credibility and trust and they can talk with clients in a very
educated way. They understand who to bring in to make something happen.
