Research shows that each year, 20% of successful firms’ clients disappear. This means that 20% of your hard-earned marketing and sales success is consumed by just staying even.

There are many reasons for this. Some have nothing to do with how well you served those clients and aren’t controllable, e.g., consolidation, failure, relocation, etc. It is said that ours is an 80-20 world, meaning 80% of any effect is from 20% of the causes. Law firms’ difficulty in getting and keeping clients stems from the following causal factors.

No Differentiation

Most firms’ messages are variations on the "Quality Legal Services/We’re Great Lawyers" theme, and many firms assiduously avoid attracting attention, preferring to look just like the other "quality" firms. Research indicates that corporate buyers think all established firms are top quality, and can’t appreciate the minor distinctions that lawyers cite in intramural discussions.

Too Few Lawyers Selling

A handful of senior lawyers brings in most of the business. Everyone else services those clients and assumes that enough business will continue to show up somehow.

Tunnel Vision

This means looking for business only in your practice area. Tax lawyers looking for tax work, etc.

One corporate lawyer, seeking to groom bio-tech startups, had begun a relationship with a university’s business incubator. During a coaching session, he complained of a recent meeting at which the department heads kept steering the discussion back to a technology transfer problem. Exasperated, this lawyer told me: "But I wanted to talk about getting into the incubator’s startup stream." Accepting technology transfer as the easy entry point and bringing in his IP colleagues didn’t occur to him.

Chasing Fool’s Gold

All sales "opportunities" are not created equal. In fact, research reveals that, in 30% of selling situations, nothing is purchased, no decision is made. No law firm has a 30% market share, so we lose to competitors far less frequently than we lose to No Decision. Few lawyers know how to qualify and avoid investing precious time on a doomed sales process.

Pitching

Pitching is telling a prospect all about your firm, your services and yourself, and hoping that your presentation’s sheer mass, and the innate attractiveness of your services will motivate the prospect to go through the cost and dislocation of replacing an incumbent.

Selling is using the questioning and listening skills that made you a great lawyer, in a disciplined way, to learn which of this prospect’s many needs are not being fulfilled satisfactorily. You have a number of legal services "products" in your supermarket. Learn which one this prospect already wants to say "Yes" to.

Failure to Cross-Sell

Our studies show that, on average, firms’ Top 100 clients buy only three or four of the two dozen services typically available.

Partner Shock

Newly-minted partners awake to the harsh fact that partnership includes developing business, whether the firm and they have prepared for it or not.

Product Cycle Blindness

Law firms are premium-priced manufacturers of custom products tailored to client needs. But needs change. Nothing is in demand or commands a premium price forever. Lawyers must learn how to recognize emerging needs that yield great value and command premium prices.

Progressive firms are overcoming these obstacles with proper education, training and guidance. Education provides the knowledge and a common language with which to propagate it. Skill building requires coaching and continuous guidance while the skill is practiced. Ideally, lawyers apply sales and marketing lessons in real situations, guided by the unseen hand of their Coach.

Learning by winning.

Law firms have always sought the best people. The definition of "best" has changed. Besides top grades, the best need marketing and sales skills that once were a luxury, found only in "natural" rainmakers. What was once the ceiling is the floor. Today, marketing, sales and client service training is a strategic tool that, properly used, can deliver dramatic results. Lawyers know the importance of these skills, and they know they must acquire them--either at their current firm or at another one.

Law firms fear that bold, assertive marketing will alienate their clients. But corporations invest billions in marketing. It’s critical and it works. When we conduct focus groups among executives, they review proposed law firm advertising or other marketing communication and invariably say, "It’s about time they got with it." Learn now. The firstest get the mostest.

Published in Empire Law Source