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OK, LET’S get started. First, do some analysis of yourself and the market. This may take some time – there are few firms who can provide access to all the information you need in the first instance. Be patient. Make a start. You’ll get there. But please be aware of the potential danger of “paralysis through analysis”. As lawyers you are used to having all the information before making a decision. But often in marketing and selling you will be working with imperfect data. There will be gaps. Sometimes huge gaps, so you will have to learn to make do with what you can easily get hold of.

Know yourself – strengths and weaknesses

Consider your own strengths and weaknesses in the context of business development. Take a look at the list of business development skills in Appendix 1 (p123). Indicate where you are strong and where you think your skills and abilities are weaker. It may guide you towards a particular route. You may be working alone – but more likely you will be part of a team. If so, then involve your colleagues in this analysis and planning process. Marketing is always easier and more effective if you share the workload and assign activities according to the strengths and aptitudes of the various team members.

Don’t be dismayed if you have mostly weaknesses against these skills – reading this book and the other resources (see Appendix 2, p125) will speed you through the learning process. And you can use the matrix to measure your progress and improvement.

Some firms have business development competencies built into their development and appraisal process. Here’s an extract of an example for you to take a look at (see Figure 3.1, p12). Better still, ask your Human Resources team if they have something similar for your firm.

You might also think about your personality. Some firms provide psychometrics and assess-ments, such as NEO Personality Inventory or Myers Brigg Type Indicator (MBTI), and support with programmes such as Neuro-Linguistic Pro-gramming (NLP). There are blogs about these and other methods if you are interested (see the list in Appendix 2, p125). Understanding yourself – and how you react and respond to situations compared to those with different types – can help a lot in business development. The ability to adapt your style in response to others is a key skill and will aid rapport building.

While I am a psychologist who is qualified to make formal assessments, one of the most useful methods I learnt was at an early sales course. It’s called the 3D approach and uses simple facial expressions (which admittedly are the most easy to mask) to help you decide whether someone is dependent (smiley, likes to get on with people, enjoys informal chatting), detached (neutral, possibly cool expressions, prefers to focus on the task at hand) or dominant (more likely to frown, likes to control proceedings and take the lead).

Trail Check Point: Analyse your business

development strengths and weaknesses.

We can’t all be good at everything, but

everyone is good at something. Identify

your areas for development. Know what

you are working with and we’ll find a

method of rainmaking that will suit you.

Know yourself – what are you trying to achieve?

A critical question before you start marketing and selling is “What am I trying to achieve?’ Yes, it sounds obvious. You want more clients, more work and more money. And promotion to partnership or the board. But you’ll need to be more specific than

3. Prepare yourself

Sample chapter

12 RAINMAKERS AND TRAILBLAZERS 2014

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that. And you may need to review and revise these objectives as you do your analysis and research and understand what is required to achieve them.

One of the reasons marketing and selling in many law firms is not very effective is because lawyers haven’t given enough thought to what they want to achieve. Remember Alice in Wonder-land where she asks the cat which road to take? He says something along the lines of: “If you don’t

know where you are going then you can take just about any road”.

You need to clarify your overall aims and mission in life before you can be really specific about what you want to achieve in business devel-opment terms. For example, while generating fee income is what most people think about, you need to consider the desirability of the clients and work you seek (in terms of both your firm’s strategy and

Competency Junior Solicitor Senior Solicitor Partner

Client relationship management

• Listens to informal client feedback about satisfaction with the service

• Forms relationships with peers at client organisation

• Asks the client about satisfaction with the service at the end of transactions

• Suggests and helps organise events to build relationships with the client

• Prepares a clientprofile and manages information about the client in the firm’ssystems

• Organises and conducts formal client satisfaction reviews

• Develops relation-ships with senior decision makers and maps all other contact points to encourage other team members to form relationships

• Prepares a client plan, organises regular client team meetings and ensures actions are undertaken

• Monitors fees andprofitsonallmatters for the client organisation

Profileraising • Ensures web biography is up to date and in line with team strategy

• Contributes drafts for team newsletter and blog

• Attends internal meetings and develops knowledge of other teams’work

• Forms relationships with lawyers in other depart-ments to encourage cross-referrals

• Attends relevant professional network-ing events and makes contact with new people

• Produces articles for newsletters and blogs

• Prepares White Papers and other content/materials for use in communications campaigns

• Prepares presentations for team partners

• Promotesthefirmand the team at relevant external events

• Develops campaigns with marketing/BD teamtoraisethefirmandteamprofile

• Organises events to which clients, targets and referrers are invited

• Establishes links with local and relevant media to gain media coverage

Figure 3.1

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how much you like working with them) and also their profitability. You need to think about where you want to be in, say, five years’ time and not just in a couple of months. This might require some profile raising, skill development and technical repositioning.

You need to consider how much time you want to invest – if you are trying to achieve 10 hours chargeable onto a timesheet every day and have a busy personal life it is going to take you longer than if your chargeable target is five or six hours a day and are prepared to spend two evenings a week (and maybe one weekend a month) investing in building your practice.

Your starting point is important – young lawyers and those setting out to create a new market will have to work harder and wait longer than someone who has an established reputa-tion and client base. However, lawyers who have a solid practice are sometimes faced with the challenge of re-positioning themselves in a different market.

So – what do you want to achieve? Is it a quick fix to get some business in fast? Or are you building a new and sustainable practice? Are you working alone or as part of a team? Are you leading or following? What’s your attitude like? Are you up for the challenge or feeling under pressure?

While it is tricky developing proper SMART objectives (that means Specific, Measureable, Achievable, Realistic and Time specific) it is worth doing so. It makes the selection of an appropriate strategy much easier and will save you time and heartache in the long run.

It may take you a while to develop a really clear idea of your aims. You’ll need to consider a number of external factors – your markets and clients, demand levels for your type of legal advice, the competition and internal factors – where you are starting from personally, your firm’s position in the market, the amount of resources (both time and money) you have to invest in business development and your current network of clients, referrers and prospects.

The other thing to consider is different time horizons. Too often, people focus on the short term

– the next six to nine months. For most commer-cial law services, the lead time (sales cycle or sales pipeline) is considerably longer. As mentioned earlier, research suggests it takes on average nine months and nine separate contacts before you convert a new commercial client. So be realistic in what you hope to achieve. You may need to set some long-term goals (where do you want to be in five-six years’ time?), as well as medium (two-three years) and short-term goals.

And, more than likely, you’ll need to do some analysis both to help you understand your current position and set some baselines or benchmarks against which you can measure your success. There’s nothing more frustrating than investing lots of time and energy in marketing and selling and not knowing how well you are progressing.

Having clear objectives – which can then be broken down into process and results (or mile-stones and outcomes in project management parlance) - will help you monitor progress. So let’s see what sort of analysis you might start with.

Trail Check Point: Think about your aims.

What is it that you want to achieve? In the

long run – five years’ time as well as in the

short term – this year? And think beyond

financial goals – what career and reputa-

tion goals do you have? What work/life

balance? What mix of clients and work?

Analyse your information (internal) – Know your history

Start by collecting and analysing information within your firm’s systems. As you look at this in-formation, make a note of key questions you need to ask, any further information you need and your main conclusions. These points will go into your plan – so keep a summary of your thinking to help you organise your thoughts more easily later on.

1. �Interrogate�your�firm’s�financial�systems�– Start by looking at what your firm and department have achieved in the past in

14 RAINMAKERS AND TRAILBLAZERS 2014

terms of fee income and profitability, and clients and cases. Work with the finance and accounts team to obtain information you require – often, accounting systems will not provide information in the exact format you need. Don’t get too hung up about perfect information – you’ll rarely find it. Look for trends. And remember the Pareto principle that 80% of your income will come from 20% of your clients/referrers. So concentrate on getting the big picture

2. Review future plans - As well as historical information about fees, profits and sources of work – and other details about clients – you will need to consider future forecasts and targets. In most firms, forecasts will be more like production ambitions – how many lawyers you have, working at a certain level of utilisation and charged out by their hourly rate. They make no reference really to demand (whether there is the work to be done) – but that’s the external analysis piece (see below). These projections show what you need to achieve in financial terms going forward – and are used as part of the firm’s budget. You will have other goals – for example, in terms of reputation and positioning, but financial goals are a starting point. If you have an overall financial target for the year think about how much of that work is repeat work from clients and how much you can obtain from existing clients and referrers and therefore how much you have to generate from scratch. Some areas of law are more transactional (e.g. banking, corporate, dispute resolutions) and reliant on referral sources, and some are more relational (e.g. employment, commercial, intellectual property). This will impact how much new business you need to generate. Most firms will have a business plan – for the firm overall and often for each department/team and/or office. These breakdowns are important because they provide insight into the firm’s overall

strategy – which parts of the business they expect to grow and where they will invest etc. This is important for you as you need to ensure that whatever you decide to do in terms of your own business development (I use this term to cover the three activities of marketing, selling and relationship management) is in line with the firm and your team’s overall plan. Ideally, you should work as part of a team – you will have different and complementary strengths and weaknesses – and it will spread the business development load. However, let’s assume for now that you will be working alone. Sophisticated firms will have marketing and sales or key client plans for the firm, the departments (services or market focused) and offices. If so, you are lucky because a lot of the hard work of research and analysis has been done for you. If not, you will be a trailblazer in producing the first such documents for your firm. And when you are successful – which you will be after following the steps in this book – your approach will probably be emulated or adopted by others in the firm.

3. Investigate your firm’s marketing systems – Larger firms will have sophisticated systems, such as InterAction, where all client and contact information is stored. Whatever system your firm uses, please do not get annoyed with your marketing team if you find data is out of date – first, all databases decay at about 30% a year and second, the marketing folk can only enter data that you – the lawyer – provides. Also, do not despair if your firm doesn’t have a good system or it has a system that no one uses. This is surpris-ingly common. Look at it as an opportu-nity to help your firm develop systems that lawyers will want to use (trailblazing again)! Find a simple system that supports you in working in the way you want to; at a later date, you can look at a more sophisticated system that allows you to

CHAPTER 3

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pool your information with others in your team or firm. Do not let technology be a barrier – Outlook has a perfectly service-able contacts system that allows you to grade contacts and add notes. Ideally, you should obtain lists of clients for the past three years that show total fee income, number of matters, range of services used, and, importantly, the source of that work. In larger firms you will probably find there is associated data regarding partners and lawyers who “own” the relationship both with the organisation and specific individuals. To avoid duplica-tion, add your name as a contact to anyone you know and they will turn up in your lists – as well as the lists of everyone else who has entered a connection. If you have a good Client Relationship Management (CRM) system you should be able to obtain a lot of detailed information, such as market sector and turnover size of commercial clients and demographics (e.g. age, location, income, family status etc) for private clients. The CRM system may hold details of what newsletters clients (those who have a fee paying relation-ship with your firm), referrers (those who refer clients and work to you), contacts (people who are known to you or the firm) or prospects/targets (those who you would like to be clients) want to receive from the firm, which will indicate their interests. There will be a difference here depending on whether you are mostly focusing on commercial clients (to whom you market directly) or private clients (where often you are working through intermediaries and referrers). It will also be different in terms of the type of work you do – for example, corporate finance and litigators have more transactional work, so the main relation-ship may be with referrers. In contrast, those providing commercial law or em-ployment services may have relationships with the clients themselves. Similarly, with

consumer clients – family and personal injury lawyers may work mostly through referrers, while tax, trusts and conveyancing lawyers may have direct contact with clients. Younger lawyers (digital natives) may be heavily reliant on social media and use a system such as CubeSocial to manage their social media connections across a number of platforms. As noted, at this stage the system you use doesn’t matter – the key thing is to have a starting list to assess your current position, add new contacts and information to, and to prompt and monitor your progress. If you work in a commercial practice area or large firm you might also find Key Account Management or Key Client plans. This is where large and signifi-cant relationships (for example, if you are on the panel for a bank or insurance company’s work) have been considered in a lot of detail and there is effectively a mini-marketing plan for how to develop each key relationship. These documents will help you immensely in understanding how your firm generates new and existing clients so if you find them, treasure them – and take time to talk them through with one of the major account team members so you can become involved. There’s more information about the marketing team, CRM and KAM systems in the second part of the book if you want to take a peek now.

Trail Check Point: Analyse internal informa-

tion. Look at the information in your firm’s

financial systems and business or depart-

mental plans. Investigate what the firm’s

client and contact database contains. Get

some lists! Start building your own list.

4. Organise your own information – Now you need to get your own information in

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order. Yes, I know it’s a pain but it’s really important you are organised. Investing time now will pay back dividends in the future. Again, you may be in a firm that has a sophisticated CRM system and you may need to spend time getting to grips with it. The marketing team (and possibly IT) can help you. If not, you need to set up systems for yourself. You might find it easier to organise information in your own system before exporting or sharing it firm wide. The main thing is that you become comfortable and proficient in managing and manipulating your information – and it’s not a good idea to expect your PA (if you have one) or assistants to do this for you. Information about your clients, referrers and contacts is the foundation of your marketing, selling and relationship management efforts. It could point you in the direction of where you might focus effort (we call this developing a niche) or it might pose questions about opportunities that already exist. You need to have a good grip of your information – otherwise you will not be able to keep track of what you need to do and when nor how much progress you have made. While your legal skills are a major asset, so is your contact base. Learn to manage it well – consider it like another currency. So, dig through that pile of business cards you have hidden in your desk, trawl your email inboxes and go through as many past client files as you can. Mine your personal lists on your phone, home PC and on social media, and add them into your contact management system. When it comes to grading your contacts use a simple traffic light system to mark those that require urgent and regular attention as green, those you need to investigate or warm up further as amber and those you really don’t think are valuable in the short term as

red. Alternatively, you may grade them in terms of how much time and attention you should invest right now – typically, existing clients and referrers should be contacted on a weekly or monthly basis, loose contacts and prospects on a quarterly basis and others on a bi-annual basis. But be careful, do not readily discard old contacts that on first inspection seem fruitless – they may have just the opportunity or introduction you are seeking. The categories facility in Microsoft Outlook will enable you to set up these categories easily. If you are a newly qualified lawyer, you may feel a bit left out at this stage and assume you do not have any clients or contacts. Wrong! You will have some contacts already – people you met at college or during your training, peers in other professions or companies you are friends with. Think of the people you know in the business world generally and don’t worry if they are not or ever likely to be in a position to purchase legal services from your firm. They are contacts and may have knowledge or contacts that are useful to you. This is the essence of networking – so dig around your address book and social media sites and start gathering your contacts. While it’s fine to store contacts in Microsoft Excel spreadsheets or Word documents, I urge you to take advantage of the facilities in even a simple contact management system, such as Microsoft Outlook, SugarCRM or Microsoft Dynamics. These systems allow you to categorise your contacts into clients, referrers and prospects, or into industry classifications or source type. You can also track conversations and schedule future calls. All of these contact systems integrate into calendar and email applica-tions, so it takes some of the pain away. In sophisticated CRM systems you can even mark what stage of the sales cycle

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you are at. But let’s not run before we can walk!

Trail Check Point: Organise your client,

referrer and contact information. Don’t get

hung up on systems or codes. Just make

sure you have a list of your current clients,

contacts and referrers in a way you can

record and manage the information.

Analyse information (external) – Understand the broad market

This is the tricky bit and you may need to get some help from the people in your marketing, information services or business analyst teams (if you have them). Basically, you need to understand what is happening in the general market. For a moment you need to stop thinking like a lawyer and think like a market researcher or management consultant.

The starting point is way out there in terms of long-term trends in the economy, political scene, technology arena and sociologically. And you need to consider a long-term horizon. Why? Because you need to know what is down the line. Marketing rarely produces overnight results. Plus, if you concentrate on meeting the needs clients have today you will be competing with every other lawyer that’s already out there in the market. So this should help you leap-frog the competition.

The definition of marketing is “the man-agement process for anticipating and meeting client needs profitably” (Chartered Institute of Marketing). Notice the word “anticipate”. You need to know what clients are likely to need before they do! Yes, I know you are thinking – but I’m a corporate/property/employment/private client/family lawyer – why am I doing this general analysis? Trust me, you need to do it. As well as informing your future marketing and selling choices it will give you an insight into what your clients are grappling with – and every client wants a lawyer who understands what is going on in the general environment.

Plus, by analysing these broad environmental trends you may get some insight into the sorts of issues on which you can develop new services or launch a thought leadership campaign. But that’s for later. You may find it helpful to take a look at my blog – I often publish useful collections of sta-tistics and trends relating to things like economic developments, changes in the family structure and so on. Your marketing people may have already done some PEST or SLEPT (Political, Economic, Sociological and Technological trends) analyses for you – and they may be in the business or marketing plans I mentioned above. Again, you might have to be a trailblazer here – but it will be worth the effort.

I came across a good example today. During a brainstorm of future trends with a group of lawyers on a course we identified data security as a growing problem. It will lead to further cases of identity theft for individuals and fraud for companies. Who are the legal experts people can turn to when this happens? This led to thinking about what would be required to package up the various investigative, litigation, technology and financial skills into a new legal product. It will take a bit of time to work out how the service might operate, what it might cost and to raise a profile in specific markets to generate work. But there’s the essence of a campaign to position you as an expert and generate a new stream of revenue in the future. That’s product (service) development in action!

Take a good hard look at your competitors – and not just similar firms of lawyers on your patch. Think about new entrants to the market, new approaches to solving legal needs (e.g. offshore services, online legal services, in-house legal services, multi-disciplinary providers etc). Consider the strengths and weaknesses of these alternatives from the perspective of clients. What is it that these alternatives provide that typically you do not? Where’s the added value?

Narrow your research into the market aspects closest to your existing clients. For example, for commercial lawyers there may be groups of clients in particular sectors – private vs public for example, or in particular market sectors – such

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as technology, banking or real estate. For private clients, you may need to investigate family busi-nesses, private estates, family offices or particular occupational groups or asset classes.

A technique many of my clients have found helpful is to create a market map. To do this, you need to draw a sort of mind map. Put a market in the centre and just write as many attributes, channels, places and other things about that market around it. You may have to try this a few times as often you start at too broad and general a market and you need a further map to explore one or more specific markets in more detail. Quite often, it will reveal a particular channel or segment of the market that is different and which you can make your own. It also enables you to focus at a later stage on a manageable chunk of the market rather than spreading yourself too thinly.

To give you an idea, I have included a couple of illustrative market maps (see Firgures 3.2 and 3.3).

This sort of information comes from Internet searches. Find suitable associations or groups (or

online communities) that cater for the particular groups you are serving. Reference libraries will have copies of documents, such as the British Directory of Associations (http://www.cbdre-search.com/DBA.htm). So, for example, for the property sector you may spend some time learning about the British Council for Offices (BCO) or the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) if serving property managers in local government. There’s a group called the Retail Property Managers Association for those involved in retail property matters. And so on. Immerse yourself in these sources – they will provide you with information about the common issues, the language and jargon they use, the major players and perhaps even existing advisers who are active there. You will find links to other sources of information about these sectors – perhaps even key conferences and events you might consider attending for listening and networking purposes.

You will also find it helpful to read sector specific media. For example, in property it

An example market map B2B and B2C

Figure 3.2

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CHAPTER 3

might be Estates Gazette and Property Week. For insurance it would be Post magazine. For local government it might be Local Govern-ment Chronicle. You need to dig around a bit. Sometimes I suggest firms consider taking on marketing interns during the holidays who will relish this sort of research activity.

Trail Check Point: Do some external market

research. Start with broad economic and

technological trends. Then take a look at

specific sectors or segments of the market.

Consider the competition.

Look for trends – Craft your market focus

When you have all your internal and external information gathered you need to do two things. First, summarise the key points – often it is useful

to categorise things as a strength, weakness, opportunity or threat and to give a weighting to the most important ones.

Second, look for trends, common themes or weak signals that will help you focus on one or two key markets or issues. The main reason why much legal marketing is ineffective is because lawyers try to sell their relatively generic services (“I’m a property lawyer”, “I’m an employment lawyer”, “I’m a banking lawyer”) to too broad a market. You need focus. And the sharper your focus, the easier it will be to identify the relevant issues and tailor the approach to target your potential clients – and then reach them.

This is the bit that can cause problems so get some help if necessary. Ask your marketing team to help you look at the information and obtain their views. The technical term for this process is segmentation – breaking the mass market down into more specific segments with common needs and/or attributes. You wouldn’t try to eat a whole orange in one go – you’d break it down into

Illustrative market map - Elderly clients

Figure 3.3

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segments first. Alternatively, ask another colleague in a different part of the firm to take a look. You may be too close to see the common thread. And it may be that the common thread is not something you expect – like a referral source, or a particularly strong client relationship who recommends you, or a previous employer, or from an event that you attended or a common “presenting issue”.

Sometimes there really isn’t a common theme to help you. But in the vast majority of cases I usually identify one, so persevere. Sometimes there are numerous ideas as you have a wide base – consider each in turn and its likelihood of helping you meet your overall aims.

Trail Check Point: Look for trends or shared

characteristics among your markets,

clients and contacts. Be creative and get

input and ideas from others if necessary.

Choose one or two key segments or

sectors on which to focus.

Know what you’re selling – Preparing your proposition and key messages

This sounds obvious. But it’s not. You will notice we have spent quite a bit of time looking outside of the firm and your work and area of legal specialisation. That is because marketing starts with the principle that we need to identify the market and client needs before we try to shape a product or service to meet those needs. Whereas the usual mode of operation for lawyers is to say, “I do IT contracts – who do I sell them to?” That’s the inside-out approach and you need to change and take the outside-in approach. Are you with me?

It also requires you to think a bit like a salesperson and adopt a client perspective. There’s more about this later in the selling skills section. Basically, we are trying to think about what problems the market and clients have and what benefits they seek so we can present our expertise and services in a way that directly matches their

needs and stresses the benefits that are important to the clients – not to us the lawyers.

Perhaps the best way to do this is through an example. There are lots of commercial property lawyers. An oversupply of “vanilla” property lawyers is what has caused so much price pressure on property work (OK, the recession and problems in the property market have contributed). But what does a developer really need from a property lawyer? They need certainty around prices and a really good knowledge of the sorts of contracts and financing they are undertaking. So rather than your message being, “I am a highly trained and experienced commercial property lawyer”, your message might be, “You need an experienced lawyer who understands the specific risks in bank-financed speculative mixed use developments and who operates on a fixed fee”. There’s a difference isn’t there?

Let’s consider a lawyer serving the consumer market. Rather than “I’m a private client lawyer” how about “I help wealthy families with business assets and overseas properties navigate the complex web of domestic and international tax issues to ensure they retain as much wealth as possible for future generations”. And instead of “I’m a family lawyer” how about “I help top executives who are regularly posted overseas to manage the end of their relationship as quickly and painlessly as possible while finding innovative solutions to shared parenting that are in the best interests of the children”.

What we are doing here is developing your value proposition. Again, there’s more general in-formation on this process in my blog. Some people refer to this as a USP – a Unique Selling Proposi-tion. You need to stand out from the crowd to be successful. If you are not different in some way, then you will be a commodity and that’s where there is the fiercest competition and the cruellest price pressure.

If it is too difficult for you to find an unusual angle then think about the three “tip of the tongue” key messages you would like people to know about you. What do you want to be famous for? Using the examples above, these might be – com-mercial property developers, bank funded mixed

RAINMAKERS AND TRAILBLAZERS 2014 21

use schemes and fixed prices, or international executives, overseas properties and innovative shared parenting arrangements. But make sure these key messages have resonance with your target audience and are not too internally, techni-cally oriented (unless that is important to your target market – if, for example, they are in-house counsel). These key messages will be important in building in key words to your web, blog, speeches and other promotional activities later on.

This process may lead you along the track of developing a completely new service – for example, an online information subscription service or a neat little App people can use on their smartphone. But if your thinking is taking you in the direction of developing a new product or service, or even packaging your advice with different service elements, then please speak to the management and marketing teams as it is not something you can easily do on your own.

Trail Check Point: Develop your

proposition. Think about your target

market or segment and their needs.

Explain what value you bring – and

what’s different about your approach.

See things from the client’s perspective

rather than the lawyer’s view. Get help

if you are thinking of developing a new

product or service.

Agree aims and objectives (financial projections) and broad strategy

I’ve already asked you to start thinking about your aims and objectives. But that was before I asked you to do some external and internal analysis and to think about specific market segments and service offerings. You will find planning is an iterative process – you set goals, do research, make decisions, start taking action and monitor the results. You might need to go back and revise or refine the goals or the decisions in view of what you have learned. This is what keeps plans alive – otherwise they would quickly become out of date.

Your plan should develop as your learning and thinking develops.

Having thought about which market sectors and particular services you wish to promote will make it easier to set specific objectives. For example, you might have previously considered goals such as:

� Generate £150,000 fees from new clients by March 2015;

� Generate £75,000 additional fees from existing clients by March 2014;

� Secure five new divorce cases with a value of at least £25,000 by December 2014.

Now you can start to break these goals down into more meaningful sub-goals, such as:

� Get the contact details of 50 CEOs of local (25 miles from the office) SMEs into my database by February 2014;

� Meet HR directors in 30 organisations in the technology sector by March 2014;

� Establish a relationship with two organisa-tions which have international executives with overseas property assets as clients by June 2014.

For the brave among you, consider your limiting assumptions. You might assume your firm still requires you to meet your daily billable hours target, will not provide you with the investment you need for an innovative marketing campaign or will not consider an unusual proposal to go out and develop a new market. Challenge your established ways of thinking and do not be afraid to ask your seniors about building a business case for doing something different. Sometimes, a high reward in the longer term may mean you have to sacrifice a smaller reward in the short term. The management teams at many firms I work with would love their partners and lawyers to come up with innovative and bold new initiatives.

A word of warning here about strategy. It is about making choices. Most lawyers want to be open to all manner of opportunities, clients and work. That’s fine. You can be – in a reactive way.

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However, when it comes to proactive marketing and business development you need to make choices. Otherwise you will spread yourself too thinly and not do anything very well, which will give confusing messages to the marketplace. So, pick one or two sectors and/or one or two services or issues on which to focus. That’s the high-level strategy you need at this point.

Remember what I said about SMART objectives? Have a look at your targets and check they are realistic bearing in mind the market condi-tions, your contact base, how unusual your service proposition is and how much time you are prepared to invest in marketing and business development.

Trail Check Point: Revise your SMART

objectives. Bear in mind market

conditions, what you are offering, the

typical sales cycle and how much time

you are prepared to invest in marketing.

Be realistic in your expectations.

Select targets and critical relationships

Your approach may differ depending on whether you are a commercial lawyer working in a large practice or a consumer lawyer in a smaller practice. So read what’s relevant to you.

If you are a commercial lawyer, working in a large practice (or a consumer lawyer whose primary focus is generating work through third party organisations, such as banks, IFAs and other advisers, charities etc) you may already have relationships with the key people and organisa-tions. From the earlier analysis you should have a good idea who these people and organisations are and you can list them as targets and adopt a direct (selling) approach to get closer to them. You may need to do some research; think about how you can help them with some of their needs (not necessarily legal ones) and put together a pitch to try and secure a meeting. If there is already a key client or referrer plan you will need to talk to the team to see how you can contribute.

At the other end of the scale, if you need more new client relationships then you need to identify some organisations to target. Use your analysis to guide you in considering the location, size, market or other characteristics of organisa-tions in this sector. Your marketing and business development team should be able to help you find reliable lists.

For those targeting consumers with transac-tional needs (e.g. family or personal injury law), your strategy will either be to raise awareness within a particular market or niche to draw interest and contacts to you (probably via your web site) or to secure relationships with third-party or-ganisations who are already central to your target community. This is a decision about whether you are targeting other businesses and organisations (B2B – business to business) or consumers directly (B2C – business to consumers).

If you are not identifying specific target organisa-tions then unless you have significant resources, it is better to identify a niche where you can tailor your message and proposition in a more focused way rather than approaching the general, mass market.

If the nature of your market – and/or your current position with regards to marketing and business development – doesn’t allow you to target specific organisations where you can make a direct approach, don’t worry. We just need a slightly different plan to help you – keep reading.

Trail Check Point: Commercial lawyers

should try to identify target organisations

(perhaps based on criteria gleaned from

earlier analysis of existing clients and work

sources). Consumer lawyers should try

to identify target organisations who are

likely to be a good source of referrals or

those with whom a collaborative marketing

approach can be developed.

Create a plan

By this stage you already have an outline plan in the making. It’s a good idea to document the key

RAINMAKERS AND TRAILBLAZERS 2014 23

CHAPTER 3

points. Your marketing team probably has detailed templates to help you (and there are also some on my web site blogs – alternatively, please email me for an example). But it doesn’t need to be a detailed plan – one or two pages will be sufficient to remind you of your thinking and the reasons for your decisions.

So, summarise the key thoughts for:

1. Where am I now? (Analysis – remember your SWOT)

2. Where do I want to be? (Aims and objectives)

3. How will I get there? (At present this will be a high level view of who you are trying to reach with what product, service, issue or message and in what way – a more detailed plan will be developed over the next few chapters) �

Trail Check Point: Summarise your key

findings and decisions into an outline plan.

Author:Kim Tasso

Publication date:February 2014

ISBN:978-0-9570022-3-4

Pages:138

Price:£195

About the author:

Kim Tasso has worked with lawyers since 1989. Yes, that’s nearly a quarter of a century. She’s worked inside

some of the largest firms and also assisted some of the smallest. She is one of the most prolific trainers of

lawyers in an array of management, marketing and selling skills. She has written books on the subject and

thousands of articles and blogs. And through her coaching work, she has worked on a one-to-one basis

with hundreds of lawyers in different regions, practice areas and levels of seniority to help them devise and

implement effective business development plans.

Rainmakers & Trailblazers

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Rainmakers and Trailblazers

By Kim Tasso

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A practical step-by-step guide to effective business development for lawyers