Business Development: Turning Art into Science

Jim Hassett was kind enough to send me a preview copy of his brand new LegalBizDev Success Kit, a business development training package, complete with audio CDs, a step-by-step guide, a reference book, practice materials, and even a "quick start" card. Even if Jim wasn't a client (full-disclosure!), I would say the Success Kit is the single most comprehensive and practical tool for lawyers who want to generate new business.

I wish I had a copy of the Success Kit when I started my own law firm six years ago; it would have made growing the practice a lot easier and much faster.

In 2002, I was RIF'd from an Internet-related venture during the post-dotcom period. Rather than look for another in-house counsel position, I decided to start my own law practice from scratch. I had 30 days severance pay and a half-million dollar mortage as well as a family to support. Talk about pressure to generate business!

With limited savings, I knew that I had to attract clients fast. I set a simple rule of meeting one new potential referral source per business day. I figured that by the end of the month, I would have 20 new contacts who could refer business to me, and that by the end of the year, I would have 240 new contacts (20 x12). Even if a fraction of those contacts referred business, I would be in great shape.

The truth was that I had no clue what I was doing; but looking back on it, I eventually stumbled upon many of the key principles outlined in the LegalBizDev Success Kit. Necessity is the mother of invention, but a tough way to go. With Jim's Success Kit, you can accelerate the learning process and improve the end results.

I first got to know Jim about two years ago, and since that time I have had the chance to put many of his business development suggestions into practice. Last year, I personally worked with 75 separate paying clients. These were clients that I actually chose and enjoyed working with, not just clients or projects that I felt obligated to take on. Almost all of these clients were businesses (meaning repeat services) as oppposed to individuals (meaning one-time projects). This year, the growth of my practice has continued to accelerate; I moved into larger office space and formed a partnership that effectively doubled the size of the practice.

One of the things that I like best about Jim's approach is his focus on people. As stated in the LegalBizDev Step-by-Step Guide: "The only way to grow legal business is to grow personal relationships." How does a lawyer develop personal relationships with clients and referral sources?

I used to think that developing (and maintaining) those personal relationships was more of an art than a science. Now, having read through Jim's materials, I am convinced that he has turned this art into a science. The Success Kit breaks down the process for developing client relationships into easy to follow steps, including everything from how to first engage the client to closing new business (without being annoying or salesy).

The Success Kit is very adaptable to each lawyer's unique style and preferences. The materials can be used like an intensive sales training program for a quick ramp-up in business or they can be used as a reference tool to gradually improve business over time. The audio CDs can be played on a computer or downloaded to an MP3 player. One lawyer may want to start at the beginning by following the complete Step-by-Step Guide. Another lawyer may prefer to use the Quick Start to pinpoint specific business development skills that he or she wants to improve.

Drawing on more than twenty years of experience, Jim has developed an innovative training program for business development. Jim also draws on the expertise of other sales and marketing professionals, extracting the essence of many of their time-tested concepts and applying it to his unique methodology. Although specifically designed for lawyers, Jim's approach to business development would be useful to other professional service providers as well.

Jim's practical approach to business development is very effective, but one thing he cannot do is make the process happen for you. In his Step-by-Step Guide, he is brutally honest in saying that "finding new clients is the hardest work you can do in a suit" and he admits that it takes a long time to build client relationships. That said, it is worth the time and effort to improve your business develpment skills. By investing the time now, you can reap the benefits for many years to come.

Do you consider business development to be more of an art or a science? What does your firm do to help lawyers improve their business development skills?

How can you attract the best clients?

The best clients may or may not be the biggest clients or the most profitable clients. For my corporate/business practice, the best clients are the ones that value my services and want to build a long term relationship. So how do you find clients that value legal services? How do you build long term relationships?

When I first started practicing law, I had this image that business development meant putting on my sales and marketing hat, heading out to some networking event, and then rounding up a bunch of great new clients (all wearing suits and ties with $100 bills spilling out their pockets). I quickly learned that it seldom, if ever, works like that. In fact, when I try "selling" my services to new clients, it usually doesn't work at all. So, how do you get new clients? Where do you find them?

Start by assessing whom your best clients are. As recommended by Jim Hassett in his new book Legal Business Development, you must first build stronger relationships with your existing clients, before trying to generate new clients. Think about which clients value your legal services the most and which clients you enjoy working with you the most. Then, invite your best clients to go to an "appreciation" lunch and ask them why they like your services. Were you right?

Also, think about which clients don't value your services very much and which clients fail to understand what you really do. Think about those clients that are difficult to collect fees from or who are trying to get more than they are paying for. Every once in a while, I get a client that has read Rich Dad, Poor Dad and believes that "money is power." Those are the clients that I have come to realize detract the most from my business. The more I weed out the bad clients, the more I begin to attract the best clients.

Clients will not hire you unless they develop some kind of relationship with you. It may be a real relationship or it may be that they just identify with who you are. In Seth Godin's book All Marketer's Are Liars , which ironically is a book about telling the truth, he says that you have to be authentic. For me, being authentic means acknowledging that I primarily represent entrepreneurs and investors of early-stage ventures, not Fortune 500 companies, and I have the practical experience of having actually owned and managed a software development business. Clients respect it when you give them a clear picture of who you are and what you do rather than pretending to be something bigger.

Developing relationships with other people requires more than just telling the truth. As business development coach, Stewart Hirsch, says "it's not just about you." Whether it is a potential client or a referral contact, you need to focus on how you can help the other person. That way you can start building the relationship. Think about how you and your whole business model can facilitate and improve client relationships.

As my long time (9 days) readers know, I have been considering various pricing models. The so-called "alternative billing" models seem to be generating a lot of buzz lately (e.g., Gruntled Employees, LawBiz, The HR Lawyer's Blog), but I'm still wary of going to anything radical like an all "fixed-fee" model. The process of billing on a "fixed fee" basis all the time means sending an invoice to the client every time a new issue comes up or a new document needs to be drafted. The problem is that very quickly the "fixed-fee" creates a disincentive for building a strong relationship with the client. Fundamentally, high-value relationships are based on trust. If the lawyer doesn't trust the client, or the client doesn't trust the lawyer, the value of that relationship will be very low and the client will likely move on to the next lawyer that comes along.

So, my advice is take a client or prospective client to lunch. Ask them what they value most in their law firm, and find out how you can be of greater service to them (whether as a lawyer or as a friend).

What makes your best clients the "best"? How do you go about attracting new ones?

Why is LinkedIn a good tool for lawyers?

Business development is one of the five themes that The Virtual Lawyer will discuss. In thinking about the "law firm of the future," I have to believe that having an Internet presence will be essential to business development. But how do you create an Internet presence, especially for those of us who grew up in the real world (not the virtual world)?

The short answer is: "I don't know, but I need to start somewhere." The Internet presence of lawyers will evolve over time. How lawyers can create (or recreate) their business image online will be a subject for future blogs. What I know today is that creating an Internet presence online is critical. Just the way people shop for music, books, and electronics online today, they will shop for legal services in the future. Now is the time to experiment with creating a "virtual" presence before everyone else figures it out.

To start building an Internet presence, I submitted my profile to LinkedIn. Many people have invited me to join and I cautiously started to "accept" their invitations. There are many different networking tools and social networking sites, but here is why I selected LinkedIn:

First, I believe that professionals and other service providers, like product businesses need to have a strong presence on the Internet. Whether you think of it as being listed in the "Yellow Pages" (before the Internet), or whether you think of it as joining the Chamber of Commerce, professionals need ways to market their services and generate new business contacts. For business professionals, LinkedIn is one of the leading websites for this purpose.

Second, I selected LinkedIn because it is a leader in the market and it's business model depends on adherence to privacy concerns and they have a strong privacy policy (that is more than just boiler plate). See: http://www.linkedin.com/static?key=privacy_policy&trk=ftr_privacy.

Third, a longtime friend, Erik Heels started using LinkedIn as a networking tool and invited me to join his network. Erik is an extremely thoughtful and talented intellectual property lawyer, who is an innovator in his own right within the legal profession. I took great comfort in knowing that Erik was using it despite the privacy concerns. Also, I thought that if Erik was using LinkedIn as a networking tool for lawyers, then I should consider using it as well.

Fourth, I am using LinkedIn as a way to maintain contact with colleagues and friends and to develop professional business relationships. Today, people frequently change email addresses, move away, or change jobs without sending new contact information. Also, I find it rather time consuming to maintain contact information for everyone I know and I often wonder where people currently work. LinkedIn makes it much easier to keep in touch.

Fifth, LinkedIn is a referral-only network with "gated access". The only way users can be connected is if someone they know forwards a contact request to them and the other user accepts the invitation to make a connection. It's okay if people prefer not to make a connection; I just hope they keep me informed of their change of addresses/professional status.

Sixth, the features and connections made using LinkedIn are quite powerful. You can easily find people, share connections, and identify who may help you to make an important introduction. LinkedIn also provides the user with numerous configuration settings that control what information the user shares with the public.

What I like the most about LinkedIn is knowing that regardless of how my business or career changes, I know that people will always be able to find me and it makes it much easier for me to find them. Since joining, I have reconnected with many colleagues that I worked with at previous employers, who now work in other parts of the country.

If you would like to connect with me on LinkedIn, send me an invitation via my profile at <http://www.linkedin.com/in/rogerglovsky>.

What do you think of LinkedIn as a networking tool for lawyers?

Can blogging help grow a law practice?

This year, my New Year's resolution was to start writing a blog and to contribute regularly. Okay, I'm a little late in starting, but I'm finally ready to put my New Year's resolution in place.

The Plan is to use the blog as a motivator for building a law practice. Not just one that makes money, but one that looks forward, leverages technology, and anticipates new trends. If you will, the law firm of the future. That said, I am currently only a solo practitioner. What I know is that I want to grow my business. I don't know whether that means recruiting partners, hiring paralegals or associates, or adding other staff. I don't know whether that means growing the business physically, virtually or a combination of both.

So, how will a blog help grow a law practice? The idea is to write about one thing at the start of each work day that is critical to building the business. I have a vision for building a law practice. One that provides great quality, leverages technology, and emphasizes customer service.

I imagine that this is how IBM started. The founder of IBM, Tom Watson Sr, as quoted in The E-Myth Revisited, described how IBM built its success:

"IBM is what it is today for three special reasons. The first reason is that, at the very beginning, I had a very clear picture of what the company would look like when it was finally done. You might say I had a model in my mind of what it would look like when the dream - my vision - was in place.

"The second reason was that once I had that picture, I then asked myself how a company which looked like that would have to act. I then created a picture of how IBM would act when it was finally done.

"The third reason IBM has been so successful was that once I had a picture of how IBM would look like when the dream was in place and how such a company would have to act, I then realized that, unless we began to act that way from the very beginning, we would never get there.

"In other words, I realized that for IBM to become a great company it would have to act like a great company long before it ever became one.

"From the very outset, IBM was fashioned after the template of my vision. And each and every day we attempted to model the company after that template. At the end of each day, we asked ourselves how well we did, and discovered the disparity between where we were and where we had committed ourselves to be, and, at the start of the following day, set out to make up for the difference.

"Every day at IBM was a day devoted to business development, not doing business. We didn’t do business at IBM, we built one."

Back to my New Year's resolution.... The promise that I made is that every day I would write about one new thing that would help build a law practice. I plan to focus on five separate areas: legal services (product quality and packaging), business development (marketing and sales), office management (technology, systems, knowledge management), recruiting (virtual and real team building), and finance (billing rates, pricing models, cash flow).

My hope is that by writing this blog everyday I will move my business forward and inspire others to do the same. I also want to encourage others to share their thoughts on growing a law practice, either by posting comments on this blog or by sending email to me directly at v-lawyer@lexpertise.com.