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Author: Allan Colman

What's Going On In Your Firm? – II.

Written by Allan Colman on . Posted in Attorney Marketing, Law Firm Leadership, Law Firm Marketing, Managing Partners, Marketing Partners, Practice Group Leaders.

Additional questions we ask during our Strategic Business Development Planning to enhance and refine a firm’s business development successes include:

5. Is anyone actively using your CRM system?

6. Can your firm’s business development structure be strengthened to have a greater impact in generating new business growth?

7. Have you clearly identified firm-wide regional needs and cultures?

8. Do you celebrate “new client acquisition” in addition to client wins?

9. What are the internal obstacles to building consensus and active attorney participation in getting face-to-face with prospects and renewing client relationships?

Your firm’s management committee, marketing committee, practice group leaders and Partners-in-Charge of offices need to carefully consider all 9 questions if they truly want to grow business.

What's Going On In Your Firm?

Written by Allan Colman on . Posted in Attorney Marketing, Business Development, Law Firm Marketing, Marketing Partners, Practice Group Leaders.

During our Strategic Business Development Planning, we ask clients to evaluate questions such as:

1. What is the firm’s own internal perception? What do the attorneys, assistants, paralegals, etc.say to describe the firm to their friends and colleagues?

2. Is there a consistent message about the firm being delivered to the market place? In our experience, the firm’s “brand” is rarely, if every, used by attorneys meeting with prospects. Is there a common sentence describing the firm’s differentiators used for speech introductions, bios with published articles, etc.?

3. Do you understand the differences between marketing, business development and business generation? These skills are all too often combined in a title without understanding the tactical differences and needs.

4. Are your attorneys engaged in cross marketing as well as cross selling? The first is to better educate your colleagues on the value you can bring to their clients. Cross selling is the act of recommending another practice area of your firm to help a client with a problem separate from the one you are working on.

We’ll continue with other questions in our next blog. For more detail, go to www.ownthezonebook.com.

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT BEST PRACTICES, II.

Written by Allan Colman on . Posted in Asking for Business, Law Firm Marketing, Marketing for Law Firms, Marketing Partners, Practice Group Leaders.

As discussed in the previous blog, pro-active organization and accountability are keys to converting your best practices into new business. Following are 4 additional tasks that complete the first steps you need to take.

5. Populate the business development program with targeting and pursuit efforts by specific practice group, sub-groups, offices, individuals — one step at a time, at first, and finally, wherever there are lawyers who really want to be engaged.

6. Assure that business development training sessions are practical, not theoretical.

7. Keep the firm ahead of economic and industry trends and build this knowledge into every client contact.

8. Make decisions on under-performing activities by either abandoning them or improving your approach in each case.

Remember, the best way to land a target is to act and pursue. If you miss, you learn. Then try again.

Business Development Best Practices

Written by Allan Colman on . Posted in Business Development, Law Firm Leadership, Law Firm Marketing, Marketing Partners, Practice Group Leaders.

We urge clients to adapt a special set of best practices when focusing on ways to measure business development success. Some of these might surprise you but are essential to new revenue growth.

1. Designate partner-leaders for each client target. This is not the usual industry focus, or practice area niche. Rather, it means a senior partner must take the lead for each new designated target.

2. Part of the job is to establish timelines for each step leading to a final close of new business. The partner-leader must designate someone to hold each attorney and marketing professional accountable for the actions they are assigned.

3. Provide the environment to encourage greater strategy debates before investing in responses to RFP’s, or even in pursuing new contacts. A “go/no go” decision making session is a must.

4. Constantly review the failed business development efforts in formal post-mortem meetings. This discussion could be part of a “go/no go” debate. And make sure out of these sessions, you codify the steps that do lead to successful new business acquisition.

In our next column, we’ll add 4 more best practices to challenge and energize your efforts.

Do Not Stop at "NO"

Written by Allan Colman on . Posted in Asking for Business, Attorney Marketing, Law Firm Marketing, Marketing for Law Firms.

Even if a proposal for new business has been rejected, continue the pursuit with the same prospect or client. MAXIMIZING REJECTION is a concept that recognizes the potential customer has a lot invested in you by the nature of the time and study they put in during the selection process.

Stay in touch; send them updates; ask them to be on conference panels with you; remind them how much you can contribute to their business.

Keep yourself in that “CLOSING ZONE,” creating more scoring opportunities for the future.
This is the 14th step in Chapter 1 of www.ownthezonebook.com.

3 Final Steps to Re-Energize Your Firm's Business Development

Written by Allan Colman on . Posted in Business Development, Law Firm Leadership, Law Firm Marketing.

While there are many ways to revitalize your firm’s business development efforts, the last several blogs have covered 11 of those that we find are most insightful. Add these final 3 and you will be well on your way to a more productive, value based business development strategy for your firm. It’s what we do best in working with clients. The final 3 are:

12. Make sure you have strong links to future industry and practice group trends.

13. Continue ongoing testing and evaluation of what works what can be improved, and what should be discarded.

14. By this time, you are ready for Phase II = a powerful Strategic Business Development Action Plan.

Re-Energize Your Firm's Business Development — III.

Written by Allan Colman on . Posted in Business Development, Managing Partners, Marketing for Law Firms, Marketing Partners.

Continuing this series on how we work with clients to identify hidden assets and underutilized skills to grow more business:

9. Analyze existing relationships with clients, past clients, professional associations, industry associations, etc. What is the cost/value/result calculation?

10. Build interactive training and professional development programs for staff, attorneys and professionals. Multiple national studies indicate this is a key ingredient in keeping your team and in attracting laterals.

11. View your revenue levels by assignment, practice area, market trends, etc. Again, what is the cost/value/result calculation?

In the next column, we’ll tie these and a few more internal analysis business growth components together. You will be producing a Strategic Business Development Action Plan.

Re-Energize Your Firm's Business Development — II.

Written by Allan Colman on . Posted in Business Development, Law Firm Leadership, Law Firm Marketing, Managing Partners, Marketing for Law Firms, Marketing Partners.

This is the second of several blogs, looking inside your firm to identify the hidden assets and underutilized skills to grow more business. Working with you we also view:

5. Social media, advertising, public relations combinations and where to maximize the impact;

6. Proposals (not rfp’s) and how they are prepared and presented to prospects and clients;

7. Following up, or conducting “post mortems” after each meeting, speech, published article, e-alerts, etc. Make sure they are working for you, growing your reputation and profile;

8. In relation to the above 3 elements of review, is your firm’s research capability, assistance and priorities being coordinated with the overall business development targets?

Remember, in working with us, we always start by looking inside. You should too. Next column will cover 4 more components to re-energizing your business development successes.

Re-energize Your Firm's Business Development

Written by Allan Colman on . Posted in Attorney Marketing, Business Development, Law Firm Leadership, Managing Partners, Marketing Partners, Practice Group Leaders.

When evaluating where and how a firm can grow more business, we always start by looking inside. What are the firm’s current resources, hidden resources and under-performing assets? The next several blogs will present the areas we examine and you should be evaluating also.

1. Forecasting, especially estimating what an increase in cross-marketing and selling would yield.
2. Assessing (honestly and openly) your brand’s impact. Does it need refreshing, refocusing, etc.?
3. Considering your marketing tactics by industry, practice area, geographic market.
4. Supporting the new-engagement-generation efforts of those actively prospecting.
5.