Law Firm Business Development: Building a Sales Team
The pandemic has highlighted the need to reduce pressure on the partners. Law firms are woefully behind every other professional services businesses to hire sales people. A trained sales professional with a successful background will help any firm drive more revenue, capture more client share of wallet, and relieve the pressure that legal professionals face when it comes to developing business. With exceptions, lawyers hate or at least dislike selling. And, they are generally not as refined at sales as is a seasoned professional. Some firms are realizing the enormous benefits of hiring salespeople and building a sales team. While there may be some initial backlash against management for going in this direction, the right sales professional can quickly change partner thinking. Yes, we are talking about hiring externally focused, client-facing sales people. The upside is significant and those partners who work with seasoned sales pros realize this quickly. The sales pro will identify and chase opportunities by balancing the legal pros who can talk substantive law with the business issues that they uncover. They know exactly when to move the conversation and the sales process along to close business.
The head of litigation at a global giant said, “Why would we hire someone like that who could turn around and walk out the door with our firm’s client contacts and go across the street to do the same thing?” Well, this is the same strategy that is expected when you hire laterals; that the laterals bring their clients with them. A seasoned salesperson will have many industry and business contacts and can do just that, bring their contacts to the firm and make introductions. They also know how to source and nurture relationships with contacts that the firm doesn’t know that it needs.
Another law firm chair stated, “When we first brought in Philip most of our partners were aghast that we hired a sales professional. Suddenly, everyone wanted a piece of him and one salesperson wasn’t enough. It’s amazing how well someone like him works with our partners, and how we’ve increased our odds of winning business by combining his talent with our lawyers’ talent. It’s unfathomable now to think of not having salespeople at our firm.”
Want to know how to take your key client teams to another level and really create strategic accounts? Get the help of a salesperson who is responsible for client growth. Want to win more opportunities when competing against another firm? Hire a sales professional.
Start by looking at the firm’s most important clients. Which one or two industries is prevalent among those clients who represent the firm’s top 80% revenue? Bring someone in from that industry who has strong and proven experience with selling in that industry. This could be someone from a financial services or accounting firm, or directly from the industry itself.
The reporting structure can be tricky. Many good and strong salespeople would never dream of reporting to a marketing person. A strong marketing person with excellent management/leadership skills will be fine. Otherwise, this individual should report directly to a department chair or to the managing partner. Create a reasonable set of goals for year one since it takes time to develop or transfer relationships. After that, a quarterly sales forecast of what he or she is working on is a helpful tool to begin to measure results.
Hiring an experienced salesperson may just be the best thing that a firm could ever do.