Closing the deal
Allan Colman, CEO of the Closers Group, provides some best practice tips on sealing deals with potential clients
You’ve implemented both a marketing and business generation strategy. You’re sitting at the table with a particular client prospect because you’ve targeted the right industry and the right company. Your research has given you a clear sense of how the buyer thinks, what his business is about, what the company wants and needs and what your opportunities are compared to your competitors.
You are in the red zone, the final 20 yards a football team must cover to get to the goal line. Here is where the defence really stiffens and where your team must implement its most precisely customised plays to finally close the deal.
All strategies demand tactics. If closing is truly a fine art, then the tactics needed to cross the goal line are multifarious, informed by the marketing resources and sales manoeuvres that have gone before.
However, all the laborious effort to reach the goal line may be in vain if the seller has not mastered the art of actually asking for business, or if the seller does not sufficiently understand the dynamics that will maximise the likelihood of a positive response. Below are some pointers on best practice for closing deals with potential clients.
Opening arguments first
Don’t marshal the minutiae and hope it drives you toward a stunning conclusion. Start with the value proposition: “Here is what I can do for you. Here’s a general sense of how we’re going to get there. I look forward to discussing the details”.
Give something away
Once in the red zone, you should be talking strategy and providing free advice on how the case can be won or the transaction completed. This strategy must give the buyer the most specific sense possible of what it’s like to work with you.
Underscore accountability
The way you sell legal services should directly reflect the way you practice law. If appropriate, propose regular meetings and include budget reviews as items on the agenda. Make the buyer feel just how assiduous you are in keeping clients aware of what is happening and how much it is costing.
Dump the resume
Ideally, you should never talk about your firm once you’re inside the red zone unless it’s specifically relevant to case strategy. (For example: “When we did a case just like this one last year, we decided to file for summary judgment because…”)
One of the things that I hear so often from in-house counsel is: “I know about the number of attorneys that the law firm has, and about their expertise. I want to hear them talk strategy. I want to see how they think”.
Let them talk
When clients talk, they’re engaged. An old IBM selling precept is the 60/40 rule, in which the client talks 60 per cent of the time. Good questions sell better than good answers.
Deliver value
By the time the meeting is over, buyers should understand more about their own situations. As a result, when they hire you, they’ll feel all the more confident about doing so.
Understand needs
General counsel often complain that members of law firms don’t really understand what they need. What are the pressures going on inside the corporation? Is a board of directors’ risk management committee looking over their shoulder? Have their competitors introduced a ‘market busting’ new product?
Identify hidden decision-making
To overcome hidden decision-making, a law firm’s red zone strategy must include a systematic approach to finding out what the decision makers won’t reveal on their own. Who is the real buyer of the service the law firm is selling? Who is the real user? When are the decision maker and the person the company sent to the sales meeting the same person?
Evaluate relationships & retention
The red zone strategy must be informed by an in-depth study of a company’s past selections – how they were made, problems that may have occurred afterwards, and any media coverage of the relationships or matters involved.
This research will set the seller’s expectations and, therefore, affect its strategy. It will also reveal holes in prior or current relationships, which will suggest natural opportunities for the seller to differentiate itself.
Learn personal concerns
Red zone strategies demand maximum personal and subjective sensitivity to the person across the table. What are the in-house counsel’s hopes and fears, and how can the firm play to those, for the client’s benefit as well as the firm’s?
In the current market, job anxiety among in-house counsel is greater than ever before. The news pages have been full of stories about general counsel who were fired because they missed or ignored the backdating of stock options, for example. Beyond that, constant increases in US federal and state legislation may result in in-house counsel simply not enjoying their work anymore.
Focus on selection
Don’t ever assume that just because a particular firm has been retained by corporate counsel for many years it will be holding onto all work for the foreseeable future. Do compete in situations where you might otherwise assume that the competition has an insurmountable advantage.
Where a particular problem is presented, ask the buyer how he or she would like to handle this situation. Doing so achieves extra yardage in the red zone, because you are inviting a more substantive discussion – and showing that you intend to really get down to business, to talk strategy and not merely promote your firm.
Right away, the buyer has the expectation that the meeting will produce value for him, irrespective of which firm is eventually hired. At the same time, the very expectation of value creates a dynamic that’s optimally conducive to closing.
Ask for business
When was the last time you asked your clients for their business? On the surface, that question may seem a bit silly. After all, asking for business once a company has signed on with your firm may feel a bit redundant. But asking for more work on a semi-regular basis is a solid client retention tactic that could lead to bottom line dividends.
Once you are fully informed of your client’s challenges and are confident that your firm can competently assume those tasks, don’t be shy: ask for the work.
Try to avoid typecasting and demonstrate that your firm has the capabilities beyond the scope of your current engagement, then clearly and concisely lay out how you can help.
Think business value
If the new project involves work in a fledgling practice area your firm would like to promote, use warm relations with the client to persuade him to take a chance on your firm, rather than another firm more established in that area. Sweeten the deal and negotiate a lower fee for a set time period – perhaps three to six months – so that the client can gain confidence in your firm’s ability to handle the project.
Maximise rejection
If, after all the effort and preparation, you get a ‘no’, do not stop there. Maximising rejection is a concept that recognises a potential client has a lot invested in you by the time and study he puts in during the selection process.
So stay in touch, send him updates, ask him to be on panels with you and remind him how much you can contribute to his business. Keep yourself in that red zone, creating more scoring opportunities for the future.
acolman@closersgroup.com