Stop thinking and start doing

It’s fair to say that getting the majority of solicitors fully engaged with marketing and business development isn’t always the easiest of processes. 

Generally speaking, you entered the legal profession to be a lawyer, not a salesperson, so the prospect of actually getting out there and selling yourself is probably not one that sits comfortably with you. The only problem is, like it or not, as the profession becomes more competitive and more commercial, the ability to market yourself proficiently is fast becoming a pivotal part of the job. 

With that in mind, the advice ?I tend to give our clients is to adopt the line peddled by a well-known American sportswear brand: ‘Just do it.’ ?As yours is a profession based upon thinking, thinking all too often gets in the way of progress.

A good example of this is the identification of a firm’s unique selling point (USP) or its near-neighbour differentiation. ?I have lost count of the number of firms I’ve seen waste valuable partner hours trying to work out what they do that makes them different from any other firm in the market. The results (if indeed a conclusion is actually reached, which is in no way a given) are at best anodyne and more than a little manufactured. 

Even if I achieve nothing else with this column, I’d like to save you the time and money required to fund prolonged head-scratching. Your firm does not offer anything that no other firm does. This does not mean that every other firm does what you do, but it does mean there ?is at least a handful of firms ?that will.

Rather than locking yourself in a meeting room to try to manufacture your point of difference, go back to what your clients can see, feel, and want – excellent advice at a realistic price delivered with the highest levels of personal service. While many firms promise this, the truth is that many fall short of achieving all three.

From a more practical point of view, if everyone involved in the discussion was to reinvest those two hours in seeing three key contacts (clients, targets, or potential referrers), the likelihood is there would be an immediate financial return.  

This takes us right back to the aforementioned American sportswear manufacturer. ?It’s easy to find reasons not to ?‘do’ business development. But ?if you are going to win work, you need to get out there and get on with the only three potential sources of work open to you: your clients, your contacts, ?and your targets. 

Potential sources

Once you build those personal relationships, work will find you, either directly or indirectly via referrals made by the people you’ve spent time with. 

That’s not to say there isn’t ?a part analysis can play in the explansion of a successful business development strategy. However, instead of trying to come up with something that doesn’t exist, that time would be much better spent working out where you think new work could come from. 

If you think you are best suited to winning more work from your current clients, invest the time that not finding your USP will free up in going through your current client base and identifying where you should be getting more work from. It could be that a client only buys from one practice area but has a need for advice from different areas. ?It could be that they are splitting their work between a number of firms and there’s an opportunity to grow your share of the wallet. It could be that they used to spend significantly more than they do now and there is work to be done to rebuild the previous fee levels.

If you think intermediaries ?are your best route to new work, structure a contact plan that will make sure you are always at the front of the mind for your most productive referrers and in the best possible positon, should new opportunities arise. Then take time to identify the local or relevant firms who should be referring work to you, and get in touch with them to arrange an introductory coffee.

If you want to win new clients, use your time to build a realistic target list and, more importantly, try to work out the warmest route to an introduction to those targets.

The one thing all three of these strategies have in common is that for them to succeed you need to just do it. ?I can’t guarantee all three will deliver work there and then, but I will promise with confidence that if you don’t get on with ?at least one, you definitely ?won’t generate any new opportunities. SJ

Douglas McPherson is a director at Size 10½ Boots @sizetenandahalf www.tenandahalf.co.uk