Presented at the 2017 LMA QuickStart® - Legal Marketing Essentials at the LMA Annual Conference, by Gia Altreche and Nathalie Daum
Summary by Nathalie Daum, Regional Director of Business Development and Marketing, Dickinson Wright PLLC, for the May 2017 LMA Southwest #LMA17 Conference Recap.
The presentation focused on the business development basics, including knowing your firm and a variety of important elements.
We covered the importance of knowing your firm, including having a clear definition of the firm’s goals and measurements, and asking the right questions to get that information. The group was given a sheet of important questions to consider asking their attorneys.
Gia covered knowing your firm’s focus areas, including their client base and targeted industries. Speaking with accounting to uncover the client industries, who their competitors are, and who has relationships with them. The same applies to your inactive client base (former clients) and prospective clients.
She also covered knowing your toolbox within the firm; those programs and resources that can help are crucial. Gia discussed the importance of CRMs and ERMs, tools such as research tools (Manzama, MonitorSuite, AtVantage, Google Alerts, etc.) and content syndicator tools (Lexology, JD Supra, National Law Review, Mondaq, etc.). We also discussed the invaluable information that can be found in SEC reports. We discussed research as a whole and that often the research requests, RFP requests and new matter reports are great keys to who your firm is pitching as a prospect.
The importance of face to face interaction with the clients/prospective clients was also discussed. We recommended that they encourage attorneys to do on-site tours or training sessions, meetings for end of matter/quarterly reviews, hold invitation-only events and utilize gamification to engage the attorneys. Client teams and client feedback were also covered, with the best practices for each discussed and provided in handouts. For client teams, we discussed making sure the attorneys listened 80% of the time and ask questions 20% of the time as that is where the opportunities can be found. Client feedback programs need a process and procedure to make sure you are covering the correct bases. Whether you utilize in-person meetings, written surveys, telephone interview or a combination, make sure you have a good mix of top clients and emerging clients (clients with billings on the rise, or who are in emerging industries).