Craig Brown, Principal Consultant at LawVision Group, and former LMA Southern California Programs Chair, presented "From Sherpa to Guide - Driving Revenue through Sales Coaching" for legal marketing professionals in both Orange County and San Diego in mid-March.
Brown is widely known for his law firm and attorney consulting, so this time it was interesting to hear how legal marketing professionals themselves can be effective coaches and as Brown emphasizes, how we can move from merely providing and holding the tools, to coaching and mentoring attorneys on how to properly use them.
Brown covered 5 topics that will be sure to help you on the path to becoming a guide at your law firm:
Leverage Strengths
- Assess the strengths of your lawyers
- Customize your assessment to their personality traits
- Focus attorneys on activities and tools that they are comfortable with and will be effective in completing.
- Is the person in front of you people oriented or task oriented? Is that person quick or methodical?
Connecting Up – Getting to the “C” Suite
- Connecting with a C-level executive raises the size of the opportunity and can get your firm connected to others in the industry.
- Tip: Join an organization that C-level executives frequent (e.g. UCI CEO Executive Roundtable)
Creating a Pipeline Culture
- Make a list of people you want to turn into clients
- Business plans are primarily lists of awareness activities (i.e. marketing activities)
- The power of the sales pipeline is that it tracks conversations and next steps
- Open the pipeline, set a regular time to review your list, identify your top targets each week, organize yourself, and go do it.
Move Attorneys from Awareness to Relationships
- Has your attorney ever written an article or speech, spent a lot of billable time, and then realized they didn’t get any business from it?
- Next step is: relationships. Get a client to write the article with you or have a client review your draft.
Value Propositions
- Specific value proposition – an idea, concept, solution or new information a client or prospect will receive by connecting to you
- Ties clients’ needs to what you offer but it is used to open doors and start a conversation
- Why would I want to talk to you?
- Social and networking examples: Thoughts on an article you are writing or on a presentation you will make or an invitation to speak on a panel
- Superior Knowledge examples: Regulatory audit; New legislation briefing; CLE program
We asked attendees to share their takeaways from the program and received great responses:
You can't approach all attorneys the same way when it comes to business development efforts. It is not "one size fits all." You will have more success, and gain more respect from the attorney, if you work with them in ways that best fit their characteristics.
It’s a refresher that pipeline reports which are commonly used in sales are still a great tool and can be tailored for lawyers as well.
Don't carry the load for others, but instruct and guide others down the right path.
Approach/ speak the "language" of the attorney based on his/ her personality style.
Our next events are Member Only Roundtables held on Wednesday, April 9 (San Diego) and Thursday, April 10 (Orange County). These roundtables will be debriefs of the LMA Annual Conference. For those members who attended the conference, please come with any tips or lessons learned from any sessions. For those members who were not able to attend, this is your chance to absorb key takeaways from the national conference.