Selling The Firm And The Firm's Services - Professionals Driven Sales

December 4, 2019

4 min read

University and Post-graduate level legal education at least here in Nigeria does not include any classes on business generally or sales and marketing specifically. Recognition (of the rights and duties contemporaneous with social and commercial relationships), analysis (of the significance of language in documents and the implications of a breach, neglect, or satisfaction of rights and duties) and advocacy (to assert, deny, or modify rights and duties) are the principal focus. The result of this approach is that every year more and more lawyers—technically competent at applying legal knowledge in service of clients but completely lacking in business generation skills like sales or marketing—are minted and introduced to the workforce. And the trend doesn’t appear to taper with time spent practicing.

Few, if any aspects of a legal practitioner’s professional experiences will imbibe her with sales or marketing skills. Were the Rules of Professional Conduct less restrictive, we could hand this client acquisition business over to sales or marketing professionals and focus on legal service delivery—our main job description but they aren’t. Since there wouldn’t be any services to deliver if there aren’t any clients with requests, we must juggle the twin responsibilities of service delivery and business development. And without any formal sales or marketing training too.

To combat this deficiency in their formal training, sales and marketing in addition to production must be taught to the firm’s professionals.

Generally, training the firm’s professionals in the art and science of sales and marketing will start with providing them with a clear definition of exactly what business the firm is in—the core nature of the services it provides; exactly who its prospective clients are; and what reservations, questions or concerns they (professionals) will need to address to enable these prospects make the decision to buy. The latter will necessarily require that the professionals be taught how to position themselves and the firm as capable providers of the desired service.

Depending on the adopted structure, the firm’s leadership will either be constituted by a solitary figure or a number of partners. In either case, the responsibility of finding new business will generally disproportionately rest on them and the higher ranking professionals that are not partners. This is expected. The partner(s) are the owners of the firm and depending on the arrangement, may have made financial investments in the firm in addition to dedicating years of service and devotion towards the firm's business. The success or failure of the firm will reflect on them personally. The senior associates on the path to partnership will be similarly motivated to bring in new business and solidify their potential as candidates for partnership. Whatever the situation, the partners and higher-up non-partner professionals will be sufficiently motivated by financial concerns and personal interests to sell or market the firm. This convergence of personal and firm interest is a powerful motivating factor that will keep the professionals going despite inevitable failures and rejections.

But this does do not mean that business development is or should exclusively be a concern of the higher-ups or management. The firm’s leadership must as far as possible imbibe every employee with a spirit of responsibility for marketing the firm. While they (employees) may not be out networking and meeting C-suite executives or other ideal clients, clients and prospective clients will not always only deal with higher-ups. Very often low or mid-level employees will be the primary point of contact between clients or prospective clients and the firm. The front-desk officer will always be the first point of contact for every person that visits the firm. A specific professional or team of professionals will handle the affairs of an individual client and communicate and liaise with him or her. The actions of the firm’s employees—positive or negative—will reflect on the firm. The employees should be trained in sales and marketing and taught that their every action physically and virtually is a marketing act and that every member of the firm is responsible for marketing the firm.

This training can be effected formally or informally through formal learning sessions or classroom training (with sales or marketing professionals), role-playing exercises, and experientially—by having the younger professionals accompany the older professionals to events, meetings, or engagements with the primary aim of observing and learning. 

However, above and before any employee training, the firm’s leadership should create a formal strategy for selling the firm and develop a system for nurturing new client relationships. Personality and training will not be enough to ensure that the firm’s marketing goals are achieved or that its professionals are appropriately and effectively selling it. A process orientation and reliance on a formal strategy will help ensure that the firm realizes its client acquisition goals. 

Culled from "A Millennial's Guide To Building A Law Firm." My new book on law firm management.