As far as lawyers and business development goes, we can look at the traditional bell curve and know that less than 5% of attorneys in a given firm are responsible for bringing in almost all of a firm’s new matters.
After 25-years of training and coaching partners it has become more than apparent that if we want additional partners to start to bring in business we need to produce opportunities that offer an ease of use process and that fit individual attorney’s style and time commitment.
By implementing an easy to use business development strategy into a website, we have found that about 20% of the attorneys will give it a try and that approximately 15% of the partners will take to it.
One well-known bankruptcy firm added a Bankruptcy Sales Marketplace on their site encouraging creditor committee members and trustees to be listed on the landing page. Another main function of Marketplace is to get all of the geographically close bankruptcy sales to be listed. These sales opportunities consisted of Business Items, Deeds of Trust, Personal Properties, and Real Property.
The process of populating the website with this information encouraged all of the partners to reach out not only to the individuals who would be listed on the page, but also to the sources that list bankruptcy sales. Many lunches and other face-to-face meetings happened through the development process of creating the Marketplace. And we all know what happens when attorneys meet with contacts and referral sources face-to-face and then have an avenue for continued outreach. Business happens.
Another website incorporated mini practice or industry specific surveys conducted about every 6 weeks. The results were displayed on their Home page. Individual invitations to respond to each four-question survey were sent out to select members of the firm’s contact list. The relationship partner of each “friend of the firm” called their contacts to explain the short survey and to encourage them to respond. Every survey produced about 5 touch points with these coveted contacts from initial call, to survey response, to obtaining quotes to be incorporated into the results, and then finally the survey results mini-post was emailed individually to each participant the day before the results were launched publicly on the Home page. The partners then each called their own contacts after publication to discuss the implications of the survey for their industry or business. The attorneys now became business advisors adding value to each relationship over time. This firm had a narrow practice focus and clients, contacts and referral sources came back to the site over and over again to keep checking the latest trends and developments from each new survey.