Have You Checked Out?

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Consider this:

How often do you check out on your Business Development activity and goals? A friend and I were talking about the many opportunities for us to distract ourselves while feeling virtuous about it: clearing email, checking LinkedIn for updates from contacts, making lists of the things we plan to do. Most of us even carry Instant Distraction Devices (also known as smartphones) everywhere we go. And, of course, your billable work is both a must-do and a bulletproof source of distraction from other things you’d rather not think about.

I sometimes check out when a task feels too daunting. When it’s big and involved and complicated (even if that’s only because I’ve made it so in my own mind) or when the risk of failure is high. I don’t necessarily mean to do it, but I get distracted because I want to get away from the task at hand. Checking out feels especially legitimate if I’ve actually failed at something, like I’m taking a justified break to catch my breath and renew my energy so I can come back from the failure. Maybe you can relate?

The problem is that checking out, especially when things aren’t going well, eliminates the opportunity to turn things around.

Checking out (even when it’s otherwise a productive activity) ruins momentum. Whatever you do instead interrupts your flow and prevents consistency in your Business Development strategy. Worse yet, it undermines the opportunity to reflect on what isn’t going well and learn from mistakes or obstacles. Lifting your attention from your business development plan (or whatever goal you’ve set for yourself) is analogous to working out for a few weeks or months and then stopping cold turkey: you’ll lose your stride, you’ll lose the strength you’ve built, and most importantly, you’ll lose confidence in yourself and your commitment.

If you check out because things aren’t going as well as you’d hoped they would, here’s what you need to know: some failure is guaranteed to occur when you’re working to grow your practice. You won’t land every potential client or every piece of business. It’s painful to experience even though we know nobody succeeds at everything they attempt. That’s why it’s critical to learn how to fail forward by taking the lessons from your failure so you can make the necessary changes to succeed instead. (For more on this, read John Maxwell’s excellent book Failing Forward.)

Failing forward means that you need to pay attention even when you most want to distract yourself. When you went all-out on a pitch and didn’t get the work. When a potential client promised they were ready to retain you but somehow slipped away. When a promising opportunity to reach a specific potential client or an ideal audience falls apart. When you have the steps of your strategic Business Development plan in place, when you’ve identified the tasks you’ll undertake to effect that strategy, and you stop—whether that’s due to cold feet or other business activities that takes precedence over your plans. Surrender the easy comfort of distraction in favor of doing the hard work that will allow you to reach your Business Development goals.

As you do your annual Business Development review this month, be sure to notice where you stopped because of a failure, an unexpected circumstance, or cold feet. Think about how you can trigger yourself to “pay attention like never before” when something similar happens to your Business Development strategy in the future. You might design a “what stopped me?” analysis. You could arrange an accountability partnership with a friend or colleague and emphasize that you want your partner to ask the hard questions and force you to pay attention when you hit a block. Be creative: there are an infinite number of ways to ensure that you’re paying attention when you want to check out instead, and the only thing that matters is that you choose one and use it.

As for me, I’ve been using a weekly review process. Here’s how that looks:

  1. At the beginning of the week, I set weekly tasks in the various areas of my life that are tied to my annual goals.
  2. At the end of the week, I track what I accomplished from my task list.
  3. Finally, I apply the “traffic light test”: where did I stop (red light), where did I keep going but pull back on my efforts (yellow light), and where did I press forward with all my energy (green light)?

Using this process doesn’t necessarily guarantee that I won’t check out during the week, but it gives me a structure so that I don’t stay checked out. When I look at my red and yellow light lists, I’m forced to pay attention to what’s happening and the decisions I’m making. I can make a conscious decision to stop or slow down, but I can’t stay distracted from the lessons that each week offers.

Take a moment right now to ask yourself: how often do you check out from your Business Development goals? When and why? Then design your own structure so that you don’t check out. Build that structure into your 2023 Business Development plan. Pay attention and refine your plans based on what you discover. By doing this, you’ll avoid stopping because of cold feet and missing the lessons of failure. Your attention will propel you forward, and 2023 can be your best year yet.

If you’d like help with this process, let’s chat. (I’m only accepting one new client to begin working together in January 2023, so don’t delay.)

Enjoy your holidays, and happy new year!

 

 

 

 

Your Decisions Determine Your Business Development Success.

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Making and executing decisions is a key part of practicing law. Litigators decide what strategy to follow on a case; negotiators decide where to stand firm and where to compromise; partners decide which associates are right for an assignment and advancement; patent lawyers decide which features of an invention to claim… And so on.

In fact, decision-making is one of the first practice skills we learn in law school. Did you ever witness the disaster that often followed when a student didn’t stick with an argument about whether and why a case was correctly decided? The professor would show that changing lanes repeatedly often leads to flaccid, half-baked arguments that fall apart. The student under questioning would discover just how accurate the phrase “hot seat” can feel, ending up exhausted and embarrassed. Sure, sometimes we make a mistake and have to correct it, but making and remaking a decision burns time and energy and rarely ends well.

Decision-making plays an important role in business development in two essential ways:

  1. Deciding to focus on BD and grow a book of business
  2. Deciding on a course of BD action and following through

Let’s look at each of these decisions and how they may fall by the wayside, undoing potential success along the way.

Deciding to focus on BD and grow a book of business

Most of us didn’t enter practice thinking, I can’t wait to do business development! Instead, something happens that prompts us to turn our attention from billable work to the process of bringing in that work. And we decide to focus on BD and growing a book of business… or do we?

The word decide comes from the Latin decidere, which is a combination of two words that mean to cut off. (See the brief discussion about the meaning of the word decide.) In other words, to decide on a course of action is to cut off other options.

But when it comes to focusing on business development, many lawyers reverse course when they get busy with billable work and deadlines. Far from having cut off the option of not focusing on BD, these lawyers justify why they have to step away from BD “for now” until they get past a busy period. Sometimes they never resume BD focus, and sometimes they repeatedly dip in and out of focus. In either case, they never come close to reaching momentum.

Deciding that things are just too busy to focus on business development feels like a valid decision, perhaps even a necessary one. After all, you can’t slack on billable work to chase new work, and meeting deadlines is crucial. This can feel like an inescapable Catch-22, but there is a solution.

Decide on small, discrete steps you can take to keep your business development work going even when you’re busy, and then do them. These steps may feel too small to matter, but they’ll keep your BD work alive until you can resume focusing on it. Read more about how to use Teeny Tiny containers to accomplish your BD goals even when you’re too busy to do as much as you’d like.

When you carve out a “no matter what happens” block of time for business development, even if it’s just a few minutes, you’re affirming that BD is a top priority for you. You’re executing the decision you made to focus on BD and grow your book.

Deciding on a course of BD action and following through

When you began focusing on business development, you probably created a BD plan to execute an underlying strategy. (If that isn’t how you began, we should talk so you can set yourself up for success in 2023.) Your plan likely includes several buckets of activities, such as networking to meet potential clients and referral sources, following up with key contacts so that you remain top-of-mind, writing and speaking to build your professional profile, and so on. You started executing your plan, but something happened…

Perhaps you didn’t see the results you were expecting or perhaps you had a new idea that seemed like a better approach. Maybe a colleague mentioned something that led to new business, or you read an article with some fresh ideas, and you think you should shift your plan to incorporate those ideas. After all, you don’t want to waste time on something that isn’t working when there’s something better to try, right? Well, yes and no.

Landing new business takes time. How long this takes depends on a wide variety of factors, but most lawyers find that establishing a flow of new business takes longer than they’d dreamed it might.

Business development success lies in having a solid strategy and consistently executing actions to affect the strategy. It takes time to see the results of your actions, but it also takes time to put in the effort necessary to even hope to see results. Frustrating but true.

I recommend my clients work on their business development plan for three months and then evaluate what results they’re seeing. Sometimes that’s measured in new business, but especially for more high value/low volume practices, that’s measured in a wider network, in more conversations about business and how to get in line to pitch a new matter. The three-month evaluation is about whether you’re seeing results, not whether you’re getting new business. If there are no results, then we have to evaluate whether it’s the plan/execution that’s faulty and a change is required, whether skills development is needed, or whether there’s something else going on. If there are some results, I counsel my clients to keep going.

The second evaluation period comes at six months. Are you seeing measurable results that indicate that you’re on the right track? Have you been invited to pitch or join a potential client’s panel of law firms? Have you built inroads in a group of potential clients and begun to develop strong relationships? Are you speaking on a bigger stage (which might be literally speaking at larger gatherings or possibly in smaller groups of carefully targeted contacts)? Have your relationships with your A-list deepened?

After engaging in this analysis, the next question is whether the results are strong enough to indicate that you should stay the course. It’s a more quantitative time in vs. results out inquiry.  Finally, you look at the list you’ve been keeping of other ideas and determine whether you should stop something you’re doing and try one of them instead.

If you try a new idea before giving your old plans a fair trial, and especially if you do that over and over, you won’t hit momentum and you will undercut any potential of harnessing the power of consistent execution. Instead, you’ll jump from one plan to another then to another, expending lots of energy and investing lots of time and getting few results.

The Bottom Line regarding your BD plan

Take consistent action with your business development plan. Decide to engage in BD with consistency, and you’ll see results. But if you keep changing plans midstream and discover that your results are lacking, question the strength of your decision first.

 

Setting Aspirational Plans?

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Nearly two years ago, I began spending time on creative writing for the first time in many years. I certainly wrote while I was practicing law — memoranda and briefs galore! —and I’ve written voluminously for my business (The Reluctant Rainmaker, among other books and articles) and for the nonprofit I founded. But this kind of writing is different: it’s something I want to do, it’s a bridge to a future that I want to live, and it’s something with no urgency whatsoever.

Does that remind you of the definition of business development? Your situation might be different: particularly if you’re a sole practitioner, if you’re working in an eat-what-you-kill firm, or if you’ve lateraled (or merged) into a new firm and need to establish yourself, business development may be not just urgent, but also important. For many lawyers, though, business development activity is calculated to reach important professional and personal goals, but it isn’t urgent.

That’s exactly why it’s important that you set your schedule so that you have dedicated daily or near-daily time for business development work. In the absence of outside motivation, your commitment to the time you set aside on your calendar may be the only thing that ensures you move forward on your BD activity. Of course, you’ll miss a scheduled BD block sometimes, but when it’s on your calendar, you’ll have an immediate prompt to get back to it at your next scheduled time. By calendaring this important task, you’ll ensure that it gets done.

There’s a danger to this approach, though: the aspirational plan. I define an aspirational plan as a plan that only the perfect you can accomplish on the perfect day. If your schedule is already busy, deciding to add in an hour a day of BD work is probably unrealistic. Deciding that you’ll have a BD lunch every day is probably unrealistic. Deciding that you’ll start a blog or podcast and post every week? Probably unrealistic unless you have remarkable support, a list of topics, and a carefully laid business development plan to ensure that the work gets done.

Aspirational plans are dangerous because they feel like they’ll guarantee progress toward your goal; the truth is that unrealistic plans (the perfect me on a perfect day plan) will be thwarted because it’s unrealistic, and you will likely end up discouraged. You may even look at not following an aspirational plan as proof that you don’t have the time (or, worse, the ability) to build your practice.

A creative writing tool I’ve learned from best-selling author Jennifer Louden is applicable here: the Teeny Tiny container. A Teeny Tiny container is a short period of time for writing or BD that you can keep no matter what. It’s less time that you think will be useful, possibly as little as five minutes. My Teeny Tiny containers are usually 15 minutes.

Teeny Tiny containers of business development activity delivers results because you’re committed to the time, you build a track record of success with keeping that commitment, and you can knock out small tasks like a catch-up email or chip away at larger ones like investigating conferences where you might speak. You may not see results from a single Teeny Tiny container, but the time adds up, and you may find yourself committing to larger periods of time as you build your BD skills. This business development process, setting short but inviolable blocks of time for BD, works even if you’re subject to demands from a court, clients, more senior lawyers, or anyone or anything else that may upend your plans at a moment’s notice: barring extraordinary circumstances, we can all find five or ten minutes.

For this approach to be successful, however, you must have a clearly defined business development strategy and a set of tasks that are calculated to affect that strategy. You must know what you’re going to accomplish during your Teeny Tiny container; otherwise, you’ll waste your time deciding what to do or working on uncoordinated BD tasks that keep you busy but don’t actually move you forward. Be sure that you leave breadcrumbs as you close your time each day so that you can get to work immediately during your next time block.

Finally, during your monthly review, look at how the Teeny Tiny containers have worked for you. Track your completion percentage (number of containers you planned minus the number you missed, divided by the number planned and multiplied by 100) to see how well you kept your commitment. If the percentage is low, try again with a smaller time block or reduced frequency. Look at your accomplishments during the month, including things like the number of contacts you made, progress you made toward writing or speaking goals, etc. Finally, if your completion percentage is high (90% or more), consider whether it’s realistic to increase your time commitment. If it’s low (under 50%), consider whether you should reduce the amount of time or the frequency of your containers so that you’re able to keep your commitment.

As a result of keeping Teeny Tiny containers, I’ve completed more than 20 essays in the eight months (one of which has been selected for publication) and begun outlining a book I’d like to write—all while running my business and a small nonprofit, planning a wedding celebration and honeymoon, having two rounds of Covid, coordinating treatment for a geriatric dog and cat, and more. I guarantee I wouldn’t have accomplished as much without this approach. I’d love to hear your results if you give it a try.

 

On Strategic Planning

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When I begin working with a new client, someone who wants to build a book of business (or a bigger book), the first thing we do is to build a strategy. I’ve written extensively in the past on the process of developing a strategy for business development. (See, for example, Chapter 3 of The Reluctant Rainmaker and the blog posts How Do You Choose Biz Dev Strategy and What’s Your Strategy?) And yet, what every client wants, quite understandably, is a plan of action items that they can do to build the practice. In fact, we talk about a business development plan more than strategy, and it’s a BD plan, not strategy, that I urge lawyers to revisit on a regular basis. What gives?
 
A BD plan is only as good as the strategy that underlies it. Without strategy, a plan is just an uncoordinated task list of actions that you think will bring in more business, but the actions don’t function together or reinforce one another, nor are they pointed to a specific outcome other than more business.

Succeeding in business development requires strategic planning; creating a plan that flows from your strategy comes next. Strategic planning can be difficult (usually is, if it’s done well), and it’s easy to slip into developing a task list instead of a strategy because that creates the illusion of being more productive.

So how do you know when you’re truly engaging in strategic planning?

I ran across this terrific video from the Harvard Business Review called A Plan Is Not a Strategy. In the video, Roger Martin, former dean of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, distinguishes strategy from routine planning and highlights the fallacy of what we usually call “strategic planning.”


Martin defines strategy as an “integrative set of choices that positions you on a playing field of your choice in a way that you win.” (Emphasis added.) A strategy is coherent and doable, but it’s also built on a theory about why this is the best playing field for you and why you’re better than anyone else on this playing field. That theory can’t be proven in advance, so it’s a calculated risk that must be tested.
 
A plan, on the other hand, is composed of discrete, concrete action steps that you can complete. The outcome of those actions must be projected, but it is not guaranteed, and unless the individual steps are tied specifically to a strategy (do this to accomplish this aspect of the strategy), the plan lacks an internal coherence. It’s a task list that defines how to use the resources at your disposal, including your time and budget.
 
And so it follows that strategic planning is the process of defining a strategy and then building a plan to implement that strategy.
 
An example of strategic planning: Beginning at 4:05 in the video, Martin discusses how, years ago, almost all airline carriers were building plans like one another to grow their market share. More routes, better customer service, steps designed to improve on what was already existing. These carriers had a plan designed to further a long-ago defined strategy.
 
But Southwest was an upstart that defined a new playing field (point-to-point flights, rather than hub-and-spoke, for one example) that would allow it to reach a desired type of customer (the group of fliers who essentially wanted a more convenient mode of travel than Greyhound without dramatically increasing the cost). In other words, Southwest built a strategy, whereas other airlines simply continued to implement their growth plans. Changing the curtains, if you will, as opposed to placing the window in a new location.
 
A key criticism of law firms and lawyers is that they tend to follow one another, building a better version of a fairly uniform concept of how to build a practice. Although the planning is often described as strategic planning, it’s usually planning for an old strategy or creating a BD plan that isn’t closely tied to any strategy at all. When did you (or your firm) last take on a review and, if necessary, an overhaul of the strategy underlying your business development plans? Do you know what the current strategy is, beyond seeking clients who need X kind of work and can pay Y kind of dollars?
 
One line makes this a must-watch video: “While you’re planning, at least one competitor is working on strategy.” Query which camp you (or your firm) belongs to and what result that’s likely to achieve.
 
Note that I’m not saying you necessarily need to abandon your current strategy and adopt a new one. It may be that you’ve been through the hard work at least somewhat recently and have a strategy that allows you to distinguish yourself from other lawyers and law firms—to win on the playing field of your choice, to use Martin’s words. If that’s the case, check your BD plan to be sure that it’s designed to meet your strategy.
 
But if you haven’t recently revisited your strategy to determine whether it’s on point—or if you can’t clearly articulate the strategy underlying your BD plan—take this as your sign that it’s time to enter a true strategic planning process. Check out the video for a primer on how to develop a strategy that makes sense for you.

Don’t Surprise Your Client With Your Invoice.

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Let’s talk about billing and the effect it can have on your client relationships. Billing is, of course, one of the fundamental business and ethical aspects of practicing law. But it isn’t just that: it’s also a form of relationship development, practice management, and even business development. How you manage billing shows something about your attention to detail, how you clearly and fully communicate with a client, and more.

Most of the time, invoicing is fairly routine. You have an agreement for an hourly or alternative fee arrangement, you and your team track the work you do, that work is reflected on monthly invoices that explain the work completed, you review the invoices and correct or modify them before sending them to your client, and the client pays within a reasonable amount of time.

But what if there’s a fee increase, a delayed bill, or a passage of time that leaves a client surprised by your invoice? Surprise will leave your client dismayed. The legal budget may be strained in unexpected ways, and your client contact may face unpleasant questions from a superior or a corporate Board. You’re guaranteed to get pointed questions about the invoice, and you and your client contact will spend time resolving the issue. Worst of all, trust may be damaged, maybe even broken. This change in your client relationships can further impact your business development process and growth goals.

The good news is that avoiding these problems is simple: communicate about any changes in advance.

  • Planning a fee increase? Notify your clients about the change in advance—don’t just send a bill at the new rate. I’m also hearing that some firms are increasing rates multiple times a year now, without any guideposts for when that may happen. I don’t recommend that: it creates unpredictability and brings undue attention to your fee.
  • An unusually high amount of work to be charged against an annual legal budget? As soon as you see the meter going up, reach out to discuss the work, the spend, and the client’s priorities.
  • Something slipped and you’re sending a late invoice? Give thought to how you’re going to position the tardiness, what effect it will have on the budget and perhaps other pending work, and how it reflects on you as a businessperson. In some cases, you may find that a discount or write-off, perhaps a significant one, makes sense.

The same is true if there’s a misstep in a matter you’re handling that causes your client to conclude that a fee is unduly high or unearned in light of the circumstances. Here, you likely can’t communicate in advance. You may ward off these issues if you evaluate each invoice in context before sending it to the client, but there will be times when a client’s feedback, or its intensity, is surprising. Aim for collaborative communication. Listen to the client’s concerns and emphasize that you value the relationship as you respond. The outcome of the discussion is important, but maintaining trust is likely more important than receiving.

While it’s important that you receive due compensation for your work, be aware that clients are likely watching the bills more closely now than they have in the recent past. Inflation is hitting us all, individuals and corporations alike, and expenses may be increasing without a corresponding increase in income.

Clear communication can help you to manage expectations, prevent surprises, and build or maintain a collaborative approach that leaves your client feeling comfortable that your interests are aligned. Ensuring clear and effective communications with your clients will greatly contribute to your business development strategy and future business growth.

P.S. I have two openings for the new clients this month, and then I will not be accepting new clients again until January 2023. If you’d like help in growing your book of business, let’s have a conversation. Book a complimentary consultation here.

“I’m too busy for business development!”

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There’s one objection I hear more than any other from lawyers who want to grow their practices but find themselves stuck: “I’m too busy for business development!”

That objection is often factual (sometimes there’s more billable work to do than any reasonable human can accomplish in a day) as well as an unassailable excuse for those who feel resistance to business development. After all, billable work comes first, right?

If you’re feeling a time pinch, consider these questions to determine how to proceed:

  1. Ask whether this busy period is a short-term situation or a long-term one. When might you reasonably expect that your load will be lighter? If it appears that this level of busyness is a new normal, you’ll need to revisit your BD plan and start fresh. A short-term adaptation can keep you moving forward according to your plan, but a long-term situation requires a fresh approach.
  2. Ask whether there’s a way to offload some of your responsibilities to create time for BD. Perhaps this would be a good time to focus your LinkedIn activity on sharing good content created by others (along with an insightful comment) rather than writing something new. Perhaps you could ask a colleague to write a newsletter article that addresses a topic of interest to your clients from another perspective so that you’re off the hook for drafting your own article. (Points as a cross-selling effort!) Or perhaps it’s shifting some personal obligations to free up time for BD.
  3. Determine how much time you can realistically devote to BD during this period and what to do for maximum effect. Whatever your answer may be to this question, block that amount of time out on your calendar and hold it as a high-priority appointment.
  4. Determine the highest value activities that you can complete in the time available. Your BD plan is a living document, so go back to it and re-examine your priorities. If you’ve decided to create a document or course to guide potential clients through an issue related to your practice, for example, you’ll need to decide whether that’s an important enough investment to devote your limited time to it. Unless you’re at the beginning of your BD journey and focusing on establishing your platform and professional brand more than working to bring in new business in the short term, you’ll reap the most benefit from person-to-person contact. Revisit your “A list” and calendar reminders to communicate with those high-value contacts. Set aside 15 minutes for a catch-up call with one of them. Schedule coffee with one of these contacts to explore mutual interests and opportunities. Remember, people are the route to new business, so when you’re busy, be sure you’re staying visible to your most valuable connections.
  5. Calendar a date to re-evaluate your workload. The mistake I see too many lawyers make is putting BD on hold “temporarily” while they’re busier than usual and never moving back to the activities they’d planned. Without some defined end to the busy period (preferably a date to revisit the workload, but possibly also a defined benchmark such as the close of discovery in a large case), it’s easy to let the busy period expand… and expand… and expand. At some point, the hiatus will become so long that resuming BD activity feels like you’re starting from scratch, and that may be a daunting prospect to face. Know how you’ll identify the end of the hiatus and trigger your return to regular BD activity.

Finally, when you’re too busy for regular BD activity, cut yourself a bit of a break—but not too much. Don’t fall prey to all-or-nothing thinking. Business development is a long game, and you will likely go through several periods of reduced activity when you’re unusually busy. As long as those periods are limited and you focus on high-value activities, you can continue moving forward with success.

How Do YOU Define Client Service?

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A few years ago, I ran across an article that’s stuck with me titled, “How to Deliver Exceptional Client Service.” Written from the perspective of a web agency, the article starts with the bold-but-obvious thesis that just doing what the client hired you to do isn’t exceptional, nor will it set you apart from your competitors. Consider this:

“You are hired to design and develop a new website for a retail client. The client loves the design, and the pages you develop use the latest in HTML5, CSS3, and responsive design, resulting in a website that works wonderfully across browsers and devices. The e-commerce features of the new website help the client significantly increase their online sales, and the entire project is delivered on time and on budget. Now, is this “exceptional” client service? I don’t think it is.”

Substitute words that are applicable to the kind of legal work you do—you’re hired to negotiate an employment agreement or to handle a divorce or to guide a company through a merger—and you do that, do it well, and do it within the budget the client expects. That’s good client service, sure. But it isn’t, and shouldn’t be, exceptional.

(As a side note, just doing your job in any respect isn’t enough to set you apart from others. That means strategic thinking, responsive communication, and being accessible to your clients won’t distinguish you from other good practitioners. I often urge lawyers to find their points of distinction, and too many count these attributes as extraordinary when they aren’t.)

The article sets out seven ways to uplevel your client service:

  1. Create real relationships. “If we do not engage with our clients in a real, personal way, then we are just another vendor….”
  2. Ask real questions. Connect with your clients.
  3. Participate in more than just projects. Go outside a pure business setting with your clients.
  4. Help them with services that you do not provide. This is where your network supports your business development work: make introductions to help your clients.
  5. Pick up the phone. In today’s environment in which a telephone call may be viewed as an interruption, you’ll want to be careful to equate good communication with a spontaneous telephone call, but the point remains: know how your clients want to receive communications, act accordingly, and do so in a way that builds your relationship.
  6. Face the bad times head-on. How you handle sharing bad news says volumes about you as a practitioner and about how you view your clients and your responsibility to them.
  7. Be thankful and show appreciation. The personal touch is always appreciated, even if it’s not discussed.

Be sure to read the whole article. It’s a quick read, and well worth your time.

 

 

Three Obstacles to Business Development Success

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Having spoken with thousands of lawyers in the almost 20 years I’ve been consulting, I’ve identified three universal challenges to business development success.  Do any of these sound uncomfortably familiar to you?

1. “I don’t know what to do.”  There’s so much information out there about how to bring in new cases and clients and, even more importantly, how to ensure that your current clients are satisfied — no, delighted — with the service you provide. Sometimes, having lots of good information is overwhelming.  When I work with someone on business development, one of the first things we focus on (after clearly identifying the goal at hand) is to simplify tasks, according to a targeted plan. Don’t flail around and try “the latest thing.” Figure out what works well for you and do it consistently.

2. Mindset challenges. The challenges that we create for ourselves (and please note that I am including myself here!) vary dramatically. I’ve heard all of the following:

  • Business Development is easier for them (men, women, lawyers in big firms, lawyers in small firms, litigators, transactional lawyers, and on and on and on).
  • Everything I do has to be perfect, and I’m busy getting ready to get out there.  (This crops up a lot with lawyers who see speaking, writing, and holding leadership positions in an organization as a good route for business development.)
  • I have to do it all myself, so I’m going to clear the decks and then get started.
  • I’m too young.
  • I’m too old.
  • I tried [insert activity here] and it didn’t work, so why should I bother?
  • My technical skills are so good, that I don’t need to market.

There may be at least a grain of truth to each of these rationalizations (and the infinite variations that exist), but buying into these statements is a huge red flag.  These “reasons” justify a lack of success and perhaps even a lack of effort.  Neither leads to great results.

3. “I don’t have enough time to get my work done and live, and now I should add on business development activities? You’ve got to be kidding me.” This obstacle is the most valid and therefore the most insidious. It also plays into the mindset obstacles, because very often a lawyer who holds a negative belief about client development will sink more and more time into fruitless business development activity. Imagine, for instance, a lawyer who polishes an article to the point of “perfection,” only to find that it’s no longer newsworthy. Fortunately, you can implement three steps to create time for business development: prioritization, systemization, and delegation.

What blocks your business development efforts?

Let’s Talk Professional Development

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Every lawyer—associates and partners alike—should have a professional development plan.  Professional development and business development go hand-in-hand for several reasons:

  • Professional development includes identification of strengths (and how to maximize them) and weaknesses (and how to compensate for them). Doing this will help you to work more effectively, work with clients more effectively, and grow as a practitioner.
  • Professional development can help you refine what you want your practice to encompass, the areas of substantive law you want to address, the mix of those areas, the kinds of clients you want to represent, and more. This information is critical for business development because it defines the scope of your activity and offers direction for how your BD activities should be focused.
  • Professional development plans are designed to help you determine your long-term practice goals and how to reach them. Defining the kind of practice you want to have and your role in it will focus your BD activity; it will also ensure that as you take the professional development steps laid out, you’ll be working toward an end result you actually want.
  • Professional development plans can help you uncover the habits, attitudes, and mindsets that will support or retard your success so that you can address them. If you believe, for example, that you are responsible for building your own practice, you’ll be more likely to focus on BD and to implement the plans you set; if you believe that other lawyers in the firm will feed you work, your BD efforts will feel less pressing and you’ll be more likely to let your plans slide. Likewise, excellence is necessary in practice, but perfectionism is often a one-way ticket to paralysis, so you need to know where on the spectrum your tendencies fall. Failing to explore your beliefs about practice and your role in it means you’ll be on unexamined autopilot—and that’s a quick route to disaster.

Once you have a current professional development (and business development) plan in place, it’s time to determine what you’ll choose to focus on from these lists over the next year. For professional development, I recommend a mix of skills/experiences and attitude/habit development goals. For instance, you might set goals of becoming the go-to person on a certain area of the law within your firm and in the outside world, learning how to delegate work effectively to more junior lawyers and to staff members, and getting speaking experience designed to prepare you to speak at a large conference that your ideal clients attend.

Your firm may request you to create a PD and/or BD plan. If so, it’s necessary to use the firm’s approach, and it’s wise to do your own personalized plan or addendum as well. The key difference between your personalized plan and the plan that you may co-create with your firm is that the personalized plan is keyed to your goals without attention to the firm’s goals except to the extent they support your desires.  Your plan should be designed to fit what you — as owner of your practice and “CEO” of your career — want.  The two plans might be identical, or they may be quite at odds.  If you know that in 10 years you’d like to have a personal injury practice with a partner ready and willing to buy you out so you can compete in the America’s Cup, for instance, that’s almost certainly a goal that you’d be wise not to share if you’re working in a mid-sized insurance defense firm because your goals and the firm’s goals don’t mesh.

Summer can be an ideal time to work on your PD and BD plans. You’ll have plenty of time to develop them before year-end conversations with firm leaders, and you’ll be ready to hit the fall running. So, start now.  Set aside time on your calendar, and mark it in ink.  Designing your plans will move you forward like little else.  Don’t miss this opportunity.

Build Your Peer Network

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Quick check: how’s the health of your professional peer network?

Lawyers are accustomed to building a network within their firm as a resource for questions about how certain partners work, business development expense reimbursement, and more. And that’s important, particularly for new associates and lawyers who’ve recently made a lateral move or were part of a merger. Fortunately, building such a network generally isn’t difficult. Your practice group likely holds regular meetings, and you can meet others at functions such as all-attorney luncheons. As is true of any kind of networking, your success will depend largely on your follow-up. Issue coffee or lunch invitations, set up a Zoom meeting with lawyers in other offices, and engage in pure social chat as well as professionally-focused conversation.

It’s also useful to build a broader network with peers from other firms or other geographic regions for discussions about issues such as landing a leadership role in a community-based organization and using that exposure to build your network and your professional platform. Especially when the group you connect with is truly your peer group —female associates working in a large law firm, sole practitioners in practice for 7-12 years, lawyers interested in leaving the law — the input from others can suggest new ideas and provide much-needed support.

Wondering how to find a peer group?

  1. Seek out online communities on LinkedIn, Facebook, or other platforms. The benefit to these is clear: you can participate anytime, day or night, and there is little risk of having your identity revealed if you’re careful not to post too many identifying details.  Of course, when you read what others have to say, there’s no way to consider the source of the comment, which may reduce its value.
  2. Explore bar association-sponsored peer groups. Young lawyers’ groups, senior lawyers groups, or law practice management groups are fertile grounds for wide-ranging discussions about how you practice and how to pursue your career goals. You can also join a substantive section for more input on the mechanics of your practice.
  3. Use your network to build your own group. You might start a group of peers with a monthly discussion topic, planning to meet at lunchtime or after work for an hour or so. The ideal group size is 6-12 members, with rotating leadership roles so that no one bears the ongoing responsibility for an agenda or plans. Be sure to design a mechanism for a group check-in on what topics are important to the members and how well the group is functioning.
  4. Groups run by a coach or recruiter. These groups are run by a professional facilitator, so there’s a continuity in leadership and the leader is trained. The groups tend to stay on track because everyone makes a commitment when joining that the leader will emphasize, often along with a financial commitment. Self-revelation is possible without being unduly vulnerable, because the group members typically will not know one another outside the group and may even come from different geographic areas, and you’ll receive coaching from the leader as well as peer input.

Whatever avenue you use to find or build a peer network, don’t neglect this. There’s no better route for sourcing ideas and support on professional topics including career moves, finding good candidates for employment, making and receiving introductions, and so much more.