Does Business Development rely on thought leadership?
The term thought leadership has been a buzzword since the mid-1990s, when Joel Kurtzman first used it to describe people who “who had business ideas that merited attention.”
It’s now a phrase that people use in their LinkedIn profiles (I wouldn’t recommend that) and something that many lawyers aim for as they work on growing a book of business. But, does this help you in your business development strategy? On one level, that makes a lot of sense: we know the value of leadership in business and in client relationships, and we know that offering that leadership in substantive matters demonstrates knowledge, skill, and value.
However, over the years, many of my clients have aimed for thought leadership and found themselves stymied. Coming up with a brilliant and original idea and the time to write about it in a way that’s authoritative and accessible can be daunting. But it doesn’t have to be that hard.
Let’s look at what might constitute a brilliant, original idea for your clients.
First, let’s focus on you. You’re steeped in your practice area. You work in it nearly every day, so you touch on the basic principles, the nitty gritty. At times, you’ll delve into the reticular aspects of your topic, the intricate, interwoven, perhaps wispy ideas where new law is made. Some part of your work is likely to be somewhat rote, but you’re always thinking about the implications, legal and business, of the work you’re doing. You likely see more than someone who might know the legal principles but not put them into real-world practice.
Now, let’s look at your clients. This is where you need to know who your clients are as you work on your business development plan: what they know, how they think, and their level of legal sophistication. (I’m referencing your clients on the assumption that your clients are the kinds of new clients with the kinds of new business you’d like to attract. If that isn’t true, then substitute an ideal client description for the rest of this discussion.)
If your clients haven’t had much experience in your field of law, most any insight you share will seem original to them, it will educate them, and it will help them to understand the landscape in which they’re operating. For those business development clients, delivering a deeply insightful perspective on a highly specialized part of the law (think the kind of arguments that would end up in a court of appeals) is probably overkill. They don’t know the basics of the law and presenting a highly technical point of practice is not going to land well with them because they aren’t sufficiently familiar with the basics to appreciate the deep view. It isn’t that they’re unable to understand, but you don’t want to deliver PhD-level information to a client who’s operating at a 101 or 201 level of comprehension. (Of course, if their business requires the deep and original view, that’s another matter: this discussion is purely focused on business development.)
If your clients are highly sophisticated in your aspect of law, then you can go deeper. You can look at positions that parties are taking in appellate cases, for example, and discuss the minutiae of those arguments, then discuss what you view as the likely outcome (if you’re willing to make that forecast) and what effect that might have on your clients going forward. Because they’re familiar with the field, they’ll be able to follow and appreciate your discussion, and if they focus on this area as much as you do, they’ll be able to engage with your analysis.
But ask yourself: do even your most sophisticated business development clients focus on your slice of law in the same depth that you do? Sometimes the answer is yes, but often even those clients who work on your issues also have other responsibilities, so they’re quite familiar with the basics and some advanced parts of the topic but less so with the most technical parts.
I bet you see where I’m going here. When you can identify your clients’ and potential clients’ level of understanding, you can find the right focus for your own substantive business development work. You know the ins and outs of the law, and you can look at recent developments, for example, and decide what would be helpful for your clients to know. You can layer your discussion, leading with the general principles and then going a few layers deeper, and then you can add your own insights about why the topic you’re discussing matters to your audience. (Don’t skip that part: anyone can share recent developments and analysis of them, but not everyone can or will explain why they matter, and that’s often what clients and potential clients want to know.)
Rather than aiming for thought leadership status in your business development writing and speaking, aim for a standard of useful insight. Educate on the law and its development, and always do so through the lens of what your audience already understands and what will matter for them going forward. That’s true thought leadership, and that’s what will get the attention that you’re truly seeking with your business development work.
When you target the right level of understanding and make it relevant to and useful for your audience, they’ll pay attention, and they’ll regard you as a leader and a reliable source of pertinent, practical information. Pure thought leadership isn’t the key to your business development activity; accessible authority on subjects that matter to your clients is.
Take a few minutes right now, or calendar a time to do this later, and list three topics that your clients need to know about, both from the purely legal perspective as well as why it matters to them. The more focused the topics, the better, so that you can write a short, focused, useful article that your audience will actually read. It’s easier to write, and it’s more likely to be consumed.
