Archive for month: October, 2023

Are you visible to your referral sources and potential clients?

Are you credibly visible to them?

We all know that in order to land business, you must be known to those who will send you work, either directly or indirectly. That much is obvious. And so in business development we talk about strategies to help us become visible to referral sources and potential clients, such as:

• Networking
• Staying in touch with contacts
• Writing articles
• Speaking at conferences and CLE meetings
• Teaching (formally or informally)
• Blogging/using Substack
• Podcasting or being a podcast guest

Let’s narrow that field a bit today to ask the critical question: are the business development strategies you’re using to be visible doing so in a way that builds your credibility?

Again with the obvious: you won’t gain anything that’s likely to lead to business if you do these activities with the wrong group of people. If you represent employers on labor and employment issues, you probably won’t get much out of attending a solo entrepreneurs’ networking group. They don’t have employees, and employment law is likely not relevant to them. Sure, you might run into someone who could refer business to you or you might hit it off with someone who will send you business years down the line, but that’s luck, not strategy. Effective business development requires strategy.

When you spend time in the right circles, whether in person, online, or via your writing, you build credible visibility as part of your business development strategy. You become visible in ways that are connected to your practice, ways that will help people recognize you as someone active and knowledgeable in your area of law.

Here are some ways to make sure you’re working in the right business development circles:

1. Unless you represent lawyers, don’t spend your time with networking with or speaking or writing to them and call it business development work. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve spoken with a lawyer who said they were active with the local bar for business development, I’d have a nice pot of cash. If I had a dollar for every time a lawyer told me that strategy had delivered as they’d hoped, my pot would be close to empty. Yes, you might occasionally get a referral due to a conflict, but that too is luck rather than a business development strategy.Networking with or speaking or writing to your competitors rarely pays off as a business development strategy.
2. Focus on attending conferences and networking groups populated by people who either (a) work in the same industry or (b) address the same issues you do from another angle. For example, if you represent dentists, you’ll want to move in their circles. If you do IP work for start-ups, you’ll want to network with investors. When you focus on these two ways of defining what’s a right audience for you, you’ll be able to define a good-sized circle of referral sources and clients who share an interest in your area of legal interest. And, of course, as an integral part of your business development strategy, you may consider writing and speaking to these same audiences.
3. If you’re in a larger firm, try cross-selling. I prefer to think of cross-selling as cross-servicing, since the effort should not be designed simply to sell something to a colleague’s client but rather to identify other legal needs the client has that are not currently being addressed. Focusing on service rather than selling aligns you with the client and removes an “ick” factor that some lawyers feel when contemplating this activity. By engaging with another lawyer who’s addressing different legal issues and helping to spot ways you can help, then following up with your colleague and, if appropriate, with the client to continue to deliver useful information, you can better support both your colleague and the client while working to bring in new business. (Note that success with this business development strategy often depends in large part on firm culture—but that’s a topic for another day.)
4. Look for unique ways to reach the right people. If you’re active and building credibility through the usual channels (as discussed above), think about new ways to reach out. Could you publish an article in your college alumni magazine or join a targeted alumni group that will include many people who are potential clients or referral sources? Could you join a board of directors for a nonprofit that has some connection to your practice and meet other directors who would be useful business development contacts? Think out of the box but stick to the “relevant to my practice” parameter.

Be sure to distinguish your efforts to build credible visibility from your efforts to develop relationships in your business development strategy. Credible visibility requires you to be centering your attention on issues relevant to your practice while connecting in some way to the audiences who may send you business, directly or indirectly. Building relationships for business development purposes will include business discussions (otherwise, you’re just becoming friends—which is great but not a path to bringing in new business); it will also bring in conversations designed for you to get to know, like, and trust one another.

When you’re having well-focused conversations (spoken or written) about legal issues relevant to your practice with the rights audiences, you’ll raise your professional profile. Your contacts, potential referral sources, and potential and prospective clients will be more likely to know about you and to view you as someone knowledgeable about the issues they need addressed.

Are you credibly visible in your market? If not, lay your plans to shift that using these business development guidelines and suggestions, and get to it. It’s never too early to start. You can make substantial inroads on this in Q4. The wind is at your back.