How lawyers can win more work from better clients
Scott Simmons, co-founder and co-owner of Legal Balance — which provides business development training, coaching, and consultancy to law firms — joined Amy Bruce, head of marketing at Osprey Approach, for a recent episode of the Empowering Law Firm Leaders podcast.
In this conversation, Scott shares his insights and knowledge to help you become a rainmaker in your firm, covering:
- Why firms need to focus on ‘better’ clients and how to win them
- Advice to improving confidence when selling
- How to instil a culture of business development across the firm
- Best practices for pricing to reduce write-offs
- How to close more deals.
Three lessons for running a successful modern law firm
You’re running a business
Simmons explains that as you move into a partnership or C-suite role, you stop doing the daily tasks you’ve been trained to do and move into responsibilities that weren’t taught at law school: “The first lesson is something we’re not taught and so we forget that we’re running a business, we just happened to be selling legal services.
“You’ll have to do less of the work with clients, and more of everything else that’s involved in running a business including building a team who do the work.”
You’ll need passion
“If you’re passionate about what you do, it’ll see you through difficult times.” Simmons believes that if you passionately believe in what you do, you’re more likely to take more calculated risks and have the confidence to put yourself out there – which can help you build resilience (and win more work).
Failure isn’t final
Simmons explains how lawyers are set up for perfection, but advises that if you want to build a business you will make mistakes: “You’re going to make mistakes, but the key thing is to learn from them and find ways to improve processes.” He believes that when lawyers get out of the perfection mindset, they grow into a place of experimentation and continuous improvement.
Why do firms need to focus on ‘better’ clients and how to win them?
To deliver a quality client service that exceeds client expectations — which will win you more five-star reviews and recommendations — it’s important that firm and your clients’ values align. Simmons emphasises the importance of choosing clients that align with the service and price you want to deliver: “We all have an idea of the way we want to provide the service we offer. For example, if you want to provide a first-rate concierge service, there are only certain clients that will pay for it.”
So, it’s important to identify what type of law firm you want to be, and the services you want to deliver and to gain a deeper understanding of the clients you want to serve. Business development stops being an uphill battle when you can successfully communicate — then deliver –—on the service and value your clients expect, and this is the responsibility of both the legal professional and the firm to build a strategy.
“Your job is to then go find those clients”, to attract the clients that you’ve identified you want to target, Simmons recommends having a solid value proposition: “In my BD Breakthrough course we talk about PRECISION selling, and the first P stands for pitch.
“Your value proposition should be a really clear statement about what you’re offering and how you offer it.”
He explains that your people, processes, and technology are then set up to support you in delivering on your value proposition: “Set yourself up for success to avoid over-promising and under-delivering.”
Advice for managing fear when selling as a lawyer
Simmons believes that anyone can be good at selling: “It’s just a skill that you learn and hone every single day.” But it requires hours of training and practice to hone the skill.
Alongside training and practice, he advises that lawyers reframe the idea of selling to clients to ‘consulting’ them, which helps overcome the fear. He shares: “Go into every meeting by simply wanting to help the person.
“An introductory call or meeting is simply getting to know the client better, so you can help them and show them an idea of what their future may look like.” He highlights how people underestimate the importance of curiosity in a sales call or meeting, because asking the right questions and being curious about your clients’ needs and challenges is the first and best way to win their trust and demonstrate the value you can provide.
Simmons believes that when you’re not curious about your client, it likely leads to poor scoping, which ultimately leads to unsatisfied clients and awkward conversations: “Often we have brief scoping conversations, which lead to misunderstood outcomes that could have been avoided if we’d asked the right questions at the outset.”
Curiosity and experimentation wins more work with better clients
Improving the profitability of your law firm is rooted in winning the right clients who align with your values. This means that the service you deliver best uses the people, processes, and technology you have in place.
To win more work with the right clients you need a team of legal professionals, empowered to be curious about their clients, to ask the right question, and to offer the best service at the right price. Empowered employees require a supportive culture that encourages training, and experimentation, and acknowledges that perfection doesn’t exist.
Listen or watch the full interview with Scott Simmons now to discover more advice and guidance on winning more work with better clients. You’ll hear exclusive advice on how to close more deals at your firm, including the one question he recommends everyone uses to progress a deal. And you’ll get best practices for successfully pricing and scoping your services, so you can reduce write-offs and charge more per case.
Listen on Spotify, Amazon Music, or YouTube now.
