Partner Article

The case of the disappearing client

Peter Fleming, business director, legal services, Huthwaite International investigates the ’case of the disappearing client.’

Ask a partner in any law firm and the chances are they will say that their client partners do not appear to be seeing clients as much as they did in the pre-recession years.

This has one inevitable consequence: law firms will have fewer opportunities to discuss their clients’ business needs and how the practice can help them. This is critical, as this is the point at which business development can get past a conversation around cost and billable hours and start to talk about the real value it can bring.

This has led law firms to reconsider their client approach. The business development team will have to sharpen their account development and negotiation skills if the practice is going to get the most out of a diminishing number of formal opportunities.

Furthermore, business development can no longer be viewed as the sole responsibility of the partners and the specialist development team. Any staff who have direct client contact can proactively help build the relationship each time they come into contact with the client. This makes sense as those who are client facing on a day-to-day basis are likely to have more opportunities to talk to key influencers than the client partner.

Service and sales should not have dividing lines. The reality is that each member of the firm can be encouraged to develop their skills through a focus on some key stages of the process.

At stage one there is pure service: clients strictly get what they have asked for. The next step is outstanding service - or going the extra mile, which is the area where law firms typically excel. This then moves through to a position of sales awareness, where the fee earner starts to look beyond the immediate service issue. At this stage they can begin to identify potential business development opportunities for the firm by adding value to the client’s business.

At the next stage, sales through service, the fee earner or member of staff proactively identifies client needs and starts to offer a solution. The key difference here is that any additional solution is sold, not simply given free to the client. Finally, there is the full-blown business development/sales role, which is centred on identifying client needs and creating value for both companies.

It seems that the structure of the typical law firm does little to encourage this. It is generally the case that partners with business development responsibilities and fee earner/client support teams only work together on an informal basis, if at all.

Law firms can no longer simply rely on the skills of their client partners. The organisations that are going to have the most success in the next few years will be those that effectively align their service delivery and business development operations more closely. The best way to achieve this will be to help and support all client-facing staff to play a more direct role in business generation and client relationship management.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .