In an occasional series of posts about successfully pursuing new clients, we’re sharing door-opening tips gathered from mentors and learned through trial and error. This post describes the attributes of a good prospective-client target.
Law firms once waited for clients to find them, but today’s commercially astute firms understand the advantages of identifying and assertively pursuing companies that they want in the client base of the future. In the best-run firms, the managing partner and firm leadership oversee and carefully monitor target selection, because it is a strategic activity that directs where one of the firm’s most valuable resources, its lawyers’ client development time, will be invested.
Why is targeting also a tactical door-opening activity? Easy. When there is a close match between a firm’s capability and a prospective client’s need, and when there is a cultural affinity between seller and buyer, doors spring open much more easily and regularly.
Some suggestions for how to proceed with targeting. First, leadership should own the interpretation for targeting purposes of the firm strategy. When given this foundation, the hands-on list-builders can specify not only the ideal companies to be pursued, but also (as AI has now made easy) the individual buyers by name, title, and role in purchase decisions.
Careful targeting just makes good sense for several reasons:
- Lawyers’ and staff members’ limited time is directed at pursuits likely to produce engagements with clients who fit the firm well, and vice versa.
- A leadership-approved list encourages all professionals to rowing in the same direction and collaborate.
- Such a list helps avoid the pursuit and acquisition of clients that don’t fit or are otherwise unwanted.
- A named list gives leadership measures such as approved pursuits underway, buyers contacted, substantive follow-ups made, serious discussions about working together (i.e. pitches), new clients landed and new engagements won, and more.
- Clear target lists hold lawyers and staff accountable and show how well the firm’s client development investment is paying off.
- Great target lists open doors!
Some firms have begun applying extensive, sophisticated, data-driven and AI-enabled analysis to generate Ideal Client Profiles. This is an excellent undertaking, because the more refined the specification and the closer the firm sticks to its target list, the more likely it is that firm strategy – and the client base of the future – will be realized. But even for firms that don’t have the resources to undertake this type of deep analysis or are not culturally inclined to do so, a Target Lite version of the exercise will open the right doors and keep sales pursuits on track.
Here’s a list of sample targeting criteria. Great targets are individuals who:
- Are buyers at companies facing large, complex issues for which the firm is known and skilled,
- Understand today’s law firm economics,
- Are aware of the firm and its lawyers,
- Are not locked into another firm,
- Operate in a geography the firm can address,
- Resemble clients already served with distinction, and
- Would be fun to serve.
Leaders at well-run firms make sure that the items on this list (or the list that each firm will create for itself) are in sync with the targets that lawyers and staff actually are pursuing. The door-opening (and deal-closing) results will be worth the expenditure of oversight time and effort.
What attributes does your firm use to decide whether a name earns a place on the list, and which of them has turned out to be the most predictive of a relationship that eventually produced work? I’d love to hear from you, because we can all benefit from one another’s experiences and insights.
Steve Bell is a principal in the Sales, Business Development & Growth Practice of LawVision. He helps law firms develop disciplined sales processes, improve business development effectiveness, and build more predictable growth strategies, integrating AI where it strengthens human relationships. Steve is known for his career-long work in initiating and advancing new relationships. He can be reached at sbell@lawvision.com or 202.421.5988.
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