The volume of debate and activity around law firms’ evolution into sales organizations continues to ramp up. There are lots of opinions – and accompanying solutions for sale – around every aspect of this emerging business function. Want to look into sales training, client teams, coaching, sales planning, sales support, associate training? Pick an industry event and there’s a good bet that it will be on the agenda. More simply, a Google search will produce more results than you could read in a lifetime. Law firms have invested or will invest in many, if not most, of these. And most either will fail or will fall far short of expectations because of a recurring and glaring omission: management oversight/leadership.
Where the hell is law firm management in this mission-critical sales evolution? Too often, in my view, they are embarrassingly absent. MIA.
Oh, they get involved in the sexy part, i.e., evaluating the potential solutions and –providers, deciding on the cash commitments, the visible program launches and kickoffs, the declarations of grand aspirations. Then comes the hard work: making sure – every week – that those expected to generate the business that sustains the firm are doing what they’re supposed to be doing.
For the most part, they have almost completely abdicated their responsibility. This lack of oversight (unintentionally) communicates that it’s OK not to do what you committed to do. As former IBM CEO Lou Gerstner wrote in Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance?, his book about the IBM turnaround, “What gets measured gets done.” Given that most lawyers have more obligations than they can reasonably fulfill most days, it is human nature to prioritize according to what gets measured. What gets measured in a law firm? Primarily, billable hours.
What doesn’t get measured? 1) Volume and appropriateness of marketing and sales activity, effectiveness. 2) Pipeline and progress. 3) Use of coaching and other invested resources. 4) Cost of sales. 5) Adherence to and progress against sales plan.
Lawyers in our ResultsPath sales training/coaching program establish a weekly time budget to execute their plan. Most say they will commit 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 hours per week to the specific plan we’ve created together, with 3 being the statistically dominant choice. How many do so, every week? We have some idea, but I’ll bet that few of their firms could answer with any confidence because they don’t check. All the action items that lawyers “commit” to in their biz dev plans: How many get done? Once again, we have an informed guess, but we’d also bet the ranch that the firms haven’t a clue. Why? Because few leaders check up on the lawyers in whom they’ve invested money and expectations. They seem to hope that somehow the partners will make sales a priority and follow through. Or, worse, they delude themselves into thinking that writing a check for training will solve the sales problem.
Law firm leaders, unless you remain visible and continually make it clear that sales is important enough for you to check on all the time, your sales programs will remain rudderless, compromising your firms’ results, your lawyers’ development and, ultimately, your credibility with the next generation of lawyers.
