In-House Sales Coaching

The business of law is changing rapidly. The trend toward consolidation of outside service providers by client companies has accelerated, and is coupled with the demand to harness legal expenditures by the executive teams of these companies. Law firms must now sell the value of the business they are seeking, and must sell the breadth of their services in increasingly complex sales situations. These functions and skills, in most industries, fall within the domain of the sales professional.

That law firms should have a sales focus is evident. What form that sales function should take is less clear. Choosing an appropriate form and implementing a sales function is a critical challenge facing the management of all law firms. The form is dependent upon the culture and tenor of a firm. However, the leadership issues of communicating the imperative of having a “sales orientation” as well as implementing professional development for business development skills are universal.

What Form Should 'Legal Sales' Take?

Some service industries, such as accounting, employ sales professionals to develop business while others still depend upon the individual practitioners themselves. What form should “legal sales” adopt? If a law firm chooses to employ sales professionals, how are the business development tasks split? Who performs the sales activities of uncovering leads, working the “sales funnel” and closing the business? Is it the lawyer? Is it the sales professional? Or do the lawyer and sales professional divide the sales functions? How does the law firm drive the focus, processes and teamwork necessary for effective selling? Given that there are initially many more attorneys than sales professionals, what is the most effective way to build a sales function?

Our firm, Dorsey & Whitney, is among approximately 35 firms in the U.S. that, according to the Legal Sales and Service Organization, has implemented a dedicated sales or business development function with sales professionals. Additionally, we are implementing a sales coaching model as a key part of our sales efforts. This article addresses how we use sales professionals, why we chose a sales coaching model, and identifies the key elements of our program.

Selling the Idea and Moving the Organization

The key challenges for any legal sales organization are:

• Leadership and focus: Promoting a firm sales culture.
• Education: Providing training.
• Organization: Building accountability.
• Metrics and Process: Implementing a sales process. Perhaps the most critical factor for success in building a legal sales organization is unambiguous leadership in the area of business development. Management must address the issues, show that lawyers' advancement is related to building business, and provide resources to help develop the appropriate sales culture.
• Set expectations and follow through: Have attorneys present “business development” plans at the beginning of the year outlining their planned activities for developing the firm's business. Review the plans mid-year and end-of-year to make it clear that sales is a component of attorney compensation.
• Provide a focus for sales: Hire sales professionals and adapt your firm's marketing department to have a business development function where business development is the sole purpose of some of those employees.

A mandate for business development without support can lead to stress rather than positive movement. At Dorsey, we have partnered with a handful of independent legal sales trainers, consultants and coaches who have traditionally served the legal industry. We have built our sales programs through a combination of internal functions and the services of these independent providers.

We have employed independent service providers to help us with our goals of providing leadership and education, whereas we've built organization and processes internally. Our experience is that independents can provide the unique perspective of industry norms and trends that can help sway those most resistant to change. We've depended upon internal resources critical for catalyzing action in organizations. With some notable exceptions we've found that independents are consultants rather than coaches. Consultants are much less “hands-on.” They tend to deliver project work rather than ongoing support. Coaches are more hands-on. They take responsibility for their work from start to completion of the sales process.

While there are consultants who provide true coaching services, we believe that the coaching organization and the associated metrics and processes are the core assets of any legal sales organization. These assets are too strategic to the firms and should not be outsourced to third parties. Rather, they must be developed internally to sustain the organization.

What Form Does Coaching Take?

At Dorsey, we have implemented a coaching model that presumes that attorneys are still the primary contacts for new business development. While at some point law firms may employ sales professionals to land large accounts, we believe that a primary goal of the sales staff is to teach the attorneys to “fish” rather than to land big fish. This approach, we believe, will ultimately provide better profitability for our firm as well as foster a sales culture.

The coaches' primary purpose is to make the attorney efforts more effective in the business development process. Sales professionals meet with attorneys either one-on-one or in client teams to analyze, brainstorm with, train, support and apply resources from across the firm toward the development of business from either new or existing clients. Both attorneys and sales coaches are assigned action items for each account that must be completed by the next meeting. A critical part of the coaching model is setting goals, tracking progress and assigning metrics to each account activity.

The factors that drove us to the coaching model were:

• Leverage. Because the attorney-to-sales professional ratio is high, by assigning sales professionals to win specific accounts, we would deliver short-term gains but sacrifice developing a sales culture. Building the right sales processes and activities across the firm, we felt, was more important.
• Focused attention. Because attorneys have different levels of experience developing business and have different talents in account development and management, the coaching model provides a means for us to help train and team attorneys to better meet the client account needs.
• Joint accountability. With the coaching model, progress and time spent by both attorneys and sales coaches on each account is tracked in a clear manner. Both have a responsibility to move accounts ahead and report progress.
• High-availability. With a coaching model, attorneys feel that they have support at the time that they need it ' they can pick up the phone and contact the coach to address the client or prospects needs.

We have discovered that joint accountability and high-availability have been the most important factors in providing effective sales support to a large group of attorneys.

While a subset of our attorneys had taken sales training classes from independents and have the opportunity to call these providers, few had taken advantage of this option ' either because of the intimidation of calling an outsider, or because they had fallen behind in their sales tasks. By providing joint accountability, we provide a model for coach and attorney to help meet goals in spite of setbacks.

Many attorneys have interrupt-driven practices ' vacillating from being very busy to having spurts of free time. By having in-house coaches, we find that attorneys are more effectively using these free slots to get help from coaches and work more effectively on their business development goals.

Evolving Legal Sales

Perhaps not surprisingly, our experiences with sales coaching and support have yielded good results in effectively winning business in competitive sales situations. Perhaps the biggest challenge is discovering which activities are the most effective and profitable. Law firms, in general, have excellent accounting systems, but they do not have good models for tracking the cost of sales or the cost of delivering different legal services. Developing these metrics are important next steps to evolving the legal sales process.

The business of law is changing rapidly. The trend toward consolidation of outside service providers by client companies has accelerated, and is coupled with the demand to harness legal expenditures by the executive teams of these companies. Law firms must now sell the value of the business they are seeking, and must sell the breadth of their services in increasingly complex sales situations. These functions and skills, in most industries, fall within the domain of the sales professional.

That law firms should have a sales focus is evident. What form that sales function should take is less clear. Choosing an appropriate form and implementing a sales function is a critical challenge facing the management of all law firms. The form is dependent upon the culture and tenor of a firm. However, the leadership issues of communicating the imperative of having a “sales orientation” as well as implementing professional development for business development skills are universal.

What Form Should 'Legal Sales' Take?

Some service industries, such as accounting, employ sales professionals to develop business while others still depend upon the individual practitioners themselves. What form should “legal sales” adopt? If a law firm chooses to employ sales professionals, how are the business development tasks split? Who performs the sales activities of uncovering leads, working the “sales funnel” and closing the business? Is it the lawyer? Is it the sales professional? Or do the lawyer and sales professional divide the sales functions? How does the law firm drive the focus, processes and teamwork necessary for effective selling? Given that there are initially many more attorneys than sales professionals, what is the most effective way to build a sales function?

Our firm, Dorsey & Whitney, is among approximately 35 firms in the U.S. that, according to the Legal Sales and Service Organization, has implemented a dedicated sales or business development function with sales professionals. Additionally, we are implementing a sales coaching model as a key part of our sales efforts. This article addresses how we use sales professionals, why we chose a sales coaching model, and identifies the key elements of our program.

Selling the Idea and Moving the Organization

The key challenges for any legal sales organization are:

• Leadership and focus: Promoting a firm sales culture.
• Education: Providing training.
• Organization: Building accountability.
• Metrics and Process: Implementing a sales process. Perhaps the most critical factor for success in building a legal sales organization is unambiguous leadership in the area of business development. Management must address the issues, show that lawyers' advancement is related to building business, and provide resources to help develop the appropriate sales culture.
• Set expectations and follow through: Have attorneys present “business development” plans at the beginning of the year outlining their planned activities for developing the firm's business. Review the plans mid-year and end-of-year to make it clear that sales is a component of attorney compensation.
• Provide a focus for sales: Hire sales professionals and adapt your firm's marketing department to have a business development function where business development is the sole purpose of some of those employees.

A mandate for business development without support can lead to stress rather than positive movement. At Dorsey, we have partnered with a handful of independent legal sales trainers, consultants and coaches who have traditionally served the legal industry. We have built our sales programs through a combination of internal functions and the services of these independent providers.

We have employed independent service providers to help us with our goals of providing leadership and education, whereas we've built organization and processes internally. Our experience is that independents can provide the unique perspective of industry norms and trends that can help sway those most resistant to change. We've depended upon internal resources critical for catalyzing action in organizations. With some notable exceptions we've found that independents are consultants rather than coaches. Consultants are much less “hands-on.” They tend to deliver project work rather than ongoing support. Coaches are more hands-on. They take responsibility for their work from start to completion of the sales process.

While there are consultants who provide true coaching services, we believe that the coaching organization and the associated metrics and processes are the core assets of any legal sales organization. These assets are too strategic to the firms and should not be outsourced to third parties. Rather, they must be developed internally to sustain the organization.

What Form Does Coaching Take?

At Dorsey, we have implemented a coaching model that presumes that attorneys are still the primary contacts for new business development. While at some point law firms may employ sales professionals to land large accounts, we believe that a primary goal of the sales staff is to teach the attorneys to “fish” rather than to land big fish. This approach, we believe, will ultimately provide better profitability for our firm as well as foster a sales culture.

The coaches' primary purpose is to make the attorney efforts more effective in the business development process. Sales professionals meet with attorneys either one-on-one or in client teams to analyze, brainstorm with, train, support and apply resources from across the firm toward the development of business from either new or existing clients. Both attorneys and sales coaches are assigned action items for each account that must be completed by the next meeting. A critical part of the coaching model is setting goals, tracking progress and assigning metrics to each account activity.

The factors that drove us to the coaching model were:

• Leverage. Because the attorney-to-sales professional ratio is high, by assigning sales professionals to win specific accounts, we would deliver short-term gains but sacrifice developing a sales culture. Building the right sales processes and activities across the firm, we felt, was more important.
• Focused attention. Because attorneys have different levels of experience developing business and have different talents in account development and management, the coaching model provides a means for us to help train and team attorneys to better meet the client account needs.
• Joint accountability. With the coaching model, progress and time spent by both attorneys and sales coaches on each account is tracked in a clear manner. Both have a responsibility to move accounts ahead and report progress.
• High-availability. With a coaching model, attorneys feel that they have support at the time that they need it ' they can pick up the phone and contact the coach to address the client or prospects needs.

We have discovered that joint accountability and high-availability have been the most important factors in providing effective sales support to a large group of attorneys.

While a subset of our attorneys had taken sales training classes from independents and have the opportunity to call these providers, few had taken advantage of this option ' either because of the intimidation of calling an outsider, or because they had fallen behind in their sales tasks. By providing joint accountability, we provide a model for coach and attorney to help meet goals in spite of setbacks.

Many attorneys have interrupt-driven practices ' vacillating from being very busy to having spurts of free time. By having in-house coaches, we find that attorneys are more effectively using these free slots to get help from coaches and work more effectively on their business development goals.

Evolving Legal Sales

Perhaps not surprisingly, our experiences with sales coaching and support have yielded good results in effectively winning business in competitive sales situations. Perhaps the biggest challenge is discovering which activities are the most effective and profitable. Law firms, in general, have excellent accounting systems, but they do not have good models for tracking the cost of sales or the cost of delivering different legal services. Developing these metrics are important next steps to evolving the legal sales process.