The Great Salesforcization Of Legal
Will client relations in legal become less human? Is that even a bad thing?
Many lawyers will go through an entire career without ever using Salesforce, one of the fastest growing software companies of the last decade. But Salesforce is everywhere. Have you ever gotten a cold email from a salesperson followed by strategically timed follow-up emails? That’s Salesforce at work making sure the sales folks do their follow-ups. Businesses of all sizes can afford Salesforce in large part because it is cloud-based (read: no expensive on-site installations). There is even a rapidly growing company called WalkMe that has built software that will, among other things, train your workforce to use Salesforce.
What makes Salesforce or any CRM (customer relations management) such a must have for sales teams? Earlier this year at the Apttus Accelerate conference, I met with sales guru Amy Van Atta Slater, SVP of Worldwide Sales for a major software company called Rovi, who is such a natural saleswoman that I could have sworn she had a cameo in Glengarry Glen Ross. What she explained to me is that the value of the CRM is not necessarily that it makes your sales people any better at selling, but that it allows her, as head of sales, to monitor her company’s sales process and go to sleep at night knowing that nothing is falling through the cracks. It’s one thing if your product is not a fit, but nobody wants to lose a customer because someone forgot to follow up, and what a CRM can do is turn your process into a tight assembly line.
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And, you might not have noticed, but the CRM has come to legal. Just replace “sales” with “lawyer” and “customers” with “clients.” Let’s start with some big ones. Apttus Salesforcifies the second half of the sales process, once you’ve gotten to yes, when corporate legal departments begin interacting with sales teams. Practice management software like Clio has Salesforcified the entire client workflow process for firms of all sizes. I recently spoke with Steve Preston, SVP of marketing at Anaqua, another BIG company, who describes what they do, not just as IP management, but as Salesforce for the entire innovation process.
It doesn’t end there. Lexicata is building a CRM for client intake, SimpleLegal is building a CRM for the in-house legal team, and Doxly is building a CRM for closing a transaction. There is a gold rush to streamline everything.
The benefits are obvious, and some of these companies are crushing it, but I do wonder (as I always do) about the unintended consequences. The one thing Amy told me that really stuck with me is that the sales process has become “less human,” which is why you get those cold reach out emails and follow-ups rather than a sales rep with those natural sales instincts who is trying to get to know you and find out what it is you really need. Will legal become less human? Is that even a bad thing? Hard to know. But one thing is certain: the Salesforcization of legal is here.
Has your life become Salesforcified? Tweet to me or shoot me an email, I’d love to hear about your experience.
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Zach Abramowitz is a former Biglaw associate and currently CEO and co-founder of ReplyAll. You can follow Zach on Twitter (@zachabramowitz) or reach him by email at zach@replyall.me.
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