Business Development: It's All Been Said Before

In-house columnist Mark Herrmann outlines a three-step process for business development.

dartboard pen inside straightDon’t you think we’re repeating ourselves?

Every morning, it seems, I receive an email with hot tips for business development featuring an interview with some anonymous partner at some equally anonymous firm.

I don’t click through, but what the heck could these guys be saying?

It’s all been said before. But I’ll say it again, and maybe we can stop sending the emails.

I’ll start with the implicit assumptions: Be a good lawyer. Do great work for your existing clients. And all that stuff. But you wanted ideas for business development, not for practicing law. So here goes.

You develop business by doing three things.

You develop business wholesale. Get famous:

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Write articles. Give talks. Join bar associations or charitable boards. Get interviewed and quoted in the press.

Or, in today’s world:

Blog. Tweet. (Frankly, I think blogging is likely to do more good than tweeting. With a blog, you can demonstrate knowledge of a subject. With a tweet — 140 characters — you can do no more than draw attention to other people’s ideas. I’d rather hire lawyers with thoughts of their own than lawyers who simply alert me that other people are smart. But what do I know?) Do podcasts. (I think these are the wave of the future. Writing is hard; talking is easy; interviewing other people badly is easier still. Look for podcasts to flourish.) Join Facebook. Use LinkedIn to connect with people. Publish articles on LinkedIn.

But, like I said, that’s the wholesale side of developing business. In a word (actually, two words): Get famous.

That’s the first step in developing business.

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You also must work on the retail level to develop business.

So work the retail level. Make contact:

Never dine alone. Find an authentic reason for staying in touch. Send emails to people about topics of mutual interest. (Monitoring the case law in a field and letting folks know about new cases that might interest them is a good idea. But there are lots of other reasons to stay in touch.) Attend receptions and cocktail parties. Make introductions: Introduce potential clients to acquaintances of yours who might do the client some good.

Be nice. People skills matter.

Cross-sell. Maybe if you cross-sell one of your partners, she’ll cross-sell you. (Or maybe not. It depends on the partner. And the firm. And whether or not you’re any good.)

Know something while you’re doing all that stuff: Say intelligent things. Understand the client’s business. And so on.

But the basic idea is always the same. At the retail level: Make contact. That’s the only way to be top-of-mind when the decision to retain counsel is being made.

Okay: Get famous. Make contact.

Third: Repeat.

Do the first two things over and over, until they pay off (or you die, whichever comes first).

That’s it. “That is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

I guess there’s one other thing to add: Get lucky.

Be handed a client by an old-timer who’s retiring.

Have your article on a subject cross the general counsel’s desk just as the general counsel is confronting that issue.

Have a client’s usual firm get conflicted out the day after you had lunch with an important client contact.

Have some guy search the web and conclude that he needs a lawyer with precisely the type of thing you did last year.

Like I said: Get lucky.

But here’s my question: This is all really obvious.

And many, many people have said it all before. (Even I did. In this column. Five years ago. But maybe you weren’t reading my columns back then. Or maybe you’ve just forgotten.)

So what the heck do those emails that cross my desk every morning add to the conversation?

And what are those seminars about developing business teaching you?

Wouldn’t you think that one, say, 150-page book could tell you everything that anyone could conceivably want to know about business development?

Have we gotten to the point that people are talking for the sake of talking, because there’s no longer anything worthwhile left to say?

I fear that, on many subjects, the answer is “yes.”


Mark Herrmann spent 17 years as a partner at a leading international law firm and is now responsible for litigation and employment matters at a large international company. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Inside Straight: Advice About Lawyering, In-House And Out, That Only The Internet Could Provide (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at inhouse@abovethelaw.com.