How to build a sales system in a legal business?
Answer the questions: how do you think the legal market will develop in the next few years? What services will be in demand? How you answer them correctly will show your entrepreneurial talent. Such talent is often demonstrated by the experience of famous people and companies. For example, what made Jobs move from making computers to making phones? Or Schwarzenegger to move from a career as a professional athlete to filming in films?
Choice of services
We will not be able to tell you what services you should be doing in the short term. We can only direct the course of your thoughts. Make three lists:
- Services that you can provide yourself and that you like.
- Services that you are able to provide through your partners.
- Services demanded by the market.
How to find out what services are currently in demand in the market? Analyze financially successful law firms. They have already chosen their destinations and provide services in them. See what you can copy for yourself.
It is also recommended to study foreign experience. It is no secret that foreign legal business often develops faster than ours. See what trends in the provision of legal services exist in the West. For example, industry specialization. In our country, it is only making its first steps, but in the West it has already become a standard.
So, you have determined what services you will provide to consumers in the medium term. Do not hurry. Discuss these preliminary decisions with colleagues and partners. Collect different points of view and only then begin to focus.
Homework: open a Word file and describe the services you will offer to the market in the next 3 years. Do an analysis. List each product by ingredients. What will you give the client? What result will he get from interacting with you? What will be your unique selling proposition for each specific service? Be as specific as possible with your answers.
Why do you need to build a sales system in a legal company?
The result of the marketing work will be the receipt of an application from a potential client. You need to make sure that you have an effectively built sales system. What is it for:
- The sales system gives you the opportunity to scale your business. Most often, all negotiations are conducted by the managing partner. But he can only conduct a couple of negotiations a day, and what if you have ten applications from potential clients?
- Freeing up your time. A lot of managing partners run in the so-called “golden tie”. Yes, you are fully involved in the process. Yes, your business brings you good money. But everything rests on you, including sales. If you stop selling, the business will effectively stop.
If you want to make things right, start treating your sales like a system. Start building this process by designing it systematically.
Writing a sales methodology
To begin designing a sales methodology for a law firm, you must sketch out a certain structure, deduce a certain algorithm. Let’s look at the main stages that you go through with a client, selling him your legal service:
- Establishing contact. Think about and write down what questions you ask the client to connect with him and move on to the next stage.
- Questioning the client about his situation. What are you asking to dive into a situational problem? What is important to know at this stage?
- Solution. How do you go about discussing a solution to an issue? You need to understand that your service is some solution to the client’s problem. At what stage do you start offering this solution? What works here? What questions are you asking? What negotiation tactics do you use?
- Cases. What cases do you use? How do you showcase your experience to make your solution look as professional as possible?
- Work with objections. What are the typical objections consumers use? How do you answer them?
Homework: You must come up with some sales technique in your law firm. Then analyze it, refine it with “chips” and methods, and then transfer it to your employees.
Creation of marketing materials
The problem with selling in the legal business is that you, as the CEO of a company, often sell on the spur of the moment. This is your business, you are passionate, you are enthusiastic, your customers listen to you because you are just on fire with ideas. When we start to delegate the sales process to hired employees, they, unfortunately, do not have the involvement that you have. Your task is to provide them with marketing materials, to give them products that will allow them to sell as well as you can sell.
Consider with you the main marketing tools that you will need in order to effectively build a sales system:
- Descriptions of services. Your customers must clearly understand what you offer. Descriptions can be on the website, in presentations, and so on.
- Consumer reviews. They can be made in video format or done on paper.
- Information about the company. For example, you can make a corporate film or presentation.
Remember that all your marketing materials must be of the highest quality and as professional as possible. No homemade, no household options.
Do your homework: a) audit your marketing materials; b) put in the plan the revision of the missing ones.
Delegation of sales to employees
When delegating sales, we face a big problem: a legal service is not a typical product. We cannot outsource the sale of a professional service to just anyone.
Basically, two approaches are used here: if the service is quite simple (insurance disputes, consumer protection, etc.), then we can transfer the sales process to our employees. If the service is quite complex (for example, support of bankruptcy proceedings), then, as a rule, the partners of the company themselves have to develop their sales skills. Simply put, lawyers and lawyers should also become salespeople. Lawyers must develop their communication skills in order to be able to conduct commercial negotiations.
Homework: Describe the process of providing your legal services. Think about what you can delegate to your employees and what to partners. Discuss the sales situation with partners: are they ready to develop their sales skills?
Internet marketing expert. Head of marketing agency MAVR.
Business degree “Master of Business Administration” (MBA).