Using thought leadership to generate new business in the legal sector

Using thought leadership to generate new business in the legal sector

There was a time when doing a good job was enough to keep the work coming in. Not any longer. In these competitive times lawyers need to be more skilled and more proactive at winning work – yes we know this I hear you say – everyone is telling us, so what do we need to do?

Most lawyers are reasonably comfortable looking for new work from existing clients but feel distinctively uncomfortable going out and finding new clients and all the inhibitions about selling, arguments about the appropriateness or otherwise of cold calling start to be voiced at this point.

In this sales blog,  I would like to explore the topic of using thought leadership to generate new business opportunities. We normally associate cold calling with generating new business opportunities. A waste of time and not appropriate for selling legal services – at least high value legal services. 

So how can we use thought leadership to generate new business opportunities?

Your average CEO or GC does not wake up in the morning thinking about what legal services to buy. They wake up and think how do I manage my risk? How do I keep the business competitive? How do I reduce costs? So if you can engage with prospective clients on their agenda and talk to them about what they are interested in they are more likely to give you time.

And this is where thought leadership comes in. Think about forthcoming legislation or changes in regulation. What might be the impact of this change for the company? What could happen if the company does nothing? Offer your opinion and advice and use this as the basis of an email to the individual GC or CEO that you want to get to see.

I attended a client event recently. It was a business supper for GCs from companies in the pharmaceutical sector. We explored a piece of forthcoming European legislation and what its impact might be on the pharmaceutical sector. There were 8 GCs at the supper and we emailed them all afterwards suggesting a meeting to explore how the legislation might affect their particular business – we got 6 meetings!!

We call this the WIIFM factor – What’s In It For Me. If you can create some value for your prospective client he or she is more likely to see you, furthermore you will feel less pushy and less like a double glazing sales man or a telesales person from a call centre.

As Zig Ziglar said “stop selling and start helping”

Many law firms are already using changes in legislation etc. as a means of communicating with clients on a regular basis either via newsletters or seminars but this does nothing to differentiate you as every other law firm does the same thing. The real opportunity is use thought leadership to generate sales meetings as this way you can potentially gain significant competitive advantage in a very crowded market.

If you would like to discuss how I can help your firm win more work contact me on katef@mobgroup.co.uk

To view or add a comment, sign in

Insights from the community

Explore topics