All change on the legal front

Admittedly, law firms are beginning to use an array of marketing strategies to win that all-elusive competitive advantage, but the profession as a whole is still criticised for being in the slow lane, lagging far behind industry in the race to adopt marketing and sales as an integral part of the business culture. Caroline Poynton talks to Mike Jones, the first appointed sales director of a UK law firm, about his role and how he might just change the legal perception of sales.

The website says it all. Cool lime and shades of grey, cleanly divided into a geometric design and tempered with a soothing image of breaking waves on a deserted beach. The message reads: “Tite & Lewis breaking boundaries.” The design is clean and simple, with a lengthy firm descriptive wisely abandoned in favour of some choice phrases: “Building a new, fresh and highly commercial proposition,” and: “Don’t expect gobbledygook, risk aversion or commercial naivety.”

It is not that the website does anything better or even as well as some other law-firm offerings in this field, but its proposition does seem to ring true when you realise that it has to its credit the only sales director ever appointed by a UK law firm. Some of the more progressive firms in the US have started appointing sales directors in the past 18 months but many, of at least the early appointees, were lawyers who were given the job of heading the sales function. For Mike Jones, a sales rather than legal professional, his experience marks the first steps for the legal profession in an unknown field.

First and foremost, Jones brings to the profession the refreshing perspective of a non-legal background. A fascination with people: what makes us do the things we do; what influences us to change; and how we interact with other people, led him to study psychology at university. He followed this up with a Masters thesis in the area of sports psychology, attempting to demonstrate the link between mental rehearsal and an improvement in physical performance. It was a decision that perhaps reflects his desire to tackle new areas and ideas, but at the time, sports psychology was still in its infancy with few opportunities to forge a career.

In the face of a career-development wall, sales seemed like a logical step that could combine Jones’s intellectual interests with the opportunities of a commercial environment. From university, he never looked back, spending the next 14 years learning every aspect of the sales profession, from high-level organisational sales right down to door-to-door cold calling.

In 1997, he was approached by Ernst & Young to head up their sales and marketing function. It was a role that introduced him to the world of professional services. “I learned that even a forward-thinking and well-funded organisation such as Ernst & Young was a long way behind many industries in its approach to selling and relationship management,” he says. “I was soon to learn that in many respects law firms are even further behind.”

Jones describes himself as: “Highly motivated to succeed in all my endeavours and nobody is able to put more pressure on me to deliver results than me.” He also talks about controlling his own personal development and making progress towards realising his current targets. Even the way he speaks seems to contrast with many legal professionals, his words resonating with a management lingo still alien to many a lawyer who has spent years in the mutually reassuring atmosphere of a traditional partnership. Nevertheless, the law firm beckoned and when Ernst & Young set up Tite & Lewis three years ago, Jones was delighted to take his place among the legal professionals.

Jones, of course, had the advantage of joining the firm at the start, and with its association with Ernst & Young, with whom he had enjoyed experience and success, he was already ahead of the game. Even with this edge, however, Jones expected to encounter problems. “I must admit,” he says, “I expected some resistance at first. I think it is understandable for professionals to take a slightly cynical view on the introduction of something new.” However, Mark Lewis and Christopher Tite, the founding members of the firm, pioneered an entrepreneurial approach that has happily filtered down throughout the firm. As Jones says: “The entire partner group bought into the concept of creating a different type of law firm and I think they see my role as being quite central to the unique culture we have developed.”

As for his day-to-day role, he is the one person whose prime focus is top-line growth. He describes Tite & Lewis as a young business where everyone has a major part to play in sales success, but he is the only person who does not have to juggle other responsibilities alongside the business-development needs of the firm. The role is multi-faceted but at the core are three main areas: sales leadership (strategy, management, reporting, organisation); sales coaching (helping lawyers to be more effective in developing client relationships); and personal sales activity.

As the business has matured, the mix of these core activities has and will continue to change. In the early months, his time was largely spent on getting appropriate support systems in place. He had to agree a sales strategy, organise the fee earners and support staff to approach their chosen markets, and provide guidance and encouragement to staff to enter into sales activity with less trepidation. As the firm has grown, he has been able to focus more time on the one-to-one coaching and group training, enabling and empowering people to take on new knowledge and skills. In the past year, Jones has found himself in a position where he can spend much more time out in the market, attracting new clients and developing the firm’s client-care programme.

Holding such a unique role as a law-firm sales director, Jones has been able to enjoy a position of growth, change and, it can be assumed, significant autonomy. It is clear that he has enjoyed the privilege: “I feel completely at home at Tite & Lewis,” he says. “The partners have been fantastic and even those partners that have left the firm have maintained contact with me and talk to me about their ongoing sales efforts.”

The role has not been without its challenges, however. The firm has a strong client-acquisition strategy, which has, Jones says, attracted a significant number of clients along the way. The firm now needs to adapt this strategy and place greater emphasis on strengthening and deepening the client relationships that they have fought hard to win. In conjunction with this, Jones sees his role angling more towards account-management coaching: using client feedback to develop a co-ordinated and integrated approach to each client. Jones says: “I am a big believer in intrinsic values and I think understanding the values that drive your clients’ behaviour and decision making is a vital ingredient in successful selling. Unfortunately, it is also one of the areas that most professional-services firms either ignore or under-value.”

On an internal level, Jones has also had to integrate his role with the other functions of the firm, namely, marketing, operations and HR. Jones admits that the four directors of each respective function are not perfect and have not always integrated as well as they could. Nevertheless, he says that they are all well aware of the need to support each other. “I have thoroughly enjoyed working alongside Anne, Karl and Dave, who head up HR, operations and marketing respectively and, as we all have a seat at the top table (operations board and partner meetings), there has never been any rivalry among us.” He adds: “Gaps are only ever created when one of us moves too fast.”

Having successfully survived three years as a law-firm sales director, it begs the question why other firms haven’t taken note and followed Tite & Lewis’s example. Jones thinks that it is a likely development. “Most of the large accounting firms now have professional sales support, either in-house or outsourced,” he says. “I see no reason why law firms shouldn’t follow suit.”

For those still resistant to the whole idea of law-firm sales, perhaps the figures might provide some final persuasion. After all, in the three years since the firm’s foundation, the business has grown 50 per cent in year two and 40 per cent in year three. For Jones, this is real point of pride as he feels that he has contributed significantly to this success. Even now, in the quiet holiday season, he says that the firm has had a terrific July and things are looking very positive for the coming months.

Law firms are perceived as being ever-resistant to change, and for many, adopting a full-on sales strategy will continue to prove a step too far. Perhaps some might argue that sales can never be truly aligned with the ethical responsibilities of the legal profession. This is all well and good, as long as those firms understand that there will be others who are prepared to forge ahead with business strategies for a business world. They will recruit people with the same confidence, enthusiasm and business experience as Mike Jones and they may very well make the crucial difference between a firm’s success or failure.

Mike Jones is sales director at Tite & Lewis. He can be contacted at: mike.jones@titeandlewis.com.