How was it for you?

Practical tips for winning and retaining clients

By Colin White

You have the technical expertise to satisfy the fussiest board of directors, excellent information systems and a very sharp marketing department. But then again, so do most of your competitors. So what are the more equivocal factors that sway those responsible for making the buying decisions and how can you influence this from the very first pitch to the completion of your umpteenth deal? Assuming technical ability is a given, where do we look next? We asked those directors and lawyers with the power to add your name to a panel.

You must have a commercial mind under your legal hat. A frequent source of frustration is a feeling that solicitors’ advice comes in a way that is designed to minimise the chances of being sued rather than making the best judgement for the business of the client. While nobody wants to make mistakes and should rightly take great care in their work, it helps if recommendations can be made with commercial objectives to the fore rather than submitting a 45-page bundle with every eventuality explained in a Byzantine fashion. So how do we create this insight? Every single person consulted in this research recommended organising secondments because these are the external lawyers that your clients prefer to deal with. Only they have witnessed first hand what pressures and considerations the internal lawyers must deal with. Think about giving a little first because this is an excellent way of gaining new clients as well as cementing relationships with existing ones.

Another useful idea linked to this is to look at in-house lawyers coming back into private practice as more than a doorway to their current company. Most in-house counsel enjoy dealing with a lawyer who has worked on their side of the fence and these lawyers can consequently gain deeper access to a new company in four weeks than some lawyers who have spent years mining contacts. This is because of their ability to communicate on a level beyond pure legal acumen and clients love it, not to mention how these individuals are well connected far beyond their most recent employer.

Obviously, if you listen and respond, your clients and contacts will like you more. Good thing because this was one of the highest priorities cited in the choosing of advisors. Be it subconsciously or otherwise, we all tend to perform better when working with people we like on a personal level. All appointments are made to an individual lawyer first and the law firm second, so be a pleasure to deal with. Seems logical, but how? One very popular suggestion is to make sure that you are easily accessible. Too often, clients find that they struggle to get the speed of response they would like and so their most valued advisors tend to be those who respond quickly.

The one subject tying all of these factors together is the way we respond to our clients. In order to respond effectively, we must listen, understand and then take action; anything else is a reaction. There is no panacea for this but the single area that every one of the lawyers consulted in this research agreed on 100 per cent was the fact that performance standards are reviewed far too infrequently and rarely at the behest of the law firm. If a company spends a significant sum annually with your firm, they want to see you analysing your performance and seeking ways to improve. This is generally accepted to be good practice in virtually all types of business yet it is typically adopted far too infrequently. If you are seen to be concerned with being the best you can be, it naturally follows that your clients will want to help you achieve that. Rather than simply asking yourself and your team, involve those who can give you the most relevant answer to the crucial question, ‘how can I do better?’

Colin White is managing director at Ortus Professional Search. He can be contacted at colin.white@ortussearch.com