By Darryl Cross in discussion with Larry Bodine

He is Senior Vice President of Business Development at Concep, Inc. in New York. The company does Client Surveys/Market Research, Communications, Client Relationship Management (CRM), Graphic Design, Marketing, Survey Software, and Web Site Development. He can be reached at darryl.cross@concepglobal.com and (212) 925-0380.

Darryl Cross:  We're talking looking at things from the client's bottom line point of view instead of ours. That idea leads to seven principles of client development, consistent principles that we see on a regular basis, whether they are a 30 lawyer shop in Dallas or a big New York City law firm, . 

Number one is leveraging our existing assets.  There is so much content and so much information available at law firms about clients; they're swimming in it.  We're talking about things like what relationships do we have?  What is the billing history of some very large maybe pharmaceutical clients?  It tells us a lot about what kind of problems they have.  We also look at things like who are the other people we know outside of here?  What is our matter history?  What part of our existing client base could be duplicated?  We have all this content at our finger tips.  A lot of times it's out of context, but we can bring that together using technology and some good old fashioned elbow grease be able to make some sense of it. 

Principle two is once we start compiling information and seeing all those assets, we have to have the ability to think small.  Think about last time you were asked to write a short 400-word article.  Hard, isn't it, Larry? 

Larry Bodine:  It's much harder than writing a 2000-word article. 

Darryl Cross:  It's a great exercise to take a 1000-word article and nail it down to 500, then 250, and then a 50-word synopsis.  It's a great exercise in thinking small.  Here's another one you should take back to your law firms to illustrate the need to think small when it comes to business development:  When you have a gathering of lawyers in the room, ask every lawyer to pull out of piece of paper and take 15 seconds to write down 5 clients they've never done work with before.  I've never run into a group that can't.  The world is way too big, and there are too many opportunities and too many possibilities. 

Larry Bodine:  It gets to another point, Darryl, that strategy is really deciding what you're not going to do. 

Darryl Cross:  Yes.  We're trying to limit ourselves to make the world smaller.  Principle three:  use mini-networks. Who are those particular people in that much smaller world?  Once we start to focus on certain clients or industries or whatever that might be, we can look at who is involved within the company.  Think of all the people that could hire your law firm.  They're called humans at companies that are still in business on planet earth.  So law firms tend to confuse capability with targeting and the ability to go after it.  Sometimes it makes them uncomfortable to limit themselves.  "Well, we could do work here, but the referrals still come in; we do good work; the word gets out."  But if I choose to focus on a limited amount of people, we can look at things like alumni, referrals, and top-client networks. 

As for number four, don't guess about their business; ask questions. If we know how small the world is and the people who are in it, we can actually sit in front of them and ask questions.  There are too many things that are going on with strategy selling and marketing that are based around conference tables at law firms and not the conference tables at clients.  We need to invite our clients in – maybe the CEO of one of our top clients in manufacturing, or in nursing homes, or maybe a corporation.  Have they ever come in to your practice group meeting and given a 30-minute seminar on how their industry works, or how their company works, or why China is beating them up so bad?  They know the answers to these questions, so instead of making a research project of all this and asking some associate to do all this research online and then bring it back, hoping this is the right order of priority for our client, we can just bring them in and they'll tell us. 

Number five is participate in team sports. You've got a smaller world, a smaller group of people, we know what they care about, so let's start spreading the word.  Team sports – it's a big hot thing right now to do client teams.  It's a challenging thing in a lot of law firms because either we have five of them, or – I actually ran into a firm the other day that just started their client team initiative and they're starting with 172. Way too big.

Larry Bodine:  I know you brought this up because you're on a rugby team, aren't you, Darryl?  Are team sports at law firms anything like rugby? 

Darryl Cross:  Rugby is a little bit nicer.  The thing is with a rugby team, everybody has a role.  There are 15 people on a field on a rugby team.  I'm usually one of the smallest people on the field, by the way, but everybody has a role.  A lot of times we get started with business development training or client teams, and everybody needs to be the glad-hander, or everybody needs to be the networker.  But what we found – like a rugby team, like a football team or whatever – there are positions.  We have an associate that is fifth or sixth year that has learned all about the industry because they're hungry.  They know how to do research because that's what they do every day, and they come back and brief everybody else.  You have the writer; you have the client relationship guy or gal; you have the go-and-network-and-find-new-people; you have the person that talks to the press.  So there are different rolls for different stages.        

Most firms already have this model in place; it's how you work on complex matters.  Think about it.  Is it optional if you have eight lawyers working on a big deal for them to say, “I don't feel like sharing information with the team”?  Not in any law firm I’ve talked to.  Just maybe you share documents or share information or material information that could change the whole case?  Absolutely not.  So use those same models to develop your team.  What are the standards and policies, and how do we make them work better? 

Larry Bodine:  Now, what about the sixth principle, boosting the client's bottom line? 

Darryl Cross:  We're going to have to pay attention to the world from their point of view, and that's hard.  That's why the first five principles are very important to get in place first, because you can't do this to all 5,000 of your clients.  Some firms have done a lot, and we hear all sorts of acronyms about it:  The XYZ 50, or whatever it is.  They start focusing on top clients, or maybe the top 10 of these practice groups, and it's good to see that a lot of firms are moving beyond the "just running it by revenue" and starting to look at "This one's not repeatable; that was a bankruptcy; this was litigation, it was an out of the blue lucky stab for us." 

So they've identified certain crown jewels or rising stars, and we start to look at a limited amount of them, who we can influence, and let's form teams around it, and let's figure out how we can improve this client's bottom line.  Some of the best practices that we are already seeing, just to start this discussion, really do focus on the client's point of view, just from a day-to-day basis.  A lot of us probably use competitive intelligence research.  Let's say Pfizer is our client.  We run reports on them; we look at their litigation history and who they use.  You're seeing that a lot more than usual; right, Larry?

Larry Bodine:  Absolutely. 

Darryl Cross:  I wonder how many firms have ever gone to their client Pfizer with the company reports and litigation history of Merck and Johnson and Johnson. 

Larry Bodine:  Now that they don't do. 

Darryl Cross:  There's no reason in the world that a law firm cannot turn the tables and look at it just the way as a Pfizer attorney or business development CEO would say, "How are we doing it versus our competitors?  Are we getting sued more or less?  Are they expanding faster or slower than we are?  What did they get nailed with that we shouldn’t, that we should avoid?"  If you had that information at your disposal, it really isn't that hard to present it to your client in that way. 

For example, what if you noticed that their real estate costs, when compared to their top two competitors, are off the charts?  Do you have real estate lawyers at your firm that could help with consolidation of that, and that would improve their cash flow?  Of course you do.  So that is something that Pfizer needs.  We can provide that to them.  We have the people, we know who to talk to, we have the research tools to do it, but we have to know what to look for, and I think that's how it is we're changing our perception. 

Take care of the client's bottom line, and they will take care of yours. 

Larry Bodine:  And the seventh principle?

Darryl Cross:  The final principle is that all these things make no difference unless we can execute them with some sort of discipline and intensity, really focusing on what we do already, what assets we have, and focusing using the 80/20 rule.  Focus ourselves and work harder; do it better than other firms do.  Not just service, great service.  Not just making the company profitable, making them have record profits because of the way that you helped them structure their company. 

And not the usual approach to using client information, where days 1 through 29 are the ones where nothing happens; then day 30 is where everybody gets together and panics and needs the reports sitting around the conference room.  Discipline and intensity are the two pieces of it.  Intensity is what you do; discipline is how often and how consistent you are with it.  So those are the two pieces.