How to increase coaching success - Part 1 of 3

According to the 2006 Law Firm Business Development Practices Survey published by ALM Research, 69% of large law firms have tried sales training, but few see it as contributing to revenue growth. Sales trainers and coaches in other industries have found that they can increase impact by focusing on five critical factors: motivation, focus, measurement, follow-up, and individual differences. This article will discuss how these factors are being applied in legal business development coaching to increase attorney commitment and improve business results.

Motivation

You don’t need to be a psychologist to know that motivation is a key to success. But discussions of motivating lawyers to develop new business often get bogged down in debates about compensation, rather than focusing on variables that are easier to control.

In the long run, law firms must change compensation to better reward business development success. However, in the short run this is simply not going to happen at every firm. Therefore, the focus needs to be on other common motivators for job performance, including social reinforcement and group pressure.

Coaches can start by “selling” both financial and non-financial benefits of marketing activity, and explaining how business development can increase personal satisfaction by helping lawyers to find the most interesting clients. As David Maister put it in his book True Professionalism: “The better you are at marketing, the better the chance you have to work on fun stuff, and the less trapped you become in being forced to take on work and clients you don’t truly enjoy.”

However well this message is delivered, some lawyers will simply not respond, and will remain unmotivated. Ignore them. As the cliché says, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.”

One of the most important factors in the success of any program is the people who are selected to participate. Law firms should always start with the motivated, especially when launching a new program that others will watch to judge how well it works. Once a pilot group succeeds in bringing in new business, it will be much easier to build upon this initial success.

After the best attorney candidates are selected, the coach must serve not just as an expert guide but also as a cheerleader, to keep people moving forward when they encounter the inevitable obstacles. One way to do this is to use group coaching to provide regular feedback on each individual’s activity and results, as described in the measurement section below. The coaching group will appreciate and celebrate success, because they will see for themselves how hard it is to get a meeting or prepare a proposal. And if some lawyers in the group fail to work on business development due to other time demands, the reporting on the group successes will provide adequate peer pressure. Most lawyers are so competitive that simply knowing that others are making gains can be an effective way to increase motivation.

This three part series is from an article I published in the November/ December 2006 issue of Strategies: The Journal of Legal Marketing.