How to improve legal business development coaching

If you coach lawyers on business development, you probably think you could do better.  Everyone can.  But how?  Exactly what should you do to increase results?

In other professions, trainers and coaches answer that question through train the trainer workshops and certification programs.  Now legal marketers can too.

LegalBizDev has just introduced two new programs built around ten key proficiency factors that increase coaching results.  The most critical factor is time efficiency.

Above everything else, lawyers are busy. If a lawyer bills $600 per hour, one minute spent chatting costs $10.   So legal coaches must take time very seriously.  When people sign up for our Certification Program, Download CertificationOverview2008k.pdf, one of the first things we do is to send each person a digital timer to help make sure that 30 minute calls do not take 31 minutes (unless the client wants them to).

Whenever I speak to lawyers, I hold up my own digital timer at the beginning of the talk.  I always tell the audience that I can’t guarantee that they will like my presentation, but I can guarantee that I will end on time.  And when I do, I point to my timer.

Similarly, we believe that coaches should make a show about their devotion to time.  If they schedule a telecon for 10:00, they should call at 10:00, not 10:01 or 9:59.  And if the call is scheduled to end at 10:30, the first question they should ask is:  “Do you still have 30 minutes for today’s call, or should we go faster today?”  Lawyers love it.

I wish I could say they love all ten factors, but lawyers are not always thrilled when we urge them to prioritize relentlessly.  Sometimes a lawyer wants to start a blog or look up old colleagues with LinkedIn when they would be much better off spending that time taking top clients to lunch, to strengthen relationships and learn how to increase the clients’ perception of value. 

Don’t get me wrong.  I believe that both blogs and LinkedIn are valuable marketing tools.  I use them myself.  But I spend more than half of my work life developing new business, while many lawyers are lucky to spend an hour or two a week.  So the question for each lawyer is:  what tactics are most likely to produce the largest results in the time you have?  Sometimes, you have to ignore ideas that are only good so you’ll have enough time to focus on the best ideas for your practice, your personality, and your schedule.

What should a coach do if he makes his case against the blog, and the lawyer still wants to do it?  Give in.  Then monitor the results.  At the end of the day, coaches must defer to the lawyer’s judgment and avoid an argument. But we wouldn’t be doing our job if we failed to urge each lawyer to prioritize.

I started by mentioning ten key proficiency factors, but so far I’ve only talked about time efficiency and prioritization.  It would be natural to ask what the other eight are.  I hate to be coy here, but I’m not saying.

I don’t want to give the impression that the eight remaining factors will amaze you with secret magic formulas.  But they do represent the result of our proprietary analyses, and the hard earned wisdom from over 20 years of experience with a variety of professions.  So if you want to make your own judgment about the other eight factors, you’ll just have to sign up for our Train the Trainer workshop or the Certification Program.