I received a comment asking me about selling to Law Firms, so I thought it would be fun to do a post about that. My first reaction to this question was Don’t even try, but seriously, selling to Law Firms is good business if you can get it, so here are some ideas for you. In general, I would treat a law firm just like selling to a large account with Multiple Decision Makers, and you need to cover your bases and meet with as many people as you can to determine if they are motivated enough to entertain the idea of buying from you.
1. You need to understand the structure of the firm as it relates to making decisions, and If possible, get the lay of the land from somebody who is currently selling something to your targeted Law Firm.
2. Build a relationship with as many partners as you can inside the firm, and take time to build strategic alliances with them. In general, most large firms are not a ‘slam dunk’ type of sale, so plan and forecast accordingly.
3. If a product that is geared toward infrastructure efficiency, you will need to sell to both the end users and the decision makers.
4. If your product is geared toward making Lawyers more efficient, they may be a bit resistant to change the way they do things. See if you can get one person inside the firm to use your product on a trial basis (neat pun, hunh!) and have them report the benefits of your product to other members of the firm.
If all this fails, here is something that I did at the beginning of my sales career selling telecommunications services.
Law Firms were a really good fit for our offering. The only issue I had when dealing with law firms in our market was the fact that they were managed by lawyers. Most, if not all decisions were made by the Partners, who can be next to impossible to meet with. As a young sales person with a big quota and a manager who tracked proposals and appointments, I did what most people would do, and attempted to sell the office manager hoping she had the chutzpa to go to the senior partner to get approval to begin using our services. Also, as a young sales person with a big quota and a manager who tracked proposals and appointments, I was stupid enough to actually forecast this as a deal that would close within 30 days. Every day, I tried to catch the office manager at her desk to find out “Where we were at with the proposal’ that I had given her. Every day, she dodged my calls, and after about a week of hearing nothing and 72 hours left in the month, I did what most sales people would do…I began to panic. I knew that I needed to do something different, but wasn’t sure what I could do.
I knew the way to get this deal signed was to get an appointment with the Senior Partner, who was in fact the decision maker. I was stuck, since most Senior Partners don’t meet with sales people, they are too busy meeting with billable clients. Then it hit me- if I was a client I could schedule and appointment to meet with him. I called the office, and found out how much Mr. Big charged for an hour. It was $300.00. With my manager’s size 12 wingtip near my backside and a big commission dangling in front of me, I decided that it would be worth $300.00 to get an hour of his time. I booked an appointment to talk about my “divorce”, and was able to get a 5:30 appointment two days later.
I showed up for my appointment with my proposal and $300.00 in cash. He asked me how I was doing, and I said, “ I just need to confirm a few things with you. First of all, your rate is $300.00 per hour, right? He said, “Yes” with kind of a strange look on his face. I continued on,” So If I pay you three hundred dollars, than basically, I am buying one hour of your time, and I can talk about whatever I need to during that time, Right?” By now, he looked as though he wanted to ring the secret security button that was under his desk, but I didn’t look that threatening. I put the three hundred dollars on his desk and said, “Now that I officially own an hour of your time, here is what I want to talk to you about” and I proceeded to launch into my very organized proposal. The appointment went well, and I left his office with signed paperwork. This was a big lesson for me. I learned that I needed to think out of the box, and do whatever I needed in order to get a deal. If you get stuck, you just need to find another way around the sticking point. Be open to doing anything you need to do, and you will win a lot more business.
Kirsten,
I am a lawyer (former Managing Partner of an international firm) and a consultant to the legal profession. You have posted on a topic about which I have a great deal of experience. I want to commend you for "getting it". We might have an interesting "fine-tuning" discussion but in general I want to congratulate you for hitting the bulls-eye of this little known topic. (…that's "bulls-eye" on a dart board just in case Tamara was worried.)
Gerry Riskin
riskin@edge.ai or www.gerryriskin.com
Posted by: Gerry Riskin | February 16, 2007 at 10:05 AM