How to Select Clients for Cross-Selling by Eric Dewey
C
ross-selling is the holy grail for law firms. Clients who like you and recognize the value you provide are more likely to expand their use of you. More to the point, they are more likely to trust your recommendation of other partners in the firm. But most cross-selling initiatives fail because lawyers are not adequately prepared. They may have done their research on the company, but they haven’t tried to understand the operational culture of the organization, the stuff not found in a 10K. They don’t understand the company’s priorities or its internal buying decision dynamics. As such, the pitches can feel random and untethered to any real needs of the business. These questions will help you identify prospective clients who are both in need of the services but also in a position to solve the issues and, as such, will be more receptive to your overtures. Keep in mind that this process is not required for all practice areas or all clients. Typically, it works best as a pre-sale exercise for clients who have a degree of discretion on which legal challenges they solve. Some practice areas leave little room for discretion, such as litigation defense. Clients facing a class action must defend themselves. Similarly, some clients are better understood by their outside counsel which may also reduce the need for this questioning process. But if you can’t answer these questions on your own or are pitching a new practice area that is optional for the client, this process will help you get the knowledge you need to pitch with confidence.
Here’s what to do. Start the process by first identifying the practice areas with synergy to your practice area—that is, identify the practice areas commonly used by companies in the industry that you are targeting. Often the practices can be identified in your billing data by looking at the
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Attorney Journals San Diego | Volume 222, 2022
practice type of newly opened matters of a group of clients within a particular industry segment. You may also have an intuitive sense of the practice areas commonly used by your clients. But it’s nice to have research to confirm your suspicions. From this list of potential cross-selling practices, select a partner that you like, trust, and respect. Meet with them to discuss this process and identify a group of 5 to 6 clients that you will focus on for this first phase of the process. Identify the specific legal solution that would form the basis for your proposal. Be as specific as possible. For instance, 'employment law services' is too broad. Updating the company’s employee manual is specific. Do the research necessary to validate, as best you can, the need for that service. For each target client, discuss what you know about the client’s need for the cross-sold practice/legal service using the criteria below. Keep in mind that proposals for legal services are essentially proposals for the company to change some aspect of how they operate or do business. Therefore, when we talk about ‘decisions’, we mean the broader concept of legal solutions that may require a change initiative within the organization. This bears repeating. Some decisions to hire outside counsel can be made quickly, typically because the company has little discretion in whether it will address the problem. In such cases, such as in litigation, there are fewer decision-makers, and the decision typically must be made quickly. But most legal proposals are ‘optional’ in the sense that the company has discretion whether to or in how quickly it will solve the issue. The questions below are best used in this context. Use them to understand the buying journey and buyer’s motivations for deciding to solve legal issues and hire outside counsel. Good cross-selling targets are clients with whom there has been a long, mutually beneficial relationship. The clients should be very familiar with the firm and
