The Critical First Step to Designing Effective Client Team Programs
Thursday, May 19, 2016

According to a recent survey by Law Firm CultureShift® conducted at the April 2016 Legal Marketing Association Annual International Conference in Austin, TX, 43% of law firms rank launching/improving firm client team programs to be one of their highest priority growth initiatives for 2016. 

Our survey result reinforces a January 2016 Thomson Reuters Legal Executive Institute Annual Marketing & Business Development Benchmarking Survey which showed that 52% of law firms of all sizes and practice/industry focuses have already launched client team programs, with another 16% planning to do so in 2016.   

Obviously, client teams are a hot issue for most law firm leaders looking to increase revenues in the current fiscal year and beyond. Why? Client team programs, when implemented correctly, should drive client revenue growth of 20% or more per year. What firm doesn’t want that type of revenue growth at a time of ever increasing competition for the best clients?

So if client team programs can be so successful in driving revenues, why aren’t more firms enjoying this level of success? It usually comes down to initial client target selection.

It seems simple enough. Run a list of the firm’s top 10/25/50/100/300 clients. Scan the list for clients with multiple legal needs in areas where your firm has strength. Pick a handful of client targets and ask the relationship partner for each client to form a team of attorneys to drive increased client revenues. Voila, client team program launched.
However, chances are if this was your firm’s approach to launching your last client team program, you’ve already failed and you might be dooming any future client team programs in the future.

We view client team target selection to be one of the three most critical steps to launching a successful client team program, along with using a standardized, client team planning model and matching your program ambitions with available client team support resources. If any of these critical elements are not in place at launch, chances are you will be disappointed in your results.

Establishing a process for selecting your client team targets

Provided below are a number of factors that go into selecting the right client team targets.

  1. Focus on client needs, not what you want to sell – A critical mistake made by too many firms in launching client teams is not investing the time and necessary competitive/business intelligence resources in the client target selection process. 

Many firms will run top client target lists, identify revenues by area of practice and then just choose those clients with the largest number of “service gaps” and move into the sell process. This approach almost always fails because it doesn’t take into account existing competitors/relationships or the actual needs of clients.

The best client team targets are the result of deep primary and secondary research into current and future client needs – an area where an outside consultant can be especially helpful.

  1. Current relationship partners should not be automatic choices for client team leaders – Sometimes, past success can be a great predictor of future success. However, as Peter Drucker famously said, “The best way to predict your future is to create it.”

Highly motivated client team leaders are essential to client team revenue growth. Current client relationship partners might find client team efforts threatening to their existing status, resulting in these individuals becoming overt or covert hindrances to future success. Finding leaders who are more interested in future growth than maintaining the status quo is essential to effective client teams, especially in an era of changing firm and client demographics.

  1. Client team targets shouldn’t be top client wish lists, existing and future client/firm relationships are critical – Most successful client team programs start with a thorough examination of the client/firm relationship matrix. However, the process can’t start and stop there.

Team leader and member selection needs to be driven off of the knowledge that is derived through examining current and future required relationships and then matching the right people with the best opportunities. Past relationships (e.g., professional and social relationships that have never resulted in revenues, firm connections to past client leaders, etc.) are not enough if that is all you have to build on. Future growth opportunities and individuals willing to go beyond their existing relationships are essential to driving future profitable revenue growth.

  1. Don’t underestimate the strength of existing client/competitor firm relationships – Clients place their trust in, and send work to, various law firms for many different reasons. Law firm leaders setting up client team programs need to understand these relationship dynamics in order to select the right client team targets. Again, this is another area where deep CI is critical and in particular, the impact of client interviews by firm leadership or independent third party service providers which should be the first step in launching any successful client team program.

Don’t guess at where your future revenue will come. Use CI to make informed decisions on where to focus your client team efforts and stop throwing darts at a dart board.

 

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