Never underestimate the power of intelligent prospecting. Something as simple as well-timed congratulatory email or call to a client about a recent promotion goes a long way.
In fact, according to Mark Herrmann Chief Counsel of Litigation and Global Chief Compliance Officer at Aon, in an Above the Law article titled: Business Development 5 Things I Have Seen Work, simply keeping paying clients happy is, bar none, the most effective way to build and grow business.
“Number one, and light-years ahead of everything else: Impress your existing clients. Those clients will then give you more business,” said Mr. Herrmann. “I can’t give you percentages, but that formula — existing clients giving you more business — surely accounts for the vast majority of business I have either generated personally or seen generated by others over the course of three decades.
It’s the magic elixir.”
The good news is, there are ways attorneys and members of the law firm’s business development team can stay connected to the firm’s most valuable clients and it requires, little to no extra leg work, The InterAction IQ feature enables attorneys and BD professionals to keep track of important client information, such as a recent client name or title change, by automatically cleaning and updating data in a client’s email signature block using the freshest data available via the IQ signature capture feature.
In addition to finding ways to stay gently connected to clients in more strategic and meaningful ways, the IQ feature also helps attorneys and law firm BD professionals to determine the right cadence for communicating with clients and prospects as well as identifying how effectively the firm is communicating with them.
Here are few examples of how firms using the InterAction platform can use IQ to organically build business and make the right connections, to the right resources in the firm:
- Find Opportunities to Make Important Touchpoints. IQ Gives attorneys insight, via the signature capture feature, to know if and when, a client has been promoted or has moved into a new role at a different company, or, if a client has experienced a name change, so attorneys can stay in touch and reach out in a more personalized and meaningful way.
- Better Assess Client Communications. IQ Helps attorneys and members of the BD marketing team determine if the firm is over or under communicating with clients, as well as identifying where the firm is getting engagement back from this communication, by capturing, counting and scoring the number of engagements with clients, so members of the marketing team can make recommendations or suggest ways to re-engage or slow down the pace of communications with clients, as needed.
- Identify 5 “Hot Prospects” For the Week. IQ identifies previously unknown relationships and exposes multiple practice groups that are engaged with clients so the firm can better identify cross-selling or joint selling opportunities. In addition, IQ enables attorneys and members of the BD team to track how engagement for new BD opportunities have increased over time and, if engagement is high enough to trigger a more planned effort. In addition, IQ can also help the firm understand who-knows-whom within the firm and the uncovers the strength of those engagements which can identify potential “marriages” across practice groups and create joint marketing opportunities to expand services. This intelligence can be used to develop a list of the “top five” clients or prospects that should be on the radar for the week.
To learn more about how to unlock the power of IQ to grow business from within and make a lasting impression on law firm leadership, take a read through, 6 Surefire Ways to Impress Your Legal Management Committee and Optimize your Team’s BD Efforts, aptly dedicated to all things IQ.
This post is by Carla Del Bove, who provides support to the business of law software product line based in the LexisNexis Raleigh Technology Center.
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