The Law Society (in the UK) recently released their Small Legal Business Toolkit: a guide to “Setting up, managing and retiring from practice for legal SMEs”.

The guide is mostly very thorough – it’s 161 pages of A4 and covers topics from setting up and registering your practice, structuring your firm, tax, business planning, acquiring staff, marketing, regulations, retirement, and a bunch of pages from sponsor the Bank of Scotland on setting up a business account with them.

The marketing section is pretty thin. It covers the generics of the 4 Ps and some high level advice to “do” marketing every day and “don’t do it on the cheap”. There are a couple of pages on the basics of websites and SEO and a page or so on permission marketing and e-mail newsletters. But nothing on the specifics of marketing for small practices (or even law firms more generally). In fact there’s more advice on the keyword density of your website than there is on which lead generation techniques work in different circumstances for different types of practices.

And as for sales (or Business Development for the sensitive souls who daren’t utter the S word): nothing.

Of course, there’s the obligitory mention of the Solicitors Regulation Authority Rule 7 on allowable publicity (for example restrictionson cold calls) and Rule 9 on referrals. But nothing on the actual process of selling your services: of understanding your potential client’s needs and working with them to define what you can do with them in a way that will help them to buy from you. Nor is there anything on generating referrals from your existing clients or on networking – one of the key sales approaches for professionals.

Now I don’t have any hard data on this, but anecdotally, my experience is that the number one reason for small law practices failing is their inability to bring in enough client work to sustain them. And I fear that this guide does little to help the SME in this respect.

I have great respect for the Law Society and the work they do – but I fear this is a real missed opportunity.

Ian

PS You can find the guide here.

When I was compiling Rainmaker Resources I scoured the net for articles, blogs, podcasts and videos of value to business developers in professional services. Most of these resources are, of course, produced by consultants and advisors who aim to help professionals in these areas. I informally categorised the firms and individuals I found, with the intriguing result that they all fell into one of three camps:

• There are many advisors who cover all types of professional services firms (lawyers, consultants, accountants, architects, engineers, etc.). I fit into this camp, as does David Maister, Ford Harding, Suzanne Lowe, Bruce Marcus, Mike Schulz and John Doerr, etc. (Bracketing myself with those giants of professional services is probably the most egotistical thing I’ve done for ages – as they say in Wayne’s World: I’m not worthy).
• There are a number of advisors who focus on law firms: Larry Bodine, Gerry Riskin, Allan Colman, etc.
• Rather fewer advisors who focus on consulting – Alan Weiss is probably the leading name here – others tend to mainly offer training and resources - e.g. SBR Consulting, the Guerilla Consulting team (perhaps consultants don’t like being consulted to).

And for accountants?

Er, nothing really. I drew a blank.

Maybe I’m looking in the wrong places – I’m a consultant by background rather than an accountant. But I’m one hell of a googler. And still I came up with nothing.

So maybe accountants don’t take advice. Or maybe advisors don’t like working for accountants. Maybe there’s a fantastic niche available for anyone willing to specialise.

Or maybe I’ve just got a blind spot when it comes to resources for accountants. So if you know of any – please drop me a line and I’ll add them to the site.

Ian

It’s the holy grail of Professional Services – to become a trusted advisor to your senior clients. To be viewed – and sought out – as a source of valued advice and support.

The benefits from a business development perspective are clear: the professional who is the first port of call for a client with a business problem is in a tremendous position to help shape that client’s thinking, to build a deep understanding of the situation, and to establish strong credibility through the discussions. In other words, they will be in pole position to win any related work.

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