Customer Service Helper

CRM in Law Firms - Only Part of the Solution in Getting Closer to Clients and Winning More Work

NOT so long ago, if you were in a relationship and it became apparent it wasn’t going anywhere, you had a choice of ways to end it: tell them to their face or phone them up. It was never pleasant, but at least one had to deliver the news personally, unlike dating couples today. Talking with my 14-year-old nephew enlightened me to the joys of text and e-mail brushoffs: just a few keystrokes and the deed is done, secure in the knowledge that if the dumpee fails to get the message, one can open a new Hotmail account or install a new SIM card.

We live in an age of texts, video conferences and voice mails. Never has it been so easy to get a message to someone. Yet with all this communicating going on, we’ve actually stopped talking to one another. The lawyer’s pursuit of new clients is a prime example.

The legal profession has, for a decade, attempted all manner of clever and increasingly expensive ways to communicate with both existing and potential clients. In the beginning, there was Yellow Pages. When lawyers were first permitted to advertise their services, Yellow Pages reps smashed their sales targets as partnership after partnership signed up for a boxed ad here and a quarter-page there - some even had colour. Even today you can see that directory awash with photos of various fee-earners all promising “a tailored and individual professional service”.

Next into the partners’ car park was the rep from the ad agency with all the answers in the form of a corporate brochure. Partnership meetings were convened, Pantone colours and artwork examined and fonts mulled over. New brochures emerged, complete with photos of specialists, the office and the compulsory sheet of expensive tissue paper just inside the front cover. Marketing mailed out a copy to every single client on the database and partners sat expectantly, waiting for the phones to ring themselves out of their cradles with new clients saying: “We surrender! You can have all our business, as that rather flattering photo of ‘Simon - head of commercial property’ won us over.” Unfortunately, following the initial enthusiastic mailing, most brochures sat in a cupboard, with most fee-earners never actually handing one out, not knowing when was appropriate to do so as the felt awkward and pushy.

Salvation for the gauche, it appeared, might come with the opportunity to lure new clients with a website. Once again, the ad agency popped up, this time in threes - account manager, web-designer and creative type. Laptops were sprung open and a confection of colours displayed. Icons were dragged, cursors moved, menus dropped down and Adobe, Flash, Quick Time and Java were added to the sorcerer’s brew. But still, the hordes did not come.

Then appeared the mother of all solutions - a “thing” that did all the client stuff for you. Lawyers could sit at their desks and do what they studied for years to do - practise law. The machine would do all this soft-skills, airy-fairy business and a techie could sort it all out - no more ethereal conversations with marketing. Again, a left-brain logical solution was the answer, rather than the woolly right-brain stuff: Customer relations management (CRM).

This time, it was software reps making a killing with budget-stretching systems to track every single bit of information about every client that ever was - and might ever be.

But here’s the rub. CRM is defined by Harvard Business School as being a system that “aligns business processes with customer strategies to build customer loyalty and increase profits over time”. Note the words “technology” and “software” are conspicuously absent.

So before you even think about CRM, you have to find what a client’s strategy is. The only way to do that is to sit down, talk to them and ask. The starting point for establishing or developing a relationship with a client is to talk to them. No technology has ever developed a meaningful relationship with anyone.

Over the past few years, many firms have used technology like a drunk uses a lamp-post: not for illumination, just support. That is changing. Firms are realizing they have been found wanting in the “soft” skills of communication and know honing these will light their way to new and profitable relationships. Aside from having been a lawyer, I have recruited, coached, trained and worked with lawyers at all levels for more than seven years and I know them to be the most charming, considerate and actually quite caring bunch of people I’ve met in the commercial world. Their integrity is without question and it saddens me so many find talking to clients quite awkward.

It need not be like this. Communication skills can be acquired. An ability to strike up conversations, be comfortable exchanging small talk and build a rapport can be learned. Put into practice it can add personal and cash value.

A partner in a firm recently told me that since he had been on a course teaching co-operative, non-confrontational negotiating skills, he felt far more relaxed about entering negotiations and, in 12 months, had brought in an additional GBP 20,000 as a result.

I once asked a professor of law why he thought lawyers lacked interpersonal skills when it came to talking to clients. He said universities take highly intelligent young people and over four years, teach them the body of the law. They get them to dissect the law, explore its intricacies and delve deeply into how it works and connects to each part to form this “body”. They are taught to analyze cases, examine judgments and question decisions. They leave university and enter the commercial world with an intimate knowledge of this body of law, to begin their legal career. On their first day with their new firm, they sit at their desks and the body suddenly sits up and says hello - and they haven’t a clue to what to say in return.

Nick Davies LLB (hons), barrister, is owner of The Really Great Training Company. He teaches and coaches lawyers at all levels of qualification and from global jurisdictions, how to sell, pitch, network, influence and negotiate their way to more effective business development. Nick also delivers after-dinner speeches and stand up comedy. Find out more at his site http://www.reallygreattraining.co.uk