Case study: Dykema

Business boosting

Integrating law-firm business development and marketing functions may not be a new concept, but it was a move that greatly benefited US firm, Dykema, as Marty A. Semaan explains.

In 2008, at the US firm Dykema, we created a business development function as part of our marketing organisation. This was based on the belief that sales success could be achieved through a structured, disciplined approach to target and win new business. Although obviously not new ground, developing a strong business development programme could be highly successful if structured and implemented correctly.
The process we developed and the role our business development manager played were based on two key elements:

Business development would establish the structure and process, identify and research targets, assist in developing the sales strategy and pitch, and keep score; and,
The lead lawyer and team were responsible to pitch and win the business.

We launched the programme with two intentions. Our primary intent was to increase market share with existing clients and our secondary aim was to capture new clients. To accomplish this, we needed to hire a seasoned business developer who could bring structure and discipline to our sales process. We needed an individual who understood that sales planning, return on investment (ROI) selling, and the need to retain and develop client partnerships were all critical to success. While at first we thought that it would be beneficial to find a person with a legal background, the reality was that someone from a different industry actually brought a fresh approach and perspective to the sales process. With our manager hired, a strong business development manager with more than 20 years of experience in computer software sales and service, and our objectives laid out, we were on our way to establishing targets, goals and reporting.

Getting started
The most difficult parts of this process were identifying firm team members, jointly developing tasks and maintaining a team focus. This process took longer than we expected, as we needed to take into consideration selecting team members from practice areas spanning our geographic footprint, compiling the essential and meaningful tasks and activities, and learning how to maintain team momentum while lawyers were already dealing with a heavy workload.
Our goal was to identify industries in which the firm had substantial experience across a variety of practice groups and to ensure teams were comprised of lawyers from those practices. Team leaders were also identified who could provide strong leadership, direction and support to the team members. In short, the role of the business development manager was to ‘make things happen’. That included:

Organising meetings;
Conducting research and developing targets;
Establishing the structure for task completion and reporting;
Helping to formulate presentations and pitches; and,
Keeping a scorecard that let the teams know how they were doing in specific tasks and illustrated a running tally of wins and losses.

Industry team identification
We decided to develop industry teams that would parallel, and correlate to, our clients’ business needs. Internal and external market research was conducted by the business development manager to determine the specific target industries. The industries were chosen based on our existing strengths, practice group growth areas and the value of our services. The industries were:

Automotive;
Financial institutions;
Energy, transportation and infrastructure; and,
Pharmaceuticals.

After the target industries were identified and the teams established, the business development manager worked with each team to identify existing clients and prospects with high-value work potential. We then looked within the existing client targets for cross-sell opportunities and at new clients that fitted our target profiles and could most benefit from our expertise. For existing clients, we identified the lawyer with the strongest client relationship and where our best inroads would be for prospective clients.
It was important to establish solid metrics and measure every aspect of this process to determine success and decide whether to expand the programme going forward. Therefore, various goals were developed for each industry team. These aims included identifying new clients, and the number of pitches and new clients acquired. We also developed objectives for existing clients in terms of cross-sell opportunities, the number of invitations to pitch and the number of new matters secured.
Activity targets were also established for new business obtained from both new and existing clients. In defining new business from existing clients, it was important to identify new substantive areas with these clients. Finally, we set goals for involvement in industry organisations, speaking engagements, and networking within each of the target industries, in order to further and share the firm’s industry knowledge.
The industry business development plans were implemented immediately after they were developed. mplementation began in the first quarter of 2008, and the process of identifying targets and pitches continued throughout the year, making this a very fluid process. A key factor in the success of the programme was following up with the participating lawyers and keeping the process moving.
As we monitored the progress of our teams, we found that each of them exceeded the pitch volume goals as well as the metrics for new clients and new matters.

Marketing and business development: an integrated approach
Our business development manager worked together with our marketing managers to develop a comprehensive integrated plan that included media, website content, public relations and marketing collateral materials.
For example:

Industry-specific marketing materials including newly-designed web content, brochures and artwork were developed;
Advertising space in industry-specific publications was purchased;
Highly-focused public relations efforts were developed to pursue specific goals for the target industries;
Increased involvement at industry events and published articles for industry consumption; and,
Client briefings were also developed and conducted on a number of practice area topics that demonstrated a depth of experience to clients and to our own internal audience.

This coordinated approach supported our business development efforts by highlighting and communicating our understanding and knowledge of our clients’ businesses and the legal issues they face.

Keeping score
Tracking metrics and reporting results became routine. This process resulted in a ‘measuring stick’ to indicate where we needed to increase our efforts or change tactics.
Activity charts and goal progress were monitored and reviewed monthly and used by our leadership to follow the team progress. Activities were followed via a colour-coding process to note if we were ahead of plan, in process, or not getting out of the gate on a particular target.
We published a periodic firm-wide internal newsletter, entitled Make the Connection, which included business development tips and successes and demonstrated the best uses of InterAction, our firm’s client relationship management tool. This kept communication alive among the firm, the teams, and our leadership, while highlighting and promoting the benefits of our approach.

Results
Dykema achieved its goal to become the go-to firm in the four targeted industries. We tracked the results against plans from the onset and published regular updates for the firm’s management. Through the third quarter, we found that billings were on track or above goal. The goal for cross-selling was $1.85m, and by the end of October 2008, we achieved $3.55m. Our goal for business with new clients was $1m, and at that point we had achieved approximately $525,000. We anticipated that our final numbers would exceed target by 50 per cent across the board.
By December 2008, we had exceeded our established cross-sell and new client revenue goals by more than double. Final results yielded just over $6m in identified revenue – 210 per cent of target. While other practice development activities generated business, our metrics included only the results from our specified targets. We achieved these results in spite of a recessive economy and the resultant tough business conditions in several target industries.
Each of the industry groups had a budget for business development activities, which included trade shows, networking activities, sponsorships, and associated expenses. The budget varied by industry group, based on the events we planned to attend and sponsor as well as the cost to participate in the targeted events. Our total business development budget for the four groups was $170,000 and we kept to budget for three teams and slightly over budget for the fourth team. Our final expenses tallied $183,000. While we had a slight budget overrun, we produced an exceptional return on investment – new revenue was 30 times greater than our expenditure.

What did we learn?
As we expand our business development programme further, there are a number of key elements that we discovered worked well. These included:

Team leaders were critical to driving the direction and providing the quality leadership necessary to succeed;
Monitoring was effective and necessary to keep everyone on the same page and to show what quick changes needed to be made with any given target;
Sending reminders to the team was effective when the tasks were behind schedule;
Keeping it simple and easy for the teams when laying out the tasks and activities was important; and,
Moving around obstacles instead of going through them worked best. Speed was essential, whether in maintaining our own team effectiveness or in deciding to add or remove particular targets.

What would we change?
We also discovered elements that will enable us to formulate a stronger up-front process. For example, we need to be more precise when assessing the depth of an existing client relationship. In some cases, we thought that a lawyer-client relationship was deeper than we ultimately found it to be. In the end, we simply changed tactics for that particular client, but we would have saved time and effort had we had a better gauge.
Also, just as in sports, not every team player played at the same level. The teams that had the greatest success were those in which everyone played an active part. We will apply these lessons as we move forward in the development of new teams.

The future
We have created a solid business development process, strategy and structure that have produced results beyond our expectations. It just goes to show you what focus, targeting and score keeping can actually accomplish. With the current market crisis and its effects on the legal industry, we are increasingly aware of the need to ramp up and advance our business development efforts. The knowledge we acquired through our 2008 business development planning and execution will assist us going forward to build an even stronger process as we identify new industries and hot areas to target.

Marty Semaan is marketing director at US firm, Dykema. He can be contacted at msemaan@dykema.com