In an increasingly competitive environment, one that has been further rocked by COVID-19 and the shift to predominantly online selling, law firms and their lawyers are having to find new and novel ways to win business.

Here are just a few ways that lawyers can differentiate themselves when it comes to business development.

1. Monitor market signals 

Any good sales professional will tell you not to waste your time on so-called prospects, unless they have budget, appetite and need for your service, and timing is right (BANT). 

Far too often, people waste their time chasing shadows, and getting nowhere. But what if you could know in advance who had BANT for your services, and you could promptly reach out to them on a weekly, or even daily basis?

This is where market signals come in to the picture.

Learn more about what this is and how to do it here.‍

2. Automate prospect outreach and follow-ups

95 percent of converted leads are reached by the sixth follow up attempt, but 44 percent of people give up after just one attempt.

This is especially true in the legal sector, where business development for the most part is left to partners and managing associates to handle, most of whom learned from who came before them. As a result, the methods lawyers used to win business today are typically as informal and ad-hoc as they were in the 90s.

But what if you could simply use technology to trigger and automate your follow-ups and send personalized messages to your prospects, based on their profile?

Learn more about how to automate outreach and follow-ups here.

3. Use Facebook and LinkedIn to target decision-makers

Social media might be construed as the plaything of swole bros and booty-happy influencers, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t an incredibly powerful business development tool for legal and professional services firms. 

Far too many lawyers are none the wiser to the capabilities of platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn when it comes to business development.

Discover 5 ways to use social media to target decision-makers in this post.‍

4. Build Relationships Online

Prospecting for new work is a little like a new romantic pursuit. You don’t want to come on too strong. That’s why it’s almost imperative that you build the relationship first, with more than fifty percent of B2B deals done between people who consider each other friends. 

But as we spend more and more time online, and less cultivating face-to-face relationships, knowing how to effectively do this online can be challenging.

For eight ways to build relationships online, check out this post.

5. Online Referrals

Approximately 91% of B2B sales are influenced by word of mouth. But referral processes used by most law firms are ad-hoc and informal at best. 

Fortunately, there are a number of tech-enabled referral platforms on the market that can not only ramp up your referral marketing efforts by an order of magnitude or more, but make it both easier to do, and easier to incentivize referrals.

Such platforms make it easy to share your referral program with existing clients or associates, have them refer you to their contacts, track referrals, and then reward referrals and/or converted referrals however you see fit (i.e. with commissions, physical and e-gifts, thank yous).

Platforms worth checking out include Referral Factory, Referral Candy, and Yotpo.

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For more insights like these, visit the FutureLaw Academy blog.