Practice Management: Cross-Selling Your Legal Services - How to Get More Work from Existing Clients

5/17/2016 - By Zachary Farrington

When it comes to business development, most lawyers and law firms focus on developing new clients. But the best rainmakers know that it can cost five times more to sell a new service to a new client than it costs to sell an additional service to an existing client.

The reason is simple: Your best prospects are your satisfied current clients. You’ve already built trust with them and delivered value. So it’s no surprise that these existing clients are more likely to be receptive of other attorneys in the firm and the services they offer. With these elements in place, the stage is set for successful cross-selling of your legal services.

What Could Go Wrong?

Broadening the types of legal services a law firm provides to an existing client can generate significantly more revenue while deepening relationships with important clients. Unfortunately, many attorneys don’t get excited by the prospect of cross-selling.

They may lack confidence in their colleagues and fear disappointing — or losing — clients if the new lawyer does not live up to expectations. Or they may lack the time to give cross-selling the effort needed, especially given the fact that lawyers often aren't compensated for cross-selling.

Compounding the problem, many attorneys operate in the isolation of their particular practice group and may not be fully aware of the depth, breadth and capabilities of other lawyers in the firm.

Of course, attorneys may say that they didn’t attend law school to become salespeople. True, but it’s critical to understand that while “selling” involves pushing legal services on a client, cross-selling should be viewed as an opportunity to provide enhanced service to your clients. For example, it’s often as simple as introducing a commercial litigation client to your firm’s employment law, tax and estate planning attorneys.

Start at the Beginning

At its core, cross-selling to existing clients isn’t much different than selling to prospective clients. To discover where opportunities might exist, you’ll need to understand their business, identify their needs and offer compelling solutions. An effective cross-sell initiative starts by following these key steps:

Listen to your clients. Opportunities to expand representation occur when you know what’s happening with clients — how their business is doing, which executives have been hired or fired, what industry trends and threats they face, etc. Regularly ask these questions and take time to strategize with clients about future hurdles and opportunities.
The trick is to get your clients to tell you what they need and then show them how those needs can be met by your firm. At the same time, regularly ask for feedback on your existing service to the client.
Communicate your firm’s range of services. Many clients are unaware of other attorneys or additional areas of expertise in areas outside of the legal services they’re currently receiving. Your website, newsletters and other communications from the firm are a good start, but also talk with clients about specific areas of interest and alert them to areas of concern or change in their industry. For example, if another attorney writes an article relevant to a client, send it along with a personal note.
Develop client teams and industry groups. The next logical step is to initiate ongoing communication between practice groups and educate your teams about the services offered by other lawyers at your firm. For cross-selling to work, attorneys in your firm must be knowledgeable about (and confident in) one another's capabilities. In other words, a lawyer can’t sell his partner’s practice if he’s not familiar with what the partner does — or doesn’t trust him to handle the matter well.
It is critical to develop a system that effectively communicates each partner’s experience and achievements, and keeps everyone regularly updated on the firm’s new and existing clients and matters. Set up key client teams or industry groups and have them regularly review specific client opportunities and industry trends. Likewise, full-firm meetings are crucial to ensuring a united effort.

How to Make It Happen

Successful cross-selling requires identifying your most active clients and introducing them to other lawyers in your firm. Start by identifying a core group of existing clients with potential additional needs.

One approach is to get the partners in a room and ask them to provide details on three clients they have enjoyed working with and who have the potential for more work. Next, research what those additional needs might be and assemble a team of attorneys who could meet them. At the same time, get input and buy-in from the attorneys who already work with the target clients.

The next step is to make introductions. Most satisfied clients will grant their lawyers the courtesy of a meeting. The relationship partner who wants to expand representation of a client into other service areas of the firm should generally initiate the introductions. He or she might act as an internal sales coach, even scripting the lawyers’ conversations and role-playing calls to clients. The key is to not deliver a “here’s-what-we’re-great-at” speech, but rather generate a client-focused conversation that features solutions.

At the same time, it’s important to understand that while client needs and markets are specialized, purchasing decisions are often decentralized. Focus on finding who the decision makers are and how to reach them.

Share Credit and Reward Cross-Selling

The adage of “What gets rewarded, gets done” certainly applies to cross-selling. For it to work, the firm’s compensation systems should reward collaboration as a component of origination fees.

For example, establish specific financial rewards for introducing clients to other partners. The precise method and calculation of the compensation is not as important as attorneys knowing that cross-selling activities will come up during compensation review.

Ultimately, cross-selling happens in pairs or teams, and the firm must give credit for a team effort. This is true even if acknowledging and rewarding those who follow team and client-centric behavior might be contrary to the more typical “eat what you kill” system in which lawyers get origination credit solely for new business they bring in for themselves.

Finally, be sure to celebrate cross-selling successes in the firm’s internal newsletter, as an addendum to new matter openings, and at attorney meetings.

A Change in Thinking

A successful legal services cross-selling program involves some changes in thinking — about compensation, ownership of clients and the approach to selling. These are hard changes, to be sure, but ones that may result in new business for your firm and deeper client relations.

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