The Source-of-Business Analysis

By Beth Rosenfeld, Lisa Peskin and Brynne Tillman
Special to the Legal

When you went to four years of undergraduate school, three years of law school and spent months preparing for the bar, did you ever think you would end up being responsible for business and client development? Balancing the time and efforts involved with finding new clients, while still effectively serving the current ones, is critical to the success of most attorneys. For this reason, Business Development University will be contributing regularly to The Legal Intelligencer’s blog to provide you with ideas, tips and strategies on how to increase your revenue opportunities.

Over the next several months, we will cover topics such as:

• Client acquisition activity plans
• Effective networking
• Maximizing LinkedIn for warm introductions
• Client marketing
• Leveraging strategic alliances and center of influence
• Blogging to position yourself and your firm as the expert
• Getting your message and blogs out virally through Twitter and LinkedIn
• Running an effective client meeting
• Planting seeds (positioning yourself in comparison to your competition)
• Overcoming objections
• Defined next steps – perfecting the close
• Time and territory management

So, here we go … our very first recommendation is to take 30 minutes to identify where your current business is coming from – we call this a “source-of-business analysis.” Once you know where your current business originates, it is much easier to identify what time, resources and activities are required to meet your growth goals.

Start with making a list of all the business you had in the last 12 months. Break it down by:

• Reoccurring client matters
• Existing clients – new matters
• New client matters
  • Referrals
    • From other attorneys
    • Clients
    • Centers of influence
    • Board members
  • Strategic partnerships with other professional groups, i.e., medical organizations, insurance companies, accounting firms, etc.
  • Speaking engagements
  • Articles/blogs
  • Networking events/groups
  • Sponsorships
  • Social media
  • Advertisements

If there are any additional sources from which previous business has originated, add those to the list as well.

One of the first and most important steps to developing new business is to analyze the sources of your current business. Once this initial and vital analysis is complete, the next steps to increasing business development will be easier to identify and significantly more effective.

Stay tuned for our next blog where we will discuss developing a client acquisition activity plan.

We are open to questions and topic requests. If you would like help getting started on your own source-of-business analysis” or assistance with any other business development related challenges, feel free to contact BDU at [email protected] or call 877-310-1370 ext. 117.

Beth Rosenfeld, Lisa Peskin and Brynne Tillman are members of the Business Development University legal sales team.

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