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Sales skills more critical than ever for SME firm owners
A boutique law firm needs a head at the helm who understands the importance of selling – but how can you strike the right balance of selling your firm’s service proposition without being “salesy”?
Emma Musgrave
Speaking on a recent episode of The Boutique Lawyer Show, Caralee Fontenele, director of Collective Family Law and Scalable Law, said that too often, boutique law firm owners fall into the trap of thinking they don’t need to build on their selling skills.
“And what happens in law firms is that we think that we are lawyers and that we give legal advice, and that’s our only role. And it’s absolutely not your only role, and it’s not your team’s only role as you grow a team.”
Ms Fontenele described sales as the “oxygen” of one’s law firm, noting that “without sales, you don’t have clients, and without clients, you don’t have a thriving law practice”.
“I’m talking to many small law firm owners every single week, and their biggest struggle is getting that phone to ring and then converting the client. And without those two things happening, without that sales funnel happening, your law firm is going to struggle with cash flow,” she said.
“You’re going to live with that anxiety and stress all the time, wondering where the next dollar is coming in, which, to the law firm owners that I’m speaking to, that is a real stress. And I totally understand it because I’ve been there myself.
“Sales are incredibly important right from the top end of the sales funnel to the actual retaining of a client. So, if you can do that more successfully, it just makes your entire business flow a little better.”
Being good at sales has become an even more pertinent consideration for boutique firm owners in recent years, according to Ms Fontenele.
“In the old days, say, even 20–30 years ago, people didn’t have websites. They were known because they were down on their local street corner and they’d get a lot of walk-ins and things like that. And I don’t know if lawyers had to work as hard on sales,” she said.
“The competition out there now is incredibly high. It’s very hard in most areas of practice and in most areas of location. It’s very hard to be on the front page of Google, for example. And if you are not seen or heard, getting sales becomes even harder and harder. You run out at some point of the number of referrals you’re naturally getting.
“Then you really have to start doing a whole lot of things: an activity, whether that’s digital online out in person, or whether that’s paid marketing, to then start getting that phone ringing to get people in the seat in the first place, to then make that sale. So, yeah, I think there’s definitely more challenges now than there might have been back then.”
When asked what the biggest hurdles are getting in the way of lawyers becoming good salespeople, Ms Fontenele said that problems tend to arise at the first initial meeting.
“I think some of the biggest hurdles is actually when they get the person in the door – whether it’s a free initial appointment or a paid initial appointment,” she said.
“Often they’re giving too much legal advice, and they’re not actually really just imparting on the potential client that, ‘Yes, I can solve your problem’ and ‘Trust me with your issue because if you come to my firm, we can definitely solve it for you’ and giving them that confidence.
“Rather, they overwhelm them with initial legal advice. So, in a way, you’ve really got to get into the mode of where the client’s standing rather than trying to offload all this great advice.
“Great advice is for once they’re retained, not for that initial meeting that you’re having with clients.”
NB: This transcript has been edited slightly for publishing purposes. You can listen to the full episode here:
