Making rain isn’t just your social network anymore…

Yes, it does indeed help to have a robust and successful social network, assuming you can transition lunch into business. But there are also some more technical elements required to become successful at generating new business as a lawyer. Historically, making rain meant a unique blend of guts and brains and all out motivation mixed with some really long hours and a few lost friends along the way. I would propose a more logically and mandatory method, which is to become systematic in the area of business development. It’s a system of Behavior, Attitude and Technique.

Behavior is having a definitive plan as to what activities you actually do that generate new clients, and at what frequency you should do them. The opposite of this is "go to every networking event you can", "always take someone to lunch" or "just get out there and meet with people". An effective new behavior strategy involves analyzing past behaviors on both a quantifiable and qualitative level, determining the most lucrative behaviors and then creating a system to exploit those that are most effective.

Attitude is developing a more current belief system required in today’s legal marketplace to become successful at growing clients and revenues. Traditional comfort zone beliefs are typically something like "if I do good legal work the business will come", "as a legal professional it is an insult to think of selling or client development" or "if I ask for help/referrals I will appear incapable". These traditional beliefs are poison to the future of your legal career. Conversely, new beliefs might be "its okay to ask for help", "you don’t have to be perfect in business development, its not legal work" and "I don’t wing it, I have a business development system and I follow it".

Technique is having systems for developing new business. A system is knowing what to do and at what time to transition a handshake into a discussion about the legal needs of your target. A system is walking into a networking event with confidence because you know how many people you have to talk to in order to land one legitimate meeting with a potential client. A system is having a static, linear process that leads to an engagement agreement and using quantifiable data to determine your probability of getting an engagement agreement.

The best sales professionals use such systems to achieve success in sales and when applied to client development in the legal world will increase time effectiveness by decreasing time wasted with illegitimate prospects and give you realistic expectations of closing new business based on your new behaviors, attitudes and techniques.