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Smart Business Development Strategies for Lawyers

What does business development mean to you?

For most lawyers, business development is no different than marketing, networking, or doing a pitch.

But for any non-service business in the world, business development means something very different. It’s a specific kind of marketing, or a different set of activities aimed at generating business indirectly.

Why is this important?

Lawyers typically think too linearly.

We understand that there's such a thing as a referral marketing. There's such a thing as a marketing campaign. But we lump all of these things together.

We don’t think like other companies do... But we attorneys would be well-served to steal a page from their playbook.

Related: Do You Have A Real Business or Are You “Playing House”?

Let’s pretend you’re not a legal business. You’re selling widgets. Gizmos. Physical stuff.
What’s the best way to get your widgets out into the world?

You could knock on the doors of every house in the neighborhood and say, “Would you like to buy my widget?”

Maybe you’ll sell a widget. Big deal.

Or you could knock on the doors of every business in town and say, “Would you like to sell my widgets?”

These two approaches are not the same. One has leverage and one doesn’t, but they both take the same amount of time.

Do you want to spend 10 hours getting a single client? Or do you want to spend 10 hours developing a business that creates a channel capable of delivering multiple clients?

It’s time rethink your approach to business development.

To be honest, trying to redefine business development for lawyers is a pointless task. (Get into a semantics argument? Nah, I'll get to results...)

Related: Bill or Build? How to Balance Clients and Law Practice Growth

My goal is this: to get you to change your approach and thought process.

What are you doing to develop business? Have you created distribution channels that can generate multiple clients and not just one?

If you could spend the same amount of time on business development and bring in many more clients, isn’t that a no-brainer?

So: what will you do to take action on this now?

Raj Jha