Pipeline to Success - Part 4: The Past

When some larger firms with sophisticated marketing departments began to realize the limitations of spreadsheets years ago, they started looking for alternatives. But because the profession had not been focused on sophisticated business development tracking in the past, there were not many choices of pipeline software available that could meet the specific needs of law firms.

So as an interim solution, some firms started testing CRM software such as Salesforce to help overcome the limitations of spreadsheets. While these CRM systems included advanced pipeline functionality, unfortunately they didn’t make sense for a firm-wide deployment. Even though they had been commonly used for contact management in most other industries, because they were web-based, could be extremely expensive and were hosted in the cloud rather than inside a firm’s firewall, the lawyers wouldn’t embrace them.

To compensate for a lack of attorney utilization, a few firms did have some successes with deploying a limited number of licenses to BD or Marketing managers who would work with key lawyers or practices and were tasked with entering the data and generating the reports. But because the systems were not readily accessible to all the lawyers, many of the key business development contacts remained where they had always been – in the attorneys’ Outlook, which made these early law firm pipelines into just more “silos” of disconnected data….

Pipeline to Success - Part 3: The Pipeline

This is where real pipeline software can help to take a law firm’s business development to the next level. A true sales pipeline allows opportunities to be entered and linked to related people and companies. Pipelines also allow for entry of additional information such as activities related to an opportunity, which can then be assigned to the individuals who need to complete them. Once all the data is entered, a pipeline can also provide a perpetual history of the activities that took place during the business development cycle and reminders for activities to keep advancing the opportunities forward.

Sophisticated pipelines can also help to predict deal outcomes and project expected revenue. They can even be used to create dashboards and generate reports. By utilizing these types of analytics, lawyers can identify which opportunities may have become stalled or inactive and which ones may be “low hanging fruit,” the opportunities that are most likely to yield the best results with the least effort.

Most importantly, pipelines provide a good way to hold attorneys accountable for developing business. Many firms have found that pipeline activity and progress reports can be effective tools to improve results and foster a bit of healthy competition in practice group meetings….

Pipeline to Success - Part 2: The Spreadsheet vs The Pipeline

At its most basic, a pipeline is simply a way to track and report on business development efforts. Initially, when law firms began tracking business development opportunities, the original tool of choice was Excel. Even at some of the largest firms, lawyers often tended to gravitate to spreadsheets to track just about everything. There are several reasons: they are easy to use, they’re on the desktop, they allow you to enter almost unlimited information, and they can even be used to print detailed lists and colorful charts and graphs. As a result, for many firms, Excel was a good place to start building basic business development pipelines.

The problem with spreadsheets, however, is that they have limitations. First off, they're “flat.” Spreadsheets were designed for quick and easy entry of large amounts of basic, linear data such as the contact names and information for people or companies as well as other key details, which are the basic building blocks of a pipeline. But because spreadsheets are flat, they don’t allow for ongoing tracking of important activities related to an opportunity or for capturing historical information such as last steps and next steps. This type of information can be incredibly important when trying to move opportunities forward or determine the best process for bringing in business….

Pipeline to Success - Part 1: Law Firms Finally Embracing CRM for Business Development Tracking

What gets measured gets done. This can certainly be said about “non-billable” activities in law firms. For anyone familiar with attorneys, this is not surprising. Busy lawyers are tasked with competing demands for their very valuable – and very limited – time. And for lawyers, time is money – literally. So when there is client work to be done, anything that takes away from billing often ends up being put off until they have time – which sometimes means indefinitely.

But as competition for work has increased recently, law firms are finally being forced to focus on the one non-billable activity that makes all the other billable activities possible: business development. As a result, attorneys have learned that successful business development takes time. So, not surprisingly, they are now searching for technology to make this process less time-consuming and more effective. One type of technology that can help enhance law firm business development efforts has actually been ubiquitous in other industries for years: the business development pipeline (of course, most other industries call it a sales pipeline, but let’s not split hairs)….