Quiver & Quill

I recently interviewed Beth Seabright, managing director of Tucker Arensberg, P.C., about her program to motivate young associates at her law firm to take business development initiatives. After you read this great article, check out how the program worked in a bit more depth by reading the below:

1.     Did you provide your team with additional resources to point them in the right direction. For example, did you create a list of possible speaking engagements for them to attend, or were they expected to research this on their own? 

I did provide additional resources for them.  I suggested publications for articles, speaking engagements, networking events and occasionally set up lunches with my contacts that I wanted my attorneys to get to know.   I coached them through phone calls when they were reaching out to contacts for the first time and walked them through various business development scenarios.  I helped the Associates to get to their goal in any way that I could.

2.    Did you post people’s point score continuously and publicly?

I sent out the results every two weeks to our Associates and occasionally included our Managing Shareholder.  

3. Did that create a competitive or a collaborative environment?

I would say more motivating than competitive.  A few Associates that were not making the time for the program initially saw that other Associates were making progress toward the goal and were inspired to meet with me to put together a plan to catch up with their colleagues.

4. What was the logic behind assigning which point values to which activities?

The more difficult the task, the higher the point value.  I made a list of all of the activities included in the program and ranked them from simple to challenging.  For instance, meetings with me: easy - Associates received 2 points/meeting.  New clients were worth 10 points.

5. And lastly, have you been able to correlate a dollar amount to the biz dev challenge–ROI?

To be honest, I did not go back and correlate dollar values to the challenge, simply because a lot of the value in the program was planting the business developing seeds with the Associates.  While our more senior associates brought in new matters and clients, which I could easily correlate with a dollar value, our younger associates were setting up meetings and writing articles for the first time, activities that were not going to create instant new business.

Quiver&Quill commentary: If I ran a business development program for a law firm, I would use a similar framework to motivate my young associates. Here’s how it would work:

The process starts by answering one of two questions:

• What, that our business prospects care about, could we help them better understand?
• What, that our business prospects are doing, could we help them do better?

The next step — turn the young associate into a resource.

Incent them to attend lectures, visit social networks, read niche publications and develop a personal interest in the areas that matter to prospects. Finally, place them into situations like conferences and events where they can help prospects and demonstrate their resourcefulness.

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