Today’s discussion on “Sales for lawyers: Growing business through relationships and value” emphasised the importance of relationships in the legal profession. The Inter-Pacific Bar Association (IPBA) conference panellists agree that authenticity, sincerity and building long-term relationships are crucial.
Itzik Amiel, founder of business networking company The Switch from Amsterdam, posed a question to the audience, at the panel on 27 Fenruary, as to how many of them would hesitate to introduce their wives to friends.
When the audience responded that they would not be worried by this, he countered “Can you introduce your clients to your competitors without worrying about the fact that you may lose them?” He said this example demonstrated that when there was a strong relationship, there was nothing to worry about.
Amiel called on lawyers to opt for a relationship-driven approach over the transactional one, saying the latter would make them a salesperson or vendor. “To be a rainmaker, you need to be relationship driven,” he said.
Panel moderator Alessandra Nascimento Silva e Figueiredo Mour?o, managing partner of Nascimento e Mour?o Advogados from S?o Paulo, said, “The client will first seek answers through technology and when they do not like the answer, then they go to the lawyer to solve the problem. Some of my young lawyers would rather just do the hard law work and not like to interact with clients. But I tell them ‘You are the future of the firm’.”
She stressed the importance of building soft skills to her younger lawyers given that technology was increasingly doing more of the lawyer’s hard work.
“Sincerity is very important,” said Jonathan Lai, managing partner of Watanabe Ing in Honolulu. “Sometimes people are very transactional. They’re like – okay, what’s in it for me? But be yourself. Be sincere. Whenever you’re talking to a client, focus on them and be sincere about it. Don’t bill them for it.”
Lai shared an example of how walking his labradoodle and talking to fellow dog owners in his neighbourhood ended up getting him legal work arising from natural conversations without making any sales pitches.
Fellow speaker Pallavi Tayal Chadda, associate partner at KNM & Partners in New Delhi, joked that the takeaway of this discussion was for lawyers to get dogs.
While the objective of the session was “sales for lawyers”, the panel also discussed a flip side as to how close is too close, and one of the panellists shared an example of when a friendship with a GC was flagged as a compliance risk and led to the firm losing the client.
