Business Development Coaching | 2023 SMART Goals for Law Firm Business Development
"The law firm needs to earn more money and bring in a ton of new clients in 2023. Make it happen, Business Development department!" -The CFO and/or every managing partner at law firms everywhere (give or take a few)
If you've spent any time at all working in business development and marketing for professional service providers like law firms, we bet you've heard some variation of this demand in your career.
Attorneys and firm leadership want to increase the bottom dollar and client growth and retention, but they don't always have an understanding of the often minuscule steps and measurements that lead to a bigger bottom dollar and book of business. They have grand goals that aren't exactly structured. That's where your expert experience in developing business in the legal industry comes into play, right?
So how do you and your team respond when you're in practice group meetings and strategy sessions facing partners and C-suites whose goals are out of reach and a bit too nebulous? You can't just build a fantasy form of a law firm business plan, not if you want to be successful.
Prep yourself and your team to face the hard-hitting pie-in-the-sky requests with actionable and attainable goals that will help your C-suites and partners recognize the actual work your team (and they) have to do to build bigger profit margins and bring in more business in a structured way.
It's time to coach the coach. We're talking about you and your department. Because, at its very core, what is a professional service business development and law firm marketing department if not a group of coaches who set attainable goals and show their firm's players how to win!?
Let's look at some real metrics and the SMART approach to your team can use to help your attorneys and firm leaders build a law firm business development strategy for 2023.
What are SMART Goals for Law Firms?
It’s time to set some goals and you've had demands to be "bigger" and "better" in 2023. But what does that really mean? To reach new heights of success in the future, ensure your law firm business development department is prepared to implement the SMART goal framework with your attorneys and leaders.
The SMART goals framework relies on individuals using SMART goals to achieve success.
MindTools had this to say about the SMART framework for business success:
SMART is an acronym that you can use to guide your goal setting.
Its criteria are commonly attributed to Peter Drucker's Management by Objectives concept. The first known use of the term occurs in the November 1981 issue of Management Review by George T. Doran. Since then, Professor Robert S. Rubin (Saint Louis University) wrote about SMART in an article for The Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology.
To make sure your goals are clear and reachable, each goal should be:
Specific (simple, sensible, significant).
Measurable (meaningful, motivating).
Achievable (agreed, attainable).
Relevant (reasonable, realistic and resourced, results-based).
Time bound (time-based, time limited, time/cost limited, timely, time-sensitive).
SMART goal coaching and implementation are 7x more likely to be attained than high-level goals that aren't formed with the SMART framework. Let's take a look at how to coach your team and attorneys away from unattainable ideas and transform them into SMART goals with impact.
Download Our Goals Planning Worksheet
Start planning your BD goals for 2023 with our SMART Goals Planning Worksheet.
SMART Business Operations
“We need more efficient firm operations.”
Law firms’ business development departments are often tasked with increasing firm efficiencies, as they directly impact existing client relationships, bringing in new business (and because BD and marketing departments pretty much do it all).
How often have you been tasked with increasing efficiencies in your operations, especially in client-facing operations such as billing? Instead of a goal that's impossible to quantify or unstructured at its core, let's reframe this goal and do it the SMART way.
Let’s walk through an example. Instead of a generic gauge like "become more efficient," reframe it in a SMART way:
Specific: We will improve our efficiency in billing operations by challenging our attorneys to submit their finalized billings 3 business days earlier than the past deadline. We will also offer prizes for submitting completed billings with no errors.
Measurable: The attorneys have a deadline to meet, and accounting will begin work on processing invoices as soon as final billings are submitted. We will also compare the time spent on prep and invoice delivery dates to the billings submitted on the previous deadline.
Attainable: We will ask attorneys if the new deadline is possible, and find out what they need in order to meet the new deadline.
Relevant: Speeding up and improving the quality of the billing operations process will allow clients to receive more timely invoices and pay us more quickly.
Time-bound: We should know in 6 months whether or not this goal and the business development and marketing efforts to reach it increased our bottom dollar.
Walking through each step of this goal and defining its importance helps take big ideas to attainable places.
SMART Growth
"We want to grow the firm."
Growth is a very subjective term that looks different to everybody. We bet everyone would be on board with "growing the firm," but what does that actually mean and how can we make it an actionable goal?
Here's how to coach your team and leaders to reframe these types of "growth" desires the SMART way. Instead of "let's get bigger," reframe it and be specific:
Specific: We're going to open a new office location.
Measurable: The objective is to open a new location in a favorable area to serve prospective and existing clients and to expand our reach.
Attainable: We will conduct market analysis for areas across the country where we have a strong client base or need and determine profitability for opening new law offices in those areas.
Relevant: Providing more access and services to potential clients in a new market will impact the bottom dollar of our firm and expand our brand.
Time-bound: We will research locations and determine the best area for a new office within 6 months, and we plan to open a new office in that location within 2 years.
See how reframing the goal with SMART objectives creates an attainable and enticing game plan to reach that highly prized growth?
SMART Client Relationships
"I want to bring in more clients."
Every legal services provider wants this, and it's no secret that law firm business development and marketing professionals do, too. But how can we reframe that desire to be a SMART goal with actual steps and metrics that help us get to a bigger book of business?
Coach your team and attorneys to be SMART in their BD goals:
Specific: I will close new business with 5 prospective clients in the next 12 months.
Measurable: I will reach out to one prospective client a week to develop relationships and establish authority through targeted law firm business development activities.
Attainable: I will improve my current customer relationships and promote firm business through targeted and intentional outreach, networking events, and social media interactions. This will help me build stronger and more meaningful connections and increase the amount of new business I close.
Relevant: Bringing in new business increases our billings, builds my profile, and creates opportunities for cross-selling and future engagements.
Time-bound: I will have brought in new business and increased my billings in the next 12 months.
This framework transforms hopes and dreams into actionable progress, and it also shifts misallocated responsibility for individual attorney success from your business development team to the attorneys themselves to show up and put in the effort to reach their goals.
Having clearly defined and structured goals allows those "big picture" leaders to scale their expectations to attainable strategies and steps that move the needle of progress forward. Remember, you're a coach at the end of the day, and everybody wants to "win."
It's your job to transform the idea of "winning" into measurable and attainable goals that include a playbook for reaching them, and you can absolutely do that with any and every goal law firms have if you and your team get SMART!
Your SMART Goal Takeaways
When you're building your SMART playbook to coach your team and attorneys to success in 2023, just Be Specific.
Specify the actual steps you need to take in order to reach new goals. The thought-out business goals are measurable by definition and attainable by design.
Measure
Ever hear of measure twice and cut once? Yeah, it's a construction axiom to ensure you're taking actions and implementing materials that actually meet your end goal. The same is true for your strategies and business development efforts.
Make sure you're assessing strategy and progress with real measurable actions.
Evaluate Your Timeline
Your firm's success is all about playing the long game. It's a marathon, not a sprint, and building real firm growth is an evolving process. Ensure the goals you set are attainable within your timeframes for completion.
Determine Impact
Always ask yourself and your firm leaders "how does this serve our end goal?" Your goals and the actions and steps leading up to them must make sense. Make sure your team and attorneys aren't doing performative work and that their efforts have direct impact on your firm's bottom dollar.
Structure
Build out your 2023 business development efforts in piecemeal, attainable strategies with actionable goals. SMART goals can turn to "unattainable pipedreams" if not properly metered for success. Remember, in order to meet those elusive fantasy goals, you must have an attainable strategy that is structured.
Could you and your team use help setting SMART goals and business development strategies for 2023?
Business Coaching for Lawyers and Marketing Professionals
We help firms of all sizes scale their operations to reach new levels of success through a SMART business development plan. Whether you’re a boutique firm or have offices around the globe, we can help you and your team build manageable goals that align across all levels and departments in your firm.
It's time to get SMART. Reach out to us to discuss support in business coaching for lawyers and building a strong team of coaches within your own marketing and business development department.