Hiding in Plain Sight: How to Increase Your Share of Wallet
This Halloween, lawyers and law firms may be looking for treats in all the usual places: new pitches, RFPs, lateral hires, and new markets. But some of the best opportunities may be hiding in plain sight—within relationships you already have.
Increasing your share of a client's legal work is not simply about cross-selling another practice area or making an introduction to the lawyer who sits down the hall from you. It is about developing a deeper understanding of the client’s business.
Where is their business growing? What challenges are they facing? Where are they investing? How are their legal needs evolving?
The goal is to move beyond the traditional question, “What else can we sell this client?” and toward a more strategic one: Where are we currently underpenetrated in this client's legal needs—and why?
Don’t be Fooled by the Obvious: Find the Actionable Whitespace
Every client relationship has whitespace. It may exist across practice areas, geographies, business units, subsidiaries, key contacts, or industry-specific needs and risks. The gap between what a client needs and the work you or your firm currently handles can reveal opportunities to deepen the relationship.
But don't be fooled: not every gap is an opportunity.
The trick is knowing the difference between whitespace that looks promising and whitespace that is actually actionable. If a client has a long-standing relationship with another firm for its employment work and has no interest in changing firms, that may technically represent whitespace. But it is not a realistic opportunity.
The more important question is therefore not simply “where is the whitespace?” but “where is there actionable whitespace?”
That requires understanding what is happening inside the client's business and where its needs may be changing.
What is Lurking Beneath the Surface?
The most valuable opportunities may be lurking beneath the surface. Changes in strategy, growth, leadership, operations, markets or risk can create new legal needs.
Instead of approaching a client with a list of what you can do for them, use your existing relationship to understand what is happening within the organization. Ask:
What are your strategic priorities this year?
Where is the company growing or changing?
Are you entering new markets or investing in new areas?
What is keeping your legal team busiest?
What work are you sending to other firms—and why?
At the end of the day, one of the most valuable questions may simply be: What's changing?
Changes in strategy, growth, leadership, operations, markets or risk can create new legal needs. Understanding those changes lets you identify where your firm can add value before a legal need becomes an official RFP that forces you to fight competitors for work.
Your internal goal and conversation should not be “How do we sell another practice to this client?”
It should be: “What is the next conversation we should have with this client?”
Use Relationship Intelligence to Connect the Dots
Now that we know what you should ask, how and to whom are you going to reach out? Most firms have significant relationship data, but it is often fragmented across email, CRM systems, institutional knowledge and individual networks. As a result, lawyers may have strong relationships within an organization without a clear picture of where those relationships exist—or where important gaps remain.
Sometimes, the connections are hiding in plain sight.
Relationship intelligence can help uncover those connections. Increasingly, AI can take this analysis further by identifying patterns across large amounts of relationship and client data, surfacing connections that might otherwise go unnoticed and highlighting areas that warrant further investigation.
But technology should not determine or drive a BD strategy. It should help you ask better questions.
The goal is not to generate a laundry list of people to pursue. It is to give you better intelligence with which to decide where to invest your time and how to approach the relationship.
For priority clients, a relationship map can help bring the pieces together by combining:
Client contacts and internal relationships
Past and current matters
Related entities and business units
Practice-area involvement
Gaps in existing relationships
From there, ask five straightforward questions:
What do we know? What work do we handle, and who do we know?
What don't we know? Which business units, executives, practices or strategic initiatives remain unexplored?
Where might there be opportunity? What changes in the client's business could create new legal needs?
Who can open the door? Which lawyer has the strongest relationship or most relevant expertise?
What's the next conversation? What can we do that provides value rather than simply asking for work?
Share of Wallet Starts with Relevance
The future of your business development may be less about finding more clients and more about understanding existing clients better.
Lawyers who successfully increase their share of wallet will not necessarily be those who make the most introductions or send the most cross-selling emails. They will be the people who understand their clients' businesses deeply enough to anticipate needs, connect the right people, and become involved before a legal need becomes an RFP.
And that may be the best treat of all: turning relationships you already have into deeper, more valuable partnerships.