by Kenneth J. Lopez, J.D.
Founder, LawProspector & 15-year litigation support sales veteran
LawProspector is a tool that helps litigation support salespeople close more deals with major law firms and corporate law departments. This goal is achieved by connecting the salesperson with the right prospects for them, based on a combination of many factors including geography, target firm size, type of case, and stage of case. Below is a description of how I believe a sales person, team, or manager should build a lead or prospect list (i.e. a custom report) to achieve maximum value from LawProspector.
At the most global level, LawProspector represents a list of the largest active pieces of litigation in the federal courts. This list is loosely defined by the intersection of the world’s top 200 law firms, top 100,000 law firm contacts, top 3,000 corporations and 35,000 active federal cases in the most important civil practice areas. LawProspector’s database also includes data beyond this intersection and increasingly will do so. With 35,000 active cases and an average of three contacts per case (not including the in-house contacts), there are roughly 100,000 solid sales targets at any given time.
With so many prospects and a proven need to successfully connect with (‘touch’) each prospect 5-10 times per year to maximize sales results, a sales organization would need to make at least 500,000 ‘touches’ (calls, emails, direct mail, etc.) per year to fully saturate the high-end legal marketplace. Since a very active sales person may make 10,000 prospecting touches per year, roughly 50 salespeople would be required to fully prospect on the entire large law firm/corporate/litigation marketplace covered by LawProspector! Since almost no firm in the litigation support industry has this many salespeople, each firm must make intelligent choices about who and which cases to target.
WHO SHOULD WE BE TOUCHING?:
I recommend that one salesperson in the litigation support space prospect on no more than 1,000 people per year and no more than 350 distinct pieces of litigation. This represents roughly 1% of the legal contacts and cases covered by LawProspector. So, how can one make an educated choice about who to contact in the industry to get maximum sales value when one can only reasonably reach out to 1 out of every 100 potential contacts?
It is always easiest and cheapest to get business from your existing customers. One study showed that acquiring business from a new customer costs 9 times more than expanding business with an existing customer. I strongly recommend targeting your existing customers as a first step. By “customer” I mean the law firm or corporation, not just the person, in your geographic target area. That is, if one has an excellent customer relationship with a top litigation partner in the Houston office of a major law firm and most of one’s clients are within 200 miles, both that partner plus their busy colleagues within 200 miles should be on one’s target list.
The word “busy” is highlighted for good reason. LawProspector allows one to see not just who is busy now but, more importantly, who is consistently busy. Within a particular law firm office of 100 partners, one might reasonably expect to find 20 partners who are routinely busy in litigation. It is always better to track busy prospects as opposed to those who are not driving litigation revenue.
Once one’s customers have been adequately targeted, I recommend that a reasonable next step is to target non-customer prospects who are busy and geographically desirable. Since winnowing down of prospects based on practice area is easily achieved in LawProspector, I advise targeting only those prospects whose practice area suits your organization’s product and service offerings. Finally, consider using LawProspector’s ability to target only litigation involving one of the world’s top 3000 corporations. Doing so will help to ensure that you are focusing on only the largest opportunities.
CASE-FOCUS v. PEOPLE-FOCUS:
The debate over whether to seek out litigation support sales opportunities based on targeting a particular case versus targeting a particular legal decision-maker has raged for the last ten years since court records became available electronically. My advice on choosing a methodology for a sales effort is simple: DON’T CHOOSE. Both methods have their merits, and LawProspector facilitates the use of both methods. Using only one targeting methodology is sales malpractice in my view.
BUILDING YOUR LEAD LIST IN LAWPROSPECTOR:
Application of these principles is straight-forward, but care should be taken to design your lead/prospect lists correctly from the beginning. Remember that, taking a proper big-picture view, the job of a litigation support salesperson is to always be developing relationships with the right people in the legal industry. I define ‘the right people’ as a combination of those who appear to have a need for your services now AND those who would routinely buy one’s firm’s products/services. This combination is critical to understand.
If a sales team were to only target cases based on ideal timing (e.g. Case Filing, Close of Discovery, Trial Date etc.), one might very well ignore a litigation partner whose name does not appear on a court record, is deeply involved in state litigation or who is going to make decisions about vendors at an unpredictable time. Similarly, if a sales team targeted only those litigation teams who were routinely busy, an opportunity to build a relationship with a new partner, a chance to work with a senior litigator who rarely goes to trial but is a thought-leader at the firm or a chance to get in early on pattern litigation might easily be missed. Always remember that the essential feature of LawProspector that sets it apart from any of the other time-intensive research tools is that, regardless of your experience with and knowledge of the legal industry, LawProspector best ensures that you will be talking to the right people.
Taking these principles into account, I present my suggested order of priorities for building the perfect lead/prospecting list for any litigation support salesperson or sales team:
For every salesperson on the team, a custom lead list should be designed so that there are roughly 1,000 attorneys/litigation support targets and 350 pieces of litigation. Since LawProspector reports are updated in real-time as underlying data is updated, one’s target list will automatically reflect the latest case filings/advancements/closings and attorney moves. I would advise building one’s lead list using the criteria below (#1 is the highest priority and so on) and only move onto the next criteria if you have the sales bandwidth to target it.
1. Target existing clients (individuals) and strike a balance between well-timed opportunities and simply staying in touch with your clients;
2. Target active litigators/decision-makers at an existing client’s firm (specifically, their office) and balance targeting perfectly-timed cases with targeting prospects who are consistently busy;
3. Target active litigators/decision-makers at an existing client’s firm (now include other offices within your target geography) and balance targeting perfectly-timed cases with targeting prospects who are consistently busy;
4. Target active litigators/decision-makers at non-client firms (within your target geography) and balance targeting perfectly-timed cases with targeting prospects who are consistently busy;
5. Target active litigators/decision-makers at an existing client’s firm (other offices outside of your target geography) and balance targeting perfectly-timed cases with targeting prospects who are consistently busy;
6. Target active litigators/decision-makers at non-client firms (other offices outside of your target geography) and balance targeting perfectly-timed cases with targeting prospects who are consistently busy.
If your firm needs to significantly narrow the scope of your list, I would advise doing so by using an additional criteria like “Client is Global 3000 Firm” and/or filtering by the prospect’s title. Doing so will tend to focus the list on only the largest opportunities in the industry. To refine these criteria so that they perfectly match your organization’s objectives, please work closely with one of LawProspector’s highly-trained sales consultants (included at no additional charge with your subscription). With a LawProspector lead/prospect list built based on these principles, a sales team is guaranteed to outperform the competition implementing only a networking, relationship-selling, docket-watching, repeat business or cold-calling strategy.
