Selling to Legal Teams: Who to Sell

Selling is hard, but so is buying. Buyers, like sellers, spend lots of time attending, vetting and managing sales cycles. Both sides kiss a lot of frogs before finding their Prince or Princess Charming buyer / vendor partner.

The (legaltech) sales cycle

Although the law is often regarded as “special”, the reality is that selling to law firms is no different. The same phases, perils and pitfalls apply. To keep this guide in context, the typical sales cycle looks something like this:

Before you sell me, get to know me

We’re not all the same

Legal teams are not all the same. Yes, they all provide legal services and products to clients, whether internal and / or external, but this does not mean we have the same needs, wants, pressures and budgets.

The worst thing you can do is churn out a generic pitch, demo or presentation aimed at “legal stuff”. Demonstrating knowledge of a legal buyer beyond them being “legal” goes a long way. It evidences a commitment to forging a partnership, rather than a quick buck.

Be sure to understand the different types of legal teams and legal buyers and which your client is.

Size and Shape Matters

Whether a law firm or in-house team, try to find out the size of the team. Is it local, regional or global? How many lawyers are there? In which jurisdictions (i.e. countries) do they work? Where are their clients based?

This matters because it often informs many things about the product-market fit (e.g. can your product be used in x, y, z languages?), security concerns (e.g. where is your data centre), the level of support expected (e.g. 24/7, multiple timezones etc), the number of users to support and so on.

Types of legal teams

Legal teams have many flavours. The below table illustrates the major types (transactional, contentious, advisory, operational, support and knowledge):

To greater or lesser extents these major types often overlap and can be further subdivided. Note too that both law firms and in-house legal teams can comprise one, some or all of these types of teams.

Where does your client fit? Google them, call them, take them for coffee and ask some basic questions to find out. Most buyers appreciate the effort to screen whether what you’re offering is a match for what they need.

Types of legal buyers

A common challenge for sellers is identifying who holds the cheque book. Unfortunately, legal buyer job titles are massively inconsistent. At some organisations a person with title A might have all the buying power, whereas another with title A at a different organisation might have zero buying power.

That said, you’re often selling to a combination of stakeholders who need to weigh in and help decide whether it is buy or no buy. These individuals include:

• Partners and Associates (law firms only)
• Practice / team heads
• Technology and Innovation teams
• Knowledge management teams
• Legal operations teams
• Compliance (sometimes, depending on the overlap with your product and these teams needs)

Be sure to understand to whom you are selling and whether your product matches their persona and identified need.

To help, we will follow-up this article with some service design personas for the above types of individuals. This will help you understand to whom your selling and if they are the right fit.

The Holy Trinity

Whichever of the above you’re targetting, you ideally want to find one or more persons that are authoritative in these three domains:

If you are very lucky, this will be a single person. More often, it’s 2–3 or more people.

Ensure as early as possible in the sales cycle you’ve identified the authoritative individual for each of (1) to (3). Doing so will make the process quicker for everyone. Your job is to help the buyer join the dots. Some buyers will do this for you, but not always. Get ahead of this blocker. If you don’t know who these individuals are, ask and be upfront.

Conclusion

Legal buyers want partners not peddlers. Remember:

1. Get to know the buyer: what type of organisation are they? What type of legal team are they? Who are the key stakeholders? Have you identified them all, if not, how can you find them and who can direct you to them?
2. Of the individuals you encounter, ask questions and qualify if they are in general the type of organisation for which your products and services are a fit and, if so, whether they are the correct person to whom you should sell?
3. If the answer to the two questions in (2) are “no”, keep searching before moving through to the next stage of the sales cycle. Don’t be afraid to ask your prospect to connect you with the correct person within their organisation, or perhaps another organisation if their organisation is not a fit.

Originally published at lawtomated.