Re-Imagine the Sales Process Through Wisdom Selling

Last week a firm was set to make a pitch for millions of dollars to the CEO of a large company. That morning the firm learned that the CEO had very strong ties to another firm and that the likelihood of getting the work was nonexistent. What do you do? Do you back off and count your losses since the financial reward isn’t there? Many firms would.

Luckily, this firm saw the larger opportunity. The law firm had dedicated time with an influential CEO who had a wide network and they had nothing to lose. They decided to invest in the relationship and build the reputation of their firm by learning about the CEO’s vision and strategy for the company and offer unique insight and wisdom that the law firm had from their knowledge of the company, the industry and legal issues.  They resisted the pressure to sell a “solution in search of problem” and instead took the time to gain insight so that they could share wisdom.

In today’s competitive market, we are so quick to sell “me” and a specific piece of business that we often miss the much larger opportunities. While we all know that clients want their attorneys to know their business, we believe there are three stages of client knowledge:

  • Basic hygiene
    • Know their language and metrics
    • Know their business performance drivers
    • Know their key industry trends and business climate
  • Insight
    • Know how they can capture opportunity in the current market environment
    • Know their customers and competitors and the implications for me
  • Wisdom
    • Integrate your knowledge of their business, their industry, their customers and competitors with your knowledge of other businesses, industries, customers and competitors to proactively suggest opportunities that have not yet occurred to them
    • Help them “dream out loud” to innovate and invent new opportunities

While the hygiene stage is about observation, the wisdom phase is taking what you see as trend and actually create an opportunity/offering for their benefit. It’s about taking your technical, situational and industry expertise and facilitating and engaging the client to define the opportunities, risks and rewards. It’s consulting plus the law – LawsultingSM.

When the firm suspended self-interest to gain legal business and focused on connecting with an influential CEO, they made the investment, deposited wisdom, and walked away with much more than a piece of business – they became memorable to the CEO, earning his trust and recommendation to others. Wisdom SellingSM is not for the faint of heart; it takes courage to go out on a limb to make a prediction/offering that others could reject as “stupid”.  By re-imagining the sales process as an act of lawsultingSM, you develop a tangible way to accelerate revenue, build a sales pipeline and develop authentic client relationships. LawsultingSM and Wisdom SellingSM allows you to truly demonstrate your knowledge of a client’s business, translate what it means to them and create an experience that helps you out-behave the competition.

Lawsulting SM and Wisdom Selling SM are service marks of Akina Corporation.