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1/ Legal tech vendors who target law firms often fail when trying to scale up their sales. It’s not because lawyers are tech averse. It’s because vendors follow formulas from other industries that don’t work for law firms. Time for a thread.
2/ The vast majority of lawyers at firms have no say in the tech buying process. And even if they do, they still need to run things by their superiors (often a partner) who then has to check with other internal stakeholders (IT, KM) or even check with their outside client.
3/ Targeting a centralized buyer (KM) can be very effective. When I sold e-discovery years ago, I didn’t come across many of these types. But I’ve since learned from @Nicola_Shaver's tweets that today, KM leaders are common and widespread.
4/ So why don’t vendors target KM folks directly? I suspect there are several reasons. But first, some background.
5/ Sales teams need a specific persona to target to be successful. That means consistency among job titles, duties, interests, and incentives. That’s how you build lists of people to reach out to, and how you can get trained up to make repeatable, effective sales pitches.
6/ At the same time, sales development teams, who are responsible for generating leads for senior sales reps, are incentivized to schedule as many meetings as possible. Can be effective in other industries when prospects have the same title (e.g. IT director, VP sales, etc.)
7/ But law firms have different org structures. Which means the person in charge of innovation or technology doesn’t have consistent job titles, interests, or responsibilities. They are also hard to get ahold of because they understandably get bombarded by vendor outreach.
8/ What happens then? Since sales is judged by meetings booked, sales development teams end up scheduling calls with those with easy to find contact information, who pick up the phone, and who have consistent job titles and interests. ie. the associates and the partners.
9/ This is why sales leaders from other industries fail at outbounding firms. They replicate the wrong formulas and focus on the wrong leading indicators. You can’t just expect to spray and pray a bunch of law firm lawyers, get a bunch of meetings, and expect to be successful.
10/ And even if you do correctly & effectively target centralized buyers, you’re not done. You still need to get partners to buy in, which is super important, to land, expand, and most importantly, retain/upsell customers. (Thanks @nwaisb for pointing this out)
11/ Outbounding is hard enough as it is. Sales cycles are long and many startups don’t have the resources to wait it out until the prospect is ready to buy. Campaigns are run for 3-6 months and scrapped when there aren’t any quick results.
12/ Ultimately, when these campaigns fail, the wrong lessons are learned: E.g. Lawyers are dinosaurs. They hate technology. It’s that damn billable hour. (There is a hint of truth to all of these statements but they’re not the real reason.)
13/ In the end, I do believe that you can sell & distribute tech to law firms. I don’t know what the right approach is exactly, but I know of several very smart, capable, and experienced people who are working on this problem. It’s an exciting time for #LegalTech.
