3 Possible Reasons why Partners won't Sell
They've attended the partners meeting, agreed the strategy, budgeted for the training and even attended a few of the training sessions. So why won't they go out and sell?
3 possible reasons:
- Lawyers are the wrong sort of people to enjoy selling. A typical psychometric profile for a lawyer is everything you don't want in a salesman.
- There is little perceived reward. Once a partner has filled up his or her own pipeline, the revenue-recognition for sales-performance is seen as small when set against how hard it is. Most partners would prefer to get back to doing high-quality work for grateful clients.
- Lawyers won't work the process. Good salespeople (whether lawyers or not) know that sales is a process. Exceptional salespeople have an intuitive grasp of the process. The rest of us have to learn it, and do it methodically, day in and day out, not just when we feel like it or have run out of fee-earning work.
So a typical lawyer doesn't want to sell, isn't rewarded for selling, and when he or she does try and sell they do it unsystematically.
So what should we do?
Possibly focus on the untypical ones. The ones who want to sell. The ones who are selling, but know that they could do better. Perhaps even the senior associates who show the spark, and who could be promoted as a sales partner rather than a traditional client-facing one. You wouldn't expect the entire senior team of BP or Proctor and Gamble to go out and sell, so why expect a stellar sales performance from all your partners?
The answer seems to be to invest in the best.