by Ken Lopez
Founder/CEO
A2L Consulting

I have always been deeply involved in and passionate
about business development. It was this passion that made it possible for me to build A2L from the ground up in the early 1990s.

Building a company from nothing is no easy task. I often share with young entrepreneurs one of my great secrets – the ways in which I found my first clients. I wrote down the name of every person I knew who I thought might know someone helpful to the business. Ultimately I ended up with a list of 400 people. They were my first set of prospects.

In that group were college buddies, old bosses, and even my mom's high school boyfriend. I contacted all of them, and from that group, I landed clients at AOL, Dickstein Shapiro, and a variety of other well-known law firms. That was how I got started, and this process of relationship-based business development is essentially how I contribute to A2L's business development efforts today.

As we're in the process of hiring a new member of our business development team, I started reflecting on how we do business development at A2L. I think it is pretty impressive, and most professional services firms could learn something from our process. It's rather complex and involves a mixture of repeat/referral work (the majority of our work), growing new relationships from old relationships, and using a rather sophisticated method of blogging to generate inbound interest in our firm that attracts clients who think the way we do.

Indeed, blogging is one of the most important things that we do as an organization. Most of our new business is generated as a result of our blog.

I love it especially because it is very authentically generated business. We share our experiences, we describe the things that we know and believe, and the world's best trial lawyers find their way to us. We give away a lot of our “secrets” about litigation, knowing full well that many people will read these blog posts and never hire us. We hope and expect that some people will read our blog and will be impressed by what we have to say and what we have learned from more than two decades of experience in trial consulting.

Our business development team is thus truly in the business of helping, not selling. They help connect top-end trial lawyers with expert litigation consultants who improve opening statements, develop compelling narratives, conduct scientifically valid mock trials, and develop litigation graphics that teach and persuade judges and juries.

If you or if you know someone who might like to work in this atmosphere in our DC office, consider sharing this article or one of the links below with them:

• Craigslist: http://washingtondc.craigslist.org/nva/sls/5702138073.html
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/175456068
• Career Builder: http://www.careerbuilder.com/job/JHQ6HH6PSW1XDYXJK41

Here are some other business development for professional services firms articles and tips that you may find useful:

• The Top 10 Tips for Selling Professional Services
• Why We Blog (and Maybe Your Firm Should Too)
• 10 Surprising Facts About Litigation Consulting Report Blog Readers
• Free Top-75 Articles E-Book! Help Us Celebrate 7,500 Subscribers!
• 6 Lessons Our Trial Consultants Learned from the Sales Process
• The Best Litigators Love Sales, Love Storytelling and Persuasion
• 6 Traits of Bad Business Developers You Never Want to See
• 8 Traits of Great Business Developers (In or Out of Law Firms)