Lateral Acceleration

Converting Potential Into Profit

Few populations have as much immediate business development potential as laterals. For the firm and the lateral, the ability to convert this potential into profitable business can determine the success of the relationship.

Many laterals are discouraged, especially those coming from government or in-house positions, because they don’t know how to build on their opportunities or navigate the inevitable challenges. By providing specifically targeted, customized training and coaching support for these laterals early in their tenure, you can significantly improve their chances for success. A focused approach can help the firm, and the laterals, in a number of crucial areas, such as:

• Providing new services to existing clients
• Developing a fertile pool of new clients and referral sources
• Maximizing cross-selling
• Overcoming major challenges such as building key internal relationships, establishing internal credibility, living up to unclear expectations, integrating into the new culture, and acquiring new skills

Intensive Customized Training, Planning, and Five Months of Coaching

We help your laterals address their challenges and opportunities by providing individualized programs that are designed to accelerate rainmaking activity in ways that will benefit both the lateral and the firm. This intensive program, which features five months of unlimited coaching, is especially valuable for laterals with little or no background in business development. The program can be offered as pure telephone coaching to individual laterals, or it can be delivered as group training with coaching. The group program includes:

• A half-day, highly interactive customized workshop that teaches best practices, introduces practical business development skills, and gets laterals to identify their best opportunities
• Live, one-on-one meetings with each lateral to begin building customized plans
• Five months of follow-up telephone coaching that supports ongoing implementation, refines their personal plans, develops new approaches, and reinforces successful business development habits

Tangible Results

Depending on their goals, laterals who have been through our programs have achieved some or all of the following:

• Developed a customized business development plan
• Generated additional revenue from new clients, existing clients, and referrals sources
• Identified and acted on internal cross-selling opportunities
• Developed a wider pool of potential clients
• Acquired new skills and techniques for uncovering opportunities
• Enhanced effectiveness when meeting with potential clients
• Developed strategies for "wowing" existing clients and contacts
• Developed methods for staying top-of-mind with important contacts
• Accelerated integration into firm marketing and business development activities
• Built strategic alliances within the firm
• Refined their personal brand and learned how to communicate it

Examples of lateral successes include:

• A lateral at a mid-sized New York firm came from an in-house position with no book of business. Within three years he built a seven-figure practice based on his persistence building key relationships, giving presentations to audiences in his targeted market, and relentless follow up. In one instance, he built a relationship with a targeted client he had never met by inviting him to be a panelist at one of his presentations. This resulted in an on-site meeting, wherein he learned about needs, which translated into new matters.
• A lateral moved from a prestigious New York City firm to a Mid-Atlantic firm and built a corporate compliance practice by developing strategic relationships within the firm. He also meticulously combed through the firm’s client database to find relationships that could lead to meetings with targeted directors and officers.
• A government regulatory lawyer joined a mid-sized firm and maintained strong relationships with private industry contacts and his government counterparts. He regularly attended regulatory meetings and created Alerts that were communicated to his, and the firm’s, contacts, positioning himself as “The One in The Know”. He has received significant inquiries and work from this communication strategy.
• A Texas lawyer joined a firm where few knew his niche practice. He did a series of “road shows” inside the firm to describe and demonstrate his practice and received numerous internal referrals.
• A labor and employment lawyer, who formerly was a lawyer in state and county attorney generals’ offices, built one relationship by being the “eyes and ears” in his state for a large corporation and has received business through this proactive approach. He has also received work from targeted prospective clients by offering in-house presentations on topical issues.
• By focusing business development efforts on a targeted audience of venture capitalists, a lateral at a large Southern firm gained entry into the “inner circle” of key players, which resulted in a number of significant new matters.

Pricing

Due to the customized nature of our programs, fees may vary. Most programs are calculated on a per lawyer basis, however, other pricing options may be available depending on your particular needs.