Two Law Firm Partners + Three Easy LinkedIn Navigator Strategies = Path to New Revenue and Client Acquisition

I recently consulted with an AmLaw50 firm, focusing my time with two prominent partners boasting large books of business. They were each part of the firm’s Navigator pilot group, yet had differing goals: Partner A was the head of the APAC region offices within the firm, looking to solidify new relationships with major clients to both drive revenues and raise the profile of the firm’s portfolio. Partner B ran the startup and venture capital practice domestically, and she was seeking opportunities to position her clients for major mergers and acquisitions within their respective industries.

Attorneys’ business development efforts should be simplified by technology, not complicated by it. Navigator does precisely that.

Navigator was able to help both partners strategically identify, target, and secure connections to decision makers at several of their prospects in less than 90 days, and both were able to tie immediate revenue numbers to their use of some of the basic functions of Navigator.

Who doesn’t love a good success story, especially one with such little sweat equity on the front end?

Here are three easy ways these partners used Navigator that you can apply to your own BD efforts to immediately affect your bottom line and increase your origination numbers:

1) Define the Right Audience: Design and Monitor Your Saved Searches

Partner A had his eyes on the big fish: easily recognizable names amongst corporate giants.

We’re talking bet-the-company litigation budgets and an endless flow of international deal work. His client-seeking pain points were not financially driven, but instead focused on finding out who the right decision makers were amongst complicated organizational charts and bureaucracy, and then quickly formulating a plan to find warm introductions to them before his competitors did the same.

Luckily, with a few saved searches that took mere minutes to set up, Navigator’s algorithm worked in the background to feed him options that exactly fit those criteria. He was able to review the searches on the train to work in the morning, and by the time he reached his desk, he was teeing up emails to ask common connections for the right connections. Within months, he added five recognizable logos to his (and the firm’s) vast portfolio of clients, entirely due to opportunities identified by Navigator.

Partner B was targeting a more under-the-radar list of prospects in a hip, vibrant geographic area with a booming economy – mostly tech startup companies and the related venture capital firms who sought to court them.

Coupling that lens with access to existing firm connections who were looking to acquire some of these rising stars, he was able to set dual searches and play M&A matchmaker as a value-add to both audiences.

His first search dialed in on location, industry and company size, making these saved searches key not only to identifying the right companies, but also the right titles within them. At startups, the internal lingo doesn’t always match a traditional corporate structure (what exactly is a Chief People Officer?!), and Navigator’s saved searches helped him to target the right levelof employees even despite unorthodox terminology.

2) Eye on the Prize: Watch Saved Lead Profiles and Utilize TeamLink Extend

Partner A dedicated less than an hour during our initial meeting to saving pertinent leads at his target companies, and then let Navigator do what Navigator does – deliver the information on the right people at the right time.

He scanned his saved leads and noticed, via the TeamLink Extend overlap with other attorneys within the firm, that he had a glaring opportunity to connect with the General Counsel of a huge prospect, simply by walking down the hall to his colleague who had attended law school with her. Had he not gleaned that tidbit of information from the saved lead searches, he would never have had the opportunity to ask for the introduction with ease.

Partner B harnessed the power of TeamLink Extend to create a list of Saved Leads in the venture capital and private equity landscape in a booming metropolitan area; he was able to find suitable investors for several clients, add value (that did not show up on the bill) by making introductions on their behalf, and even found overlap with the Chief Compliance Officer at one of the largest tech companies in the world that lead to further conversations about potential deals. He incredulously accredited those opportunities to Navigator and noted how little time it had taken to beget such significant outcomes.

3) Get Creative: Design Advanced Searches and Let Daily Digests Do the Work for You

After the first two months of the trial, Partners A and B weren’t quite as proactive in monitoring their saved searches as they had been with the initial adrenaline rush. Luckily, we had already worked with each of them to construct several advanced searches that queued up Daily Digests to appear in their inboxes with curated summaries.

Partner B received a notification which allowed a very complicated deal to close on a tight deadline…

In the third month of the trial, Partner B received a Daily Digest notification that triggered a connection which allowed a very complicated deal to close on a tight deadline.

Similarly, Partner A saw a current client move to a new company in the wee morning hours and was able to reach out to him before his competitors did, securing the relationship transfer to the new role. You know I love when that urgent bird gets its worm!

Both attorneys would have missed out on those opportunities had it not been for the Navigator Advanced Searches and Daily Digests acting on their behalf to do the research, letting the attorneys react adeptly within minutes to make a difference in driving revenue and client satisfaction.

The simplicity of using Navigator is part of its overall value. With just a little upfront time investment, it acts as another team member to help your practice grow and thrive by providing competitive intelligence at the right moments to help foster relationships and add client value.

What are some other easy ways your use of Navigator have made the difference in securing a new client or maintaining a critical relationship? Reach out with your successes, and I’ll include them in my next post.