Proof of Experience: The Key to Successful Pitches

How important is "Experience Management"!

In today’s competitive market the Law firms are being asked to respond to more request for proposals (RFPs) whereas, clients are reducing the number of firms they have on their panels. The firms must also pitch for work to existing clients for their different verticals. Today’s buyers are better informed, connected and more skeptical than ever before.

A recent report indicates that when evaluating a new professional services firm, 88% of decision makers chose "past experience" over "promised results" when asked which attribute is more important. The report said that buyers "aren’t looking to be "sold" or "wowed" but want to see tangible proof of legitimate experience in the specific field."

A Firm-wide Challenge

Marketing and BD teams are highly aware of the need for managing experience. They are asked to include proof of experience in proposals, RFPs, pitch decks, website content, directory submissions and other marketing materials. They clearly need a solution that delivers efficiency and quality. The scope of the challenge, however, extends to lawyers as they are the ones delivering pitches. Not all pitches are planned far in advance and involve marketing resources. When an opportunity arises, lawyers must be able to respond quickly to provide proof of experience and strike while the iron is hot.

" WITHOUT JARGON, tell me how you’ll fix the problem and how you’ve fixed it before." - Senior Executive at a leading U.S. bank

RFPs are asking for specific information about the firm’s experience and expertise. Last-minute pitch requests from partners require lists of past cases and deals that are similar to the exact work being pitched. To win, you must be able to respond quickly with complete and accurate information.

You cannot afford to not have a solution in place. Let’s see what to consider while looking for a technology!

Selecting the Right Technology

There are two technological components required to effectively deliver proof of experience and receive better pitching outcomes. First, you need an experienced management database you can easily search to find the past experience needed for successful pitches. Second, you need a proposal generation tool to efficiently create persuasive, firm-branded materials to support pitching efforts. Consider the following when evaluating technology options:

• Build or Buy?

Does your firm have the in-house resources to develop a viable solution, and will they be available to enhance and maintain it? Do 3rd party solutions have the functionality and flexibility to meet your firm’s requirements?

• Enterprise Solution or Marketing-Only Database?

Will a marketing-only experience database deliver enough value or do the additional benefits of integrating with data in other systems provide a compelling value proposition to your firm?

•  Dedicated Solution or Add-On?

Would an add-on module to a product the firm already owns be sufficient or a dedicated solution designed specifically for experience management is required?

•  Integrated or Standalone Proposal Generation?

Do the features of a standalone proposal generation tool provide the bells and whistles you need, or is it a priority to receive the benefits of a seamlessly built-in proposal generator? This would let you track the proposals in which you have used your experiences and streamline the creation of proposals.

• Putting It All Together: Capturing Matter Data

To deliver the maximum benefits, your experience management solution must contain quality information. The challenge is that experience data are often spread across multiple systems at the firm, and much essential information is trapped in the heads of lawyers.

Getting data from existing systems is a good start, but much valuable data about a matter is not captured in any system. New business intake forms cannot fully address this because information such as outcomes, judges and deal values are not known during matter intake. To get information out of the heads of the lawyers, design workflows to capture information at natural times in the matter life cycle. Asking for a small amount of critical information at the right time is much more effective than asking 50 questions of varying importance that don’t yet have answers at matter inception.

More Than Just Pitches...

Beyond enabling the firm to deliver and win more pitches, you can leverage a robust experience management solution to solve other firm challenges. From a marketing perspective, an experience management tool becomes a vital instrument for dealing with league tables and directory submissions. Quickly finding the right experiences to highlight for a particular submission saves time and improves rankings. In addition, lawyers are keen to make sure the information in these submissions is accurate because they want to be appropriately recognized for their work. This creates a vicious circle, where capturing matter descriptions from lawyers for submissions feeds more valuable content into the database that can be used for pitches and other purposes.

The effects of the experience management solution extend beyond business development benefits. Lawyers can use experience information to find precedents, connect clients with experts at the firm and identify peers with the right experience and expertise to help with a case. The experience data can inform pricing benchmarking and be used to more effectively budget and staff matters. Look for opportunities like these to make experience management a key piece of your firm’s knowledge management and practice management strategies.

 Experience Matters

"I'M IMPRESSED BY a potential advisor that comes to us with an understanding of the industry and some insights from other clients in the marketplace, or broader economic patterns." - Senior Director at a global pharmaceutical company

To create winning pitches, law firms must be able to easily find examples of the firm’s experience doing the exact work they are pitching. As with other law firm projects, success requires an investment in solving the people, process and technology challenges involved. It is worth the efforts and resources, however, because the stakes are high. The financial goals and health of the firm are at stake. The good news is that smart processes and thoughtfully-designed technologies can overcome these challenges and ensure that your firm can provide proof of experience to win more business.