Best Practices To Excel In New Business Competitions

Ever more frequently, law firms are being asked to vie for new business – especially high-value business – by competing against other firms in some kind of "beauty contest," where two or more firms compete against each other to represent the prospective client as its outside counsel.

Ann Lee Gibson, PhD. consults nationally with law firms on new-business competitions, sales presentations, and competitive intelligence. She discussed the fine points of high-stakes new-business competitions at the Oct. 10 meeting of the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the Legal Marketing Association, held in Denver.

"Win or lose, it is essential that you debrief the client as soon as possible after the competition concludes to find out why the winner won and why the losers lost," said Gibson. "Would a professional football team that lost an important game fail to watch the game tapes afterward to analyze what happened? Of course not.

"Over time, a systematic debriefing process will help you see patterns – what you're doing well and what you need to change," said Gibson. "Practice makes you better. Practice with feedback makes you much better, much faster."

The random win-rate for a law firm participating in a competition in response to a Request for Proposal, where 20 firms respond, is five percent – one winner and 19 losers.

Gibson continued, "With a few years of consistent effort involving feedback and other tactics," said Gibson, "law firms can achieve a win-rate of 30-40 percent. One firm I know well eventually reached – after seven years of effort – an 85 percent win-rate on responses to RFPs."