Another Top 10 Event in a Decade of Law Firm Sales and Marketing: 9.11

For the last several weeks, I’ve been using the New Legal Normal blog to list several of the major changes that have taken place in the legal sales and marketing world during the 10+ years since I became one of the profession’s first sales professionals who actually used the word “sales” on the business card.

Returning from the Marketing Partner Forum in Miami last week, I realized that one of the biggest changes during my law-firm sales tenure has been the effects of 9.11.

The terrorist attacks on the United States occurred just three weeks into my new job at Womble Carlyle. I was using the time to restore (and leverage) contacts with some of the business executives that I had met during my preceding 16 years of sales work at accounting firms. I distinctly remember that on the morning of 9.11.2001, I was on the phone with the CFO of a large DC-based conglomerate. As our conversation progressed, I gradually became aware of an eerie change to the symphony of the city. Normal street noises were replaced with sirens, care horns blaring, helicopters, and even fighter jets buzzing the city at low altitude. Shortly after I finished the conversation with my CFO contact, I learned the dreadful reality: One of the New York World Trade Center towers had collapsed, and there had been bombings somewhere in DC, perhaps the Mall.”