When I became one of the first sales directors at a law firm a little more than 10 years ago, my vision for law firm sales was complex and dynamic, like a Marcel Duchamp painting. I thought we would more or less transplant the best processes, technologies and metrics from the accounting and consulting worlds into this new environment.

After 10 years of first-hand experience, a lot of reading, a lot of stubbed toes, and the benefit of research from Hellerman Baretz, BTI Consulting and other law-firm thinkers, my current vision of law firm sales is more like a Mark Rothko.

I believe, and it is confirmed nearly every day that I interact with inside counsel and other buyers of legal services, that buyers – nearly 70% of the time – find and engage lawyers based on relationships with peers, lawyers at existing law firms, and trusted advisers from banks, accounting firms, consulting firms and the like. When buyers’ relationship networks fail to identify an appropriate outside lawyer, they then most often turn to search engines. So I spend my time these days thinking less about complex processes than about how lawyers can a) initiate, build and monetize relationships, and b) enhance their findability on search engines.