I love speaking to lawyers and law firms about marketing and business development. (Hint: He's available for retreats and trainings!) A good keynote or workshop can be incredibly inspiring--and humans value inspiration.
Inspiration is merely Stage 1, though. If your goal is behavior change, know that that takes more than an afternoon.
Epiphany vs. Efficiency
We've all returned from a conference or training with renewed energy and commitment to attack our work in new ways. Yet three days post-epiphany, the glow has faded and it's back to business as usual.
What happened? Our best intentions yielded to efficiency (what we know how to do in the ways that have made us successful so far) in the face of our daunting task lists, projects, and deadlines. Oh, and that nitty work-life balance thing.
If we want to arm lawyers with new ways of thinking about and acting on business development, an afternoon is not enough. Firms that succeed in changing BD behaviors create time and space for five stages.*
The BD 5
Inspiration: New concepts delivered with spark (the presentation)
Application: Let's all try it together (the activity or workshop element)
Assimilation: Individual trial and error (in the wild)
Reinforcement: Group debrief ("That was great! Can we talk about it?" or "BD is hard! Can we talk about it?"); the reinforcement stage is about support, brainstorming, and new ideas
Mastery: Adoption of helpful habits, rejection of harmful habits, and steady repetition (with forays back for more reinforcement, trial and error, and new inspirations)
Firms that build on inspiration and create shared experiences around business development activities will help lawyers experience all five stages to create a BD culture.
Cross-sell Bonus: Lawyers that learn together in multi-stage BD trainings report a strong understanding of their colleagues' practices. This awareness, along with the high trust and creativity that accompanies group BD training, leads to rich cross-selling potential.
*Those firms also tend to get the incentives right, be they financial, social, or other.