The question that turned Joanna Beckett into a BD coach

Joanna Beckett found legal marketing by accident, starting by collecting ad submissions for the Association of Corporate Counsel before moving into legal marketing and BD roles. In her first manager role, an unexpected question from a newly elected partner led to her training as a certified coach. Today, as Director of Business Development Training & Coaching at Sheppard, Joanna runs a program that helps lawyers build and execute a personalized approach to legal BD.

How did you start working in legal BD?

Like most folks of my age, it was a complete accident. I saw a posting for a marketing job at the Association of Corporate Counsel (the American Corporate Counsel Association at the time). I liked the location and it had marketing in the title, so I marched myself along to the interview with no real idea what it was.

Part of my role there was collecting the ads from law firms for the ACCA Docket (now Corporate Counsel Now). I would call folks who worked internally at law firms to check on the status of their ad, so I got to know this network of people. Then one day it occurred to me that, for my next step, I could go and do what they were doing. It’s been a happy accident and served me well.

You're a certified coach. Why did you pursue that qualification and has it changed your approach to legal BD?

When I was in one of my first manager roles, a newly elected partner who I was friendly with called me into his office and said, “Help, what do I do?”

I had stage fright. I said to him, "If you don't know what you're supposed to be doing, how am I supposed to know?” I remember leaving his office and thinking, wow, I should have been able to answer that question.

He caught me off guard because, at that point in my career, I had been working with senior partners who knew exactly what they wanted. I was completely unprepared for someone to say, “I don’t know.”

I wanted to be able to advise partners, so I did some initial research, asking ‘how do you coach someone?’ By accident I ended up finding the Co-Active Training Institute; they were running a three-day introduction seminar the next month, and I asked my CMO if I could attend.

I thought the seminar would walk me through the conversation I should have had with that newly elected partner. Instead, I was introduced to a completely different philosophy of how to help people reach the best version of themselves and achieve their goals.

The underlying belief is that we all have the answers, we just need someone to help us clarify exactly what we want to pursue. You will hear from a lot of people in BD that there is no universal right or wrong way to do things. Everyone has their own bespoke and tailored approach. I can't tell you how to do it; you have to define what recipe works for you.

Not all firms have a director dedicated to BD training. Why has Sheppard invested in that area?

When Christie Cáceres stepped in as Chief Business Development and Marketing Officer at Sheppard, she asked for an overview of the existing coaching program and process. I showed up with an elaborate PowerPoint of everything we had done so far and a plan for what I thought the program could become. She came back to me a few weeks later and asked, “Would you like to do this full time?” I thought I had died and gone to heaven.

That was almost five years ago, and we’ve been running a centralized BD training and coaching program since then. It's a strategic initiative for the firm. My role sits within the business development team so I can stay close to new skills and feedback from clients, and it’s aligned with the goals of our talent management team. I love that I get to focus on training and coaching full time, and I’m so flattered and thrilled that they've allowed me to build out a new function.

How is BD training structured at Sheppard?

Our program starts the moment an attorney walks in the door, whether they’re a summer associate, lateral, or partner. We have a ladder of trainings designed to match our KPIs. The program involves different styles of teaching: group virtual sessions, one-on-one coaching, in-person workshops, and more. We’ve made DCM Insights Activator Program part of our velvet rope BD Masterclass for equity partners. The skills taught at each rung of the ladder are then supported and reinforced throughout all our BD programs and talent management academies.

What are the main BD skills that you focus your training on?

We talk a lot about the client life cycle and how marketing skills have to fuel your BD pipeline, and vice versa—one doesn't exist without the other. You can see the light bulbs turning on when we socialize that and lawyers realize they were putting too much focus on the marketing or BD side of things and neglecting the other. It’s a delicate balance that needs to be nurtured and requires discipline. Helping the lawyers find the recipe that works for them is the undercurrent to our training.

What is your perspective on rainmakers?

I think there has been a cultural shift with rainmaking. I don't know if it's generational, but lawyers now join the firm expecting to be equipped with BD and marketing skills.

I don't think rainmaking is a question of skill versus talent. I think it comes down to resiliency and consistency. To borrow a sports analogy, a .300 batting average is considered exceptional, right? You're not going to win every time but all you need is the resilience to get back up to bat after a no. I try to coach people to think of integrating BD into everything they do, rather than thinking, “I practice law and then I do BD.” If you can adopt that mindset along with consistency and resiliency, you will be successful.

The ROI on training can sometimes be hard to measure. How do you show the firm that your work is paying off?

Sheppard is committed to cultural change and activating mindset shifts. Sometimes our wins look like a list of what people are committed to do or a cross-selling opportunity that came out of team collaboration. Other times it’s actual new business in the door. Similarly to how we ask the lawyers to consider the entire client lifecycle, we look at the holistic picture of behavior change and results.

What advice would you give to a BD professional who's been approached by their managing partner and asked to build out a training program?

If you have the budget, there are so many wonderful vendors in our industry that will make it seamless for you. Alternatively, your BD and Marketing team knows what they're doing. We have all sat in a room and said, “This is how that event went sideways and this is how we could make it so much more effective.” So, ask for visibility at internal meetings to highlight best practices, lessons learned, and share wins.

Lawyers want to know what worked for the person down the hall. Create the environment for them to share their approaches and position the BD team to help reinforce what works well. We all know starting small in a law firm is the best approach. Give it time to ruminate, get feedback and constantly evolve the program based on what is clicking with the attorneys. Marketers are sometimes so busy at marketing the firm that they have a blind spot to marketing their own services internally. Believe in these initiatives; in the end, they are there to inspire, motivate, and drive results.