Focus on clients
With the right people, the firm can have a total focus on clients.
Conner creates teams of lawyers for each client so nobody can say a client is his and that he alone handles that client.
“The starting point for almost everything we do, when we’re doing it right, is what’s in the best interest of the client,” he says.
“Build teams and create teams for client service.”
For example, if a client has a project involving an investment operation in Mexico, he would want a team of lawyers with skill sets to help that problem — lawyers from both the U.S. and Mexico and those specializing in financial issues and any other practices related to the issue.
Once you can get people thinking in terms of a team, it becomes easier to actually focus on your customers.
“You learn a lot from clients from working with them on projects,” he says. “I think it goes beyond just the project. You need to invest time in the client relationship, and that includes spending time that’s not going to be billable to learn about the client’s business and learning about their industry — sitting down and talking to them about their goals, talking about the challenges they face.”
For example, Conner may sit down with a customer knowing that government regulations in his industry are changing, and he may ask that customer how he sees that affecting his business, what kinds of issues he thinks it will present and how that may change his legal needs going forward.
You also want to make sure you don’t dominate a client meeting by talking about only what you can do for his or her company.
“It’s talking first about their goals,” he says. “So many professional service firms want to come in and talk about what they do, but what we do has value only from the standpoint of what’s important to the clients, (what are) the clients’ goals, what are they trying to achieve strategically, what are some of the issues they feel like they’re going to encounter the next couple of years and how will changes in the global economy affect their marketplace?”
In addition to these, he says it’s also important to ask clients about topics that they typically may be intimidated to bring up, such as billing.
“We’re glad to talk about it,” Conner says. “Tell us what’s important from your standpoint about how billing is managed. Those are the questions to really start to assess what’s important to the client.”
In addition to talking to the client directly, you also want to gather information about the client’s industry yourself.
“It’s one thing to be able to identify what has already affected the client, but what we’re trying to do by focusing on business intelligence is really understand the changes that are coming,” he says. “That can be for a client, it can be for an industry, it can be for a practice. As you develop a good picture of how those changes — economic, political, legislative — are going to affect your clients, then you can begin to build a valid strategy that takes that into account.”
For example, he says it’s important for his team to understand how the expansion of international work between Asia and the United States and also between the United States and Latin America will develop over the next few years. He says many companies will be involved in or affected by these initiatives, so by having his team members well-versed on the topic, they can serve as an additional resource and help foresee issues clients may have surrounding these efforts.
Making such a strong focus on client service has helped the firm over the past few decades, but it has also helped it excel within the industry even in recent years, having been named as a finalist for the Dallas Business Journal’s Best Places to Work competition.
“The focus on clients as opposed to a focus on how much money have you made for me today is very liberating,” Conner says. “It’s something that our personnel can relate to, and it’s a higher mission than simply how much money did you make this quarter.”
But money hasn’t been an issue, as the firm generated $306.5 million in gross revenue last year.
“Obviously we’re in business, and we’re conservatively managed, and we have a strong balance sheet and do well financially, but I think our personnel really appreciate and respond to the fact that we put the interest of the client first and emphasize the teamwork culture and not just how much money have we made today,” he says. “It helps us to recruit, and it helps us to retain outstanding personnel, and I think also it’s in the best interest of the client, so it’s a kind of symbiotic relationship between culture and client focus.”
How to reach: Haynes and Boone LLP, (214) 651-5000 or www.haynesboone.com
