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Sales Enablement: The Next Big Thing In Legal Services?

By Eric Dewey
February 01, 2022

Research says that individuals only retain about 10% of what they are taught in-classroom training. In fact, it's estimated that half of classroom learning is lost within the first 24 hours. While this type of instruction is still required as part of the professional development process, one-off classroom instruction is inadequate to build the knowledge and skills that lead to new behaviors. This is especially true when learning new subjects, such as lawyers who are learning new business development skills.

To build new skills and behaviors, learners need to have the learning reinforced continuously and in multiple ways. You can do this using quizzes and exercises, one-on-one coaching, group coaching, and on-the-job practice (where skills are applied in real-world settings). These 'follow-on reinforcement strategies' can improve skills development and knowledge retention by as much as 90%.

For law firms, this type of continuous learning loop is rarely used to teach business development skills (although I know of two that are developing similar programs). Law firms can look to a growing trend, however, among their corporate brethren as a model to solve the business development training challenge. It's called Sales Enablement. As you will read, firms that create this type of business development learning culture learn more about how to sell individual practices, better facilitate new engagements, understand better what to look for in potential hires, and build better and more collaborative teams around revenue growth. Simply put, sales enablement builds business development cultures in law firms.

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