A firm’s client base should be a crystal-clear reflection of its strategy. Here’s how leadership can help ensure that business development professionals bring that part of law firm strategy to life.

Setting the Stage: Strategy and the Client Base of the Future

In a previous post, we explored how even the busiest firm leaders can personally contribute to sales success. This follow-on focuses on one small but powerful—and
too often overlooked—step in the strategic planning process: targeting.

When a firm plans for its next three to five years, it envisions its future market positioning, geographic footprint, brand, buyer awareness, services, people, and other key factors. Even if only implicitly, the strategy also illuminates the client base of the future.

Most new law firm strategies define an ideal client profile. That’s a start, but as Tony Robbins said, “You can’t hit a target if you don’t know what it is.” A profile alone is too abstract to drive consistent action. What’s needed is a specific, strategy-driven target list—by name—of clients to retain and nurture, and prospects to pursue.

The questions, then, are:

• Which current clients deserve continued investment, and which have run their course?
  
  
• Which prospective clients align with the firm’s future direction and need to experience direct and energetic sales efforts?
  
  

The Leadership Imperative

Today’s client development teams, now equipped with sophisticated tools, including generative AI, can generate remarkably precise target lists. But without visible and ongoing leadership sponsorship, those lists rarely take hold. Leaders are well-advised to make clear that targeting is a strategic, sanctioned, monitored, and rewarded activity. Otherwise, even the best-intentioned efforts will fade into “business as usual,” and strategic plans will gather dust on a metaphorical shelf.

Two contrasting examples illustrate the points made in this blog post:

• The cautionary tale. A mid-sized firm we advised generated a strategy to become a leading advisor to middle-market businesses across all the firm’s limited geographies. With this guidance, the client development team built a list of 3,000 companies, identified key buyers, mapped relationships, and generated preliminary action plans. It was a promising approach, but leadership did little more than acknowledge the existence of a list. Without leaders reviewing, refining, endorsing, and enforcing accountability, enthusiasm waned. Within two years, the middle-market strategy had been replaced by the de facto goal of opportunistic expansion, including “growing globally.”
  
  
• The success story. A then-Big Six accounting firm embraced a strategy “to serve global companies globally” (my words). Leadership made it clear: “Your job is to serve or pursue Global 1000 clients. Other work is your choice, but we will not invest in it, and it will not drive recognition or compensation.” Within two years, the firm’s annual growth rate rose from single digits to 16%+, it expanded into previously unserved markets where its clients and targets operated, and its workforce expanded by an estimated 20%. 

What Firm Leaders Should Consider Doing

Client development teams can deftly perform most of the back-office work required to develop great, strategically guided target lists. But to ensure that names on target lists become names on client lists, leadership might take some or all of the following actions:

• Publicly charter the effort. Empower client development leaders to craft and maintain target
  lists that reflect firm strategy.
  
  
• Know the lists. Be conversant with their composition and alignment with firm priorities.
  
  
• Communicate relentlessly. Reinforce who the firm serves now, who we will serve next, and how each lawyer’s
  work contributes.
  
  
• Monitor the pipeline. Track traction against target lists and step in when progress stalls.
  
  
• Provide resources and alignment. Support the effort through budget, technology, incentives, and lateral hiring.
  
  
• Recognize performance. Celebrate wins that reflect strategy and quietly correct those who are off course.
  
  
• Help lawyers and staff learn to say “no” to proposed off-strategy actions and investments.

The Payoff

When leadership and client development teams align around specific targets, the results are transformative.

• Accountability. Progress can be tracked, and success measured, against named targets.
  
  
• Clarity. Everyone knows the firm’s priorities and what’s expected of them.
  
  
• Focus. Effort and investment concentrate where they yield the highest return.
  
  
• Collaboration. Lawyers coordinate around shared priorities, enhancing the client experience.
  
  
• Efficiency. Time, attention, and resources flow toward what matters most.
  
  
• Cultural alignment. The firm speaks with one voice about growth and purpose.

Why This Matters

A firm’s client base should be a direct function of its strategy. When leadership sets clear boundaries and expectations, client development becomes not just a clerical exercise but a manifestation of strategic intent.

Turning a strategy into a defined client base requires more than capable business developers; it requires leadership resolve. Ask yourself: Does everyone in your firm know exactly which clients define your future? If not, now is a propitious time to make that clear.