Nightmare on BD street
It’s Halloween week. The pumpkins are out, the kids are preparing to consume their body weight in sugar, and somewhere lurking inside a law firm, lawyers are about to do something truly terrifying to a client.
Last year, we explored the ghosts, zombies and vampires haunting our sales pipelines. This year, we’re flipping the script and looking at three BD horror stories through the eyes of the people who pay our bills.
Lights down. Popcorn ready. Enjoy.
#1. The jump scare
Genre: Psychological thriller
The plot
It’s Friday, 5.47pm. An invoice lands in our unsuspecting General Counsel’s inbox.
No warning. No explanation. Just another bill from their trusted law firm.
Until they look at the total. They check the original estimate. Then the invoice. Then the estimate again.
It’s 40% higher than expected. Nobody mentioned it. Nobody explained it.
Cue screaming. Dramatic music. Laptop thrown across the room.
LINAR review
An absolute classic. The client thought everything was going swimmingly. Nobody mentioned additional fees, delays or changes to the team. Then, BOO!
Clients understand that things go wrong. What they absolutely HATE is finding out after the event.
How to survive: At LINAR and Legal Engine, we use a simple weekly communication called This Week, Next Week (TWNW). Every Friday, clients receive a short update covering:
- This week we… What we’ve completed and the progress made.
- Next week we will… What’s coming up and where we’re focusing.
- Things we need… Decisions, information or actions required from the client.
Three headings. A few bullet points. Ten minutes to prepare. An incredibly effective way to maintain momentum, accountability and, most importantly, avoid nasty surprises.
#2. Night of the living leads
Genre: Zombie apocalypse
The plot
Six months ago, a client politely declined a proposal. The budget wasn’t available. Perhaps next year.
But the salesperson refuses to accept the inevitable.
Every fortnight, another email emerges from the darkness.
“Just checking in…”
“Any update?”
“Thought I’d bring this back to the top of your inbox.”
JUST. WON’T. DIE.
LINAR review
A terrifying tale of misplaced perseverance.
Sending the same pointless follow-up email six times isn’t demonstrating resilience. It’s demonstrating that you’ve got absolutely nothing new to say.
Worse still, your CRM is probably showing this opportunity as ‘live’, inflating your pipeline and giving everyone a warm, fuzzy feeling about revenue that doesn’t exist.
That’s not pipeline management. That’s creative accounting.
How to survive: Stop confusing activity with progress. Review your ageing opportunities and ask three questions:
- Has anything materially changed since our last conversation?
- Can I offer something genuinely useful to help the client make a decision?
- Is there actually a credible reason to believe this opportunity will convert?
If the answer to all three is no, have one final, direct conversation about whether to progress, postpone or close it.
#3. Frankenstein’s email
Genre: Science fiction horror
The plot
A client receives an email.
“I hope this message finds you well. I was delighted to learn about your organisation’s recent exciting developments…”
It continues for six paragraphs, stitched together from an AI prompt, a corporate brochure and several hundred meaningless adjectives.
It’s beautifully written. Grammatically perfect.
And completely devoid of anything remotely interesting.
LINAR review
The newest monster on the block. AI has made producing professional-looking sales communications ridiculously easy. Unfortunately, it’s also made producing absolute rubbish at scale remarkably efficient.
The client can smell a generic email a mile away.
How to survive: Before sending your next piece of outreach, ask yourself three questions:
- Why this person? What do I know about them and their business?
- Why now? What’s happened that makes my approach timely?
- What’s in it for them? What immediate value will they get from engaging?
If you can’t answer all three, don’t press send. No amount of AI-generated polish will rescue a message that has nothing worthwhile to say.
Chat to Tina by voice, when you’re between meetings, on the commute to/from work, or heading into something you’d rather avoid.
Final thought
Three horror stories. Three very avoidable disasters.
The common thread? Forgetting what it’s like to sit on the receiving end of our sales and BD efforts.
This Halloween, spare a thought for your clients. They’ve suffered enough.
Happy Halloween. And remember, the scariest monster is often the one staring back at you from your CRM.
We’re building a team of voice enabled AI assistants to support you with BD activities and allow you to spend more time being human. Interested? We’d love to chat.
