A successful cross sell in four easy steps.

• Author: Severson, Adam

As part of a recent panel discussion, Adam Severson offered a real-world example of a successful cross-selling initiative his firm undertook. Some of his comments are excerpted here.

There are two types of cross-sell initiatives: Those that are client focused and those that are internally focused. The client focused cross sells are based on latent needs a client may have or undiscovered potential for new work. They typically arise from trends in the marketplace or new legislation. Internally focused cross sells are more about us and how we (an individual attorney, practice or office) would like to do work for someone else's client.

As you might imagine, the latter is requested more frequently and often yields far fewer tangible results. Many of you may get the sense that cross selling or marketing in general is like herding cats.

I'm going to focus more comments today on one particular client focused cross sell initiative that we did a couple years ago, for a few reasons:

1 It was well structured

2 It had effective communication

3 It was successful

4 If I told you about a current cross sell initiative, you may be able to thwart our mission because our targets are your clients!

In 2004, the American Job Creations Act was signed into law by President Bush. Passage of this law has several ramifications, but for the purposes of this discussion, we'll focus on those related to Section 409A and deferred compensation; riveting, I know.

This piece of the law required that companies review and amend their executive agreements relating to deferred compensation, or pay upwards of 20 percent penalties. That's right, 20 percent penalties.

Foreseeing this new piece of legislation, one of our senior partners and I discussed how we might spread the word and "cross sell" our capabilities. First, we needed to identify two whys:Why it is important for our colleague partners to listen to what we have to say? and why would our clients want to hire us and not their current counsel?

The 20 percent penalty is one reason, and the fact we were coming to them first was another. The technical prowess of our attorneys seemed to be second fiddle to the cost of not amending the agreements and our proactive client service.

Second, we identified a strong way to communicate internally. We organized a firm-wide videoconference with a key corporate partner, the senior benefits and compensation partner and a tax guru. This was broadcast to eight offices worldwide and via...