Do you ever feel like you’re speaking another language when you’re talking to your sales team? Why can’t they see the risks? How did they get this far into the deal without involving Legal?
In this episode, Alex Su helps us understand the sales team and how to talk the talk and improve our company’s results. Alex left a career in litigation to join the sales team of a legal tech start-up and has since been in sales for more than 14 years. A rare breed who understands what drives sales people and what makes lawyers tick, Alex helps us understand how to serve this important part of the business.
Bonus: Alex answers an Office Hours question for a law firm partner trying to build their book of business.
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Listen to the podcast here
Talk The Talk: Understand Your Sales Team To Drive Results + Office Hours With Alex Su, Latitude Legal
On this episode, I’m excited to welcome Alex Su, Chief Revenue Officer of Latitude Legal. We’re going to talk about all things communication, particularly communicating with those business folks and even more. Specifically, your sales team.
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Alex, how are you?
I’m doing great, Stacy. Thanks for having me on the show.
I told you before, I’m pumped to talk with you about this topic. You got on my radar screen because you are a prolific poster on LinkedIn with these very cool videos, and I’m sure TikTok. Although I don’t do TikTok. One in particular got my attention where you were had a side-by-side with a lawyer. What I assumed was an in-house lawyer, trying to communicate with sales and the salesperson was a baby. There was a flip phone involved. It was just hilarious, but I thought it captured this gap in communicating as lawyers to the business folks. That’s where I thought we could talk.
How Alex Su Became A Legal Meme Lord & LinkedIn Sensation
That was one of my favorite videos to me. I’ve made a lot of videos over the years. The short funny video skits of the interactions between in-house lawyers and their sales counterparts. A fun fact about me, even though I’ve legal training, I’ve never worked as an in-house lawyer. I have always been the sales guy. When I first started making them, my potential clients, my in-house community, the people I talk to told me about their frustrations of working with sales. I thought, “How funny would it be if I could make a skit where I could pretend to be both?” That’s how it started. It all started probably in late 2020 and early 2021. I started making TikToks and posted them on LinkedIn, and quickly attracted a following. It’s completely unexpected but a lot of fun.
It is mission accomplished. You mentioned you haven’t worked in-house but I do want to give people a brief background. Chief Revenue Officer is a great title. It’s a sales-related role but you didn’t start there. I would love to give people a little splash of your background.
From Law School To Sales: An Unexpected Career Path
I went to law school many years ago because I wanted to be a trial lawyer primarily because I thought it would be a lot of fun to spend my day persuading juries, people or judges or whoever. I went to law school, did all the law school stuff that you’re supposed to do, get good grades, and get a big law firm job. A few years in, I realized this is not exactly what I thought it would be. I am a litigator, but I am not going to court. I’m not persuading anyone.
I am spending my days reviewing documents, building chronology, prologues, and all this stuff that I didn’t enjoy. That was a crossroads moment for me to think, what else can I do with this law degree of mine? My personal life got in the way, and I ended up moving from New York to California. I ended up settling into the Bay area and tech was big out here.
I thought, what could I do to leverage my legal training and experience in combination with what’s happening out here? By then, I was about 5 or 6 years out of law school. I had been practicing as litigator for a few years. I made the jump to a small legal text startup. Since they were looking for salespeople, I took on a junior sales role.
You were very high level which I appreciate. You were a federal law clerk. You were at Sullivan and Cromwell, is that right? I would say the textbook things that people do when they’re trying to be very successful or be at a practice that a pretty prominent level then you pivoted into sales. I do want to understand why that was. You’re in the epicenter of tech and legal tech is a nice crossover. What about sales called to you?
The whole reason why I went to do that clerkship and why I went to Sullivan and Cromwell even though I knew it was a tough job was because I wanted to be an AUSA. I wanted to be a federal prosecutor because that’s what everyone said is the best trial lawyer job out there. What I wanted to do was I wanted to convince people or persuade people. I wanted to stand up and make an argument. For a lot of reasons, I ended up not being my path, but when I saw the menu of options for my career moving forward, sales was very attractive. Now, I know what you’re readers might be thinking.
I’m cringing a little bit.
I know. It’s not what you would expect, but part of my journey to where I ended up made me realize that I was spending a lot of time trying to get around to the thing I wanted to do. It’s taking a lot of into account what I thought other people thought. I thought, if everyone says that you should be an AUSA, if everyone in the legal profession celebrates getting into these fancy big law firms and clerkships. Maybe I should do it too?
That’s how I ended up in a place where I was trying to do the thing but then I learned a lot about what it’s like being a federal prosecutor. It turned out that a lot of aspects of the job did not appeal to me. I learned that you would have to grind for many years in a large law firm doing work that is not making an argument. You’re preparing a case, which is helpful but is not exactly what I wanted to do.
I want to dig into to sales and what that is. I’m also going to give a little teaser. We are going to do an office hours question related to how lawyers sell. You’re going to build your credibility through this sales conversation and you’re going to tell us how lawyers can be better at sales. The reason I wanted to talk with you is to pull back that curtain for what is the sales job and to bridge that if we’re looking at your video. Bridge the frustrated in-house lawyer and the baby in sales that doesn’t quite know what to do to make their in-house legal support them. Tell us a little bit about what is the job of sales.
Understanding The Sales Process & Legal’s Role
The job of sales is to find potential customers or clients and convince them to sign a contract with your company. The whole thing is a long process. The reason why my videos resonate is because they resonate primarily with an in-house legal audience and in-house lawyer. When you get a contract, that is the starting point of the sale or the transaction. For the sales professional on the other hand, maybe you’ve spent six months to a year or more walking through multiple contacts with an account, going through lots of ups and downs and getting the door shut in your face. All the way to convince someone to say, “Yes, I’m interested in moving forward with your company. Here’s the contract.”
The job of sales is to find potential customers or clients and convince them to sign a contract with your company. Share on XThat’s why when the salesperson presents a contract for review to an in-house lawyer, that is not the beginning of the process for them. It’s the end of a long process that salespeople feel should be pretty straightforward compared to dealing with all the rejection and with a lot of people who say, “No, we’re not interested in which are offering.” That’s where there’s a huge disconnect between in-house legal and sales.
One of my perceptions about, I mentioned we don’t have sales but I do have people that are trying to get something done or I’m on the other side where our teams working with a vendor who’s trying to get that sale over the finish line. I feel like, “I’ve got a study the tempo here a little bit.” Talk about a little bit about that six-month period, where the contract is like at you feel like you’re at the one-yard line trying to convert something. What are you doing in that six-month wind up? You referred to it as a pipeline.
You’re building a pipeline of sales. If I can move backwards in the sales process, there are generally speaking three categories of stages within a sale. The lawyers are only involved in getting the transaction done part of it, which is the last one. Before that, there are two stages that are both equally challenging and we’re salespeople spend the most amount of their time. The first part is getting a meeting with a potential buyer. That could be one person, but at a large organization.
If you’re selling something to a large bureaucratic company or firm, that may involve getting a whole bunch of people on one or more calls. Very often, the buyers, these contacts push you off. You’re not a priority. It’s very hard to hurt cats to get that meeting. Stage one is getting a meeting in the first place. Stage two is making sure you’re having enough of those conversations and driving them forward. What I mean by that is, let’s say I’m a salesperson. I’m working one potential account.
I’ve got to do that for at least ten other accounts as well. I can’t just rely on the one because the more accounts I have in my “pipeline,” the more likely it is that one or more than will close. That involves talking to lots of different accounts and people. It also involves, for each account, driving the ball forward and getting closer to getting that contract stage.
When you talk before, you mentioned that your sales manager is looking at that pipeline. They don’t just look at the close. They’re managing you throughout that cycle.
That’s exactly right. There is this thing called pipeline review. If I’m a sales rep, I need to show my manager that I am progressing towards the sale. Salespeople have quotas. They have to close a certain amount of business. The sales manager’s job is to make sure that the individual sales rep has everything they need to track towards hitting that quota, which means talking to enough potential buyers, but also making sure that the sales rep is doing all the activities that they need to do to drive the ball forward for that particular deal.
There was a lot of pressure on the individual sales rep to do all of these things and on a day-to-day basis, call in enough people and get rejected enough times to be declined by multiple buyers. There’s a lot of rejection and ups and downs because sometimes you think a deal is going to happen and it doesn’t before you even get to the contracting stage.
Why Salespeople Seem Anxious & How Legal Can Help
I wanted to talk about this because it informs maybe why that the energy that the salesperson has when you’re at deal stage. It almost feels like anxiety. There’s a lot of nervous energy pressure. I feel like they’re shortcutting in communication. You said you haven’t worked in-house but I feel like lawyers read that as a lack of trust almost, like a lack of credibility. I don’t know if you have thoughts about that, but I wanted people to see this is why your business colleague may be showing up a certain way.
Part of it has to do with the fact that I mentioned those first two stages where you’re constantly dealing with rejection. You’re almost battling your potential buyer’s organization. For example, if you’re selling a piece of technology. Maybe the business contact you have who’s buying it is very much interested in moving forward but then they’ve got their procurement and IT people to contend with internally.
That’s what I mean by you need to hurt cats or get a lot of people together to make a decision. Those first two stages require a lot of work and involve you, as a sales rep, convincing a lot of people externally to your company. Now, here’s why this leads to nervous energy around contracting. By the time you get to the contracting phase, it does feel like now you’ve gotten through all of that challenge. You’re in a good spot.
All that is left is getting the signature on the dotted line. The person who has one of the biggest amounts of influence in that process is your internal colleague, your teammates, someone who works at your company. Naturally, as a salesperson, you would think that person want to help me. They’re going to say yes to everything, and we know that’s not the case. That is the mindset that the salesperson is coming into with that initial conversation with the in-house lawyer.
Are they disappointed? Tell me how it doesn’t work.
The most common fac pattern is that they are disappointed because it turns out you can’t say yes to everything in the contract. Very often, these salespeople because they’re trying to get the deal done inch by inch, they will often say, “Potential buyer, you can send me your contract templates. Send me your paper and we’ll just say yes.” They may not use those exact words, but they’ll say, “We can be flexible.”
They want to be easy to work with for the customer.
That’s right, so then they bring it to their own internal in-house lawyer, and it turns out, that contract template has all sorts of problematic provisions. That’s where the negotiation happens. Seasoned salespeople know how to get ahead of that, but very often the more junior or inexperienced sales folks, they may not anticipate. They may not budget for this much time and energy for the contracting phase.
Added on top of that, some of the savviest sales reps know what levers to pull to get their ways. In other words, they may approach the in-house lawyer and say, “You got a do whatever it takes to get this done.” They may CC a higher up. This is something that’s probably very familiar to your audience. The salespeople are very good at using leverage to get what they want. That’s a lot of the reason why when you get to the contracting phase, there’s just so much going on and there’s an inclination or this momentum to say yes to everything.
Salespeople are very good at using leverage to get what they want. Share on XLet’s talk about another pressure point. Again, this is probably not familiar for many lawyers, which is the way that salespeople are compensated. You talked about the pipeline and you’re getting managed. I have to say, I think about the Glengarry Glen Ross movie. Alec Baldwin hitting the desks and telling people, “Coffee for closers,” and all that. Talk a little bit about beside of that day-to-day management of pipeline and all those the steps. How are the salespeople measured and compensated?
Sales Compensation & The Pressure To Close Deals
Salespeople are compensated in large part due to how they perform. In compensation, you have a base salary then you have a commission. However, many deals you close, you get some percentage of it, whether that’s revenue or percentage of profit. It depends on the company. I, as a sales rep, coming into a new job, I know that I’m going to get a base salary that does not cover my total compensation. It’s often about 50%, what we call on target earnings, which is what you would get if you hit all your quota.
Every deal that you get builds towards that total quota and your total compensation. In other words, when a deal falls through, you’re not getting compensated what you expected to get and you did a lot of work to get to that point. In a scenario, you can imagine a salesperson who is expecting to close a certain number of deals. They have one more to get to their number. They’ve spent a year plus on trying to close this one customer. It turns out that at the very last minute, there’s a problem with the contract and they can’t go forward. That’s got to be incredibly frustrating for the sales rep.
How do you deal with that frustration when you’re like, “I have a teammate and we’re both trying to get our company to this next phase or whatever How can paper stand in our way?”
Balancing Risk & Revenue: What Legal Teams Should Understand
I have a very basic scenario for a tech company that I’ll share that may illustrate some of these challenges. Let’s say you’re a company with minimal funding. Your startup and you need to get to a certain revenue milestone to get to raise the next round of funding. This is very common in Silicon Valley. A lot of startups need to get to $1 million in annual recurring revenue, so subscription contracts.
Now, as the sales rep, you know how your work fits into that. If you’re deal ads $100,000 to the goal, you’re getting that much closer to that $1 million mark and that would lead to great things for the company. However, if the deal doesn’t go through, then the company’s got to figure out a way to fill that gap. Where it comes in to play with the lawyer is that there are some lawyers who may view that customer contract in a way that’s disconnected from that reality.
In other words, they may see it as, “These are all these risks that could potentially happen in the document. I’m going to press back hard because I want to protect the company.” What they don’t realize is that when you protect the company based on risks in the contract. You may be introducing other risks like the risk of not hitting that million-dollar mark and not being able to raise that next round of funding.
The in-house lawyers that sales people like to work with the most are ones who can see the big picture and can understand that it’s not just about isolated risk within one contract. Risks that may happen or may not happen. They’d like the in-house lawyer to be able to balance all the relevant factors. To answer your question, for me, my mentality has always been to try to look at the big picture. That’s part of the reason why I did not enjoy big law litigation at the junior levels. I was focused on all these details and a lot of times, I would say, “Why does this matter?” In the big picture, how does this matter?
I struggled with that but that mindset ended up being an asset at smaller high growth companies because it’s not all black and white. You got to understand what the goals are of the company and then view risk in those lens. I always joke that I always make these videos where legal is the hero and sales is the villain. People don’t recognize that my experience personally and professionally has been in the villains shoes. I’ve never worked in-house. I’ve only been the person pressing my colleague to just say yes. That’s something that I’ve been trying to talk about more. I joke about it, but it’s a common phenomenon.
Let’s talk about that as you’ve been in the villain role. What advice do you have for the in-house hero? Certainly, looking at the big picture and caring about the company goals is a great takeaway, but what else should they be doing?
How In-House Lawyers Can Build Better Processes For Sales Teams
Turning things into process. I’ll give you an example. Many companies when they’re very small, the salespeople tend to say yes to everything. Part of it is because they don’t have an in-house lawyer, but even if they do, it’s a matter of survival. At some point as the company grows, you can’t say yes to everything. One thing that many companies do is they create these deal size thresholds for negotiating the contract.
If you are trying to convince a buyer to purchase whatever you’re offering and they are not going to spend above, we’ll call it $50,000. There is no negotiating of the contract. You have to use our paper. That can be tough on the sales rep, but what’s also helpful for the sales rep is knowing that ahead of time. If in-house lawyers educate the sales team on these thresholds early on, then what the salesperson can do when they have that early meetings is communicate and preview that for the buyer and saying, “We can’t negotiate the contract if it’s below this threshold.”
By setting the right expectations that alleviates a lot of problems downstream, where the buyer down the road, may eventually be okay with no red lines and no feedback. I’m just going on your paper, but I do think that’s like a process example where there is something legal team can do. There’s other things too, but that’s one that jumps out in mind.
I’m thinking here reflecting back on that pipeline and the fact that you don’t just go to lunch with potential customer and close a deal. You’re building a relationship with them over maybe six months or a year. I would imagine that if your legal team hasn’t given you some parameters at the outset and you’re at the one-yard line trying to close. All of a sudden, there’s a bunch of rules and red line. I would imagine that could damage the customer relationship.
It can. That’s why it’s so important to enable the sales team to be aware of these things early on before the contract hits your desk. Now, the problem is that many in-house lawyers are just swamped. It can be hard to do this proactive work. I do view it as critical. People talk about how important it is to build relationships with your business, and stakeholders. Especially if you work with a sales team.
It extends beyond just social and rapport building. You’ve got to deeply understand what the salesperson does on a day-to-day basis, and how you can fit in and help them. Part of that is just giving them a preview of, “If it’s below this number, I can’t negotiate this.” It does require the head of legal to advocate legal team’s considerations with the sales leadership. There’s needs to be a lot of communication that happens at the highest levels.
I couldn’t agree more, and it’s one of those spend time to save time things, especially in a small company. The legal teams is going to be overwhelmed, but you’re going to cut off a lot of friction and work on the back end by being up front with folks about what the expectations are. Again, circling back to like who is our salesperson. When we talked before, you share that salespeople are very competitive and that many times, there’s even like a leaderboard or something where your performance is measured. Talk about that.
Understanding Sales Team Culture & Competitive Mindset
Salespeople in many ways are not too unlike lawyers. We are all very competitive, especially when you’re talking about the day-to-day of a salesperson. Sales manager’s often like to pit them against one another and show the entire team who is doing well and who is not. I remember one of my earliest sales jobs. We had a leaderboard. There were monitors throughout the office and it would stack rank all of us and say who was up and who was down.
One commonly overlooked aspect of a salesperson’s personality is, yes, they care about money but they also care about winning and being good at what they do. They’re very competitive. You have all of these programs among salespeople where if you do well, the leadership will give you like a free vacation to Hawaii or something. They call it Presidents Club. They may have another award for it, but it all goes to show that sales teams are highly competitive. If they are not able to close as many deals as their colleague’s, they’re going to do whatever it takes to win.
What about the sales team’s appreciation of risk? You said it earlier, one of the lawyers job is to manage risk for the company. Do sales people appreciate that? Do they care or they’re just about like, “Move me up on the leaderboard?”
How Salespeople View Risk & Why It Differs From Legal’s Perspective
That’s a good question. It depends. If I were to generalize, I would say they just want to move up on the leaderboard. If you think about the compensation, incentives, and the training they receive, a salesperson is there until the close of the deal. Once the deal closes and the check clears. The compensation comes through and they move on. This is by design, Stacy, because that, if you zoom all the way out to the company leadership level, you need people to care about the short term.
The counterpoint to the in-house lawyer is they appreciate all the risks, but what if some of these risks don’t happen? Who pays for the cost of protecting against risks that aren’t there? It’s almost it’s by design. You have these two teams with competing values. Even if a sales rep is naturally inclined to watch out for risk because of their incentives because of the systems they’re operating under. They may not care about it quite so much.
I’ll add one more thing, which is that if you have a salesperson who’s been in the job for many years and survived this system. It is highly likely that their personality is not one where they worry about risk too much. When I first started in sales, I worked for legal tech company. We hired a lot of former practicing lawyers as sales people and a lot of them did not work out. It’s just a different value system where a lot of folks want to research things. They want to take the time and they say, “I don’t want to call this person until I learn 100 things about them, then I’ll call them.”
Whereas, the salesperson with no legal background will say, “I’ll call 100 people and maybe a couple of them will say, yes.” That second person tended to do better. These different jobs have different profiles where you can succeed in not succeed. I would be willing to bet that if you did these personality tests, you would have a salesperson not care about risk, even without the incentives of the system that they operate in.
I’m also thinking as you’re saying that. That law firm training is great for getting things perfect, making sure all of your punctuations proper, and your fonts the right size. It does tend to condition us to be hyper focused on details and not being able to risk stratify.
That’s exactly right, like prioritizing.
I’m more like you. I see the big picture. Am I going to go to the mat on a choice of venue? If we’re going to fight about me buying some technology software, then we’ve got a bigger problem. I do appreciate the advice to set expectations at the outset. Do you think, in terms of a strategy, would sales people be open to taking some time out of their day and talk with the head of legal or the lawyers about these risk issues about the different provisions in the contract, why they matter and why we care? Is that something they’d be opened to doing?
Aligning Sales & Legal Through Better Communication & Training
I think so, but it has to be simplified. Instead of everything, I would say, “Here are the three most common ones, and why they’re deal-breakers.” If you were to segment your sales team into multiple parts, it’s going to be the ones that deal with the largest contracts. These are people who tend to be more nuanced in the sale. Sales reps who handle large accounts and large deals tend to have a nuanced understanding and understand how building bridges is helpful.
It also happens to be that those are the most highly negotiated contracts, so its most relevant to them. In your organization, you want to think, who is most receptive to this message? It’s probably the most experienced salespeople dealing with the largest deals who have a greater appreciation for the contracting process who are more empathetic in general. I would start with that group. You want to get sales leadership involved but I do think that there has to be a tie-in, like some benefit conferred to the sales team other than, “Can you just help us out.”
It's probably the most experienced sales people dealing with the largest deals who have a greater appreciation for the contracting process, who are more empathetic in general. Share on XHelp us help you.
That’s right. That’s why it’s important to know your audience. Some salespeople who deal with smaller deals, for a variety of reasons, your approach with them may be like, “It’s a hard line. We can’t negotiate this.” Maybe there is room for the larger accounts. The salespeople who deal with the larger deals because those are the ones who have the most likelihood of having their deal impact corporate goals. Knowing who to build bridges with is going to be pretty important.
Relatedly, I’ve had several of my in-house guests talked about this concept and I’m sure it’s not unfamiliar to you. It’s being with the business. Sterling Miller in particular talked about going to his company sales meetings so that he knew like you were talking about with that startup. “This is our number we are trying to hit so that we can be eligible for our next round of funding or we’re trying to close this client. Only that the in-house lawyer has a sense of like all things are not equal. Your baby salespeople trying to close a $10,000 deal. I don’t have time for you. Alex who’s our enterprise sales leader, I want to give him like a standing meeting or something like that.”
How In-House Lawyers Can Stay Ahead Of Growing Sales Teams
That’s valuable. There’s a lot of ways to do that. Certainly, jumping on the meetings with the business but also the rise of contract management systems. You can get a lot of visibility into what’s happening. One thing I always tell in-house lawyers to keep an eye out for is when your company is ramping up sales hiring, especially enterprise sales.
I had a conversation with an in-house lawyer who was forward looking. She correctly identified that the company was trying to grow. There were some leadership changes but they were hiring very aggressively for enterprise sellers. As an in-house lawyer, you can imagine how that could lead to six months down the line, a spike in the number of activity and in workload, too.
You would hope that wouldn’t be a surprise, though, to the GC. You would hope that they’re at the table and hearing like, “We’re trying to hit this goal, so we’re bringing in ten new salespeople. Get ready to support them.”
That’s a good point. The savviest ones do. On the flip side, it’s not all the GCs fault because when they go to their CFO, the CFO may say, “We can’t give you the budget for an FTE. You need to find a way to get this done.” For a quick plug for Latitude, that’s where we provide contract attorneys for that overflow help.
That’s where I meant a lot of these conversations, where people say, “We can’t get a full-time higher but we know that a lot of contracts are coming on the way. Can you provide us some flexible talents, somebody who can do this on an ongoing basis without me needing to use an expensive outside lawyer outside counsel or having an FTE?” The savviest GCs are seeing where the workload is coming in and aligning their resources with the right needs.
Office Hours: How Lawyers Can Be Better At Sales
Resourcing around it. As we’re rounding the bend here, I want to pick your brain on how lawyers can be better at sales. Many of our colleagues do sell professional services. This is my new segment called Office Hours and I got this question from a law firm lawyer. I thought you would be the perfect guest answer it. “I made partner at my firm and I’m trying to build my book of business, meeting new clients, and building relationships with existing clients. What role do “perks” or relationship building efforts, such as dinners gifts and tickets, etc., play in attracting and retaining clients? How do you balance that with professional competence and outcomes?”
That’s a tough one. A good question. I’ll give a consensus view and then I’ll give my personal view. The consensus view is that it’s incredibly important. Law firms do this, but legal vendors do as well. We all set aside a budget for entertainment and gifts. A lot of people do appreciate them. It’s almost like if you don’t do it, you’re losing out on something. I would say that they do play a role.
My personal view is that they are way overstated. There’s this belief that if I could give entertainment or gifts to a client, they will reciprocate by giving me business. The way that it works is that these gifts and entertainment or whatever you want to call it merely open the door. Maybe it’s a busy GC who likes to go to see a specific team and inviting them to an event there. Yes, they’re going to come, but that doesn’t mean that they’re going to necessarily buy what you’re offering.
In fact, I would say that if you want to focus narrowly on what your clients want and need. You want to minimize the entertainment and gift aspect of it. I’m going to give you a story that’s somewhat related but it seems tangential but it will tie into the same principle. Many legal vendors think that hosting CLEs is a great marketing tool. Again, the consensus view that it is. Many busy lawyers who may buy your offering are going to need to get CLEs, so they’re going to show up to your CLE if you offer credit.
My personal view is that, very often, you get a lot of people showing up who want the CLE and have no interest in what you’re offering. What happens to me as the vendor, I’m spending a lot of time with a lot of people who have no interest in buying what I’m offering. That CLE adds a lot of noise. If you flip the CLE into a webinar on a topic that’s related to your offering, you’re going to get a smaller audience.
It will be a lot harder to get people to show up. The ones that do, you know that they’re interested. That will help you longer term to make the sales. To your audience member, I would say they do play a role but don’t overdo it. Make sure that your client is getting out of the relationship. Something that they’re interested in beyond the gift or entertainment.
It’s what you’re saying, it needs to be tailored and you need to look at what’s the goal. When I get invited to dinner or some a social thing, I think of, “Is it just they’re trying to sell me? Is it somebody I like and I want to get to know them better?” I certainly don’t make buying decisions based on if somebody’s taking me or wants to take me out somewhere. By the way, my company has a conflicts policy and I’m not allowed to accept meals, dinners, drinks, or anything. It adds a layer of awkwardness for me.
On the CLE front, I will tell you there’s one firm that I’ve been to. They do an annual. In California, we have a compliance deadline at the beginning of the year, as you may know. When they highlighted people in their firm who handled interesting complex cases and they could showcase this person as super smart and this his creative way we handle the case. I did hire them for other things but it wasn’t like the peanuts teacher like just click the box. I do agree with you that it has to be tailored. It’s just not a one-for-one.
As you say, what could work for one firm may not work for another. It seems like the one that you went to was very effective. I’ve seen effective CLEs. The broader point is that, if you’re offering something that someone will go to that’s unrelated to what you’re doing, then it’s not likely to lead to business. I don’t know if you’re readers are from a large law firm. I have observed anecdotally that the large firms tend to throw money at a lot of things and maybe that works. I have not been part of that world.
I’ve worked for leaner startups and smaller companies. We’ve had to be very discerning about what types of gifts and entertainments we use. One thing I’ve noticed is, for this segment you don’t need to give something very fancy. To your point, a lot of in-house lawyers do feel uncomfortable with it. That doesn’t mean that you can’t add value, because what we found is that if we create a networking event, they know.
It’s because they get to meet each other and that is the value. It doesn’t feel creepy or wrong. It’s just like you’re getting out there and meeting people, like, “By the way, Latitude happens to be the host of it and is paying for the drinks.” It’s like not a big thing. Finding ways to add value to your clients is the most important thing beyond how much it costs.
Finding ways to add value to your clients is the most important thing beyond how much it costs. Share on XAlex Su, The Meme Lord
That’s perfect. I couldn’t agree with you more. Last question. It’s a softball, and I’m very intrigued to what it might be. What is your pump-up song?
It changes over the years, Stacy. It’s Not Like Us by Kendrick Lamar. After the Super Bowl, I feel like everyone knows the song now, but that’s my pump-up song for now.
Alex, great to have you. Thanks so much.
Thanks for having me, Stacy. This was a lot of fun.
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About Alex Su
Alex Su leads sales and marketing efforts for Latitude Legal.
Alben is engaged in both research and policy development relating to Cybersecurity, Anti-Trust issues relating to Big Tech and the ethical conundrums created by Artificial Intelligence. He also is working on implementation of The California Consumer Privacy Act.
Prior to joining Latitude, Alex spent nearly fourteen years working at the intersection between law and innovation. Previously, he held a range of sales and marketing roles at emerging startups serving the legal sector and was most recently the Head of Community Development at Ironclad, a contracts technology company.
In addition to his sales and marketing experience, Alex has an active presence on social media. He has over 250,000 followers on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok and publishes a newsletter called Off The Record that discusses unique career paths, business development, and the future of work. Alex is a member of the Fastcase 50, a group of visionaries and leaders who are “leading the charge on innovation in the law.”
Alex graduated from the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law in 2010 where he served as an editor of the law review and was the student commencement speaker. He is a former associate at Sullivan & Cromwell and clerked for the Hon. Edmond E. Chang of the Northern District of Illinois. Alex is a New York native who now lives in Alameda with his wife and their two children.
