Most firms do not spend much time focusing on cross-selling. It’s the rare practice that actively seeks to expand the number of lawyers who are familiar with an account, no matter how many different practice groups work with that client.  The statistics below, recently released on LexisNexis’ blog Make More Rain, show why these issues must be priorities:

— When a law firm serves a client in just one area of law the risk of attrition is 35 percent; when a law firm serves a client in 4 or more areas of law, the risk of attrition is less than 5 percent.

— When five or more law firm partners are involved with a client, fewer than 10 percent of those clients leave the law firm.

This data confirms why we recommend every law firm marketing plan include a formalized cross-selling strategy.  We know cross-selling is not easy and not easy to stay focused upon, but it’s critical to your long term success.    It also saves you both time and money.  It’s well accepted that keeping clients costs less and is far easier than developing new ones.

The second statistic confirms what we had long suspected through anecdotal observation. It’s now moved up on our list of 50+ best practices which we use when evaluating law firm marketing programs.