Here are three easy ways the industry, company, and practice area intelligence available in JD Supra's Beacon Insights dashboard can support your firm's business development initiatives:
1. Prepare for Better Sales and Client Meetings
Thanks to Beacon Insights, you no longer have to guess what a potential client might want to talk about (or, for that matter, an existing client!). It’s 
all right there.
Build a preparatory brief for your pitch team based on multiple reports, all available in your dashboard: specific issues people in your target company are reading right now; popular topics across the entire industry; subjects their peers/competition are researching.
Turn that information into intelligence to guide your next meeting.
Organize the data into talking points that guide your lawyers in their conversations with clients and prospects alike. Arm your team for business development and sales meetings that are focused on the very questions that targets care about most.
You've heard it time and again from in-house attorneys asked about exemplary client service: "We want outside counsel to know our business, inside and out." Here's how.
2. Write Better Proposals
Law firm proposals are typically organized around detailed descriptions of the firm’s experience. But most potential clients already know that your lawyers have the necessary technical skills – they wouldn’t have asked you to pitch if they didn’t.
Companies also look to proposals to determine whether your attorneys understand their business and the issues that are important to them. The want to hire lawyers that worry about the things they’re worried about. That’s where data can help.
Use the intelligence you find in Beacon Insights reports – again, as above, information on exactly what your targets care about – to make your pitches stand out. Frame the discussion of your skills and experience around very the concerns of those reading your proposal. If you find, for example, that fast-food franchisees are reading about wage & hour law, make sure you specifically reference that in your employment litigation pitch.
3. Surface Actionable Competitive Intelligence
The data in your Beacon Insights dashboard provides a wealth of competitive intelligence, a deep dive into industry trends, market concerns, client information, and more.
Use it to refine your practice growth strategy
Reader data is a leading indicator of what’s actually on the mind of corporate professionals. As Rich Bracken so aptly pointed out in this post, it tells you where opportunities are and where you need to be.
Use it to guide your BD budgetEver wish you had a crystal ball you could pull out at budget time? You might not need one once you start digging into Beacon Insights data, which you can use to identify emerging trends and greenfield opportunities around which you can plan events, attend conferences, and market your practice
Use it to populate your editorial calendarIf the data tells you that your prospective health care clients are interested in, say, data privacy around telemedicine, your health care lawyers should write about that topic. And write about it again. And one or two more times to boot.
Use it to track the competitionBeacon Insights data tells you what the competition is writing about, and how your own efforts stack up in various sectors. It’s a good way to keep tabs on the attention that other firms are getting in your core practices - and where you need to work harder to increase visibility.
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Don't leave anything on the table: Interested in learning how Beacon Insights can support your business development efforts? Let's talk! Submit your contact information on this page...
[Paul Ryplewski is JD Supra's VP of Client Service.]
