The BD habits your best lawyers aren't doing that's costing your firm growth

In episode 35 of the Empowering Law Firm Leaders podcast, Matt joins Amy Bruce, marketing director at Osprey Approach, to pick up where episode 18 left off. In that earlier conversation, Matt Dixon – co-author of The Activator Advantage – introduced the research behind the book, including the five partner profiles and the finding that only one of them consistently drives growth. This episode moves from the research to the reality, exploring what has happened when firms have tried to put those ideas into practice.

In this conversation, Matt Kelly, Chief Experience Officer at DCM Insights, shares what a year of embedding business development training inside law firms has actually revealed. He reflects candidly on what has shifted, where firms continue to struggle, and the practical steps leaders can take to make behaviour change stick.

In this conversation we cover:

• What the past year has revealed about how law firms respond when they encounter this research
• Why behaviour change is harder than knowledge transfer – and what actually makes it stick
• How the most effective leaders close the gap between growth strategy and daily reality
• The BD Rhythm principle: why consistency outperforms episodic effort every time
• What separates firms making genuine progress from those that went back to business as usual

What the past year has revealed about how law firms respond

“The traditional, organic or acquired approaches to business development no longer guarantee success in a market experiencing significant change. What we find is that small, strategic, and intelligent changes in the approach to BD – changes that are responsive to what’s happening in today’s market – are most consistently equated with success.” That is the framework in a single thought, and it is the lens through which DCM Insights has spent the past year working with firms across the market.

Two observations have shaped Matt’s thinking over those twelve months. The first is the reach of the problem. Interest has extended to some of the most elite practices in the market, firms where, historically, work arrived without being actively pursued. “The changes in the market are a tide that’s rising, and it’s starting to reach inside even some of the most elite postcodes,” Matt says. “That’s been an interesting revelation over the last six months or so.”

The second observation concerns how change actually takes hold. “A lot of people conceptualise it as a blast-off from the launch pad. In its most effective incarnation, it’s more like consistent ripples that flow out from a centre of change and relentlessly remind the firm that there is something they can be doing slightly differently.” That image, ripples rather than a rocket launch, reflects the mechanics of change inside a partnership, where a single large intervention rarely produces lasting results, and small, persistent nudges tend to compound over time.

Why behaviour change is harder than knowledge transfer – and what actually makes it stick

“Business development in law is not a skills problem – it’s a behaviour change problem.” That distinction sits at the heart of everything Matt has learned from running these programmes. Reading the research is not the same as acting on it, and the classroom experience has sharpened his understanding of what the gap between the two looks like in practice.

“So many preconceptions coming in are that if you’re a people person, if you’re an extrovert, you’re going to be better at business development. Not true. We have an equal number – maybe even a larger number – of activators who are very successful and who happen to be introverts.” The framework gives participants a language for what is already working, and a way to future-proof the areas that are presenting risk as the market continues to shift towards more formal, consensus-based buying.

What helps behaviour change stick, Matt explains, is consistency in the company of others. “It’s heartening to see partners schedule time with each other – not really to report in, but just to know: I’ve got to have something to say about business development, because we know consistency week over week is one of the key ingredients.” Small, strategically placed blocks of time, “15 to 30 minutes, one for planning and one for executing, can deliver huge returns.” And crucially, the approach asks nothing transformative of the individual: “it meets the partner where they are and allows them to adjust the sails ever so slightly towards the prevailing winds.”

Two levers emerge. The first is time reclaimed from long-tail clients – those who cost more to serve than the revenue they generate. The second is a shift from reactive to proactive positioning. “Rather than entering the RFP race alongside everyone else, the most effective business developers find a way to shape and structure demand before a formal process begins. You are helping a client who may not yet fully understand the needs or requirements they have – and that is a much more advantageous position to be in. You are a category of one.”

The BD Rhythm principle: why consistency outperforms episodic effort

“Today’s business development is next year’s billable hour.” That phrase, Matt says, captures why so many firms find themselves in difficulty: they treat business development as something to return to when the pipeline forces it, and then discover that restarting from a standing position is far harder than maintaining momentum.

“When you’ve squeezed the pipeline dry and need to start over, it’s like restarting a cold engine. It’s much harder than keeping a refreshed pipeline of opportunities going.” The programme calls the alternative BD Rhythm: a steady drumbeat of small, consistent increments that keeps momentum alive between peaks of client activity.

The practical illustration Matt offers is telling. A UK-based partner replaced part of his daily commute into central London with three LinkedIn outreaches, “and has developed a number of deals out of that, simply by taking a habit he already had and repurposing a little bit of it for business development.” The underlying principle is linear: “if you are at the 10th percentile of activator behaviours and you move to the 20th, you will see a commensurate rise in revenue generation. Small adjustments, made consistently, compound.”

What separates firms making genuine progress from those that went back to business as usual

A year on, the firms making genuine progress share one recognisable characteristic above all others: leadership that sets a culture of learning rather than treating business development as a one-off initiative. “If leadership can say, look, there’s something different happening today, and we have an obligation and an opportunity to learn, that’s really where it starts.” The firms that stall, by contrast, are often those that believe the idea alone is sufficient.

“Real change happens when people are in the room together, talking with each other, sharing vulnerably what is working and what is not. We ask partners two questions early in the programme: what’s one thing you can offer right now as a business development best practice? And what’s one thing that remains elusive or hard? The amount of vulnerability partners are willing to share – that’s really where the rubber hits the road.” An idea absorbed in isolation, however compelling, does not produce the same effect. “It needs to be investigated, interrogated, and internalised.”

Sustained momentum comes from successive waves rather than a single launch. “The steady drumbeat ones – three or four cohorts a year – send out waves and signals and a kind of grassroots adoption.” Peer stories are decisive in that process. “I am especially interested when there is someone who sat where I sit and can articulate the progress they’ve made. That is especially powerful, far more so than even a well-sourced external voice.”

Small moves, consistent effort, lasting growth

Across this conversation, one theme recurs in every answer: the outsized return that comes from making small, intelligent changes consistently over time. Whether it is 15 minutes of planned business development, three LinkedIn outreaches on a commute, or a fortnightly accountability conversation between two partners, the compounding effect of modest, repeated effort is what separates firms that grow from those that stall.

The message for leaders is equally clear. Culture, not content, is what makes change durable. When partners are given the space to be honest about what is and is not working, and when they see credible colleagues modelling a better way, the ripple effect takes hold. Not with a blast-off – but steadily, persistently, and with results that build year on year.

Watch the full interview with Matt Kelly now to discover more on engineering peer influence inside your firm, the untapped opportunity of mid-career partners, and what Matt wishes he had known at the very start of this work. You will also hear his candid reflections on what genuinely surprised him about lawyers – and why the stereotypes so often fall short.