Eric G. Dewey

Eric Dewey, MBA, has advised and coached lawyers and other professional service providers for more than 30 years. A former Chief Marketing Officer of four large law firms, he has coached hundreds of lawyers and advised dozens of law firms in business development, marketing, practice management, and lateral recruiting. He has held senior marketing and business development positions in a variety of professional services firms gaining insights from a variety of industries including financial services, commercial real estate, and management consulting. His breadth of experience enables him to bring innovative strategies and creative business development solutions to lawyers and law firms of all sizes.

Dewey is known for his innovations in legal marketing. He created the first lateral performance study with The American Lawyer and has developed new methods and techniques in legal business development research, attorney selling skills, outreach techniques, and cross selling effectiveness. He introduced new concepts such as 'reverse client interviews,' the three main differentiation strategies, and created a simple model for lawyers to understand the position of their practice in the marketplace and in their client's perspective.

His sales methodology, Buyer-Aligned Selling, urges lawyers to meet prospects where they are in their internal buying decision process, a stage of the buying-selling cycle that is not addressed in any other legal sales methodology. His writings dispel the conventional wisdom that one sales method can work for all selling situations and for all practice areas. Instead, he lays out how to identify the specific stage of the buying-selling process and identifies the four main selling situations and the sales methods required for each that lawyers can use to win engagements. These include an education sales strategy, a incumbent displacement sales strategy, a competitive positioning sales strategy, and a decision strategy sales method.

Dewey is the creator and co-author of the legal industry's first study of lateral hiring performance. The study, Surmounting the Lateral Partner Hiring Challenge: Lessons Learned, Best Practices and Tools for Success, is a 2016 publication of The American Lawyer. He is the author of numerous publications on legal marketing and business development and has been featured in a variety of publications including Law Practice Management, The American Lawyer, Legal Marketing Strategies, The Recorder and numerous others. Dewey frequently speaks on the subject of business development training and coaching, lateral recruiting, competitive and client research, and has been a featured speaker at The Association of Legal Administrators, The Legal Marketing Association, The American Association of Law Librarians, The American Bar Association, and numerous other conferences and law firm retreats.

Watch for Eric's upcoming book, Buyer-Aligned Selling for Legal Services. How Lawyers Can Sell More By Selling Less.

Eric holds an MBA from Ohio University and professional certifications in financial services marketing and commercial real estate marketing from the University of Colorado and the University of Michigan respectively.

Eric can be reached for speaking, coaching and training engagements at 502-693-4731 or by email at ericgdewey@gmail.com