InterAction Attorney B--t C--p

Sunny Bane, Marketing CRM Manager of DLA Piper US LLP
Deborah Holt, President of DH Training & Technology Consulting
Design targeted training sessions for different user groups. How you train and sell the application to a senior partner is different than the approach you would use for a secretary and is different than the approach you would use for a junior associate. Accessibility to attorneys is key so that you can identify their needs and customize the presentation to them.
Map out an ongoing training strategy, communication strategy and incentives (giving out toys). Instead of incentives, you can tap the competitiveness (contests for the best results). Come up with an elevator pitch: This is a client service tool; This is a better tool for tracking and managing the information. You need to stay with the message over the course of training, deployment and refinement. Make it about the content, not the software. Point out the time-saving benefits of using InterAction.
Tackle the know issues and responses:

• "I don't want to share."
• "I don't have the time."
• "The program is too____ ."

Tie in to other departments and front line staff. You need to show the benefit ahead of time to get users to pay attention. To get the attorneys, you need to get the secretaries.
You need to show them the time-saving benefits of InterAction. Offer them incentives and rewards for participation. It may be better to take a slow deployment and ensure data quality. You will lose users if the first thing they run into is bad information in InterAction. That said you should have a clear goal for the time it will take the percentage of contacts for contact resolution.
It is important to establish best practices for incoming attorneys. Deborah's position is to not include InterAction training into lateral training. They will be too overwhelmed with how to use core systems and to begin practicing in a new environment. The strategy is different for first year associates. They just need to learn how to build a collection of contacts. They do not have the problem of going through the "resolution" process of associating contacts into the InterAction database. Deborah also thinks that desk-side training with attorneys can be the best way to show them how to use the system. This can be a time-consuming process. The training should focus on the workflow process the attorney goes through to find information about a contact. For associates, you should also focus on the partnership track for associates. Show them the business development opportunities and information in the system. Increased knowledge of a person can give a competitive advantage. Since you are documenting their business development activities, they can show how much they are doing. There are a different set of challenges for partners. They may think they know the contact information. The pitch can focus on the referral tracking (I have not figured out how to make this work.) Emphasize the tracking abilities. Practice group leaders should be targeted to promote, use and demo InterAction. If that succeeds, they can can spread the word through the practice group. You need to be persistent. The more they hear about the benefits of InterAction, the more likely they will be curious to explore and use. It takes many awhile to get someone to realize the benefits of a new tool.  
UPDATE: I changed the title of this blog post based on request by Lourdes De Armas and her company Attorney Boot Cap (tm). Apparently she obtained a trademark for the use of  Attorney Boot Camp (tm).