|
 By Stephen Ruben, Valuelaw
Consulting Inc., New
York, N.Y. Stephen can be reached at
212.255.2989, stephen.ruben@valuelaw.com and
www.valuelaw.com.
A panel of five law firm
marketers discussed, debated and explored the questions and
quandaries of staffing a law firm marketing department at a Web
seminar broadcast recently by Law Journal Newsletters.
The panelists
included:
- Moderator Betiayn Tursi, the
Director of American Lawyer Media, Law Journal Newsletters, in
New
York.
- Linda Sedloff
Orton, President of
Intelligent Marketing Solutions Inc. in
New
York
- John
Asperger, Director of
Marketing & Communications for Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw in
Chicago.
 - Roberta Montafia,
Chief Marketing
Officer of Day, Berry & Howard of
Hartford
CT.
- Craig Levinson,
Director of business
Development and Marketing at Brown Raysman Millstein Felder &
Steiner LLP of New York, N.Y.
- Sandra
Napoli-D’Arco,
Director of Marketing and Communications at Freeborn & Peters
LLP in Chicago,
IL
Linda Sedloff Orton, President of Intelligent Marketing
Solutions Inc. in New
York, began by discussing the who, what,
when and where of a marketing needs assessment (“MNA”). She suggested that an MNA be
conducted after a change in either management or marketing partner
and before hiring outside consultants, inside senior staff or before
commencing a major project. The goals of an MNA include gaining
knowledge, making changes in people or projects, increasing
revenues, improving relationships and the all-important appeasing
partners or clients.
The 10
ways to create marketing departments
 John
Asperger, Director of
Marketing & Communications for the global firm Mayer, Brown,
Rowe & Maw LLP gave and expanded on his list of ways to build a
marketing department:
- Align expenses with
resources. Will what the firm spends
be sufficient to meet their expectations?
- Don’t get ahead of the
firm. Be aware that
revenue per attorney is the goal not marketing
output.
- Empower
people ensure that
decision-making is spread around and a avoid hierarchical
structure.
- Create what is needed
by the firm’s culture.
For example, if a lawyer is academically oriented and can
write well, encourage the lawyer to write in publications as a
marketing vehicle.
- Use internal resources
before going to outside marketing consultants or experts
(with the exception of
certain obvious technical, printing, creative and artistic
resources that are not part of internal
resources).
- When
hiring staff, Asperger
look for the best person based on character, experience and
other personal and professional traits rather than trying to
find the perfect specialist for each
position.
- Recognize that constant
battling with the lawyers is counterproductive.
Being right is not as important as being respected by the
partners so that you can live to fight another day. Sometimes you
just have to give in!
- Be a guerilla, not a
redcoat. The firm is not about you,
it’s about them. Learn to operate behind the scenes and never
claim credit for a new client or other firm
successes.
- If you are in a firm that
has many offices or is global in nature, think of the firm as a
whole in your marketing efforts. Don’t get caught up with
the more provincial concerns of your own office but keep a global
view.
- Create a marketing
department that shows enthusiasm and creativity, and is a
fun place to work where people care about their work and exceed
expectations.
Shifting
responsibilities
 Roberta Montafia, Chief Marketing Officer of Day, Berry
& Howard of
Hartford, CT, spoke on how responsibilities
of law firm marketers are shifting from
·
directory listings, tombstone advertising brochures,
seminars, newsletters, civic involvement, and bar journal articles,
to
·
the more sophisticated demands of today including competitive
intelligence, client surveys, research driven advertising, custom
RFPs, client service teams, sales training, financial analysis
(retention/profitability) and prospecting.
She asserted that marketing
department size is a function of maintaining a balance between the
functions, the financial resources and the firm’s expectations. In the foreseeable future
Montafia sees:
·
Increasing sophistication.
·
A
greater demand for and scrutiny of value from the marketing
department.
·
The continuation of placement of
specialists as departments grow.
·
Higher salaries to reward increased productivity and to keep
good people.
·
A
growing place for outsourcing resources to meet the needs of
specific projects.
She concluded that CMOs
ought to focus on obtaining and retaining quality people, clarifying
the role and expectations of each department member, and recognizing
that each individual must demonstrate the value of their efforts as
a return on investment.
Communicating with
management
 Craig Levinson, Director of Business
Development and Marketing at Brown Raysman Millstein Felder &
Steiner LLP of New York, N.Y., gave a well-crafted talk on
communicating with firm management and when to outsource, and opined
on a model for communicating with management. He suggested that there were
three main components:
- Manage partners’ expectations on each significant
task.
- Build a
financial case for each new staff hiring.
- Sell internally
by using sales tactics to position marketing expenditures as
returns on investment rather than as
costs.
His rationale for managing
expectations on a task-by-task basis is twofold. First if management
consistently signs off on the objectives, the resources and the time
required for each task, they are more likely to understand the need
for more staff at a later point. Additionally, you can more easily
answer concerns, address resources and task time later if the
expectations are agreed to and put to writing at the outset.
Hiring
staff
To manage expectations
Levinson uses a protocol called MOST-T provided to him by Mike
O’Horo of Sales Results Inc. in
Arlington, VA, which stands for:
- MISSION: What is to be accomplished (e.g.,
narrow the mission to realistic proportions?)
- OBSTACLES: What are the barriers to
competition?
- SITUATION: e.g. Is the task environment
hostile or supportive?
- TALENT & RESOURCES: Do you have the
personnel, funds, other support required to be successful?
- TIMING: What are the time parameters for the
task? Are they realistic?
To secure a budget
that increases the size of the department, management must be sold
on the likely financial benefits on an ongoing basis. Partners must be made aware
that:
- With growth comes
increased spending and increased marketing, e.g., increased
staffing.
- Surveys have shown that
2/3 of competitive law firms spend between 2% and 7% of revenues
on marketing.
- Your firm’s spending
should not be far behind the main competitors, or your firm will
be left behind
- If your firm’s marketing
expenditure is at 2% of revenues or less, you can make a
compelling case for more hires.
When attempting to make a
specific hire one must also make a financial case. Examine the costs of a new
hire’s salary and overhead vs. the cost of outsourcing that
work. If, for example,
the salary and overhead costs of a designer are far less (or more)
than the cost of an outside design firm, then a financial case is
made.
Levinson asserted that if
one desires to retain the services of an outside consultant (e.g. a
sales consultant) for specific limited tasks, one will require sales
skills of his or her own to influence that decision. The partners
will generally focus only on the cost of a consultant. A skilled
marketing director can guide them through an investigative process,
where the partners see the losses incurred from not taking
action to address a recurring problem. At his
firm, he got the partners to recognize
the underutilization of their rolodexes and
the resulting amount of dollars (in
the millions) that was being left on the
table. Once the partners saw the potential returns,
the initial investment in an outside consultant did not seem as
daunting.
Hands-on
managing
Sandra Napoli-D’Arco, Director of Marketing and Communications
at Freeborn & Peters LLP in
Chicago, IL, talked of the value of being
a hands-on marketing executive within the firm, within the
department and within industries. She
recommends:
Within the firm you:
- Get involved in committee
and practice group meetings.
- Communicate with practice
group coordinators.
- Attend the annual
partner’s retreat.
- Make daily rounds within
office -- don’t sit in your office.
- Be a player. Approach every
initiative from a strategic point of
view.
Within the marketing
fepartment itself you:
- Empower the marketing team
by allowing them to take ownership of projects
- Be aware of all initiatives entering and leaving department
- Sign off on everything prior to leaving the department.
- Develop departmental performance standards that everyone on
the marketing team buys into.
- Keep organized separate files for RFPs, presentations, ads,
sponsorships, PR, etc. so that all previous projects are easy to
locate.
Within industries
you:
- Know your competitors,
their strengths and weaknesses and competitive advantages and
disadvantages.
- Know the legal and legal
marketing industries and be able to share valuable information
with partners.
- Stay on top of client
industries, current trends, growth data, potential needs for
(reductions in the need for) legal services and share that
information with partners.
- Identify other industry
trends that may apply to your
firm.
Napoli-D’Arco spoke
powerfully of the necessity for the department to stay on message.
She emphasized that communication between the head of marketing and
the marketing team is crucial.
Each member of the team needs to be on the same page at all
times, speaking the same language. Mixed signals are deadly to
the credibility of the department and the firm.
Excellent internal
communication doesn’t happen automatically. She holds weekly
departmental meetings.
Discussions revolve around the prior week’s initiatives and
projects in the pipeline. To increase the understanding of what’s
going on outside the marketing department, partners from different
practice areas are invited to talk about their practice group,
targets, goals, etc.
You can’t be hands-on unless
you have easy access to everything that is occurring. So all projects are logged
in an Excel. This process allows
marketing to provide realistic expectations based on concrete
information.
Napoli-D’Arco emphasized the
importance of the team being organized. With many projects coming in
and out, it is very easy to drop the ball. She recommends teaching
staff or sending them to a seminar to learn organizational
skills. |
