Masterclass: Facing up to a new age

Marketing has evolved rapidly in the legal profession, with business development now proving essential to law-firm management. This masterclass demonstrates how firms can get the most out of their business-development professionals.

By Dean Whiteford, global director of practice development and Armilene Coronel, marketing communications manager, White & Case LLP, New York

As corporations continue to merge, streamline their legal panels and, as the legal market becomes more global and competitive, the role of the traditional legal marketer will continue to be increasingly strategic in its focus. Today’s business-development manager commands heightened responsibilities, faces increased challenges and expectations, and is a key player in the development and profitability of the law firm’s practice. This article will explore the evolution of the business-development function in law firms, identify best practices to raise the profile of the business-development network, and address the challenges and recommend methods for establishing an effective business-development process within law firms.

The evolution of the business-development function

During the late 1990s the (then) ‘Big Five’ accounting firms became increasingly aggressive in the way they went to market and, specifically, how they went to market against each other. In recent years, major law firms have also become aggressive in addressing their global business-development and
go-to-market strategies.

A key element in the development of this focus and of these strategies has been the evolution of the role of the business-development specialist within the law firm’s marketing function. Where previously the primary focus of a firm’s chief marketing officer and the marketing department was directed towards communication, media and branding initiatives, more attention and resources are now being deployed towards business-development activities. This progression has been evolutionary in nature, and will continue to develop and mature as law firms embrace the need to have a clear business-development strategy and discipline. As part of this process, law firms have recognised the need to place a greater emphasis on the integral role that business-development professionals need to play for these strategies to succeed.

A significant challenge facing business-development professionals is correlating the growing importance and complexity of their roles with the need for a more sophisticated skill-set to meet escalating demands. That is, as law firms increasingly embrace and elevate the importance of the role, so contemporaneously, business-development professionals need to advance their expertise and skill-sets to not only meet these needs, but also to continue to be the driving force behind the development and advancement of the process. This places increased demands on business-development professionals, but also places growing demands on chief marketing officers as they find that they need to balance their (relatively) more traditional responsibilities of directing firm efforts around media, communication and brand development with the now expanding requirement to partner with firm leadership to drive the development of the firm’s business strategies and initiatives.

Key responsibilities of the business-development professional in today’s law firm

The business-development role can be considered to involve five key areas of responsibility. The first two are the deliverables that the function actually provides to the partners:

1. Business strategy;

2. ‘Delivering the firm’ (client pitches, RFPs, media hits, client events etc).

The other three key areas of responsibility enable the business-development function to deliver on the first two areas:

3. Optimal utilisation of resources;

4. Efficient information sharing;

5. Professional development.

We expand on each of these areas below.

1. Business strategy

This includes the preparation of strategic business plans that have both a long and short-term vision of where the firm is headed, and include an analysis of factors such as cross-practice opportunities and cross-border issues. The ability to build a comprehensive, strategically focused business plan is a core skill for the business-development professional. An integral part of the business plan is the identification of key clients that the firm believes will most impact future profitability and success. The business-development professional should play a central role in developing and maintaining client plans for these clients, and work with partners to develop ideas for building relationships and business. The key responsibility is to help keep partners focused on meeting their relationship and business-generation goals with each client.

Building a client-relationship-development mindset and firm culture, and having a discipline around its implementation and ongoing efforts, is crucial to the success of any key client-programme strategy. The key to business development has always been, and always will be, institutionalizing, developing and nurturing relationships with key clients that your firm wants to do business with. It is essential for the future success and profitability of the firm to develop these long-term client relationships.

The business-development professional needs to work with partners to identify these key clients and relationships, and to actively help plan, focus and monitor these structured relationship-building activities. As this process matures and law firms get larger, more complex, and become more truly global in focus, so will the business and client-planning process become more complex and demanding for the business-development professional.

2. Delivering the firm

When working with partners on client pitches and RFPs, it is essential that business-development professionals get involved as early as possible in the process. The earlier we are involved, the greater the impact we can have on the success of the whole process. It is important to remember that business is rarely won by the production of an impressive, glossy document. What wins business are existing and established client relationships, developing an understanding of clients’ needs and issues, and then using this understanding and knowledge to focus the strategy for the RFP or pitch. Even when pitching for business where relationships are not strong, the RFP process will often provide client-meeting opportunities. If structured carefully, these meetings can provide opportunities to begin building relationships and gain substantial information on the clients’ needs and issues. This extra effort will demonstrate your firm’s sense of commitment to understanding your client’s needs and to building long-term relationships, and can substantially improve your chances of delivering winning proposals.

3. Utilising resources

Efficient resource management encompasses the development and maintenance of various collateral materials, multiple databases, intranet sites, client extranet sites and related client-relationship-management (CRM) tools and technologies. Optimal organization of these tools is essential to running an efficient and effective business-management function. Not only does this save time and resources, but it also helps identify opportunities for developing new business, and delivers tools that our clients are going to increasingly demand and expect – for example, extranet sites. The major consulting firms have used extranet sites extensively for some time. Their clients have come to simply expect that these sites will be provided and that they will be maintained at a very high standard.

4. Communication: Sharing information

Developing, sharing and communicating best practices and information, not only within the business-development and marketing functions, but firm-wide, is essential to team effectiveness. As law firms grow and employ increasingly larger numbers of business-development professionals, the ability to actively manage the information-sharing process becomes essential – otherwise the effort and time that one practice group or office spends developing a great process and best practice will be replicated unnecessarily by other practice groups or offices if the end product is not efficiently and effectively communicated to the business-development network. Thus, the opportunity to take existing best practices and to continuously improve upon the processes and product will be hindered or lost.

5. Teamwork

It is an understatement to say that the role of the business-development professional is a challenging one; factors such as a competitive marketplace, demanding partners and often short deadlines influence the work process. Critical to success is the ability of the business-development professional to team and work closely with the partner group. This rapport is built by business-development professionals demonstrating their skills in understanding the issues faced by the practices and lawyers, the issues faced by their key clients, and identifying resultant business opportunities.

It is therefore very important to develop a sense of ‘team’ and shared endeavour within the business-development network. Getting business-development professionals to work together to share best practices and information, and to provide back-up and moral support to fellow team members, is essential.

To support these goals, there needs to be a programme and process implemented to help develop the skill sets of professionals across the network. The objective of this programme includes not only the professional development of direct reports and colleagues, but also of one’s self. A further ‘teaming’ responsibility is to develop a process to help integrate new business-development professionals into the network as seamlessly as possible.

Raising the profile of the business-development network

Some of the major challenges facing the business-development functions of all law firms and, indeed, all professional-service firms, is not only the increasing demand on the skills and capabilities of the professionals within the network, but the levels of acceptance of the role of the practice-development professional by various partner groups across the firms. One of the important challenges we face as business-development professionals is effectively communicating an understanding of the key elements and focus of our roles – or, at least, what our roles should be.

A very effective method that our firm has used is developing a clearly communicated and understood goal-setting process between business-development professionals and their direct partner groups. The objective of the process is to generate an acceptance and understanding of the value of business development to the firm by working closely with firm, practice group and office management to set realistic and agreed-upon goals. The process of agreeing and setting specific goals up front each year with partners enables business-development professionals to work with their partner group to identify, gain support, and prioritise key and strategic projects for the year.

To be effective and help achieve the objective of raising the profile and generating awareness of the value of the contribution of business-development professionals, goals need to be set as follows.

Specific (as to results and responsibilities)

Identify several key projects that are not only considered strategically important, but will have an impact on the performance of the group or firm. That is, develop a list of ‘must do’s’ that will make a difference and can be delivered. Additionally, include goals around areas that are considered key in supporting the network and enabling future success (for example, acquiring, developing or building information-sharing tools such as extranet and intranet sites or a CRM database).

Measurable (to the degree possible)

Set goals that are measurable. For example:

Work with partners to develop seven (identified) client plans by the end of the first quarter
Help grow relationships with key client ‘A’ from five to ten (identified) executives;
Work with partners to identify five opportunities in the (targeted) industry;
Ensure extranet sites are developed for top-ten clients by the end of the second quarter.

Agreed (between business-development professional and key partners)

Once ideas are developed, meet with partner groups to agree and prioritise projects and goals, and set timelines. It is important to agree and confirm with partners the level of support that they undertake to provide to business-development professionals to enable them to achieve their respective goals.

Challenging (but achievable)

Set goals that will be challenging, rewarding to accomplish and, when achieved, will have an impact.

In line with both practice and firm strategy

The overall objective of the business-development network is to be in sync with, and to help identify, support and drive the strategic business-development objectives of the firm. All the goals above therefore need to be a reflection of each team member’s contribution to this objective.

Dean Whiteford is global director of practice development and Armilene Coronel is marketing communications manager at White & Case LLP, New York. They can be contacted at dwhiteford@ny.whitecase.com and ascoronel@ny.whitecase.com respectively.