As the chief marketing officer in a big-four accounting firm for many years, I was aware of the challenges related to retention of talent in law firm management – as judged by the number of c.v.s I received from law firm marketers. While turnover in the non-revenue-producing areas of all professional services firms is high, law firm turnover provided the greatest candidate supply.
As the president of ZSA, I now see this challenge from a different angle as I work with our law firm management practice to attract talent to law firms.
I never thought of the accounting profession as particularly exciting when compared to law, so what made so many folks want to jump from one professional service to the next? What makes professional-services marketers in general thrive and survive, and what should you be thinking about when hiring the next person for your marketing or business development team?
In my experience, senior marketers – those that have thrived within professional services firms – live by three rules:
- Be patient: manage your expectations and those of your clients.
- Listen: what does your client really want and can you deliver?
- Pick your spots: go where you are wanted or valued.
Be patient: It takes time to adapt to change, and for most partners, trusting an outsider to develop and oversee the execution of the marketing plans that will drive business development and take carriage of the firm’s brand isn’t easy. Unlike sales, marketing results are not quickly or easily quantified – it will take some patience on your part to see the return on investment (ROI) from marketing efforts.
Even with your support and a firm consensus that it needs to be done, it’s difficult for law firms to get all of their practices to fall in line and let marketing do its job. You have a chance at starting a successful journey together – but only if there is agreement on what can be delivered in reasonable time frames, the available resources and the support in place.
Marketers won’t be able to demonstrate the ROI in a single quarter – marketing a firm isn’t traditional product marketing. The firm needs to stay focused on deliverables at the same time as setting the groundwork for the addition of new elements to the marketing mix.
Listen: Marketing and co-ordinating business development are two different jobs. Has your firm already defined and determined a marketing plan and the importance of various elements in that plan? What do you want your senior hire to do in order to create and add value? Is it client opportunities, marketing materials, logos in print, newspaper quotes? You need your new marketing guru to execute the programs that you value, but at the same time you need to be mindful of their expertise and open to their ideas – which may not be in your current plan.
You relationship with a marketing executive will only be successful if you have a clear understanding of what you expect of them versus what they can reasonably deliver. If you want weekly media coverage, they can produce press releases and by-lined articles, but they can’t assure that the material gets picked up by a media outlet or that a journalist leads with a quote from your firm with a photo above the fold.
If you only want someone to execute a plan developed by the lawyers in the practice, don’t hire someone who has strength in marketing strategy and planning. Hire the expertise you need and then leverage it.
Pick your spots: Some partners will want and need marketing services, while others won’t see the need for such an investment. Both sets of partners will benefit from an experienced marketer and marketing plan, but only one of these groups will be open to working with marketing and enjoying the early successes.
I advise marketers to pick their spots by identifying the areas of business, the specific partners and the aspects of a marketing mix that will have the greatest impact. This, in turn, needs to be balanced against some early wins to convince your reluctant partners to come on-side. Identify those practices, events, or cities that have high potential for expanded market- or mind share. For example, find an opportunity for a willing, articulate partner to speak at a high-profile conference. Then, share that success with the firm when the ghost-written presentation is printed, reproduced for your clients, handed out at the conference and highlighted on the firm website. You won’t be surprised when the reluctant partner comes on-side. Find the single partner who is keen to accept communications training and works in a practice area where the expertise is demanded by the media. Let marketing work with this spokesperson for the early media win. Be mindful that your best spokesperson is not always going to be the most senior partner in a group.
Professional services marketing is unique and those qualified to do it are rare. The skillset and experience required are different from those needed for a product marketer and very different than those of a trained and experienced lawyer.
The firms that understand the value a solid marketing department can bring to the bottom line over time will have a competitive advantage in a very competitive legal marketplace, and in a very tight talent pool.
Colleen Albiston is President of ZSA Legal Recruitment - Canada’s largest legal recruiter. She spent eight years as director of marketing for Ernst & Young in Canada. Colleen holds an MBA from the University of Toronto. The ZSA Law Firm Management Practice, under the leadership of Carolyn Berger, identifies talent in marketing, finance, professional development, and knowledge management.