Integrating marketing, BD, and the work of fee earners

There is a massive amount of confusion regarding the role of marketing in law, accountancy, and other professional service firms. This confusion grows when you add in BD and how these all relate to the work of fee earners. It's no accident that marketing and BD are known as 'fee burners' and relegated to back office (or mid office) functions since many professionals believe them to be exactly that. Even more so, they see little interaction between what they do and how marketing actually adds value to client work. I am going to rock the boat here a little and say that marketing is the foundation of the value that professionals deliver to clients and rather than being a fee burner, fee earning does not exist without it!

The above figure shows the explicit link between marketing (as strategy, in other words the orientation and culture of the firm), firm behaviours, and the link to the manifestations of marketing, BD, and the areas of fee earners work that it affects. What this figure details is that aside from technical advice, clients demand an increasing amount of business advice and industry knowledge that is linked to the technical advice professionals provide. For a professional (and firm) to effectively differentiate themselves in the eyes of the client, they must be able to deliver a level of value (whether through industry and technical know how, responsiveness, pro-activity etc) to clients that is different from what other providers can offer. Additionally, since a marketing culture is associated with job satisfaction and engagement, it acts as a motivator for professionals to engage in individual level market oriented behaviours which are aligned with the needs of clients. In this sense, marketing in its truest form becomes a key pillar in the work of fee earners and what they deliver to clients.

To get people within the firm to accept and fully understand this requires a change process that unfortunately is anathema to most professionals.

More than anything, it is crucial to fully articulate the meaning of marketing and how it differs to BD and the tactical level marketing most professionals recognize as the be all and end all of marketing. This process can be significantly enhanced by finding the pockets of excellence in the firm that this intuitively works well (and probably outside of the stated strategy of the firm) and using these (with senior partners involved in training) as part of innovative learning programmes that go well beyond the standard training of most firms which create little lasting change.

Building the right processes, skills and support is an ongoing process. I have detailed some of this in a presentation I delivered at KPMG (for APSMA in Hong Kong) recently of which some is based on the concepts detailed in Suzanne Lowe's book: The Integration Imperative.