Law Firm 4.0 Blog

Law Firm CMOs Part 2: LSSO listserve discussion about their future

In my last post, I brought in comments from leading legal marketing consultants from the LSSO listserve discussion called, "Where have all the CMOs gone?"  In Bill Flannery's LSSO listserve post dated February 20, 2010, he said that he has recently interviewed more than 100 law firms in North America and overseas, and there are more than 40 CMO positions open. 

He goes on to say that firm leaders have put those positions on ice, because they are frustrated that the former CMOs failed to drive revenue (I am paraphrasing here) - that there was "very little ROI" on the "marketing things. . . branding, brochures, newsletters, etc." 

Specifically Bill says:

The partners thought they were getting sales when they hired these CMOs and CMOs did the “marketing thing” as they do not have the authority or clout to drive sales.  As you can see from the LMA listserve discussions sales, client teams and account management has not been discussed hardly at all.  The great promise from marketing and branding was that the business would come in without the lawyers having to do much at all.  In other words, marketing was going to make sales unnecessary!  “I went to law school so I would not have to do sales”.  In my case I went to law school to learn how to sell to lawyers.

As a former in-house marketing director and one who works with marketing departments of all sizes, I am saddened that we are still having the above conversation.  First, I don't know any CMOs who believe that branding will drive sales.  As with any multi-million, or multi-billion dollar organization, a branding initiative is a critical business investment - to adjust audience perceptions, clarify and distill messaging, enter new markets, and otherwise communicate a consistent and memorable positioning promise that resonates with constituents.  An effective and well executed positioning strategy and branding campaign saves money in the long run - because all elements of the integrated marketing program are supporting the strategy.  If a lawyer's million-dollar idea is, in fact, a good idea, you'd move forward with it if it supports the strategy. If it doesn't, you would set it aside. 

The rest of Flannery's post continues below: 

The big buzz among Managing Partners and mktg partners is business development, i.e., sales and client teams.  The firms that get it have gone to very structured client teams using firm-wide account planning, similar to what IBM and HP have done for the last 40 years.  LSSO had a Harvard professor speak on this very subject at its annual Chicago meeting.  His conclusions support the conversations that I have been having with firms.  The firms that self-medicated trying to develop client teams on their own have mostly universally failed.  "Client teams" now have a bad reputation in those firms, and chances of revisiting teams are remote.  I am wondering how the clients of these firms might react knowing the lack of collaboration on their matters, and with regard to their future needs.

Because a failed client team and other initiatives are viewed as "marketing," (rather than serious law firm business strategy), many of the CMO jobs are today going unfilled.  What the search consultants have told me (I get 4 to 5 calls a week looking for Chief Business Development Officers) is the pool of people to fill the position of CBDO is VERY small.  That explains why partners are now filling those slots.  At the very large firms the compensation can be as high as $500k plus. 

In all fairness to the CMOs few have sales, client team and account management backgrounds or experience.

We have stats (14,000 partners surveyed worldwide) that indicates the average partner spends less than one hour a week meeting with clients and prospects face-to-face in a business development/sales situation.  No surprise there!  The real problem is that 99% of the lawyers do not want or are not skilled to do business development. Some lawyers spend less than 10 hours a year.  There are recent HBR studies that indicate buyers will not buy from people they have not met and with whom they have trusted relations.  There are no proxies to build trust.  Also internal lack of partner-to-partner trust resulting in client hoarding has become rampant in this economy.  Partners state, “I need to have a portable book of business."

Lateral movement and having one's own book of business rules like never before.  The cultural fabric of these firms is being stretched to the limits.  No one seems to be teaching how to drive firm loyalty.  Free agency has caused many firms to fail.  Firms are beginning to look like NBA teams where a very few number of stars are running the show for their own personal gain.  Daniel Pink’s new book, “DRIVE” gives those of us who value mastery, purpose and self actualization, hope.  Hope unfortunately has limits as a strategy.

Studying the failed firms over the last two decades, the demise of most of these firms is typically driven by a tiny minority of partners.  Practice group marketing has facilitated the demise in almost all of the most recent firm breakups.  Some practice groups in large firms had their own CMOs and became firms within the firm.  The potential departure of significant practice groups remains the single biggest exposure law firms have today.

The other approach of self-medication has been to use former MPs to do BD and client opinion surveys.  I like the commitment, however I remain skeptical that the lawyers will absolutely address and fix the client concerns.

Some firms have fired their entire mktg/BD departments.  Their thinking is, when in doubt about ROI, clean house.  Others have outsourced mktg and use coaches.  The trend I am now seeing emerge is that these outside consultants/coaches are being hired as contract CMOs/BDOs (see the LMA job bank for this description).  Some of the coaches are in the attorney placement business.  They help partners build a book of business then the lawyer shops the book to other firms…very clever.

Because there are no true comparable models on how to grow the business in a recession, I would suggest that CMOs, MP, COO and other stakeholders look outside the legal profession for solutions to the account management and sales challenges.  Forget a client's standard reply “we cut the budget for legal services so we want a discount.”  Most of the business issues that became legal work did not exist as budget items in 2008.  Also the budgets are being set at executive levels ABOVE the legal department.  Raise your and your firm’s contact level to include those who approve the budgets.

These are my thoughts from listening to firms and businesses.

You can reach Bill Flannery directly at [email protected] or (512) 338-1758.

Law Firm CMOs - LSSO listserve discussion about their future

"Where have all the CMOs gone?" is the subject line of an LSSO listserve discussion late last week. Some of the legal marketing/sales industry's top consultants (Silvia Coulter and Bill Flannery, to name two) weighed in on this hot button topic.

Silvia, a consultant with Hildebrandt Baker Robbins, noting that she is seeing the following at firms who are not currently filling open CMO positions (she posted it Friday, February 19, 2010).  These firms have chosen instead to:

1. Have a highly respected partner oversee biz dev and marketing
2. Have a highly respected partner BE the CMO (maybe with the title of marketing partner/business development partner)
3. Go with the director of marketing and director of biz dev who the CMO hired (who needs a CMO when it's all set up kind of thinking)
4. Have marketing managed by the practice group managers (some who are former practicing lawyers, some who came from marketing and are in the practice groups themselves and some who are PD folks)
5. Have marketing/biz dev managed by the COO/ED.

Silvia asks the question:  Have we lost footing in the senior ranks of the profession?  I think the short-term answer is "yes," because the urgency to replace this strategic, more expensive position  following the financially strained years of 2008 and 2009, has taken a back seat to short-term cost savings.

The March 2010 Harvard Business Review is called, "Power out of the Recession."  There is a terrific article called, "Roaring out of the Recession," that states "research notes that 9% of companies come out of a recession stronger than ever" and the authors list how these companies lay the groundwork for success.

The authors talk about post-recesssion winners and losers . . .

"Just who are the postrecession winners? What strategies do they deploy? Can other corporations emulate them? According to our research, companies that master the delicate balance between cutting costs to survive today and investing to grow tomorrow do well after a recession. Within this group, a subset that deploys a specific combination of defensive and offensive moves has the highest probability—37%—of breaking away from the pack. These companies reduce costs selectively by focusing more on operational efficiency than their rivals do, even as they invest relatively comprehensively in the future by spending on marketing, R&D, and new assets. Their multipronged strategy, which we will discuss in the following pages, is the best antidote to a recession."

They go on to note that:  "Companies that only cut costs heavily during a downturn don't flourish after it ends."

So, let's go back to the open law firm CMO positions.  Those of us who have been in legal marketing a long time have seen highly effective and successful CMOs. In most cases, these professionals have had success at one or more law firms, and some have recently left their current firms and are now CMOs at other large law firms.   What makes these professionals successful and sought-after? 

They have the same qualities and talents that Fortune 500 CMOs have:  rigor, resourcefulness, intelligence, ambition, courage, a brain that is balanced in its rightness and leftness, a sense of humor, and decades of relevant experience in sales and marketing operations.

My advice to the law firms who are putting the CMO position on hold is -- don't.  Prepare your firm to hire a strong CMO; do the hard work up front -- analyze what makes your firm unique, know what your top rainmakers and practice leaders need in terms of support, then find the candidates who  have a track record of success.  If you don't know how to get started with this critical analysis, call me at 214.351.9690 or email me at [email protected] -- just don't wait.  Your overly defensive, wait-and-see position won't pay off long-term.

In my next post, I'll add more from this LSSO discussion.

The "How to Get Things Right" Lawyer Checklist

(Guest post by Keith Wewe)

 

While passing time during the Olympic commercials, I wandered upon a book review (http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_08/b4167079069773.htm) in Business Week of “The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right” by Atul Gawande.  It’s the byline that caught my eye – “How tragic errors can be sharply reduced with a piece of paper, hand-drawn boxes, and a pencil.”

 

The author examines how the ever-simple and lowest-tech checklist can greatly improve outcomes. Successful examples include a decrease in infection rates at hospitals, the triumphant flying of the Boeing B-17 in World War II and the heroic landing of US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River.

 

Where is the example of the lawyer and a satisfied client?

 

It occurs to me that as we enter the 4.0 era of client service we should not forget to check-off the basic tenets of client happiness. The forget-me-nots below (an homage to Valentine’s Day) are must-do’s for any lawyer working with any client.

 

· Return the client's phone call within 2 hours (or have your designee do so)

· Provide unbilled value to client by making introductions and peer connections for her

· Demonstrate willingness to understand the client's business in his terms

· Take a critical eye to all invoices before they are sent

· Identify potential landmines long before they explode.

 

This checklist may seem simple and old-school (attorneys have been talking about this for decades), but how often are the individual elements forgotten?  Add them to your daily client service canon – write them down, actually do them, and you’ll create the best foundation on which to build a successful (and mutually profitable) client relationship.

 

But don’t stop here. Create a Post-it® note checklist (that's how simple it can be) for your client service and marketing activities to ensure compliance. In client loyalty interviews, we often hear that it is these basic relationship investments that set one lawyer above the others in the fray.

 

If you want some free feedback on your checklist, share it confidentially with us -- email me at [email protected]

 

Keith Wewe, Director of Client Service and Growth, Content Pilot LLC

 

 

Google's Super Bowl ad -- Sweet, but at what cost?

I am resisting adding my opinions to the blizzard of commentary about any of yesterday's Super Bowl commercials.  In fact, this post isn't even mine - it's from the Daily Online Examiner.  The post is entitled, "Will Google's Super Bowl ad backfire?"  The author is Wendy Davis. 

Will Google's Super Bowl Ad Backfire?

For years consumer advocates have warned that Google poses a threat to Web users' privacy. Now, Google has provided privacy advocates with new ammunition in the form of a Super Bowl ad.

The spot, Parisian Love, vividly demonstrates just how revealing users' search histories can be. The 52-second ad consists of a series of 11 searches that tell the story of a man (presumably fictional) who falls in love while studying in Paris, moves abroad and gets married. It begins with a search for "study abroad paris france" and ends with a search for "how to assemble a crib."

"It's great that Google used this opportunity to illustrate the importance of search privacy to one of the world's largest audiences," writes Kurt Opsahl of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He goes on to call for Google to anonymize the data after no more than six months, as rival Bing just promised to do.

The fact is, people's search activity reveals a tremendous amount about them -- probably more than they realize. And Google saves every last query and the IP address it originated from for at least nine months.

Consumer advocates -- and regulators in Europe -- have repeatedly pressed Google to shed data within six months at the latest. Of course, even six months is plenty of time to compromise people's privacy. Consider, when AOL released search data about users, the company only made available around three months' worth of query logs -- yet those logs provided more than enough information time to identify specific users like Thelma Arnold.

Google says it will protect users' privacy, but advocates warn that the company might have no choice but to reveal information it has compiled. Courts can issue subpoenas; saboteurs potentially can break into servers. Either way, once the raw data about users becomes known, it can be used to create detailed portraits of individual users, as illustrated by Google itself during the Super Bowl.

Given all the worry about privacy today, this will surely be a topic of discussion in e-discovery and other circles. 

My Super Bowl-watching friends all liked the ad a lot.  Clever.  Sweet.  We all went "awwww."

How to discuss innovation and strategy with lawyers

Nathan Darling, the Director of Client Development and Marketing for Van Ness Feldman in Washington, DC, and the 2010 President of LMA International, has the following suggestions for marketers who want to "brainstorm" ideas with their firm lawyers.

1.  Frame such sessions as "strategy sessions" rather than "brainstorming."  In my experience many lawyers (many people in general!) don't like the idea of brainstorming - too soft and squishy. 

2.  On that note, I've found it hard sometimes to get a group of lawyers from a blank page to something useful.  They (again, with exceptions) don't typically do well when asked to "picture this" or "set a vision" - too abstract.  Instead, engage their desire (and training) for facts and completeness, and ask questions such as "list  clients or prospective clients who might have a need for our services in x area." 

Likewise, using "if, then" constructions often appeals to lawyers' logical minds.  For example, rather than asking for any ideas as to how the firm could build the x practice, consider breaking the session into a series of if-then questions such as "if we want more work from x types of clients, then what steps must we take/who must we get to know, etc." 

A different way of doing this is not to start from a blank page, but to offer a strawman set of proposals, questions, etc. to which the group can react.  The lawyers must see this exercise as absolutely relevant to what they do.

3.  Sometimes, appealing to their competitive nature works too.  While being careful not to imply that a firm should automatically do what the competition does, engaging in a session where lawyers are asked for specific examples of what they've seen other law and consulting firms do can be a good way to tease out ideas that would otherwise go unsaid. 

Consider framing it in the context of your firm's clients (i.e., "Hey Rainmaker, in the work you do with Major Client X, you have occasion to  work with or see a lot of their other consultants and firms.  What do you see that's working, where do you see the client responding favorably or unfavorably -- and what things do you wish we did?").

4.  On the topic of rainmakers - these may be among the more visionary/creative/brainstorming types in your firm.  Enlist their help in guiding these strategy sessions and framing the discussions.  The caveat is that these folks can sometimes absorb all the oxygen in the room and dominate the discussion, so carefully facilitate the discussion so that everyone has a chance to contribute.

 

Law Firm Web Sites: Foundational Best Practice #1 - Communicating your Message

On December 31st, in this blog, Content Pilot announced the 2010 Ten Foundational Best Practices for law firm Web sites. We wait with anticipation American Lawyer Media's announcement of the 2010 AmLaw 100 firms - those law firms whose Web sites we will review against these Ten Foundational Best Practices.  Between now and May 1, 2010, I will preview each of the Ten FBPs, starting today with "Communicating your Message, " the first of the ten.  Perhaps with the exception of foreign languages or personalization, it applies equally to the largest global law firms as it does a local firm with one office.

Remember, the Ten Foundational Best Practices are "foundational" - the must-have elements and features of your site.  These best practices do not address the latest, coolest fringe widgets and functions of today (although they might be added to the Ten FBPs in future years).  Historically, firms focused too much on "cool" and not enough on usability and quick delivery of relevant content. 

The attributes of this first FBP are:

1. Logo, firm name and strategy copy stand out
2. Practice and industry focus are apparent
3. Geographic reach are important (one office/40 offices)
4. Contact info is clear and easy to find
5. The site features:

a. Links to foreign language translations
b. Personalization, if it supports strategy

This FBP is, simply, about the first impression your site makes.  And, in how few seconds your visitor can figure out where to travel next.  Does your home page give a preview of what it's like to do business with you?  How hard does your home page work for you in the critical few seconds you have a visitor's attention?

Your logo should be visible, but not over-power the rest of the page.  It is an anchoring element both navigationally (always linking back to the home page from the interior pages) and design-wise.  But beware of super-sizing it - it's not necessary.  Visitors get it.

"Strategy copy" is a short, compelling positioning statement or short paragraph about your firm.  Resist the temptation to merely recount features (700 lawyers, 10 offices) - that information can be handled elsewhere.  Step out and put your stake in the ground -- capture the position that you can own.  This strategy copy should preview the tone and voice of the rest of the content in the site.  Be critical about it and ensure that you are talking to your visitors about something thaqt matters to them (clients/prospects/new hires, etc.) - not merely focusing internally on the firm.

We recommend cascading navigation that previews your listing of practices and industries. Likewise, use such navigation to list and link to your offices, list them on the site or in the footer navigation on the bottom of the page.  Listing and linking enables visitors to quickly peruse the options and choose the one most relevant to their interest.  The most important benefit to visitors:  you are not wasting their time. 

Many large firms have so many practices and sub-practices that they feel it's impractical or cumbersome to list them in a navigation box or traditional cascade (the list can extend below the fold).  Box navigation (see www.coxsmith.com or www.millerchevalier.com) can accommodate a long list as you can see on the Miller & Chevalier Web site. 

Show personality, show what it's like to do business with you. 

All AmLaw 100 firms are global and represent clients with global operations.  Including foreign languages supports your foreign offices as well as target clients and prospects around the world. 

A terrific example of personalization that supports firm strategy is Davis Wright Tremaine (www.dwt.com).  Visitors can quickly register their preferences so that content that is most relevant to them is pushed to the home page.  DWT's strategy copy is very clear about its bespoke service:  "A law firm devoted to helping our clients achieve success as they define it by providing service customized to their particular needs."

In my next post, I'll jump to Foundational Best Practice #4 - Lawyer Biographies.