Professional services firms – and their marketers - can thrive under very different circumstances
Many professional services adapted well to the short-term challenges imposed by the global pandemic. Leaders of these organisations now enjoy unprecedented opportunities to reshape how they run their businesses for the long term. This is a positive development for marketing and business development professionals.
The global pandemic demonstrated beyond all doubt that the manner in which professional services firms tend to operate stems from a series of choices - conscious or not, informed or not - reflecting the shareholders’ preferences.
Over time, these choices have morphed into immutable laws of nature, and shareholder preferences have become conflated with sound operating principles. However, when forced to embrace new operating models due to the pandemic, rapidly and comprehensively, it turns out that professional services firms can thrive under very different circumstances.
Prioritising in a crisis
Leaders of professional services firms faced a number of challenges when national and local governments across the global nearly simultaneously closed borders, restricted group gatherings, and sent almost everyone to work from home.
The first priority, obviously, was to ensure the safety of the organisation’s professionals. Immediately thereafter, leaders looked to open up lines of communication with all stakeholders, including clients. Finally, they began a series of battlefield adjustments to operating procedures, firm finances, work schedules, communication protocols, and technology usage. To free up time and resources, numerous projects were put on hold.
This required leaders to have a laser focus and embrace an efficient approach to assessing the relative priority of a large number of firm activities. In many cases, the rubric was simple: Does this generate or preserve revenue? Will this save us money immediately? Does this improve our ability to meet client needs today?
These are the very questions that many professional services leaders have failed to address in a systemic fashion, at least on a tactical level. In too many cases, decisions about which market segments and clients to pursue and which service offerings to promote have been left to the professionals to sort, depending on what suits them.
So long as aggregate financials at year end meet budget, senior leaders tend not to meddle in the details. Marketing and business development professionals, by contrast, live in these details every day. And many are overworked, burdened by a surfeit of demands on their time, and lacking performance metrics and a seat at the table to help prioritise their time.
The pandemic focused leaders’ attention toward these sorts of tactical challenges. The battlefield calls they made helped to generate healthy financial performance – in many cases well above the pre-pandemic budget expectations!
Applying Lessons Learnt
As leaders shift their attention back to the wider view, many will resist the inexorable pull back to “normal” and seek to embed new lessons into their operations. This can prove beneficial to marketing and business development professionals in several ways.
Prioritisation
Many professional services firms operate without business cases, or documents that closely link strategy with financials to help leaders decide between competing initiatives and track performance. When firm leaders needed to make rapid budget decisions, they had very little to go on. Two things happened: they relied on internal advisors, e.g., a chief marketing officer, to quickly sort the mission critical from the pet project; and they realized the benefit of simple business cases to justify expenditures. Marketing now has a greater opportunity to guide partners and other stakeholders into preparing concise business cases for new initiatives. Eliminating poor ideas will free up capacity, and this in turn can be applied to more lucrative initiatives.
CRM Usage
Many firms have long treated client management tools and processes as optional. Partners are allowed to closely protect client information for any reason or no reason, but of course the primary reason is to protect the partner’s influence. Many firm leaders sent an alert to all clients to reassure them that the firm was open and operating, but some were astounded to learn that neither the CRM or billing systems contained a complete roster of the firm’s clients and contact information. They were more astounded to learn that marketers must frequently make manual adjustments to client lists for various reasons, and then repeat this over and over because of poor discipline or poor compliance. More than one firm leader was irate to learn of partners who vehemently reject the idea that clients belong to the firm, not to an individual. This is a great opportunity for marketers to showcase the many benefits of clean, consistent client data.
“Leaders of professional services firms have rapidly learned some lessons about how to run a modern business. Marketing and business development professionals stand to benefit from these lessons, if they understand and proactively guide the leaders in applying their learnings.”
Intentional Collaboration
Many firms have operated under the delusion that because people work in close quarters in an office, they must be collaborating. In reality, proximity doesn’t foster collaboration. During the pandemic, practice leaders, client team leaders, relationship partners, and managers have had to be thoughtful and intentional about how to assign and monitor work and how to communicate with far-flung team members. These intentional efforts have proven to foster teamwork and creativity far better than simply working near each other. Marketing teams often operate in a matrix across great distances, and this is an opportunity to model these behaviours.
Flexibility
An obvious opportunity in the post-pandemic firm is the option to work remotely. Many enjoy working in a central location, but many would prefer to avoid the commute. Firm leaders have finally realised that productive, engaged professionals can work in different models – remotely, shared jobs, part-time, flex-time, etc. – like the rest of the business community. This bodes well for marketing and business development professionals who are regularly out of sight of their constituents. Rather than over-hire simply to have a body on site, firms may now embrace central intake or ticketing systems to field and assign requests based on availability and capability.
Talent
Perhaps the most compelling opportunity of all is the ability to hire or retain talent regardless of location. Good marketers who have departed due to a spouse’s job transfer, or because their commute has become untenable, or because their local office has less need of their talents than other offices may now remain in their roles. And marketing leaders can recruit and hire talented professionals from distant locales who can add significant value to the team, with perhaps only an occasional visit to the office.
Leaders of professional services firms have rapidly learned some lessons about how to run a modern business. Marketing and business development professionals stand to benefit from these lessons, if they understand and proactively guide the leaders in applying their learnings.
Timothy B. Corcoran is principal of Corcoran Consulting Group, a trustee and fellow of the College of Law Practice Management, past president and Hall of Fame member of the Legal Marketing Association, an American Lawyer Fellow, and a Teaching Fellow in the Master of Legal Business program at the Australian College of Law. A former CEO, Tim advises law firm and law department leaders through the profitable disruption of outdated business models. Based in New York with a global client base, he can be reached at www.BringInTim.com and @tcorcoran.