Webinar: Framework to Grow a Law Firm in a Tight Economy

Amid a back drop of the “Big Reset” – and the tight economy that followed – Doug Johnson lays out key challenges for law firm marketing and business development in an article for The Journal of Legal Marketing, titled The Future of Marketing & Business Development.

Those challenges are:

1. Translate modern marketing practices into techniques lawyers can use:

“The challenge for legal marketers is to rapidly study and analyze cutting-edge practices emerging in the corporate world and determine those that will translate into the legal environment. Then, determine how to modify those practices so they can be implemented by the lawyers and their support teams and effectively executed.”

2. Tackle the sales and marketing gap in professional services:

“Law firms and other professional service firms also must deal with the gap between sales and marketing. Our sales force consists of lawyers, not dedicated, professionally trained sales executives. So we have to support a “sales” force with other duties that was not formally trained and in many cases doesn’t get excited about the concept of ‘selling.’”

3. Vague roles and responsibilities across the business development cycle:

 “Law firms also grapple with vaguely defined roles. In the corporate world, sales and marketing roles and responsibilities are well-defined and clearly understood. In most companies the VP of marketing is responsible for positioning, branding and, most importantly in today’s economy, lead generation, while the corporate sales VP is responsible for ensuring marketing is developing qualified leads, then making certain the sales force closes sales.”

A Framework for Law Firm Business Development

We’ve invited Mr. Johnson, who is the founder and managing partner of Catapult Growth Partners, to present his ideas in three sweeping hour-long webinars the first of which will presented this month.

The first webinar in this complementary series will cover:

• Law firm cultural readiness.Assess your firm’s cultural readiness for adopting a Business Development process; learn to deal with supporters and skeptics.
• Law firm leadership.  Align firm leadership behind your efforts as champions and advocates.
• Change management.  Establish the right change management balance points to maintain ongoing marketing tasks as efforts shift to BD and sales.
• Team commitment.  Gain sufficient long-term commitment and support while waiting to prove results.
• Law firm strategy.  Define practical steps and stages for a rollout strategy, including limited pilot programs that move you beyond “proof of concept” activities.

Registration details

What: Webinar – Moving Along the Arc — Part 1: Framework for Change
Who:  Managing partners, rainmakers and law firm business development staff
When: Wednesday, November 19, 2014 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM EST
Where: Online seminar; register here: http://bit.ly/1wsLTjW
Cost:  Complimentary with registration

Details on parts 2 and 3 to this webinar series will be forthcoming.

Photo Credit:  Flickr; CC BY-SA 2.0

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