The must-listen podcast for professional services marketers, where we engage thought leaders from various realms of Professional Services Business Development and Marketing. Together, we delve into strategies for firms to foster authenticity, enhance effectiveness, and take advantage of the opportunities for growth available today.
Episodes
Wednesday Apr 03, 2024
Wednesday Apr 03, 2024
In today's competitive landscape, fostering diversity, equity, and inclusion isn't just a moral imperative — it's a strategic advantage.
Fresh off the back of our International Women’s Day episodes released on CMO REPRESENTS series, today, we’re shining a spotlight on the crucial importance of BD coaching for women.
Our guest, Deborah Farone, Founder of Farone Advisors, joins Will Eke on the Passle CMO Series Podcast to share her extensive expertise as we discuss the unique challenges women face in honing their BD skills and the transformative impact of tailored coaching programs.
Deborah and Will explore:
- Deborah’s career journey and what led to her current role as Founder of Farone Advisors
- The turning point in Deborah’s career when she recognized the necessity for tailored BD coaching, particularly for women
- The unique obstacles women encounter in honing their BD abilities, and how the current landscape reflects these challenges
- The impact on CMOs, BD leaders, and firms if they don't invest in BD coaching for women
- Success stories of women who have transformed their BD approach as a result of coaching
- Recommendations for organizations seeking to enhance the BD skills of their female employees
Thursday Mar 28, 2024
Thursday Mar 28, 2024
Training and developing the next generation of lawyers is a key driver for a firm’s long-term success.
Investing in new talent is often overlooked, but today we have the pleasure of sitting down with Sheenika Gandhi, Chief Marketing Officer at Greenberg Glusker, to understand how she is reimagining business development training, for the future success of their associates and the firm.
Sheenika and Ali discuss:
- Sheenika’s career journey and how she came to be a Chief Marketing Officer
- How she became aware of the need for BD training
- The training culture at Greenberg Glusker including specific training programs and their focus areas
- What success looks like and any examples
- A look into the future of training at Greenberg Glusker
- Advice for other CMOs looking to reimagine their training programs
Tuesday Mar 19, 2024
Tuesday Mar 19, 2024
Mapping the clients’ buying journey is key to successfully aligning content to meet their needs.
Someone with extensive experience across multiple industries in doing just that is Vicky Cunningham, Marketing Director at Efficio Consulting. Vicky joins the CMO Series Podcast today to discuss her approach to aligning content strategy with the client buying journey to drive business growth.
Vicky and Will discuss:
- The importance of mapping the client buying journey and aligning this with content strategy
- How Vicky approaches this at Efficio Consulting
- The barriers to success and how to overcome these
- The key components of driving your content strategy and examples of success
- Advice for others looking to align their content with their client’s buying journey
Transcription:
Will: Welcome to the Passle CMO series podcast where we discuss all things marketing and business development. My name's Will Eke and today we are going to be talking about aligning content with the client journey. Mapping the client's buying journey is really key to successfully aligning content to meet client needs. Someone with extensive experience across multiple industries including law, consulting, and various other areas, is doing just that. And I'm really really happy to have Vicky Cunningham, who's the marketing director at Efficio Consulting, join us today. Vicky is going to discuss her approach and Efficio’s approach to aligning content strategy with the client buying journey to drive business growth. Welcome Vicky, how are we doing?
Vicky: Hi, Will. Thanks for having me. I'm doing very well, happy to be here.
Will: Good stuff. Some people will recognise you and your voice. We were just talking about that from your Freshfield days, but we'll come on to maybe how you got to where you got to on one of the questions today. To start off with- be good to set the scene in terms of your career. What- at what point did you realise the importance of mapping the client buying journey and, and aligning it with you know, a really robust content strategy?
Vicky: Well, I think the seeds of that come from the fact that I started out in a sales route and if you get closer to the coal face, it, you know, it focuses the mind. It's always- I've always had to stop and say, you know, what's a customer or client need first? What is it that, what is it that they want? How do you put yourself in their shoes? I also spent a number of years as a journalist, so you, you know, you get the understanding of storytelling, the importance of storytelling for different audiences and that, you know, takes you right into what do you- what stories do you need to be telling to your potential clients and your existing clients to, you know, to keep them focused, to sort of help them along their buying journey or to, you know, nurture them once they have bought. So it's sort of- it's kind of in my professional DNA, I think from the, you know, the background that I've come up through.
Will: Makes perfect sense, especially, yeah with the journalist background as well-
Vicky: -and part of, you know, part of that route from a marketing point of view, i've also spent time in consumer marketing, and that's very very different clearly to B2B and professional services. So, consumer marketing, you're getting much much closer to your potential customer and again, that teaches you to think customer first, maybe doing much more sort of persona based marketing and B2B tends to approach that differently.
Will: Yeah, and I suppose you- with that you're used to actually having this tangible outcome often with a consumer as well. You can actually link it back sometimes to a transaction type.
Vicky: Yeah, and you know, in professional services, I think people still- marketeers and I've been guilty of this too, still often think of their clients as job titles and the practitioners think of their clients sometimes as job titles and not as humans, which is crazy because, you know, we're in a professional services, it's a people led business, your clients are, you know, they, they are also humans. What are they going through on their journey, you know, in a law firm, and what's the general counsel thinking about? Not, what for us, what's the Chief Procurement Officer thinking about?
Will: You mentioned it there, you know, different target audience, as I said at the start. People that are listening, you know, we often have marketing directors, CMOs, heads of BD, that are currently at law firms. You're not. However, you have been at them in the past and you're quite right, most are targeting in- house counsel. Can you tell us a bit, before I ask the full question, about Efficio Consulting, you did say that you're trying to target procurement, which probably gives us a bit of a hint as to what you guys do.
Vicky: Yeah, we're a specialist consultancy. So all we do, and all we ever have done is procurement and supply chain management and you know, consulting services around that. So that's helping our client organisations to optimise their cost base, maybe improve their internal procurement and supply chain processes, upskill their teams bake in sustainability, and be able to track sustainability through their supply chains. So- but it's all about procurement and supply chain and the human aspects of that as well as the sort of process and technological aspects of that and the sort of hard numbers around that as well.
Will: And with that in mind, I mean, you've alluded to a bit already, how are you approaching, you know, the content strategy at Efficio and how do you define, you know, the client challenges? And I think you, you guys, you work on looking at the website, you've got some nice built out pillars that you might want to talk through if possible.
Vicky: Yeah, so when I joined the business about 2.5 years ago, I think every marketing director at some point likes to sort of do a brand refresh, or a web rebuild. Partly because you come in with a fresh set of eyes and you start taking things to pieces and going is this fit for purpose? Is this doing the job we want it to do? And so, you know, obviously I sort of began that process and we took a look at, you know, we took a look at who we are as a business. And, you know, workshops around where do we sit in terms of how we think our clients see us and what they think, you know, what problems they would look to us to solve for them. But then we did a deep dive and said, okay, if we want to build a good user journey through our website and we want to make sure that we are putting together content which is gonna resonate for our various clients, you know, what's the journey that the client goes through when they have a problem? What is their buying journey? We did a really deep dive in partnership with a number of the consultants in the business and we did a deep dive into the problems that come up most often for our clients around procurement and supply chain. And we, you know, we went right the way down into so what's the conversation that happens in the client organisation when, you know, they realise they don't have the right skills to or the, well they can't have the team size, they want to, you know, deliver an efficient, effective procurement operation or, you know, what are the questions they're asking themselves if they need to reduce their costs of some of the sort of categories that they're buying for their business. And so you go, okay, so if they ask these questions, then what happens next when they've got the answer to that question? And then when they've, you know, what, at what stage might they start to look for some external help to solve that problem and if they do, how do they approach it? And we just went through step by step by step to understand, you know, before they even would look at our website or start having a conversation with us or consume any of our content necessarily, what's happening for them? And so we mapped it in really really solid detail and then we used that as the basis for creating the, you referred before to, the pillars that we have on our website. So we realise that most of our clients challenges fall into five distinct areas and so we, you know, we headline those on our home page, but all of the user journeys through the website are built around those pillars. So if you know if your problem is to do with your, you know, your capability and capacity, you would follow this journey and you would explore the website through that pillar. If you, if your challenges are around ESG or sustainability, you would explore the website through that pillar and so we plan the journey through those sort of- through that lens and through those pillars and then we think about our content in the same way, making sure that the content that gets served up along that journey is particularly relevant to that particular challenge set.
Will: It sounds- what you've achieved there does sound like the holy grail for a lot of marketeers, I suppose, especially at legal firms when they're looking to build their website. So it, and I've, yeah, the website looks great. So well done to you and the team on that. What would you say were the main barriers in terms of success and how have you guys overcome those?
Vicky: I think with any of these projects, look, content creation is an ongoing process. So, you know, we build a user journey through the website and match the content to it, but we have to make sure that we're continuing to stay focused on creating the right kind of content for, you know, for our potential clients and that we're continuing to address what those specific needs are and pain points are that they have. So for us, and you know, this is for every professional services organisation, the practitioners in the business are really really vital to your success. So as you, if you're changing your approach to how you create content and you know how you map that to you know, buying journey, you have to keep working closely with those practitioners who are, they're inputting on content. They might be writing first drafts of it, they might- you might be in, you know, they might be being interviewed to feed into reports, or whatever it might be, but it's, you know, it's a sort of change management process which is, it's never over. And that's to make sure you have to always work really hard to make sure that collaboration with the practitioners is fruitful and that you're talking the same language because for example, in our business, in Efficio, we all run around talking about content, but actually, when marketing is talking about content, we're talking about something different to the content that the consultants are talking about. So they're talking about sort of best practice and ‘know how’ that they gather through their projects and that they collaborate on to share, whereas we're talking about externally facing content. So, you know, there are some, that's just one small example, but when I say talk the same language, you know, make sure you're on the same page. And when you're talking marketing speak, they understand what the purpose of it is and what it is you're trying to achieve. And so, you know, in terms of the barriers that not all consultants are going to be the best placed people to partner with. So you have to find the stakeholders, I think who are commercial and seek out the people who have the strongest understanding of their clients. And I think actually, something where we're probably all guilty of not doing enough of is client listening because we, you know, we sit there and we have these sort of ideation sessions and we will plan content and we'll bring our practitioners into those discussions to make sure that we're focusing in the right places, to make sure that we're aligning with what the business wants to achieve, but oftentimes in this, people don't ask the client, in a formalised way. And I, you know, I know we don't do enough of that and I know in previous roles, we've not done enough of that. But if you can find routes to do that and make sure that when it does happen, it's joined up so that marketing can take those client listening inputs and create actionable insights, you're gonna be onto a winner.
Will: Yeah and it links back to your point about it, it's never finished. There's an evolution isn't there that of a client relationship, which also means, you know, the content that you produce is always evolving as well to meet those needs which makes perfect sense. I mean, you, you've alluded to again, some of the tactics there, but are there any other sort of tactics, tools if you like, channels, that you're using to drive the content strategy, specifically, you know, to support the business development arm as well?
Vicky: Yeah, so we are trying to take a more structured and rigorous approach to the way we partner with our practitioners on content and around the content strategy. So, we have, you know, clearly there's a sort of high level objectives of what it is you're trying to achieve, which is, you know, always gonna be supporting the business growth and the sort of firms, you know, BD priorities. But we need to try and instill some of that client focus thinking into our practitioners and so one of the tools and tactics we're rolling out now is, lawyers, consultants, they are all, they're, you know, they're very keen to share their knowledge and know how and I alluded to this before, it's you know, it's bringing the right people on board and trying to help them to understand what's the purpose of content, what's the job it has to do? And it's not just for you to show that you're really smart. So, we are now encouraging our consultants if they, if they would like to participate in content creation to sort of put forward a content proposal and we've structured it, it's like, think about these things, who it- it's training them in the way that we think about as marketeers and, you know, content marketers, the way we think about content creation, it's like, who's your target audience? What do you want them to take away from this? What's the key message? What's the, so what, and then, you know, the killer question- and it's interesting how often the answer might come back ‘oh, I hadn't thought about that’. If you create this piece of content, if we work with you to write this article or this report, what are you going to do with it as a BD tool? How are you going to activate it? Would you send the link, you know, or the social post to your client? Would you send them a link to the website? Would you use it as a conversation starter? Because if the answer to that is no, then there's no point creating this piece of content. So, that's an important one we're trying to roll out and that's when I talk about the change management being ongoing. That's a big process of, sort of reframing the thinking with the practitioners at the moment. The other thing that we are doing an awful lot of and are trying to sort of fine tune our approach as we go through is more ABM. And that is, you know, we're working very very closely with our BD team to understand where they're focusing, who are their priority verticals or very specific target accounts for both new business and for nurturing existing clients. I think, you know, sometimes you can start focusing too much, you can go too much in one direction or the other, you know, too much into new business or lead generation and forget about all the good people who continue to give you business or you can go too far to, we just care about our core clients and forget about, you know, needing to sort of feed the pipeline at the other end. So, yeah, working with BD to understand where they're trying to focus and create ABM campaigns to sort of facilitate their efforts. So the, you know, the ABM approach is a very important part of what we're doing and coming into that, actually, you asked about, you know, more of the tactics, I think, and it comes back to this client listening piece where we can, if you're not doing a formal client listening process, where we can talk to our consultants to understand more about the questions they're being asked by their clients, right? When you have a conversation, what are they asking you? How do they ask it? What is, how do they frame it? And that helps us sort of do a little bit of an ongoing gap analysis in terms of content because if they're asking questions and we haven't got a content which answers that question, then it's something we should be focusing on. And I almost feel like, yeah, we can't, nobody can do a podcast and talk about tools and tactics at the moment without mentioning AI. And we're not jumping on the bandwagon going ‘Yes! AI is going to write our content for us’, but we are seeing some useful use cases, you know, some judicious use of AI to help maybe speed up a little bit of the copy editing process or making sure that we're creating SEO optimised content briefs, we can use AI to help us with that a little bit. And there's also I think a use case where if you're asking your practitioners to write content, some people have a little bit of a sort of blank, you know, the blank page fear. So we can use AI to maybe give them a framework as a starting point to help them get some words on a page.
Will: A whole bunch of useful information there, I mean the thing that springs to mind quite a lot, but one of the key bits that you've mentioned there and we hear it a lot and we actually try and preach it ourselves is, you know, only write content if it does further a business relationship. And actually, that leads into your account based marketing there because it's like, you know, for your partners, for consultants, for lawyers, for, you know, who for any fee earner, don't be afraid to write content for a single client actually, because it's very very powerful and it's definitely worth doing. It doesn't need to be for the masses necessarily, so yeah, that's a very interesting way of looking at it.
Vicky: Yeah, absolutely agree. It’s that, yeah, when you, it does get down to the ABM I mean, you know, you've got the sort of one too many, the one too few and yes, you can get right down to one to one bespoke content if, you know, you can't be doing that across the board but in where there's a really important focus point, really important target, then absolutely, you can get very very nuanced.
Will: I think it helps then to your point about the blank bit of paper then as well because actually, you know your client really well, so what are their pain points? Let's write something that helps solve them, it works hand in hand. Have you got, on that note, any particular examples of success where those sort of tactics that you've mentioned, have worked well?
Vicky: If I go back to what works really well, I have to go back to the remembering that your clients are people and not job titles and actually when you bring your client into your content creation, you know, we get the highest engagement of any of our content is always when we've got say a video case study or, you know, we interview a client or, you know, we have a podcast series and bringing in, you know, bringing in clients to talk about that. Sometimes it's about telling a general story, and it's sometimes it's a, you know, we might have an academic, but getting people on the podcast to talk about- like this one, right? What are the pain points that other marketeers might have? So, yeah, I can sort of share my insights, it's getting our clients on as podcast guests, talking about the sorts of things that their peers are dealing with. But actually, the podcast is a really great secret BD tool as well. It's not secret, here we are on a podcast, but it is a really effective BD tool. If it is a conversation starter and in somewhere who doesn't like, sort of sharing their insights, so we use it for furthering client conversations as well. So it's, yeah, when you bring people, your clients to life and give them a voice, I think is- we always get success off the back of that.
Will: I don't know what you mean Vicky, and you won't be allowed back on now, you know. the cat's out of the bag. Yeah, no, it's a very good point and clients obviously love talking about what they've done so, yeah, it makes perfect sense.
Vicky: But it's actually about, you know, take that step back, it's about using content generally, proactively for BD, using it as a conversation starter, you know. So I think there's a tendency in professional services organisations for the practitioners to say, ‘oh yeah, it's on the website, that's done now’. No, that's where it starts in some ways. Now use it to talk to your clients, use it as a way to continue a conversation to show that you understand what their, you know, what their pain points are.
Will: And it's also again, you must see this even when you're at a firm that is a bit more targeted in what you do, a niche consultancy as you call it, there's still massive need for collaboration as well, so content can help with that part as well, right? So, ‘oh, I didn't know Efficio did you know that, as well as this part’. You know, we often hear that ‘I didn't realise that you, you know, you do stuff for supply chain as well as you know, the procurement or the environment.
Vicky: Yeah. and we used to, our previous iteration of our website didn't mention supply chain anywhere, even though it's a big chunk of our business. So if you don't tell people about it, how are they to know? But yeah, it's a little bit of, and I saw this in law firms all the time, that people connected with their clients on, you know, in their particular practice area and those clients had no idea about all the other good stuff that you did. Because if your website wasn't telling the story, they weren't sharing content, which they thought would perhaps help that client in other areas of the business.
Will: There's a whole bit of research now that came out just before Christmas from the Harvard Business Review around that in professional services, that’s all about, you know, what makes a rain maker, what makes the most successful consultants, lawyers, and it, they picked out this one profile, that's the activator profile. Actually, one big part of that is that they're proactive in their business development, that another big part is that they collaborate and they actually will push forward other areas of the business to their client. So, yeah, it's, it's the same thing really.
Vicky: Yeah. Spot on.
Will: Just gonna do a quick fire round. What are you listening to, or are you actually going old school and reading at the moment?
Vicky: I am an old school reader. I've never got my head around audio books. I do listen to the odd podcast, so I am, well, I've just literally just finished a book called The Lost Future of Pepperharrow by Natasha Pulley. And it's a sort of second in a series of books. The first one was a Watchmaker of Filigree Street and it's really, it's a magical book and she writes these wonderful sort of fairly convoluted storylines that have, you know, you have to suspend disbelief that makes them a little bit magical. But I like a book that puts you in another time or another country and writers who can be, you know, really evoke those different scenes and she does it beautifully so I've been enjoying that!
Will: Sounds very interesting, I have to make a note of that one. I always try and write down ones I haven't heard of. Second question, what is the one piece of technology that you can't live without.
Vicky: It goes back to reading actually and whilst I'm- I don't think it's old school to read books rather than listen to them, but I couldn't live without my kindle, you know, on the train, travelling, you've got all your books there in one place. Couldn't be without it.
Will: Environmentally friendly as well, my daughter’s loves hers and saves having to, you know, waste all that paper in the end.
Vicky: Yeah, and I'd like to, you know, I'd like to believe that I could live without my phone so I'm sure a lot of people might say their phone, but I'd like to believe I could survive.
Will: Digital detox. What's the one thing that you look forward to every week?
Vicky: Do you know, right now, specifically, this time of year, I would have to say, I look forward to the prospect of it still being light in the evenings and getting home and feeling like you've still got some runway in the day rather than getting in and hunkering down and that’s very seasonal, but that's where I am right now.
Will: Looking forward to Spring. Where is, where's your favourite place to visit and why?
Vicky: I have to say Portugal and because it has, you can tell, I like light, I just talked about having light in the evenings, Portugal has fantastic light and I work from there sometimes and it's great just to be able to sort of look out, see something different to the sort of low gray clouds of the UK, got beautiful countryside and a lot of lovely lovely coastline and great beaches for water sports. I like a little bit of surfing and paddle boarding and kayaking and it's, you’re surrounded by great great water to do that.
Will: And great food as well of course and I didn't expect you to say somewhere in the winter that you'd go, I did expect a summer destination from your-
Vicky: -yeah, I go to Portugal in the winter too because it's still, you know, you get the, you get a milder climate and lighter in the evenings.
Will: Yeah, the light, you see. What's the one habit you have that you think would help others?
Vicky: I would say, and I have to remind myself to do this often, is carve out thinking time. Now we're all very very busy and you're running from meeting to meeting and project to project and deliverable, to deliverable and, you know, if you don't give yourself the headspace and actually put it in your calendar, just a block of time where you can just think, let your thoughts wander, problem solve, you, if you don't do that, you're just gonna, you know, squash your creativity and your problem solving ability. So, that would be my top tip.
Will: Great tip, yeah, bit of reflection, always good. We're at the end of our client journey in terms of the podcast amazingly. What's your sort of one piece of advice? I know it's hard to whittle it down to one but what would you say to other marketers, your peers looking to align their content with clients buying journeys?
Vicky: It comes back to you know, mapping the journey a little bit. It's understanding that for any professional services buying process, there are multiple audiences. You've got, there's gonna be one person who signs off on the piece of work, signs off on the project, but that person is not necessarily the person who's executing on the work. And there are going to be a whole slew of influencers in that buying journey as well. So it's understanding that you've got multiple audiences with all very, you know, they might say in totally different functions, they've got very different interests and you need to keep communicating with them. And it's, you know, on that basis, it's that B2B buying journey is not linear, right? You, there are all these sort of, you know, the old diagrams of your really, you know, here's a sales funnel ABCD and something I saw a few years ago, which I'm sure lots of lots of your listeners will be familiar with, Gartner published something called the asynchronous buyer journey and it is a very convoluted diagram of all the different people that might get involved in a buying decision and what you know, what are the problems they're solving at any particular time. And yeah, Gartner call it a long hard slog and it is so when you're creating content and you're creating a content strategy, you need to bear in mind that it's not linear. You have a lot of different stakeholders in that buying decision and your content needs to be speaking to them.
Will: Brilliant, really useful. Vicky, thank you so much for giving us your time and talking through how you guys have done it so successfully in terms of aligning that content with the client journey, some really useful tips there for our listeners. Thank you so much.
Vicky: Thanks Will. Thanks for having me. It's been a pleasure.
Tuesday Mar 12, 2024
Tuesday Mar 12, 2024
The landscape for professional services business development is changing. Clients are less loyal to firms and individual fee earners, and strong relationships are no longer enough to guarantee repeat business.
These are just some of the insights that have recently come out of research conducted by DCM Insights, published in the Harvard Business Review.
Today, on this special episode of the CMO Series Podcast, Will Eke welcomes founding partner of DCM Insights, Matthew Dixon, to discuss the highlights of the study and delve into the key characteristics that today’s most successful rainmakers all have in common.
Matt and Will discuss:
- How the research came about and the impetus behind it
- The key findings from the study and the most surprising results
- The 5 business development profiles of lawyers the research revealed
- The characteristics that set the ‘Activator’ profile apart
- What lawyers can work on to develop some of the key ‘Activator’ attributes
- Advice for BD managers looking to develop the business development skills of their lawyers
Friday Mar 08, 2024
Friday Mar 08, 2024
This year we’re celebrating International Women’s Day by shining a light on the experiences of incredible women across the industry. In this second installment of Inspiring Inclusion, we uncover the personal stories of our guests and the inspirational people who have influenced their journeys.
From creating safe spaces to the power of putting words into action, this incredible lineup share their insights and perspectives on the role of firms and their leaders in inspiring inclusion.
We’re so grateful to hear from Julie Chodos, Chief Marketing & Business Development Officer at Axinn, Veltrop & Harkrider, Sandria Lherisse, Director of Marketing and Business Development at Groom Law Group, Emily McKeown, Business Development Director at Godfrey and Kahn, Sarah Short, Business Development & Marketing Manager at McLennan Ross, Angela Quinn, Chief Client Officer at Husch Blackwell, Christie Cáceres, Chief Business Development and Marketing Officer at Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton, Sarah Kempsey, Chief Marketing Officer at Montgomery McCracken Walker & Rhoads, Laura Long, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Finance Officer at Hanson Bridgett, Liz Bigham, Chief Marketing Officer at Burford Capital, Marianne Talbot, Chief Marketing and Business Development Officer at Bailey & Glasser, LLP, Gina Connell, Chief Marketing Officer at BP Collins, Diana Courson, Chief Marketing Officer at Wiley Rein, Nicole Miles, Chief Marketing Officer at Dentons, and Despina Kartson, Chief Marketing Officer at Baker Hostetler.
Wednesday Mar 06, 2024
Wednesday Mar 06, 2024
To celebrate Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day 2024, we invite you to join us as we talk with marketing and business development leaders from the world’s best law and professional services firms.
This special episode of CMO Series REPRESENTS shines a light on leaders as they share their personal stories, best practices and the inspirational people who have influenced their career journeys and inspired inclusion in their firms.
Join us for part one of this special series, as we uncover the transformative power of recognition and role modelling in fostering a culture of diversity and inclusion.
First up, we speak with Deborah Fleming, Marketing and Business Development Director at Walker Morris, Alison Reynolds, Digital Marketing Director at Vinson & Elkins, Julie McConnell, Associate Director of Business Development for Global Industry Groups at White & Case, Liz Gooch, Chief Business Development & Marketing Officer at McDermott Will & Emery, Vicky Hanks, Head of Marketing at Blake Morgan, Lisa Azzuolo, Chief Marketing Officer, Bennett Jones, Evette Pottinger, Head of Marketing at AA Thornton, Sheenika Gandhi, Chief Marketing Officer at Greenberg Glusker, Gemma Vaites, Director of Business Development and Marketing at Capsticks, Karen Snell, Chief Business Development & Marketing Officer at Kennedys, Naomi Butson, Corporate Communications Manager at Marks & Clerk, Vicky Elliott, Group Head of BD & Marketing at Memery Crystal and Rosenblatt Law Firms, Deborah Farone, CEO of Farone Advisors, Jean-Marie Campbell, Head of Client Development at Baker McKenzie, Cynthia Howard, Chief Marketing Officer at Greenspoon Marder and Lora Wegman, Marketing Director at Thompson Coburn.
Tuesday Feb 27, 2024
Tuesday Feb 27, 2024
For any seasoned marketing and BD professional, it can be tempting to make the move into the world of consulting and set up as a sole trader.
While there are rewards to be reaped, there are also many factors to consider before you take the plunge. Today, Will Eke has the pleasure of sitting down with someone who has successfully made the leap.
Susanne Pugsley, Founder, Managing Director and Consultant at Pugsley Sidwell Business Development, joins the CMO Series Podcast to share the highs and the lows and what it really takes to become a successful Marketing & BD Consultant in the professional services industry.
Susanne and Will discuss:
- Susanne’s career journey and how she came to be a Marketing and BD Consultant
- The main challenges faced when first set up as a sole trader
- The most interesting or enlightening aspects of being a consultant compared to being in-house in law firms
- How to go about setting a price structure and justifying your value
- The appetite for business development support
- The dos and don’ts when working with law firms
- Advice for others looking to set up as a Marketing & BD Consultant
Tuesday Feb 20, 2024
Tuesday Feb 20, 2024
Across the legal industry, firms are seeing the increasing need for a professional and high-performing business development function.
Today on the CMO Series Podcast, Cam Dobinson is joined by Hugo Peña, Director of Business Development at Gonzalez Calvillo, to discuss the change he has witnessed throughout his career and what the formalization of legal BD means for firms and business development professionals.
Hugo and Cam discuss:
- What "formalizing legal BD" means and why it is something that those in BD & marketing roles should be aware of
- How this trend is playing out differently in Latin America and what can others learn from what is happening in the industry
- The ideal role and structure of BD teams in a modern firm and how they are organized
- The distinction between marketing and BD as well as lawyers and BD
- Key challenges or focus points that have arisen as part of the formalization of BD
- Advice for aspiring BD leaders looking to formalize their BD approach
Tuesday Feb 13, 2024
Tuesday Feb 13, 2024
Ensuring that clients align with a firm's values is vital for a successful legal rebrand. Actively listening to clients, crafting compelling brand narratives, and fostering a cohesive firm culture, all contribute to a brand that resonates and reflects a firm’s long-term strategic direction.
Today, Will Eke has the pleasure of speaking with Noni Garratt-Wall, Head of Marketing at Charles Russell Speechlys, about her journey through the rebranding process as she joins the CMO Series Podcast.
Will and Noni discuss:
- The reasons behind the rebrand and how the process began
- The importance of timing and the impact on the success of the project
- The key starting points of the rebrand, and the core messages that were essential to the new brand narrative and positioning
- The main challenges or roadblocks along the journey
- How to get buy-in from the partnership and manage the feedback process
- How to launch the brand internally and embed it across the firm
- Advice for any legal marketers embarking on a rebrand
Tuesday Feb 06, 2024
Tuesday Feb 06, 2024
Developing an effective bid strategy is key to the success of any legal business development function, yet the process often goes into a black box and isn’t fully leveraged by firm leaders.
On this episode of the CMO Series Podcast, Will Eke is joined by Deborah Fleming, Marketing & Business Development Director at Walker Morris, to discuss the critical role of a winning bid strategy and its impact on marketing and BD.
Deborah and Will explore:
- Deborah’s career journey to her current role at Walker Morris
- How bid experience can set you up for success in legal BD and the transferable skills it can offer
- What the bid process looks like end-to-end
- What success looks like when working on a winning bid strategy
- How to get lawyers and other firm members on board with the approach
- Walker Morris’s newly launched website for GCs, and how it came about
- What the landscape looks like for bids and where Deborah sees it going in the future
- Advice for marketing leaders looking to create a winning bid strategy and advice for those considering a move into bids