18 ways to stretch MBD resources

June 24, 2024|Accountants, Kim's Blog, Lawyers, Marketing, Strategy|

At this month’s PM Forum – PM Forum online workshop on “Campaigns, thought leadership and project management” we explored the three topics from a strategic (why) rather than a tactical (how) perspective. 50% of the delegates were from law firms with others from accountancy and consulting practices. There was an equal split between managers and executives. From the polls, break out exercises and discussions (see below) three core issues emerged: Senior management support, fee-earner engagement and marketing and business development (MBD) team resources. It is this last issue – stretching and squeezing the limited resources of the MBD team – where this article focuses. Campaigns, thought leadership and project management – 18 ways to stretch and squeeze MBD resources.

How to stretch MBD team resources?

Many MBD teams struggle to meet all the demands for support they receive. This fire-fighting and “hamster wheel syndrome” limits the ability of teams to drive the strategic agenda and achieve performance improvements.

In part, MBD teams are victims of their own success. The more we do, achieve, produce and impact – the more demand there is for our support and services. Which, in turn, makes the transition from reactive service provider to proactive advisors even more difficult.

“Squeezing until the pips squeak” is one approach – getting team members to produce more and more. But this isn’t sustainable in the long term as often teams are already “stretched to breaking point”.

We must be alert to the mental health and well-being of MBD professionals. Sadly, relentless pressure, chronic stress and burnout is alive and kicking in MBD teams. Leaders have a responsibility to safeguard the well-being of MBD members just the same as with their fee-earners. (This book takes an interesting look at the problems of toxic cultures, overwork, stress and burnout in the legal profession – and much relates to other professional service firms Book review: The Thriving Lawyer by Traci Cipriano (resilience) (kimtasso.com))

Ways to stretch MBD team resources

So how can we safely stretch and squeeze MBD team resources? We considered both the obvious and the obscure:

Review the strategic priorities – In an ideal world there will be a business plan and a strategic marketing and business development plan that sets out the priorities. Each division or team will also have a plan that shows their priorities. Hopefully, these all align. Reviewing these strategic priorities regularly is one option to maintain focus and limit additional requests. Having a senior leadership team support you in enforcing those priorities is another challenge altogether.

Reduce the workload – Many senior professional services marketers have a mantra of “Do less, but do better” (sometimes quoted as “Go large or go home”). They avoid spreading themselves too thinly by concentrating on a few key programmes and focusing resources where they will have the biggest impact. This relates to the point above about strategic priorities. But it means that the MBD team can jettison the smaller, day-to-day stuff and concentrate on the big projects.

Grow the team – Adding extra team members will help in the medium and long term but will increase pressure in the short term as these people are inducted, bedded in and get into their stride. Furthermore, a bigger team means that there is then increased complexity and the risk of silos. So additional management time might is needed to support collaboration. Also there is also the risk that once partners have approved additional resources their expectations increase – thus fuelling the resources problem.

Improve project management processes – We “walked through” the five steps of the traditional “waterfall” project management process (initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and closing). We looked at an example Work Breakdown Structure and its component tasks being built into a network diagram and GANTT chart. And considered some alternatives.

Agile – Enables quick reaction to project feedback. The priority is adaptability, collaboration and incremental delivery. Projects are broken down into small, manageable iterations called sprints and rely on constant feedback from stakeholders to make quick changes
Kanban – Focuses on continuous improvement through visualising and managing the flow of work. The project management board is divided into columns representing different stage of work – and tasks move across the board as the project unfolds. It is ideal for teams that have many incoming requests
Scrum – A popular way to implement agile projects. It divides larger projects into shorter, one-to-four week sprints that adapt to demands as the project evolves. It sets out rules for team size, team roles, planning, meeting and deliverables

PDCA cycle – Plan (identify and analyse the problem), Do (develop and test solutions), Check (measure effectiveness of preferred solutions), Act (implement the solution)

PERT – Program Valuation and Review Technique is for very large-scale projects to consider the critical tasks (critical path analysis) and their dependencies to learn the proper sequence

Action Priority Matrix – A familiar matrix comparing the impact of the activity vs the effort involved. The resulting classifications are: quick wins, major projects, hard slogs and fill ins

Restructure the team – Review the strategic aims of the firm and identify the priorities. Then audit the team’s activities, outputs and impacts to see if there is alignment. Several firms have restructured their MBD teams. Other restructuring solutions include: using account managers, creating separate operations teams and deploying specialist project managers who can be “parachuted” into high demand areas.

Train, upskill and coach the team – This is a win:win strategy. With more skills, the team members can tackle a broader range of tasks. This reduces pressure on MBD team leaders who can then attend to more strategic tasks and process improvement. Team members feel appreciated and value the efforts to help them develop and progress their careers.

Train and coach the fee-earners – Rather than expecting the MBD team to do all the leg work, you can reposition the services so that the MBD experts invest their time in upskilling the fee-earners through training and coaching so that they are empowered to do things for themselves. As systems become more sophisticated (and incorporate AI) we should be able to put more power in the fee-earners’ hands to do the work themselves. The use of THE thought leadership platform for professional service firms (passle.net) to create and distribute content is a standout example of this.

Provide toolkits and templates – Most marketing and business development campaigns will come with a toolkit and templates so that fee-earners are empowered to tailor and implement activities to the needs of their particular market or clients. This might mean diverting some MBD team resources in the short term from “doing” to system analysis and packaging but it reduces demand for support at a later date.

Keep meetings short – We discussed the strong results from just a 15 minute brainstorm. And concluded that meetings with fee-earners should be kept short to reduce resistance and encourage participation.

Offer the fee-earners alternatives – This relates to education and training. If fee-earners’ knowledge of what they can do is limited, they will keep returning to the MBD team to help them repeat the activities they have done in the past. Talk to the fee-earners to really get to grips with what they are trying to achieve – and then offer alternatives to a centrally designed and implemented campaign. For example, explain that personal LinkedIn profiles have 10 times more followers and eight times more engagement than their company pages – this might reduce demands for the team to post on the firm’s account. Another good example was the Mills & Reeve tech sector campaign – rather than investing time in producing content upfront, the campaign was designed so that the content was developed as part of the campaign events. Marketing and BD case studies in legal, accountancy, consultancy (kimtasso.com)

Implement a go/no go campaign process – Enlist the senior leadership team in establishing and honouring a go/no campaign process. At a recent event in Ireland, a leading accountancy firm explained that they had a process – fully supported by the CEO and CMO – that prioritised planned requests and declined those that were outside of the strategic scope or assigned responsibilities.

Learn from past campaigns – One of the byproducts of being constantly busy is that we lack the time to revisit past campaigns to see which were most effective in generating the desired clients, fees and profits. But looking at past campaigns – with both digital analytics and sales conversion data – to see what was most effective means that we bring hard data to the table when people request support for campaigns and projects that have been proven ineffective.

Improve infrastructure and data – An informal poll revealed that the average rating for a robust CRM system amongst delegates was 4 out of 10. Whilst implementing and embedding a new CRM or improving the current system is a major project in itself, it significantly improves the ability to manage future projects more effectively and efficiently. Good CRM systems allow fee-earners to be more self-sufficient in managing lists and maintaining good habits in client relationships – reducing the pressure on the MBD team.

Increase efficiency – Marketing automation can increase efficiency and allow more to be done with less resources. Naturally, we talked about time savings from artificial intelligence (AI) to support routine tasks. With AI, time has to be invested upfront to understand your processes, upskill your people, invest in the tech and train your AI system and develop the relevant prompts.

Use external agencies and freelancers – There are numerous resources to help with peaks in workload. External agencies (both general and specialist), contract staff and freelance consultants present opportunities to increase capacity in the short term. There are recruitment agencies who specialise in marketing and business development staff in professional services (see the list Recruiting and retaining marketing and business development (kimtasso.com))

Build better internal relationships – Having better relationships with internal stakeholders means that there is more room to negotiate requests for support and assistance. Several delegates commented on the power of face-to-face contact with fee-earners for more productive meetings and stronger relationships.

Integrate marketing with the sales process – This was a theme throughout the session. Delegates shared their experiences of preparing in advance how they will help fee-earners to respond to and nurture leads generated by marketing campaigns. By improving integration, more conversions will be achieved and thus less future demand on the MBD team.

Consider what to stop doing – Often, the MBD team will continue to take on new campaigns and tasks without stepping back to consider what they might also stop doing. Some routine tasks can be automated and some can be delegated to other teams.

Delegate views

Delegate aims at the outset of the session

Get back to basics!
Just a refresher
Gain insights into campaign and project processes
Be more strategic in campaigns and projects
Develop a campaign routine
Cultivate strategic thinking
Finesse my campaign and project skills
Develop my campaign knowledge
Be more purposeful in my planning
Obtain new ideas
Improve my juggling with a busy team
Support my campaign executives
Learn from others on their experiences and best practice
Tips for better project management
Help with dealing with multiple priorities
Address ROI on campaigns

Delegate great campaign criteria

Within budget (enough resources)
Senior stakeholder approval and commitment
Clear purpose (if thought leadership)
Clear objectives and KPIs
Differentiation – Stand out in the market
Market clarity and relevance
Responds to client needs
Clear benefit to end user
Multi-channel
Timelines
Trackable results
Wow! Factor

Delegate creative ideas for thought leadership campaigns

“Finance Director insomnia”
“Hackathon” for general counsel in the tech sector
“Surf the algorithm wave” for CEO in tech businesses

Delegate key takeaways on campaigns, thought leadership and projects at the end of the session

Early engagement of fee-earners and team
Conduct more research
Work on the needs and preferences of the target audience
Develop bespoke research as a thought leadership vehicle
Include a risk assessment (and disaster planning) when planning a campaign.
“Communication. Communication. Communication” is key
Identify more visual ways to engage stakeholders
Produce a campaign visual to achieve buy in
Arrange a kickstarting meeting – using tools described in the session

Delegate poll results

Delegates like to benchmark their views against their peers. It’s also interesting to compare the results against those in previous sessions:

What is your MAIN role?

55% Marketing
18% Business development
18% Events
9% PR/Communications

How confident are you about developing and implementing campaigns?

Which aspect of the session is of most interest?

0% Context – Strategy and marketing/BD
8% Campaigns – benefits and developing communications campaigns
8% Thought leadership campaigns
8% Overcoming barriers, implementation and project management
75% Everything – I am a sponge today!

What’s the MAIN focus for your campaigns?

33% Whole firm
0% Particular territory/office
42% Sector
17% Service line
8% Key clients/ABM
Something else

Where are you weakest in campaigns?

33% Objectives
42% Clarity on markets and services
8% Planning and execution
17% Effectiveness

Having seen the definition of thought leadership, do you think your campaigns are mostly:

25% Communications campaigns
67% Thought leadership campaigns
8% Something else (e.g. events)

Are your campaigns integrated with your sales/relationship management plans?

91% Yes – but we could do better
9% No integration

Which research methods have you used? (multiple choice)

70% Roundtables and panels
70% Collaboration with a third party
50% Case studies
40% Email surveys
30% Benchmarks
20% Delphi method (expert panel)
10% Face-to-face interviews
0% Telephone surveys
0% Monthly or quarterly polls

During campaigns you collaborate with (multiple choice)

82% (International) network
64% Referrers
55% Trade, business and professional associations
45% Existing clients
36% Key clients
36% Media organisations
18% Educational establishments

Which objectives are there in your campaigns (multiple choice)

73% Social media engagement
64% Web site visits
64% Strategic positioning
55% Number of enquiries/new clients
36% Revenue/fees/profits
36% Internal engagement/amplification
27% Interactions/meetings generated
27% Reputation, awards and league tables
18% Return on investment (ROI)

Which tools do you use for campaign/project management (multiple choice)

57% GANTT charts
29% Project management software
29% Mailing list/specialist software/apps
14% Resource/budget planning
14% Team project management tools
14% Other
0% Agile
0% Project management methodology
0% Task breakdowns and network diagrams

Project and team management systems used:

View of biggest problem with campaigns now?

50% Lack of fee-earner engagement
30% Lack of M&BD time/resource
20% Lack of senior support
0% Integration with other aims/projects/campaigns
0% Culture (politics, lack of rewards)
0% Unclear or unrealistic aims/expectations
0% Scope creep
0% Poor internal communications/silo mentality
0% Project management processes/systems

Related campaigns, thought leadership and project management articles

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25th Professional Marketing Forum Conference Report (kimtasso.com) November 2020

ROI, BDO case study on winning awards

nine reflections on thought leadership (2019) professional services (kimtasso.com) September 2019

Thought leadership, campaigns and project management (kimtasso.com) January 2018

Thought leadership campaigns and project management Eight Essentials (kimtasso.com) September 2018 Entrepreneurship, Engage, Educate, Expectations, Empathy, Essence, Edge, Engineer, Execute, Equip, Extract, Evangelism, Evaluation, Evolution

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Project Management in Marketing – Kim Tasso May 2013

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Professional services campaign (and thought leadership and project management) case studies

(And remember that PM Forum members can access all 5,500 past articles from PM Magazine here: Skills Development – PM Forum)

Marketing and BD case studies in legal, accountancy, consultancy (kimtasso.com) April 2024

Law firm media relations and integrated campaigns (Kysen) (kimtasso.com) December 2023

Case studies: Marketing and Business Development at law (kimtasso.com) November 2023

Professional services marketing/BD case studies (kimtasso.com) August 2023

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2023 financial benchmarks for law firms (kimtasso.com) April 2023 (Hazelwoods and Crowe)

The Drum | How Addleshaw Goddard Increased Brand Awareness By Combining Poetry And Law December 2022

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Legal marketing case study – Thought leadership campaigns (kimtasso.com) November 2022 (Howard Kennedy)

World Shaping Wealth: the impact of affluence on the next economy (taylorwessing.com) May 2022

Law firm thought leadership update (kimtasso.com) June 2021 Davitt Jones Boult, Howard Kennedy, DLA Piper, Moreton Fraser, Stephens Scown, Passle legal thought leadership league table

Professional Services Thought leadership update – (kimtasso.com) November 2020 FTI, Bidwells, Grist, FieldFisher

Accountancy marketing case study – MHA (kimtasso.com) June 2018