What Does the Marketing and Business Development Department Do?

As former in-house marketing and business development leaders, we know that age-old question usually posed from a curious partner to justify the size of your department, resources, and to determine what else they can add to your plate.

And to respond appropriately, you need time to sift through those emails, ask your department to send a status update on the current list of marketing and business development initiatives for each practice group, industry group, and attorney, in an effort to explain the immense value your department brings to the firm… AKA the bane of every marketing and business development leader’s existence…

We feel you and know exactly the stress marketing and business development leaders face when it comes to accessing the right information at the right time.

That’s why we built a software specifically for law firm marketing and business development leaders to access this information simply and smoothly – it’s called INform, and it is abundantly better than sifting through information that is likely buried in a spreadsheet or several spreadsheets of information.

There is much more to gain from tracking metrics on your marketing and business development initiatives, but compiling it into a meaningful story about the value of your department, that’s an entirely different and often more complex challenge that requires time, organizations, and usually lots of effort.

You’d be hard-pressed to find any business professional who denies the importance of tracking marketing and business development initiatives and the underlying projects and tasks that roll up into those initiatives. Businesses build budgets, proposals, and expectations for their work based on the projects and tasks at hand, the number of hands on a given project, the phases of said project, the resources available to those who are assigned any given task, and how successful similar past endeavors have been for ROI. Yet, so much of this data lives on spreadsheets. 

So, why are many firms still tracking marketing and business development projects and tasks on a spreadsheet when there is a better way? Every marketing and business development leader deserves better, especially in the time of COVID when so many uncertainties exist and when every single role and resource is so scrutinized.

Let’s take a look at 3 reasons why utilizing a system for tracking your firm’s marketing and business development efforts positions you and your firm to be more competitive, efficient, and successful.

Systems Allow for Better Progression Tracking 

We’ve all been there – clicking through our emails and hitting control+F in a lengthy attempt to find out what the status of a project or task is, who has it, and if there are any important notes or needs related to this task.

How much time have you wasted emailing your attorneys and marketing team to find out just how that Chambers submission or RFP is going? You probably don’t want to think about that if you’re being honest.

What you should be thinking of to combat that universal issue experienced by spreadsheet tracking, instead, is the benefits of a tracking software system to assist internal marketing and business development professionals on your team in their tracking of efforts and time.

If you’re not reviewing quantitative reports on the flow of work, it’s impossible to spot inefficiencies. Furthermore, you cannot accurately identify when a team is falling behind or needs more resources. The lack of easily accessible reporting and data creates breakdowns, miscommunication, and potentially missed deadlines.

You need eyes on your marketing and business development initiatives, every step of the way.

Systems Allow You to Access Time and Resources More Accurately 

We all know there are never enough hours in the day to complete everything on an endless to-do list. However,  understanding how much time each professional takes or should take on various marketing and business development tasks helps set your team up for success. Imagine being able to set reasonable expectations for future goals, create a more balanced and equitable workload, and being keyed into errors and issues your business professionals may be experiencing with their initiatives and projects before concerns arise.

Tracking software can deliver this information in the form of easy to access reports in one centrally located system. With a tracking system in place, there is no need to send out emails to your professionals to ask for estimations on the time it took to complete certain tasks or the need to stare at Pivot Tables of information for answers to simple questions like, “Was answering that RFP worth it?” Welcome to 2022, where tracking and initiatives software does that work for you.

Systems Allow You to Measure Success Specific to Law Firms

How many RFPs, awards submissions, and conferences have you made part of your marketing and business development initiative each year solely because it’s what your firm does every single year? We can probably guess, and when you stop to think about it, you can probably frustratedly guess, too.

Just because you’ve always done something doesn’t mean you should always continue to do it. You look at ROI for almost everything in your firm, and you should be doing the same when it comes to the work your team is doing to support the firm.

Having a very clear measure of time spent, money invested, and positive responses (if any) from your marketing and business development initiatives is imperative for the success of your firm. This type of data allows for better allocation of resources and a more strategic approach to your firm’s marketing and business development efforts.

To learn more about the INform software, a system created to assist internal marketing and business development professional service teams in tracking efforts and time, providing quantitative reports, and spotting inefficiencies and successes in their initiatives, reach out to one of our trusted and experienced team members.