STOP-COLLABORATE-LISTEN to spot inefficiencies
Managing Partners, Practice Group Leaders, and Marketing Department Directors constantly strive to push the needle of progress forward. With so many moving pieces to a thoughtful strategy, especially in firms with statewide and global offices, it can be difficult to track the initiatives that lead to satisfied clients and a more robust bottom line on your accounts receivables. No matter how well-structured a firm or how long they’ve been using the same business development and marketing outreach strategies… inefficiencies exist.
Identifying business inefficiency can be burdensome, and many firms lack the objective data to properly address personnel issues or BD strategies that are falling short. Gathering accurate data takes time, and you risk offending when trying to address inefficiencies with no clear evidence or course of correction. Anyone in business can tell you how crucial it is to nip these tiny issues in the bud before they grow, leading to lost information, disjointed departments, compliance failures, and even lost business.
Let’s take a look at common inefficiencies that keep even the strongest firms with the best intentions from practicing successful business development and how to remedy them:
Lack of Organization in an Inefficiency
There’s a reason why 90% of startups fail – they lack the organization and structure necessary to bring in the client revenue and investor interest needed to stay afloat and thrive. The same can be true for established firms, especially in shifting times, such as a global pandemic or economic recession. Having clearly developed processes is the equivalent to a roadmap for your firm. Think of the new associates you hire – law school doesn’t teach BD, and you can’t expect your hires to have the soft skills to manage client relationships.
Setting goals with clearly defined processes on how to achieve them sets your staff up for success and cuts down significantly on spinning wheels and uncertainty (aka inefficiency).
Lack of Data is an Inefficiency
What’s worse: no data, lost data, or difficult to find data? None of those is desirable, and they’re all major time sucks that contribute to firmwide breakdowns at every level, especially in your business development plans. Your accounting department sets budgets and tracks spending throughout the year, right? They have tracking software in place and a constant eye on the bottom line.
What if your business development department’s day-to-day and every step in the plans to drive business were traceable? What if you could have a clear idea of where your initiatives stand, how long your teams take to accomplish tasks, and the one thing every department head wants to have readily available… ROI!? How many inefficiencies would that obliterate for your department and firm? Probably most of them if we’re being honest. A lack of data = a lack of pulse on your plans, which brings us to our next inefficiency: lack of strategic focus.
Lack of Strategic Focus is an Inefficiency
Having great ideas for firm BD plans is inspiring, and you don’t want to squash the enthusiasm and creativity of attorneys, firm leaders and other personnel who contribute, but we all know that great ideas must have a place in a strategic plan. Disjointed efforts lead to a lot of aimless wandering on the path to success, so it’s imperative to have everyone on the same page to share a strategic focus. Firmwide clear goals and transparency cut waste on many levels.
People Can Be an Inefficiency
Personnel issues sound scary, but that’s the best way to describe this next inefficiency, and it isn’t always a result of laziness or disinterest on your employees’ parts. We’ve all worked with the overachievers who carry it all, burn the candle from both ends, and end up suffering from burnout. They may have been carrying their weight (and then some) for a while, but burnout is an inefficiency that will bite you in the long run.
Being able to keep the pulse of workflow progress, have an eye on workloads, and spot who could use more or less work will drive good business. In turn, the healthy work-life balance established as a result builds a happier firm culture and drives employee satisfaction in the right direction.
We know we’re not dropping any new truths here. You know the inefficiencies we’ve mentioned. You might be up to your eyeballs in them, and you’re probably thinking how wonderful it would be to mitigate these issues without superpowers or an Act of Congress. Enter Society 54’s INform 2.0: everything you need to STOP inefficiencies, COLLABORATE with your firm, and LISTEN to clearly defined data and needs that are wholly unbiased and uncompromised.
As former in-house Marketing and Business Development leaders, the Society 54 team recognized the need to be able to both track and report on the wide-scope of projects and activities of their teams. By creating and developing the INform software, we created a system to assist internal marketing and business development professional service teams in tracking efforts and time, providing quantitative reports and the ability to spot inefficiencies. Project progress, separated by category, is tracked using an easy-to-navigate platform that gives motivation and rewards through gamification.