September has been a full-on month of insights for law firm marketing and communications professionals. Big shout-out to PM Forum for their annual conference and a couple of interesting roundtables and webinars.
Cross selling
Every professional services firm is obsessed about cross-selling – and with good reason.
Over 80% of firms (according to Passle) believe that they can increase revenues by 10%, if not 20-30%, by improving cross-selling.
At a recent PM Forum, there was no silver bullet presented but a range of concepts to explore, to improve that magic number!!
Narrative – reframing cross-selling to make it more palatable – and understand what is actually involved, and why it benefits client and firm.
Trust – helping partners to build the relationships and understanding to trust their peers, but also to ensure a consistent client experience.
Knowledge – some firms give a rough guide; others are looking at automating the knowledge and insight. What’s important is that partners have an informed way to introduce clients.
AI-enabled – are you using email or AI engines to bring the relevant insight to the relevant partners and teams?
Training – finally, giving partners the skills and confidence to do this as a matter of course is all important.
Obviously many firms have Key Client Programmes and Client Partners; but it feels like everyone needs the tools, cultural foundation and information to make all of this happen.
The new consumer
At the PM Forum annual conference, Dr Susan Rose reminded us of the behaviours and expectations of consumers today. Sure we all appreciate the notion of ease, frictionless transactions and instant information; but what was also surprising was the potential erosion of expertise. This comes fom AI, social media, fake news, and more. How can law firms lean into their expertise and role as a trusted advisor?
Branding
There was a lot of focus on branding at the PM Forum conference – and rightly so, as more firms look at their brand identity. Only this week, Clifford Chance came out with a new look. At the conference, Elliott Moss of Mishcon de Reya talked about starting with the numbers – and showed some impressive returns from investment in branding. Who else spends a £1m with one media (in this case, The Economist)? Impressive presentation, impressive results. We also heard from Joe Glover on the importance of brand-building today, whether through the new GEO search optimisation or YouTube. Is this the Gold Era of Branding?
