CMO Mandates Expose Big Bets on Growth

Law firms may seem to move in lockstep. Not so when it comes to growth strategies.

CMO mandates prove just how far apart firms really are.

These marketing leaders are running point on their firm’s growth bet. Each mandate is a signal about where the firm is today, and where it thinks it’s going.

And it’s anything but uniform. Some are clear winners.

BTI’s survey of more than 140 law firm marketing leaders unwraps these mandates. Here’s what these CMOs are charged with accomplishing:

• • 37%: Support individual attorneys in business development
  • 32%: Grow firm revenue
  • 16%: Develop new strategy for growth
  • 15%: Raise the firm’s profile to win higher-rate work

These aren’t job descriptions. These are strategic bets. And – there will be winners and losers.

4 Big Law Firm Marketing Bets

The Decentralized Bet

37% of CMOs are going to get the best out of their attorneys. These CMOs are charged with supporting individual partners with business development.

This means supporting a plethora of individual strategies, tactics, and approaches. CMOs will often try to guide the attorneys to the most successful strategies – but these are largely opt-in.

The attorney-centric approach offers the path of least resistance – and is often the legacy approach.

The challenges include:

• • • Exceptionally hard to scale
    • Multiple approaches (and messages) to the market
    • One-by-one approach to developing rainmakers

A group of these CMOs finds the multitude of requests, demands, styles, skill levels, and expectations exhilarating – almost addictive. They especially love the success stories. But others describe it as an unending, unrewarding treadmill.

The underlying assumption here: the successful attorneys will bring in enough business for all – or more.

The Firm as Enterprise Bet

32% of CMOs are tasked with growing revenue at the enterprise level. They are betting:

• • • Sustainable growth comes from superior systems – combined with superior people
    • Institutional knowledge outlasts individual partners
    • Collaboration beats individual achievement

These firms invest more in thought leadership, partner training, client feedback, industry-facing groups and new business development metrics such as shared business development credit.

It works – when leadership backs it, measures it, and protects it from being derailed by one-off exceptions and legacy habits. And funds it.

These CMOs are not ignoring individual attorneys. They provide individual support in  2 strategic contexts:

• • • Drawing on enterprise efforts to generate inbound leads
    • Leveraging a set of strategically selected tools backed by the firm

The enterprise bet offers partners a potential differentiator – and a uniform message to the market.

The Reinvention Bet

16% of CMOs are reinventing their firm’s BD model. Incremental change won’t unleash the outsized growth they want. Most of these CMOs are operating under mostly partner-centric models.

The reinventors are moving closer to the enterprise model with deep investments and structural change including:

• • • Industry facing go-to-market strategies
    • Strategic account teams
    • Firmwide training at scale
    • Dedicated client development executives to support relationship partners and clients

This amounts to transformational change. And – transformation demands unequivocal air cover from leadership.

The Premium Work Bet

15% of CMOs are tasked with moving into the rarified air of the super-premium work.

They are after the big, complex, new, novel and prestige assignments. These CMOs play a role in lateral success, along with the institutional support, to gain credibility in key market segments. This is prevalent in M&A, Private Equity and Litigation.

But laterals are only part of the equation. CMOs are adding brand building, thought leadership, and new support systems to meet the unrelenting demands of both the top laterals and clients.

Success demands 3 components:

• • • Crystal-clear, unflinching market-facing message
    • Super-premium rate partner behaviors
    • Funding and discipline – well more than a fiscal year

The High Stakes Trade Offs

Every bet brings its own risks and rewards. The risks in these bets include:

• • • Strategy gets overruled by partner preference
    • Firms dabble in these strategies by offering limited funding
    • Leadership silence on the strategy

But – the rewards can be substantial, including:

• • • Mouthwatering profits
    • Outsized growth
    • Enduring growth
    • Improved talent recruitment and retention
    • Rate-setting leadership
    • Attracting new clients

Avoid the Known Landmines

CMO mandates are easily muddied up by partner requests, special initiatives, marketing emergencies, pocket vetoes and budget freezes.

Successful CMOs view building the leadership backing and commitment they need as an ongoing, dedicated part of their role – and never, ever let it lapse.

Pick your bet. Fund it. Back it. Protect it. Execute it. Growth follows.