We’re ending the week on a high note, with a guest post from Lance Godard, of The Godard Group. For over 30 years, Lance has worked with lawyers and law firms to help them craft their messages, so if you’re looking for someone to help you with your content, look no further than The Godard Group. Today, he gives us some solid tips for conducting a quarterly tune-up of our marketing/BD plans.

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Just as you regularly perform maintenance on your car, you need to regularly tune-up your marketing and business development efforts, objectives and plans in response to changes in your practice, your client base, your experience, and your network. In fact, it’s a good idea to do that quarterly, because three months is enough time to determine how well your plan is working or, more to the point, how well you are working your plan. Here are three things you can do:

  1. Honestly assess progress against goals. Obviously, a single quarter doesn’t provide enough data to evaluate whether or not your plan will bear fruit, but it is long enough to see how well you’re performing against what you wanted to do. That means, for example, if you set the objective of writing one client alert each week but have only produced two in the first 12 weeks of the year, you need to adjust your expectations (there’s no sense beating yourself up if your schedule doesn’t permit you to write more). That doesn’t mean that you should dial everything back, but it does mean that you should assess at this point whether the marketing and BD activities you planned at the beginning of the year are realistic, and that you can and will actually carry them out.
  2. Refocus efforts on existing clients. It’s easy to build a plan around the “new:” new clients, new opportunities, new regulations, new industries. But most lawyers – and you’re probably one of them – are only able to devote a limited amount of time to identifying and pursuing new clients because they spent most of their time assisting their existing clients. If that’s what you’ve done over the past quarter, now might be a good time to refocus your efforts on getting additional work out of the people with whom you spend the most time. Challenge yourself to learn about those clients, to ask them questions that go beyond the scope of the work you’re already doing, to get introductions to new contacts at the company in other divisions, and maybe even other locations. The knowledge you gain will give you valuable insight into the challenges facing those companies, while at the same time position you to provide additional value because you’re more in tune with the things they care about. More importantly, it will alert you to additional opportunities to assist them.
  3. Follow the market. It’s a good idea to confirm that the objectives and tactics you identified three months ago are still relevant to the market you serve. Is medicinal marijuana still a factor for employers in your state? Have you helped a client get through a thorny regulatory issue that didn’t even exist in January? Maybe you’ve developed a new skill or experience in a different industry that opens the door to work you didn’t even contemplate doing when your first wrote the plan. In all of those cases, you need to revise your plan take into account those unexpected opportunities: what they are and what you’re going to do to go after them.

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There’s no time like the present to review your marketing efforts, rethink your marketing objectives and tune-up your marketing and business development plan.

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Photo of Lindsay Griffiths Lindsay Griffiths

Lindsay Griffiths is the International Lawyers Network’s Executive Director. She is a dynamic, influential international executive and marketing thought leader with a passion for relationship development and authoring impactful content. Griffiths is a driven, strategic leader who implements creative initiatives to achieve the…

Lindsay Griffiths is the International Lawyers Network’s Executive Director. She is a dynamic, influential international executive and marketing thought leader with a passion for relationship development and authoring impactful content. Griffiths is a driven, strategic leader who implements creative initiatives to achieve the goals of a global professional services network. She manages all major aspects of the Network, including recruitment, member retention, and providing exceptional client service to an international membership base.

In her role as Executive Director, Griffiths manages a mix of international programs, engages a diverse global community, and develops an international membership base. She leads the development and successful implementation of major organizational initiatives, manages interpersonal relationships, and possesses executive presence with audiences of internal and external stakeholders. Griffiths excels at project management, organization, and planning, writes and speaks with influence and authority, and works independently while demonstrating flexibility in thinking, especially in challenging situations. She also adapts to diverse and dynamic environments with constant assessment and recalibration.

JD Supra Readers Choice Top Author 2019

In 2021, the ILN was honored as Global Law Firm Network of the Year by The Lawyer European Awards, and in 2016, 2017, and 2022, they were shortlisted as Global Law Firm Network of the Year. Since 2011, the Network has been listed as a Chambers & Partners Leading Law Firm Network, recently increasing this ranking to be included in the top two percent of law firm networks globally, as well as adding two regional rankings. She was awarded “Thought Leader of the Year” by the Legal Marketing Association’s New York chapter in 2014 for her substantive contributions to the industry and was included in Clio’s list of “34 People in Legal You Should Follow on Twitter.” She was also chosen for the American Bar Association Journal’s inaugural Web 100‘s Best Law Blogs, where judge Ivy Grey said “This blog is outstanding, thoughtful, and useful.” Ms. Griffiths was chosen as a Top Author by JD Supra in their 2019 Readers’ Choice Awards, for the level of engagement and visibility she attained with readers on the topic of marketing & business development. She has been the author of Zen & the Art of Legal Networking since February 2009.