United States: Partnering With Marketing and Media Experts

When you hire outside consultants, you have a portrait in your mind of what it will be like to work with them and what results you would like them to generate for you. Like other meaningful relationships in life, client relationships may be two-way streets, but they’re also unequal in a critical way.

Here’s the inequality. It’s not your job to understand consultants. It’s their job to understand you. To a great extent, that also applies to your relationships with the lawyers in your firm, who are your internal clients. This awareness of all clients is one of the most important skills a communications practitioner can develop. It defines that elusive and misused concept called "partnering."

Not that you as the client don’t have to bring something to the table as well. The onus may be on marketing or media specialists to know our clients inside and out. But clients must be prepared to help identify the strategic ways to move forward quickly to gain market share or penetrate new markets.

Media consultants continue to challenge law firms to tell them as much as possible about your client mix and the target buyers you want to reach. Whatever you may not know now, it will be worth the time to find out. It is an exercise that, in and of itself, serves the law firm as a vital first step toward market penetration.

"By partnering with an outside agency, you can bring the strategic focus and expertise of media relations professionals [to bear] in developing very strategic and focused methods of creating more awareness for a firm and its key practice areas," says Deborah Todd, Director of Technology Initiatives at Vinson & Elkins, LLP. "Utilizing your agency efficiently will create a win-win for both parties."

Partnering thus refers to a relationship built on mutual trust, respect and confidence in each other's abilities, especially the ability to provide the information and feedback necessary for a successful relationship.

With that in mind, let’s review ten fundamental action points that you should expect from outside consultants to develop and leverage the kind of internal support at your firm that will enhance the partnering strategy:

1. Meeting with your partners to determine the goals and objectives. Know their key areas of strength and let them know yours. Assess and explain the unique areas where your firm/attorney(s) should be positioned. Introduce your agency to key attorneys. Define what is important to your firm.
2. Articulating specific results that you can measure. Ensure your consultant knows what you define as success. Make sure these are not vague clichés, but very, very specific measurements, including the hard dollars at stake.
3. Listening, listening, listening. Consultant Deborah McMurray, of McMurray Associates, points out that disregarding client's concerns, and not perceiving problems before they arise, can endanger the partnering alliance. "The best professionals are those that anticipate their clients’ needs and concerns, and are able to structure their approach and strategy accordingly," says McMurray.
4. Staying in regular contact. Your consultant should be communicating face to face, via the telephone, and email. Each communication is a critical trust-building opportunity. A successful relationship between an agency and law firm depends on continual reports and ongoing evaluations. There needs to be a specific, ongoing interchange of what is working and what is not in order to ensure that the time, effort, and resources justify continuing the relationship for both sides.
5. Following up on all opportunities. Check on whether the consultant working with the key attorney is communicating how to process marketing or media opportunities. The consultant needs to be meeting with the attorneys and hammering home the importance of returning calls promptly, rehearsing the best answers to likely questions and helping track down the attorney and professional assistant when an opportunity arises in order to ensure the interview is taken. Afterwards, the consultant should evaluate how and how well your attorney is quoted, make sure reprints are secured and include these in promotional materials, RFPs and shown off the good results in an internal newsletter.
6. Helping you and the partners at your firm refine and evolve a strategic plan that represents a consensus on measurable objectives. By working from a strategic plan on which the firm and the marketing or media consultant agree, you ensure that the opportunities are targeted and that every possible follow-up opportunity is taken to leverage the initial success and generate additional hits. Together with the consultant, you should develop a team approach involving all of your outside resources. The consultant should be able to help you coordinate activities beyond his or her specific expertise: sales training, advertising, PR, recruitment, etc.
7. Bringing you new workable ideas that are strategically on target. The consultants must be integral parts of the industry – conspicuously market-wise and insightful.
8. Tough love. The consultant ought to be bringing you important messages that you or the partners at your firm don't want to hear. By being truthful in a clear and concise way, without being judgmental or dismissive, they build trust. Once you trust them, the relationship will flourish.
9. Clearly defined billing process. It is important to discuss service and billing to avoid any misconceptions about what they delivered and what you are paying for.
10. Checking in. The consultants must never be overconfident in their relationship with you. Client relationships often deteriorate without the client making one single direct complaint! In the professional services, the smart folks are always wary.

The consultants you hire should know how to interpret any warning signs you send up, consciously or not. Are you no longer including them in strategic planning meetings? Are you not referring them to others? Do you not return their calls promptly? Then there’s that most telling question: have you decreased the budget?

It’s the job of outside advisor partners to pay attention, and begin repairs the moment they sense that something has changed or shifted for the worse. If they value you as a client, keeping the relationship intact should be their top priority Not just their reputation is at stake if you're poorly served: their precious dollars are involved, too, since it costs a lot more to win a new client than to keep an existing one.

The ten actions I've listed can indicate how beneficial is the relationship between partners. And it will only be a true partnership if it benefits all the participants.