Dateline:  07/27/97

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• Have a reward or incentive system in the firm that rewards marketing efforts and/or results.
   
• Help each partner to develop a personal strategic marketing plan according to his/her specific skills and interests (get outside support if needed).
   
• Evaluate your current client list for potential expansions of service or new opportunities, choose the best among them and establish a specific budget for developing this business.
   
• Develop a list of new prospects, based on the clients you serve most successfully now.
   
• Hire an unprejudiced outsider to help review and prioritize your prospects.
   
• Review marketing results regularly to assess the quality of your mix of business.
   
• Develop ongoing tracking measures to monitor all marketing activities and publicize the results regularly to all partners, with summaries periodically to the firm.
   
• Distribute internal newsletters that update the members of the firm regularly about marketing efforts (include information about how to improve effectiveness).
   
• Enhance relationships with referees, like bankers, accountants, lawyers, underwriters.  This is still the primary source for most new business.
   
• Put someone in charge of the firm's marketing efforts who understands something about marketing, is interested in it, and will be a bulldog about  getting other partners to deliver as promised (Don't forget to relieve them of some of their client responsibilities so they have time to do the job right!)
   
• Keep your databases of client and prospect information up to date.

Time Wasters

• Developing list of prospects (unless done in small groups and based on clients you currently serve successfully)
   
• Developing cross-selling or interdisciplinary  marketing plans (unless you have formal teams organized and there is regular follow up)
   
• Providing marketing support personnel if they are being used as an excuse so partners can avoid doing what they should do themselves.
   
• One-time research efforts on the competition.
   
• Hiring a marketing director and then not giving them the authority needed to carry out their jobs.
   
• Aggregated ``image studies" of client perceptions (unless specific feedback is preserved and studied).
   
• Estimating the size of your market.
   
• Developing a position statement.
   
• Required ``selling seminars" (unless they want to learn, this won't help).
   
• Receptions and sponsored seminars (unless you provide specific guidance to your professionals about what their goal is for each event and what they should do to accomplish it).
   

Next week's feature:  Is Your Web Site Working?

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Copyright 1997 by Kaye Vivian (kvivian@cloud9.net).  All rights reserved.  Permission to reprint is granted provided this article is not altered and the copyright notice remains attached