Building a marketing culture in your firm
The 4th Annual PM Forum CEE Regional Summit drew nearly
60 people from a dozen different countries in Europe to Prague
in November 2006
The Regional Summit was kicked
off by Jeffrey Forbes, founder and
chairman of the PM Forum in
CEE and creator and organiser of
the event, who welcomed all participants
and explained the day’s programme and
other logistics.The morning session
consisted of two main presentations and a
client panel discussion, and was chaired by
Hilary McDowell, managing partner of the
Prague office of CMS Cameron McKenna.
Hilary commented on the fact that attendees
to this year’s Summit are coming from
a wider variety of firms and that almost all
of the major service firms have established
their marketing/BD departments. Some
team members are even in senior positions,
which clearly show that firms are aware of
the need for greater differentiation on the
market.
The first presentation was a keynote
speech delivered by Jan Matejcek who is
the managing partner of the Prague office
of White & Case as well as their global
partner in charge of business development.
Jan had chosen to tackle the topic of “How
a marketing culture can be built in any
professional services firm”. He approached
the issue firstly by laying out the landscape,
providing definitions of marketing and
culture itself, and smoothly moved on to
explaining the most important aspects of
building a corporate culture so that
marketing becomes the DNA of the firm.
His presentation was well structured and
clearly showed that his opinion on this
subject has been build up on the basis of a
wealth of knowledge, together with experience
coming from being at the steering
wheel of business development in one of
the top global law firms.
The next presentation promised to answer
the question “Why don’t professional
service firms act more entrepreneurial?”
This topic was presented by Richard Singer,
Ernst & Young’s marketing & sales director
responsible for the Central Europe South
Area. Richard explained and illustrated the
pitfalls and struggles of an in-house
marketer in professional services firms. He
spent time defining the key factors making
up a typical member of a leadership team
and proposed various ways on how to
motivate them to act more entrepreneurial.
Probably to the amusement (or relief) of
those working in law firms, Richard also
confirmed that accountants, even though
they are more numeric, have the same
phobias as all professionals when it comes
to selling their services.
After the coffee break, Richard Chaplin,
global founder and chairman of the PM
Forum, chaired a client panel discussion.The
panel was attended by two senior in-house
counsel, a CEO and an MD.The panellists
were asked to tell the audience about the
most amazing and most atrocious experience
they have had with professional services firms.
They agreed on the overall
attributes when hiring professionals:
the necessary knowledge
and skills, results oriented
with good knowledge of the
client and superb communication
skills.This marked the end
of the morning session for the
attendees who after lunch split
up into groups for the afternoon
workshops.
Workshop A was facilitated by
Michael Bolan, director of
marketing for Deloitte in
Moscow, and was focused on
how to best use your firm’s
employees as the main
marketing channel. Michael
highlighted the importance of
brand identity and its attributes
– mainly its people – and in
the second part of the workshop
attendees were asked to
work on a case study related to the subject
of internal communication and HR strategies.
Workshop B was facilitated by Mihaly Varga,
regional business development director for
Clifford Chance in Budapest, and was about
joining the inner (management) circle to
drive your firm’s marketing initiatives.This
workshop aimed to address issues relating
to what the critical success factors are that
will help you build a successful career
within a professional services firm, and
succeeded in spite of the diversity of experience
and seniority of the participants.
Then we had another break and a chance
to experience the best networking opportunity
in Europe for professional marketers.
This was followed by Workshop C which
was facilitated by Landy Palmer, European
marketing director for Cushman &
Wakefield in London, and dealt with
moving marketing from an expense to a
valuable asset in the firm. Landy gave participants
a feel for what can be done to move
perceptions of marketing within professional
service firms.
Finally, there was Workshop D which was
facilitated by Pawel Osowski, a partner of
Warsaw Consultants in Warsaw, and dealt
with overcoming resistance to marketing
with successful PR tools. Pawel says partners
demand short-term results which they
can measure and described three effective
PR tools that work and which partners will
invest in to enhance their marketing.
Jana Kloudova is marketing manager at law
firm Allen & Overy in Prague.
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