Tiger Team Briefing 5P – Driving business development performance
Briefing magazine’s virtual 5P conference prompted the latest Tiger Team gathering, with the focus on business development performance aligning with one of 5P’s core themes.
Editor-in-chief Richard Brent and Christopher Young, leader of the BD practice at Pinnacle, were joined by Sid Welham, chief operating officer at HFW; Ruth Ling, head of innovation and change at Taylor Wessing; Marc Yaffe, partner and head of commercial litigation at JMW; and Kirsty Shenton, head of client care at Mills & Reeve.
As ever with the Tigers, and a format that encourages very open, authentic contributions, it was a hugely insightful discussion into the world of BD from cultural, technical and operational perspectives; the short-term and longer-term pandemic impacts (an effective if extreme way of getting law firms closer to their clients, it transpires]; and the levers available to unlock more progress.
On the latter, leveraging and integrating technology, and a healthier supply of better quality data, are strong contenders in the mix of suggested solutions, but it transpires work could also be done to incentivise commitment to key actions such as client listening, referrals and wider cross-expertise collaboration.
And a shout-out too for time recording and time data featuring in despatches once again. A much-resented administrative burden that some commentators years ago called time on, it has amazing powers of endurance – and the business value of the inputs/outputs is finally being recognised beyond its immediate billing purpose.
There’s no doubt that driving BD performance is higher up the practice agenda than perhaps ever before – but the will to do better clearly needs a success strategy to match. With a number of marketing and experience projects currently in flight, the Pinnacle tigers have the knowhow and the learning to give those strategies some real bite.