Essentials:

• 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).