Marketing planning
Planning is important to maintain focus, avoid flitting from initiative to initiative, and to remind oneself that marketing has to be sustained over the long term. Budgets are needed to keep a check on spending.
Too many partners think that marketing and BD can be turned on and off like a tap: "off" when they are busy and "on" when they are quiet and need to generate some work. Of course, the lead time involved in nurturing a relationship with a decision-maker from inception to the point where you receive an instruction is often very long - measured in months and years, rather than days and weeks - so sustained, unbroken relationship building is required to win new business in a consistent fashion. Take your eye off the ball by neglecting a contact during a busy period and one of your competitors will nip in and steal an instruction from under your nose, often without you being aware of it. Managing all this requires a plan of action.
How we can help
At Wheeler Associates, we provide a range of services to help firms to prepare effective marketing plans, including:
- Putting in place marketing planning processes for firms
- Facilitating the preparation of department, office, sector and firm-wide marketing plans and budgets using workshops and planning templates
- Coaching partners to prepare personal BD plans
- Auditing firms' existing marketing plans to suggest ways in which these could be improved