Moss marketing

Naomi Moss, Trowers & Hamlins’ director of marketing, on the client-focused strategies that have seen her firm succeed in a strained economy.
Interview by Lucy McNulty

“I started my career in the 1980s working for a law firm that specialised in real estate. I enjoyed working in the legal sector from the outset and have never really looked back. Over the past 20 years, marketing within the sector has changed considerably. In the 1980s and early 1990s, marketing departments were very limited. It is also true to say that there wasn’t the same level of buy-in to marketing as there is today. Marketing is now considered to be a part of a fee-earner’s career path.
In light of this, the investment in marketing and business-development training at Trowers & Hamlins (Trowers) has increased in recent years. We now offer a wide variety of ‘soft skills’. We like to bring an element of reality to our training sessions as too often fee-earners found it difficult to transfer the experience into real-life situations. We act out real-life situations such as interviews for beauty parades, which has brought a much-needed dose of reality to proceedings.
While we may have moved on over the past 20 years, inevitably there are some people who still resist getting involved in business development training. However, when working within a comparatively conservative environment like the legal sector you expect to face these hurdles. There are some dissenters who you can change – you simply have to become adept at altering the way that you work with people. Experience shows, however, that you can’t convert everyone, and at times you have to step back.
For the past four years, participation in these types of training sessions has been part of the appraisal process for the firm’s fee-earners; every fee-earner is required to establish what marketing training they need and draw up a 12-month soft-skills training plan accordingly. The focus is no longer solely on black letter law. The economic downturn has driven home the importance of having such skills under your belt.
I have now worked through two recessions, watched people come and go in both, and have seen the ensuing discomfort and vulnerability that can spread throughout an organisation’s workforce as a result. My experience has taught me the importance of having a strong culture in place. Undoubtedly, Trowers’ unified culture has helped us retain an engaged workforce throughout a difficult period, enabling staff to pull together and work hard as a team. A policy of honesty from the outset – through the introduction of a quarterly newsletter that sets out exactly where we were financially and what we were doing to help people weather the recession – has further helped in boosting staff confidence in the business going forward.
Certainly, the firm’s strong culture is something noted, and highlighted as a differentiating factor, by our clients and staff. Differentiation is more important now than ever, as clients search for the qualities that set your firm apart in an increasingly competitive and commoditised legal services market.
This recession has undeniably been more expansive than previous downturns – there is more pressure on firms to demonstrate added value and good client care. Partners and fee-earners have had to completely adapt their approach to be much more client-focused in their activities. It is important for clients to feel that when times are tough they can rely upon their lawyers to act as trusted advisers. Most firms have gone back to basics and we too we have stepped back a little bit. Like everybody else our budgets have been cut, and this has forced us to evaluate and substantiate our marketing practices in a more robust manner than previously.
Nonetheless, our firm has succeeded in ‘weathering the storm’. We are lucky as a firm to have a very diverse practice spread across the UK and Middle East and shared between the private and public sector, which has enabled us to avoid over reliance on one or two key clients. We also have a strong reputation as the number one housing and local government firm – established as a result of our very long-standing involvement in the sectors and the well-respected legal expertise within the firm. A top spot in a niche area has certainly helped to set us apart from rival firms.
The firm also has very strong leadership. The firm’s management board is made up of eight senior partners, the finance director, human resources director and me. I have now been on the board for three years. Having a seat on the board means you can participate in setting the firm’s strategy, and managing that strategy throughout the year to ensure we are getting it right and monitoring return on investment. We do this by asking one practice per month to present to the board on a number of key areas. This has proved hugely successful both for the board and for the practice areas.
Two years ago we carried out a restructuring of our marketing department as a result of an independent review of the department that assessed our marketing efforts, the role that we as a marketing department had with our internal and external audiences, how we contributed to the practice and also how the partners interact with the marketing team. We realised from this that refocusing our resources to ensure we had business development and marketing professionals looking after our key areas of growth would greatly benefit the firm. For too long, we had been a department that serviced all sectors across the board and this simply wasn’t the best use of our time. Looking at the key areas of growth, recruiting senior business-development managers, with skills relevant to these different sectors, and by introducing more marketing training, has meant that we have been able to improve our service to the firm, and this in turn has improved the standing of some of the less well-known of our practice areas. We have instilled fee-earners with confidence and helped with their desire to make a name for themselves both within the firm and the wider general public.
Going forward, I would like to see business development and marketing professionals within the firm sitting within individual departments. I would also like to implement a client relationship management (CRM) system as this would greatly benefit the marketing team and our fee-earners. However, we have a client-care committee that is made up of three management board members and me and we also run key client management meetings for our top-50 clients. The communication is there and our CRM processes are successful; they just need to be automated.
As far as the future is concerned, 2010 will be a challenge but I think that we are through the worst of this recession. When firms begin building their marketing departments back up as the economy turns, finding people with the right skills will be important. I think marketing budgets will always be cautious. There will always be other investments to be made, and sometimes the investment into marketing can lag behind, which is always a frustration. Unlike investment into something as tangible as a new IT system, for example, marketing efforts can be difficult to measure.
I have been with the firm 11 years now, and during those 11 years things have progressed unbelievably. I thoroughly enjoy working at Trowers & Hamlins, we have a fantastic culture and great people. At this moment in time I am happy, and if you are happy in this profession then I see no reason to move.”

Naomi Moss is director of marketing at Trowers & Hamlins. She can be contacted at nmoss@trowers.com