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All technology companies or all agricultural organisations). g. corporate finance, tax etc). • For a particular partner or fee-earner. Therefore, decide for which level you are producing a plan and obtain plans for other levels in your firm first to provide you with guidance, but also to ensure that your plan integrates and reinforces with others’ plans. 20 DYNAMIC PRACTICE DEVELOPMENT A marketing framework Having reviewed the main marketing ideas, what follows now is a framework to guide you through the various steps you should take to prepare yourself and your firm for effective marketing and to prepare a marketing plan to focus on your marketing, selling and client development activities.

When you move from communicating with a market to communicating with a particular organisation or individual you have moved into the selling phase. Here the focus is on the specific needs of that one organisation or individual rather than the generalised needs of the whole market. Some argue that selling is more orientated to ‘pushing’ the product or service you want to sell although most successful selling is driven by the needs of the buyer. Typically in a professional firm, selling is the preserve of the most senior fee-earners – they have the experience and knowledge to promote their own and the firm’s benefits.

The analysis should provide you with three or four areas on which you need to concentrate. Or it may show you that your marketing challenge is to radically alter the nature of clients and work you are generating. Once you have identified the types of clients, or referrers, you want to target, you should start collecting information about them. This should include their names and addresses, their needs and concerns, any links within your firm, background information about them and ideas on how you might approach them, or build the relationship if they are existing clients.