To quote our Podcast guest  "To be a successful lawyer in the 21st century you need both world-class legal skills and the ability to be a successful business person and marketer".  With this in mind I caught up with Barbara Koenen-Geerdink, Global Head of BD & Marketing at Ince, and author of Beyond Billable Hours: Your guide to career success in professional services firms to ask her how individuals in Business Development and Marketing roles can support fee earners in their BD activities.

Barbara talks about the importance of Strategy and Planning and making sure that each individual activity, be it an event, conference, sponsorship etc aligns with the overall strategy of the firm. Part of this is helping fee earners to understand the return on investment of their efforts. 

Barbara also gives some insight on how to do this at scale discussing the importance of ownership from individual sector BD leads and empowering the fee earner who "have some fantastic ideas" to action them.

To close, Barbara explained that you don't need to re-invent the wheel, you can focus on what you are doing well as a firm and try to do that better. Often there are opportunities right in front of you - low hanging fruits - and this is a good place to focus efforts.

Some brilliant insights were shared and I hope you enjoy the 8 minutes.