This final panel effectively stitched the theme of the day's workshops together. Shourik Chatterjee (Future Gazing 2045), Amit Champaneri (Sales Mindset), John Tiniakos (ROI & AI), hosted by Lee Curtis, concluded that firms need to stop admiring the possibilities and start operationalising them around clients, data, and measurable outcomes.

1) Future Gazing 2045 (Shourik Chatterjee)

• Three lenses: data & tech, clients, people/culture. The debate wasn’t whether to use data/AI, but where to lead and how fast, and how to align with client demand rather than internal noise.

• Boardroom seat (re)claim: M&BD earns influence by being the team that best aligns fee-earners to client needs, using data to move first (and measure).

• One human skill for the long game: resilience + adaptability + continuous learning. That’s the mindset to outrun the curve to 2045.

“Keep clients at the centre and use data/tech to move faster toward them, everything else follows.”

2) Sales Mindset in Professional Services (Amit Champaneri)

• Define the campaign before you launch it. Objective → audience → hook → route to conversation → measurement. If this isn’t crystal clear, don’t press send.

• Measure what matters. Link activity to pipeline, meetings, and revenue stages in CRM. Vague lunches ≠ outcomes.

• Tech helps, but humans close. AI can size markets, draft, and prep. Sales is still relationships, judgement, and tailored value to a buyer.

“Start with the objective and the buyer. If you can’t map objective → conversation → pipeline, you can’t measure success.”

Marketing + Sales: one motion

Marketing builds the content and go-to-market. Sales challenges the purpose and shapes the journey to commercial outcomes. Begin together, stay joined-up, and be willing to say “not yet” until the objective is measurable.

3) ROI & AI: From “Failure to Launch” to Document Lift (John Tiniakos)

• Document drag is real. People burn hours hunting for content, fixing brand issues, and reworking tone. You’re paid for expertise and trust, not for reformatting.

• Proving ROI: Don’t stop at “time saved.” Track rework reduction, brand compliance, speed-to-first-draft, and win-rate lift where docs are involved.

• Change management matters. The AI that “actually works” connects to sources, drafts something usable, and lands with training + governance.

“Spend less time building decks and docs, more time presenting and advising.”

Audience Takeaways

• Data quality? Draw a line today and decide the minimum dataset per use case, set a source of truth, and start collecting consistently.

• Web & discovery: Your site is a growth engine, not a brochure. Make it answer questions, surface signals, and feed CRM, so that humans can act.

• Next five years: Expect usable, source-connected document generation; more specific buyer journeys; shifting talent pipelines (and humans working alongside agents).

   

What to implement in your firm today

• Write one-page campaign briefs (objective, audience, hook, offer, route to meeting, metrics). Get rid of anything that can’t be measured.

• Tie activities to CRM stages. If it isn’t in the system, it didn’t happen. Track meetings booked, stage progress, velocity, and conversion.

• Ship one “thin-slice” AI workflow (e.g., credential pulls, client alert drafting) with a human check. Log time saved and rework avoided.

• Turn your website into an instrument. Add conversational search, capture behaviours to CRM, and build two partner landing pages that actually sell.

• Protect the talent ladder. Replace rote “learning by suffering” with judgement checklists, prompt libraries, and live review sessions.