Digital White Papers

52 WWW.ILTANET.ORG | ILTA WHITE PAPER MARKETING TECHNOLOGY Strategic Experience Management and Proposal Best Practices Create a culture of collaboration The firms that are most successful in creating pitches and proposals have created fail-safe, methodical approaches when responding to lawyer requests. These plans details what the firm can provide based on how far in advance the BD team receives the original proposal request – from 6 hours to 12 hours to 24 hours to 1 week to 2 weeks. As the lead time increases, different processes and workflows, aided by automation, kick-in and assist the business development team in creating a best-in-class response. For example, at the 1-week interval, imagine the Competitive Intelligence, Library Services and Pricing teams being alerted with an email that requests tasks on a specific proposal without additional work from the business team? And with the ability to log the responses in a database? These types of processes are invaluable by creating an "we're all in this together" mentality, as well as aiding the BD team in puing the firm's best foot forward. Aggregate all the sensible data you can The old saying that "content is king" holds true in the proposal automation realm, too. There is a constant fear that BD teams do not have access to the right and most recent content. Therefore, integration with third-party systems is an absolute must. But you must look beyond the website, experience management, and time and billing systems for content. These integrations are considered table stakes. Your intranet, HR database, data warehouse and document management systems have tons of actionable content that the BD team may not have otherwise considered. It's oen the furthest beneath the surface where we find the diamonds, so make it easy for BD teams to excavate this rich content. Automate a win/loss debrief It seems that no one has the time these days to ask why the work was won or lost, which is invaluable information in formulating an ongoing, winning pitch and proposal strategy. And even if the information is available, it's not captured in a singular system that can be searched. So – create one. Work with your BD team to determine the most important questions to know in the win/loss debrief and create an easy method to get this survey into the hands of the lead lawyer(s) – or potentially, clients (though, if a possibility, I suggest face-to-face meetings with clients is the way to go). And keep the survey as brief as possible. More is not more in this instance. "More" simply increases the height of the hurdle to complete the win/loss debrief task. The goal is asking the right questions. In closing, technologist can great value to proposal automations – so get off the sidelines, get in the game, and help create a system that wins more business. ILTA KEITH N. WEWE My name is Keith Wewe and I'm the VP of Strategy and Solutions at Content Pilot, a marketing, technology and business development consultancy for law firms, and former International President of the Legal Marketing Association. One of the many aspects of my work is to connect the dots for clients between the receipt of proposal or RFP and a huge win. To do that, I work with large firms to regional boutiques creating laser-focused proposal content, differentiating template designs, go/no-go plans, response strategies, win/loss debriefs and analytics research that help them create better proposals with the goal of achieving that win. You can follow me on Twitter at @ kwewe and Linked In at www. linkedin.com/in/keithwewe.

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