It’s often challenging to fully illustrate what differentiates a law firm to the market. Being able to articulate the unique value a firm offers is a key element of the role of the CMO.
Today on the CMO Series, Charles Cousins is lucky enough to dive into this topic with Suzie Williams, National Director, Marketing & Business Development at McMillan.
Suzie and Charles discuss:
Suzie’s journey to her role at McMillan and the specific moment differentiation became a key consideration
The importance of client listening and feedback
How to demonstrate the talent and experience within your firm in an authentic way
The role of the marketing team in building diverse teams
Advice for others trying to build a point of difference for their firm
Transcription:
Charles: Welcome to the Passle CMO series podcast where we discuss all things marketing and business development. Today, we're going to explore how firms can differentiate themselves in the market. The difference between law firms are often difficult to fully illustrate to the market, being able to diff differentiate and clearly explain the value of the firm is important and usually this falls under the remit and one of the jobs of the CMO we're lucky today to jump into this topic with Suzie Williams, National Director, Marketing and Business Development at leading Canadian law firm, McMillan.
Suzie, welcome to the podcast.
Suzie: Thanks for having me Charles.
Charles: And you're dialling in from Toronto, is it or you're just outside?
Suzie: Yeah, I'm in Toronto, the GTA. So, yeah.
Charles: OK, brilliant. Well, we've had a few folk from Toronto recently, Lisa Azzuolo from over at Bennett Jones, Judith McKay from McCarthy Tétrault and Tamara Costa from BLG.
So we're really getting some great insight straight out of Bay Street. So it's a pleasure to have you on.
Suzie: Thank you.
Charles: For the benefit of our audience, Suzie. Could you take us through the journey of how you came to be in your role at McMillan. And was there a specific point in your journey when differentiation of the firm became a key consideration?
Suzie: Sure, as I look back, I actually started my career in sales and since I was compensated almost 100% commission, I learned pretty quickly about sales principles like the law of averages. And that if what you're selling isn't clearly addressing a need, you know, you better find another gig. So I moved from sales to customer service and eventually on to marketing where I pretty much kept my teeth in professional services. I started at a pretty small law firm that was acquired by a larger street firm. And then after that merger, there were seemed to be two leaders of many roles including marketing. So I took my experience to another national firm and I had the opportunity there to lead their marketing team. Now, I would say I had some ownership aspirations, but I'm not a lawyer. So law society rules don't provide a path to partnership for non-lawyers.
So I made another move to an engineering firm where I actually had the opportunity and achieved becoming a global equity partner. And I think this was kind of valuable point in my career because it was one where I could demonstrate that as a partner, I had true skin in the game as a marketing professional where I was really making marketing investments, not just marketing spends where members of the organisation are like “What's marketing doing with their money now?” Well, it's not our money, it was my money as well. So working to invest it wisely. About a dozen years later, after the resource market changed the opportunity to lead the marketing and business development efforts at McMillan came up and I was fortunate to be selected for the role. So here I am.
Charles: That's a pretty interesting journey. So started in sales and then operated as a global equity partner in your marketing role and shaping the marketing direction. I like what you said about they're not marketing, spend their marketing investment and really you know, making that strategy work for the firm and the growth of the firm.
Suzie: Yeah, indeed, like when you are able to bring a different perspective in terms of where we're investing and how we're spending our marketing and business development dollars, the internal clients that we're servicing, look at things a whole lot differently, Right? So that really helped on recommendations and setting directions and opportunities that we intended to pursue.
Charles: So in terms of understanding when that point was where you realised that differentiation of the firm was a key thing you need to work on, was that something that you sort of already had at play at that point or was that more when you sort of came into the legal space?
Suzie: No, actually it started early on and I would encourage all to do a stint in the customer service department of their organisations because when I was in customer service, this is where I had the opportunity to hear direct from the c See less -
