It’s no secret that firms and marketing departments aren’t equal in regards to aggregating enterprise data, hiring data scientists, or utilizing other resources to try to unlock value, uncover trends and identify practice correlations to drive revenue. So if you’re still stuck in “making a business case” for the tools needed to perform these analyses, it’s not the end of the world just yet! There are plenty of ways to see the forest, even if that value is hidden in disparate silos and requires some manual synchronization. For ease of explanation (and perhaps at the risk of simplicity), I will refer to these areas as the “3 I’s”, where you can use industry, individual and internal data to begin to see patterns, start to test hypotheses around potential “if/then,” “go/no-go” decisions, and potentially unlock other qualified opportunities on your horizon.

Perhaps more importantly, the effective use of these tactics can help to build business cases for the firm to invest in more automated solutions so that you and your team can spend less time in gathering and more time in analysis, action and further business development.

Let’s take a look at each of these in kind.

Industry Data

At its highest level, I describe industry data as widely-available data that one can gather from macro sources such as Bloomberg Law, Thomson Reuters/MonitorSuite, LinkedIn and others that can help you to understand market position, perform SWOT analyses, conduct social listening, identify potential talent, analyze “go/no-go” opportunities, confirm CRM data, and screen companies that possess similar characteristics as your ideal client/institutional personas.

Some examples in action within this bucket include:

• Using litigation, TTAB/USPTO or even transactional/deal analytics to see who else is competing for a particular client, industry, topic or practice area.
• Identifying legal spending/usage spread within a firm to conduct “go/no-go” on a proposal or potential client/target. For example, if ACME Company gives all of its litigation work to ABC Law Firm, the chances are strong that they are heavily embedded with deep relationships (something you can cross check in LinkedIn or another relationship mapping platform). On the other hand, if the spread is wide with ACME and the law firm where they are sending work, then your chances are a whole lot better in potentially finding an entry point to begin to turn the faucet on with a particular organization.
• Using Chambers “Up and Coming” and other “Rising Star” talent, and cross checking against public sources to identify future rock stars for succession planning or hiring ideas.
• Utilizing Hunter or another free service to check CRM bounce backs and confirm emails as opposed to using a paid contact or relationship mapping tool.
• Setting LinkedIn or Sales Navigator (my favorite) to follow accounts (companies) or leads (individuals) to read what is on a company’s or General Counsel’s radar and how you could position content, pitches, analysis, or alternative approaches to help.
• Leveraging third party syndicators such as MONDAQ to see what topics are resonating best with readers (of other law firms) in order to replicate success and scale content strategies.
• Understanding how Z-Scores or merger news from services like Debtwire or Bloomberg can trigger alerts and then swimming upstream to automate your own process and beat the masses.

In many of these cases, the information is there in plain view — the key is starting small and developing systems to effectively integrate this into a scalable system. While at first glance, you may be getting more matters and more revenue from a client, these programs can help you to see the wider forest as it pertains to the client’s entire portfolio and help you to identify leakage or areas of concern/opportunity.

I’ve used the above tactics to uncover webinar topics, create cold reachout lists for roundtables, ascertain business development entry points, and otherwise sanity check a lot of hypotheses. In order to do it all, you need a system, a schedule, and a prioritization cadence that works for you.

Individual Data

Again, for the sake of simplicity, I will refer to individual data as the information that resides within your system on a particular person or individual, such as the data within your CRM (OnePlace/ContactEase/InterAction, etc.), mailing system (Vuture/Concep/MailChimp, etc.), social media activity, or website/CMS activity. In smaller firms, this is a lot easier, as many of the targets are known and we can pick our key lists and roll back user, email, social and website behavior to glean information.

Some examples of “individual data” in action could be:

• Analyzing key decision maker actions within your top 20 accounts to see website/CMS and mailer readership metrics to uncover potential areas of interest or growth.
• Looking at unengaged readers to check for similarities, then reaching out to glean feedback as to what can be done better (and doing just that!).
• Checking client alert reports to see who is forwarding your content, and to whom, and developing and testing hypotheses.
• Going beyond simple bounce rate metrics through Google Analytics to see where visitors are leaving, and testing those pages with teaser or alternative content.
• Reviewing similar individuals/companies to compare mailing list subscriptions against matter types opened to identify correlations.
• Utilizing data from a third party syndicator (MONDAQ/JD Supra) to hone client personas, uncover trends and identify types of readers from your firm’s content.

Any data is better than none, so even if you can try these specific tactics one at a time, you may be surprised at what you can uncover. While admittedly it was not a sophisticated process a few years ago, our firm utilized MONDAQ data and an odd blip in client alert “forwards” to uncover an insight and subsequently develop a roundtable that brought in two new matters in less than a month. Obviously, integrating that tactic into our wider data integration strategy is a key goal of ours (API issues notwithstanding).

Internal Data

For this article, I am describing internal data as that which is solely internal, such as those from financial systems (Aderant/Elite), conflict systems, and any intake/onboarding processes or systems that are in place. Whether these are done a la carte or are automated from the systems themselves weekly or monthly is your call- but this is often the most useful category as growing existing business and creating stickier clients with multiple industries or practice areas is a lot easier and often more effective for law firms.

Some examples of using internal data include:

• Identifying correlations between practice areas to find “warm” leads based off other similar industry/practice clients or patterns.
• Uncovering “if/then” scenarios with matter types, or using the data to better understand client lifecycles (then developing content or value-adds by client type/persona).
• Looking backwards into how those clients were won and by whom to start to scale strategies or develop team pods across the firm.
• Reviewing originating partner information to assist in succession planning or client growth tactics.

Of course, the above tactics and strategies are only the tip of the iceberg in how you can use some data sets to see opportunity. Try to get creative in using what you have in your stack to show success on a small level, and use the wins as fodder to make a business case to do it the right way with some of the more integrated platforms. You need to show return on investment throughout the process to the appropriate decision committees in order to get the tools you need to win at the next level with AmLaw200 firms who have many of these tools at their disposal. Best of luck!

Mike Mellor is the Chief Marketing and Business Development Officer for Pryor Cashman, a nearly 200-attorney midsize firm with offices in NYC, Miami and LA. In this role, he works to identify, develop and execute strategies to both drive new business for the firm and increase brand awareness. His passion is creating clarity and game plans for attorneys by implementing rigor and process around the new business development cycle. Mike’s 20-year career has spanned various roles throughout the professional services sector, including sales enablement and pursuit roles at Paul Weiss, Deutsche Bank, Katten and KPMG.