Larry Bodine Law Marketing Blog

We had a fantastic PM Forum program last evening in Chicago on "How to Get Your Clients to Drive Change in Your Firm." We had marketers from the publishing, law, consulting, software, accounting and design industries at an elegant event -- featuring chocolate fondue! -- at Piper Rudnick. Two brilliant presenters showed how they brought the client/customer's voice into their work to change the direction of their firms.

If you weren't at the meeting last night, you really missed something great.

Allen Chichester played a riveting 12-minute video of focus groups of clients, complaining about poor service from lawyers. He played it at a partner meeting and stunned the crowd. He explained how he got the OK to film clients and described all the changes he accomplished from playing the video.

Teresa Poggenphol, a partner and the director of global advertising for Accenture, showed how she researched customers while planning an ad campaign aimed at "High Performance Business." The research completely upended her initial hypotheses and changed the direction of the campaign. She described how Accenture rolled it out in October and kicked the butt of their main competitor, IBM consulting. You had to be there to get the details of how she did it.

Look for David Alan Moore's report on the event on www.PMForumNA.org, and plan to attend future meetings.