The Pulse

Pipeline management has been steadily gaining traction in the professional services sector, and it bodes well for business development (BD) departments. To me, it’s a sign of a maturing business function, but also acceptance by firms’ senior executives that a more strategic and data-driven approach to commercial growth is needed.

Both business development (BD) and marketing teams recognise the value of CRM individually, but there is a need for meaningful cross-functional engagement between the two disciplines and your CRM team which often is lacking when it comes to campaigns and initiatives.

Having been on the other side of the fence – i.e. in a law firm – I have personal experience of the challenges that CRM managers and business development leaders face in getting people to use the organisation's CRM system.