BD & Marketing Manager (Pensions)

• Develop close working relationships with the partners and wider lawyer team, providing support to develop, implement and refine business plans, demonstrating a deep and thorough understanding of the respective practice areas, helping to identify market and client trends, and growth opportunities from existing and new potential clients.
• Create targeted business development and marketing activity plans that flow from the business plans, to help achieve the financial, client and market positioning and penetration objectives set in the Pensions Group's business plan. Monitor, analyse and report on activity against objectives, putting in place ROI measures to assess the success of the plans and corresponding activities.
• Work closely with the firm's Head of Client Relationships to ensure that client action plans are created, monitored, supported and actioned for the most significant clients. A key component will be identifying common elements with action plans for other clients across the firm as well as coordinating the intersection with firm wide client initiatives.
• Work with the wider Business Development team to ensure that activities are aligned across practice groups and cross-firm initiatives to ensure a 'one firm' approach to clients and to business development activities.
• Develop a deep and broad understanding of the key client relationships and practices which includes specific partners and areas of specialism, and competitor and market trends to make recommendations to impact revenue and client growth, cross-selling with other practices and client service improvements.

• Create an annual BD and marketing plan for the Pensions Practice Group and nominated 'horizontal' initiatives and ensure that each is executed well. Plans to include all elements of the marketing mix, including marketing brochures and materials, pitch documents, thought leadership articles, social media pages and content, website content, lawyer biographies, events and corporate hospitality.
• Provide market and practice insights to support the Communications team in developing a media and PR plan. Together determine how best to utilise PR and media plans as a complementary business development tool and to position the Pensions Practice Group to further the objectives of the business and marketing plans.
• Work with the Events teams to ensure that all client facing events, and referral events for the group are planned, organised and delivered to the highest standards.
• Work with the Events team to assess the value and relevance of various sponsorship, events and other corporate hospitality opportunities to ensure best value for the firm and our clients.
• Work with the KLs and Communications team to plan and deliver targeted thought leadership to clients and prospects to raise the profile of the Pensions Practice's priority areas through direct-to-client communications, targeted materials on the website, email marketing, LinkedIn and other appropriate channels.
• Lead the pitch process for opportunities in the Pensions Practice Group, as well as assist the Pitch team in supporting, pitching and winning new firmwide business, as required, including providing practice, partner, client and market-specific insights to target and tailor each opportunity.
• Take responsibility for managing the practices' directory and awards submissions in line with the firm's directory process, creating high quality content that delivers results.
• Be the InterAction champion for the practice groups and 'horizontal' initiatives working closely with the Digital Marketing team, the department PAs and lawyers in the practices to ensure that all contact and BD activities are regularly updated.
• Manage and track the business development budgets for the groups and initiatives responsible for.
• Participate in delivering firm wide client initiatives and marketing programs including client listening, post pitch reviews and the TS Change programmes.

• Assist in developing the BD team's expertise through active engagement in team meetings and team initiatives, including proactively sharing best practices from previous firms, other industries, training and original research.
• Work with the Chief Marketing Officer and legal Heads of Department to plan and manage annual business development budgets.

• 5+ years' experience, working in a Business Development role in a professional services environment, preferably within a law firm.
• Commercially astute with a track record in actively supporting the growth of existing and new business.
• High level proficiency in systems skills - Word, Excel, PowerPoint and InterAction.
• Ability to understand macro-economic issues and use them to define appropriate business development plans and activity.
• Excellent communication and presentation skills - able to speak with confidence and influence change both internally with senior leadership and externally.
• Experience of managing, mentoring, and motivating team members.
• Comfortable providing recommendations and advising with confidence to senior level stakeholders, even when there is ambiguity involved.
• An ability to quickly gain confidence and challenge and change behaviours where required.
• Able to inspire a team through a personal and energetic approach - active involvement in getting work done yourself as well as delegating to other team members.
• Strong team player with a positive attitude - a natural coach and mentor.
• Strategic and analytical thinker, able to set and measure the success of programmes across business development.
• Proactive in generating high quality strategic ideas to help the firm grow.
• Ability to build strong relationships with internal and external clients.
• Excellent work management skills - capable of managing and coordinating a broad and demanding, fast-paced workload in an organised, controlled and efficient manner with the ability and confidence to prioritise as required.

Travers Smith