Frequent fliers.

• Author: Wood, Stuart

I haven't seen much evidence that Canadian firms are better than U.S. firms at staying close to clients. That's been one of the opportunities for us. We have really focused during the last six years on making as much of our marketing face to face as possible--on one-on-one business development We get on planes a lot more than we used to and look to get in front of clients The focus is less on doing a transaction and more on building the relationship We work hard to get an accurate read on what our clients are thinking and how they view the relationship. If you're not asking them, you're assuming everything is fine. I think some of the Canadian firms focus on this more than others

As a firm, we think of ourselves as innovative and as thought leaders on the legal side My belief has been that our marketing work needs to echo that We need to try new things and learn what clients like and don't like and keep the ideas that work We look outside the legal field for new ideas and adapt them. For example, we looked at what RSA Animate was doing with illustrated lectures and applied it to our annual M&A trends report This material can be a bit dry, so we wanted to make it more approachable We got quite an audience, and they watched it all the way through It was a good idea taken from one sector and applied to another. It reflected well on our brand.

One thing that's helped me in my role...