When the Economy Slows, Act With Intention

A playbook for law firms and professional services firms wanting to keep revenue moving when the market hits pause.

When the economy stalls, many firms instinctively start to cut back. However, growth during these times is not completely stopping; it is merely shifting.

In 2023, I wrote “Marketing Opportunities in a Slow Market” (American Bar Association, Law Practice Today, March 2023), in which I argued that downturns reward the firms that remain visible, flexible, and client-focused. Two years later, the lesson still holds, but the bar has been raised.

Mere visibility is now table stakes. Sustained revenue growth demands intentional marketing: a disciplined approach aligning strategy, branding, and pipeline discipline to activate your strongest relationships. At its core, intentional marketing involves a deep understanding of your clients and their thoughts, values, and purpose. It’s not about doing more; it’s about doing what matters.

Every program, every outreach, and every piece of thought leadership must serve a strategic purpose: to reflect a brand that clients recognize as relevant, trusted, and worthy of the client in the pipeline.

Budgets, however, do need reflection in times of economic stress. When putting your marketing and business development plans together, every element must pass a simple test:

Does it advance a priority relationship or reinforce your strategic positioning?

If the answer is not a definitive yes, move on to something else. That kind of discipline frees scarce budget dollars for moves that will influence revenue.

Let Your Strategic Plan Guide You

A slowdown tests your strategy. But if you have done the work – defined your core competencies, identified your differentiators, clarified your goals – now is the time to execute on that strategy. Executing without chasing every opportunity, but instead focusing on the right opportunities.

• Are you clear on your most valuable services? Now is the time to focus on your most profitable services (in terms of gross margin) and those services that matter the most to your clients.
• Are you clear on what you do best? You must strongly articulate the messaging proof points that make you different and worth that premium. Broadening your brand by chasing areas outside your expertise may very well dilute your brand's prominence.
• Are you best positioned to win work that you can work on right now? You can’t do the job if you don’t have the team, and you won’t realize revenue if you can’t bill for it.

Your Pipeline is a Map, But Only If You Use It

With revenue as the focus, firms often say, “We need more clients.” But not all clients and client matters are created equal. In a slow market, your pipeline needs to be prioritized, not just filled. Every fee-earner needs to be onboard, in a systematic way, to:

• Identify the highest potential opportunities, such as those closest to decision-making or where you have an inside track. You must be able to move those to a win to be able to move on.
• Move warm leads forward. Have the calls. Send the notes. Offer a deliverable to close the deal. Make it easy for your client or prospect to say yes.
• Identify new opportunities with existing clients or reach out to referral sources to help open doors to strong, new prospects. At the same time, be brave and park dormant opportunities that divert time and effort from winning other matters.

For each of these groups, using tracking tools to stay disciplined is imperative. Not individual Excel worksheets or Post-It notes on your monitor, but collaborative tools used consistently across the team. Your CRM should not be an archive of just one person’s leads and pipeline opportunities database. It needs to be an actionable dashboard with measurable analytics of everyone’s leads. Even the simplest dashboard should indicate where each opportunity stands, the next required action, who is responsible, and what the projected revenue would be if the matter were won. This type of firm-wide visibility breeds accountability.

Regular meetings to consistently review the pipeline will also prompt action, and with action, momentum follows. For these meetings, include pipeline velocity, hit rates by stage, and relationship health. Hold monthly 30-minute debriefs to celebrate wins, diagnose stalls, and reallocate effort.

Your Network is an Asset, But Only If Activated

Your best leads often come from the people you already know but may not have spoken to in a while. Reaching out to them is not just opportunistic, it’s smart business. However, not all networking is the same; not all of it will generate business.

• Focus on the quality, not the quantity, of your contacts. Select the 10 people in your network that are most likely to retain or refer you.
• Once your list is complete, make your outreach personal, genuine, and tailored to each recipient. This is not the time to merely add contacts to a client alert mass outbound email. This is the time for you to activate your network so it yields results personally.
• Stay focused on developing new contacts. When doing so, create a logical plan of activities or an automated flow within the CRM. Segment them by influence and relevance. Research them for a trigger that links their world to your expertise. Reach out with a personal note.
• Record all of this in your CRM pipeline opportunity database. If it is not recorded and trackable, the opportunity does not really exist.

Your Current Clients Still Need You, So Stay Close

If you are experiencing a stalled economy or an uncertain market, so are your clients. In uncertain times, clients crave clarity. Guide them. In this instance, staying in touch is not about selling; it’s about providing exemplary client service. Good client service makes you relevant. Your competitors know that … beat them to the punch.

• Schedule regular check-ins, even if no immediate work is on the table. This is unbillable time that will lead to a billable matter.
• Share insights that connect to their business or pain points, not to you or your services.
• Help clients look toward the future. Talking about risk mitigation, new regulations, or efficiency improvements can all open new doors.

Publish Thought Leadership That Serves

Thought leadership is a business development accelerator that clients read, watch, listen to, or otherwise use. Don’t abandon those efforts now. A slow market is not a green light to stop writing. Firms that maintain their cadence, even personalizing it for the client or client group, build trust within those groups.

• Try to imagine the hard questions your client is Googling at 11 pm. Research and provide the answer and plan of attack for arrival in their inbox at 9 am.
• Share anonymized case studies showing the path from issue to outcome. Comment on studies and stats that are related to their business and business process. Give color to why you're sharing and what it means to them.
• Repurpose one insight into multiple formats. Convert a webinar or podcast into an article. Revamp a panel (that you were on or even just attended) into a LinkedIn carousel.

Publishing through the lens of your strategy reinforces positioning while feeding your network with shareable, share-worthy material. Double down on what you are known for. Own it and build trust.

Just as important, thought leadership anchors your brand narrative. Each piece should echo and reinforce your firm’s brand and positioning. Don’t forget the keywords, for human readers, search engines, and AI bots, so the market hears a coherent message, whether they read a feature article or skim a social post. This will compound digital authority over time.

A slowdown forces choices. The smartest firms make the right ones: They prioritize the best parts of their pipeline, invest in their strongest relationships and engage them personally, publish insights that teach, listen relentlessly, measure what matters, and stay true to who they are. Business development in a slow economy isn’t about chasing more. It’s about doing what works – and doing it better.

That is marketing with intention – and it’s how firms not only survive a downturn but emerge with stronger relationships, a sharper brand, and revenue momentum the moment the market rebounds.