When your marketing manager hands in their notice or your business development director goes on maternity leave, the immediate reaction is often panic. You’ve got campaigns mid-flight, client events planned, proposals in progress and suddenly the person who was holding it all together is leaving.

The temptation is to rush into recruitment, hoping to fill the gap as quickly as possible. But what if there was a better way to handle this transition period, one that keeps everything moving forward whilst giving you the time to find the right permanent hire?

That’s where interim cover comes in. And for professional service firms, it can genuinely be a lifesaver.

The hidden cost of leaving roles unfilled

When a marketing or BD role sits empty, the impact ripples through your entire firm much faster than you might expect.

Momentum stops almost immediately

Marketing campaigns lose their rhythm. Social media goes quiet. The pipeline of leads starts to dry up. Business development conversations that were carefully nurtured suddenly go cold because there’s nobody following up.

Your junior team members might try to pick up the slack, but without senior guidance, they’re often unsure what to prioritise. Should they focus on the website update? The event that’s six weeks away? The pitch that’s due next week? Without clear direction, important work gets delayed or done to a lower standard than you’d want.

Your team becomes overwhelmed

The rest of your marketing and BD team suddenly finds themselves trying to do two jobs at once. They’re handling their own responsibilities whilst also trying to cover the gaps left by their departed colleague. This isn’t sustainable, and it’s a quick route to burnout.

I’ve seen talented marketers hand in their own notice simply because they were exhausted from carrying too much for too long. What started as one person leaving can quickly become a bigger staffing crisis if you’re not careful.

Opportunities slip through the cracks

Perhaps most critically, you start missing opportunities. Potential clients who were interested but needed a bit more nurturing don’t get that follow-up call. Speaking opportunities that could have raised your profile go to competitors instead. Events that could have generated valuable leads don’t happen because nobody had time to organise them.

In professional services, where relationships and reputation are everything, these missed opportunities can have a lasting impact on your business.

Why recruitment takes longer than you think

The obvious solution seems simple enough: just hire someone new. But anyone who’s been through the recruitment process for a senior marketing or BD role knows it’s rarely quick or straightforward.

Finding the right fit takes time

You need someone who understands professional services. Someone who can navigate the complexities of marketing legal, accountancy, consultancy or financial services firms. Someone who knows how to work with partners, manage long sales cycles and balance thought leadership with business development.

That’s quite a specific skill set, and people with that experience are in high demand. It can easily take three to six months to find the right person, interview them, work through their notice period and get them started.

You can’t afford to rush this decision

The pressure to fill the gap quickly can lead to making the wrong hire. And a bad hire in a senior marketing or BD role is incredibly costly. Not just in terms of salary and recruitment fees, but in terms of the disruption it causes, the momentum you lose and the need to start the whole process again.

You need time to find someone who’s genuinely the right fit for your firm. But whilst you’re doing that, the work still needs to happen.

How interim cover keeps everything moving

This is where an interim marketing or BD professional becomes invaluable. They step into the gap and keep things running whilst you take the time to make the right permanent hire.

They hit the ground running

The beauty of working with an experienced interim is that they don’t need months of hand-holding to get up to speed. They’ve worked in professional services before. They understand the environment, the challenges and the expectations.

They know how to work with partners who are time-poor and want to see results. They understand the importance of building relationships in professional services. They’re familiar with the compliance considerations, the longer sales cycles and the need for sophisticated, thought leadership-driven marketing.

This means they can step in and start adding value from day one, rather than spending weeks or months learning the basics of how professional services firms operate.

They maintain momentum on critical work

An interim can pick up the campaigns that were in progress and see them through. They can ensure your events still happen. They can keep your business development pipeline moving. They can maintain the consistency of your marketing presence so that clients and prospects don’t notice the disruption behind the scenes.

This continuity is incredibly valuable. It means you don’t lose the progress you’ve made. Your marketing and BD efforts keep building on what came before, rather than stopping and starting every time someone leaves.

They provide stability for your team

Having an interim in place also gives your junior team members the guidance and direction they need. Instead of feeling abandoned and uncertain, they have someone experienced to turn to with questions, someone who can approve their work and keep them focused on the right priorities.

This stability can make all the difference in terms of keeping your team motivated and preventing that domino effect of people leaving because they’re overwhelmed.

The strategic value of interim expertise

But interim cover isn’t just about keeping things ticking over. The right interim professional can actually add significant strategic value during their time with you.

They bring fresh perspective

When you’ve been doing things the same way for years, it’s easy to develop blind spots. An interim comes in with fresh eyes and can often spot opportunities or inefficiencies that you’ve become too close to see.

They might identify channels you’re underusing, processes that could be streamlined or positioning opportunities you hadn’t considered. Because they’ve worked across multiple firms, they bring insights and best practices from elsewhere in the industry.

They can tackle projects that have been stalled

Often, there are projects that have been sitting on your “we really should do this” list for months or even years. Updating your website. Developing a proper content strategy. Creating better reporting systems. Improving the integration between marketing and BD.

An interim can be the perfect person to finally get these projects done. They have the experience to do it well, the objectivity to make tough decisions and the time-limited nature of their role creates natural deadlines that drive action.

They help you understand what you really need

Going through the experience of working with an interim can also clarify what you’re actually looking for in a permanent hire. You might discover that you need someone more strategic than you initially thought. Or you might realise that the role needs to be structured differently.

This insight makes your eventual recruitment much more targeted and effective because you have a clearer picture of what success looks like.

What makes a good interim for professional services

Not every interim marketer or BD professional is going to be the right fit for a professional services firm. There are specific qualities and experiences that make someone particularly effective in this environment.

They understand the professional services model

The best interims for professional services have worked in this sector before. They understand how firms operate, how decisions get made and how to work effectively with partners and fee-earners.

They know that marketing in professional services is different from product marketing or B2C. They appreciate the importance of reputation, relationships and thought leadership. And they understand the compliance and regulatory considerations that often apply.

They’re comfortable with autonomy

Senior marketing and BD roles in professional services require someone who can work independently, make decisions and get on with things without constant supervision. A good interim thrives in this environment because they’re used to stepping into situations where they need to quickly assess what needs doing and just get on with it.

They know how to build relationships quickly

Professional services firms are built on relationships, and an effective interim knows how to build trust quickly. They take time to understand your culture, listen to your people and adapt their approach to fit with how your firm works.

They’re also diplomatic enough to navigate the politics that exist in any professional environment, working effectively with different personalities and stakeholder groups.

They’re focused on leaving things better than they found them

The best interims don’t just maintain the status quo. They’re genuinely invested in improving things during their time with you. They document processes, train your team, fix things that are broken and set you up for success once they move on.

They see their role as not just covering a gap, but as leaving your marketing and BD function in a stronger position for whoever comes next.

Making interim cover work for your firm

If you’re facing a gap in your marketing or BD team, here’s how to make the most of interim cover.

Be clear about what you need

Before you start looking for an interim, take time to think about what you need them to achieve. Is it maintaining business as usual? Completing specific projects? Providing strategic direction? The clearer you are about your expectations, the easier it is to find the right person and brief them effectively.

Give them proper access and authority

For an interim to be effective, they need to be treated as a proper member of your senior team. That means giving them access to the systems, information and people they need. It means including them in relevant meetings and giving them the authority to make decisions within their remit.

If you treat them as a temporary stopgap who needs permission for everything, you won’t get the value they can provide.

Use their expertise

Don’t just have them maintain what’s already happening. Take advantage of their experience and perspective. Ask them what they’re seeing, what opportunities they’d pursue if they were in your shoes and what they’d do differently.

You’re paying for their expertise, so make sure you tap into it.

Plan for handover from the start

Even though an interim is temporary, don’t leave the handover to the last minute. Build in time for them to document what they’ve done, train your team and brief whoever is taking over (whether that’s a permanent hire or someone internal).

A good interim will want to do this anyway because they care about leaving things in good shape. But you need to make sure there’s time and space for it to happen properly.

The bottom line

When someone leaves your marketing or BD team, your first instinct might be to panic and rush into hiring a replacement. But there’s another option that can save you stress, maintain momentum and actually strengthen your function in the process.

Interim cover gives you breathing room to find the right permanent hire whilst ensuring that nothing critical gets dropped. And with the right interim professional, someone who knows professional services and can hit the ground running, you might find that this transition period becomes an opportunity rather than a crisis.

You don’t have to do everything at once. You don’t have to make rushed decisions about permanent hires. And you don’t have to watch your marketing and BD efforts grind to a halt whilst you figure things out.

Sometimes, the smartest thing you can do is bring in someone who’s been here before, knows exactly what needs doing and can keep everything moving forward whilst you take the time to get your next permanent hire exactly right.

Need help?

If you would like help with your marketing, bringing on a marketing consultant with a fresh pair of eyes can make all the difference. I work with B2B businesses and professional service firms in London, Kent, the UK, and Europe, specialising as a legal marketing consultant. Please get in touch or book a free 30-minute consultation.

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