Possible Strategies for being more valuable to Clients

a.  Develop an innovative approach to hiring so that we can be more valuable to clients by achieving a higher caliber of staff than the competition

b.  Train our people better than the competition in a variety of technical or "counseling" skills so that they will be more valuable on the marketplace than their counterparts at other firms

c.  Develop innovative methodologies for handling our matters ( or engagements, transactions or projects) so that our delivery of services becomes more thorough or efficient

d.  Develop systematic ways of helping, encouraging and, above all, ensuring that our people are skilled at client counseling in addition to being top technicians

e.  Become better than our competition at accumulating, disseminating and building on our firm wide expertise and experience, so that each professional becomes more valuable in the marketplace by being empowered with a greater breadth and depth of experience

f.   Organize and specialize our people in innovative ways, so that they become particularly skilled and valuable to the market because of their focus on a particular market segment's needs

g.  Become more valuable to our clients by being more systematic and diligent about listening to the market: collecting, analyzing, and absorbing the details of their business than does our competition

h.  Become more valuable to our clients by investing in research and development on issues of particular interest to them

 Increasing the Firm's Capabilities to serve this Clients

1.                 Increasing Knowledge of client's industry

Study industry magazine/newsletters thoroughly

Attend industry meetings with client

Conduct proprietary studies

2.                 Increasing knowledge of client's business

Read all client's brochures, annul reports, other public documents

Ask to see strategic plan

Volunteer to review  internal studies

Conduct reverse seminar

3.                 Increasing knowledge of client's organization

Ask for organization chart

Ask who client deals with most

Ask about the client's boss

Ask about power structure

Arrange to meet other executives

Spend time with client's juniors

4.                 Increasing knowledge of client

Find out precisely how client is evaluated inside his or her company

Find out what he or she is unhappy with  

Making the Client Disposed to Use the Firm Again

1.                 Going the extra mile on the current engagement

Use new business budget to fund extra analysis

Use budget to improve turnaround time, service

Improve quality of presentation

More documentation, explanations, accessibility

2.                 Increasing the amount of client contract

Telephone regularly

Visit at every opportunity

Schedule business meetings near mealtime

Invite to firm offices

Introduce one's partners

Get firm leaders involved

3.                 Building the business relationship

Help client with contacts

Put on special seminars for client's staff

Volunteer to attend client's internal meetings

Offer free day of counseling on non-project matters

Send client useful articles

If possible, refer business to client

4.                 Building the personal relationship

Social activities

Remember personal, family anniversaries

Keep in touch

Provide home telephone number

Offer use of firm's facilities 

Tactics to enhance Client Value

• Dictate and transcribe summary of all meetings and significant phone conversations and send copy to client same or next day.

• Involve client in process through: brainstorming sessions; give client tasks to perform

• Give client options and let client choose

• Explain clearly and document what is going to happen; make sure process is understood in advance. If appropriate, develop printed booklet laying this out.

• Make meetings more valuable:

Establish specific agenda and goals prior to meeting

Send info, reports in advance - save meeting time for discussion, not presentation

Find out attendees in advance, research them

Always establish next steps for both sides

Call afterwards to confirm that goals were met 

• Make reports more valuable:

Get client to instruct the firm on format, presentation

Provide summary so client can use it internally, without modification

Have all reports read by non-project person prior to delivery to ensure readability, comprehension

Provide all charts, tables, summaries on overheads for internal client use

Write progress summaries in a fashion that client can use internally without modification. 

• Help client use what is delivered:

Assist client in dealing with others in client organization

Empower client with reasoning steps

Advise on tactics/politics of how results should be shared inside client organization

Tactics for Dealing with the People Crisis

 PRODUCTIVITY STRATEGIES

• Speed up apprenticeship process so that costly resources can handle higher value work

• Reward partners explicitly for good coaching

• Change engagement staffing so that all are put to "highest and best use"

• Use technology to enhance productive capabilities of staff members

• Increase expected billable hours from staff

• Change pay schemes to reward performance differentials.

REDUCE NEED STRATEGIES

• Withdraw from some services and markets that cannot support new salary levels

• Drop "up-or-out" system to reduce turnover

• Rethink fast growth strategies

• Emphasize profitability more, volume of fees less

SUBSTITUTION STRATEGIES

• Use more  Trainee professionals

• Use technology to substitute for labor

• Hire "nontraditional" candidates and offset by training

• Hire people for "jobs" instead of "careers"

• Accommodate part-time, flex-time, alternate "life-style "workers

 Profitability Tactics

In descending order of impact on profit health

ONE: RAISE PRICES (i.e. FEE LEVELS)

• Earn higher fees through specialization, innovation, adding more value

• Use marketing knowledge to get "better" work

• Speed up skill-building process in staff

• Invest in new (higher-value) services

TWO: LOWER VARIABLE COSTS (DELIVERY COST FOR EACH ENGAGEMENT) 

• Improve engagement management performance

• Increase leverage in the delivery of services

• Make greater use of Trainee professionals

• Develop methodologies to avoid duplication of effort

THREE: FIX UNDERPERFORMERS

• Deal with underperformers

• Drop unprofitable services

• Drop unprofitable clients

FOUR: INCREASE  VOLUME

• Increase utilization (billable hours per person)

FIVE: LOWER OVERHEAD COSTS

• Improve speed of billing

• Improve speed of collections

• Reduce space and equipment costs

• Reduce support staff costs

The Lessons for Individual Professionals

LESSON ONE

What you know now and are able to do now, what your current success is built on, will unavoidably depreciate in value unless you actively work on learning new things and building new skills. Continual professional development is a lifelong requirement, not an option. There may have been a time when once you got good at something, may be "made partner," you could live off that for the rest of your career. If those times ever existed, they are gone now. The minute you start thinking you know how things work, you are dead.

LESSON TWO

The health of your career is not dependent so much on the volume of business you do, but the type of work you do (whether or not it helps you learn, grow, and develop) and who you do it for (whether or not you are increasingly earning the trust of some key clients). In any profession, the pattern of assignments you work on is the professional development process-you just have to learn how to manage it.

LESSON THREE

No matter how busy you are, you still owe it to yourself and to your career to get involved with and take charge of your own practice development activities (marketing and selling). If you let others in your firm generate the business you work on, you are putting your career development in other people's hands-a risky move at best. If you rely on business flowing to you unsolicited, then, with high probability, it is going to be "asset milking" rather than "asset building". What marketing and selling are about is truly practice development: influencing the qualitative nature of what you work on, so that you use your work experience to continue to build your career.

LESSON FOUR

Since asset building is about managing your affairs for the long-term health of your career, you would better take charge of it yourself. Do not wait for your firm to establish formal policies to reflect concern about the balance sheet as well as the income statement. It probably should, but whether it does or not, it is in your own interest to get started yourself.

LESSON  FIVE

Also you cannot automatically assume that what your firm "asks you to do" will always be the right thing to build your asset. For example, if you are already experienced in a certain area, chances are that others in the firm will turn to you every time an issue comes up in that area. If you don't take charge, others will exploit your asset. You have got to be a good corporate citizen, but you have also got to learn to balance that with what makes sense for your own development.

LESSON SIX

Among the worst mistake a professional can make is under investing in marketing to existing clients. Existing clients are not only more likely to give you new business, but the business they will give you ( if you work to earn) is likely to promote the value both of your skill asset and your client relationships asset.

Source: Good guy

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