Managing the Professional Service Firm

The answer is that few firms have any systematic program for ensuring and improving the experience the client has with the firm.

Perhaps most important of all, good coaches follow up. They monitor the execution of plans (“By the way, Tom, how’s that seminar that you agreed to arrange going? Anything I can do to help?”) If things are getting off track, they don’t wait for the end of the fiscal year to see what was and what wasn’t done—they gently intervene while there’s still

many practice groups continue to maintain expertise-based approaches to running their affairs when their marketplace is probably closer to the efficiency stage.

In expertise practice areas, business development tends to be a personal responsibility of each partner (or partner equivalent).

The act of asking can never hurt the firm—except if we fail to respond and deal with the client’s concern.

charge-ability and realization reports are circulated more frequently and more broadly than reports showing how well partners leverage themselves.

Only increased fee levels or leverage move the firm forward. All else is hygiene. It is the nature of the work brought in, not just its volume, that contributes to profit health.

Disclosure certainly discourages the cooperative behavior required in most professional practice.

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