by Robin Dicks | May 27, 2020 | Robin's Blog
A couple of weeks ago our car – probably like many others in the last few weeks – had a flat battery. The thing about modern cars is it’s a lot more complicated than it used to be, you can’t just stick jump leads on any more. In the end it necessitated two different people from two different organisations coming out. I’ve no idea which one was more technically adept, as I struggle to tell the difference between a spark plug and an exhaust pipe. But one guy coughed into open air, and kept rubbing this nose, and was pretty blasé about social distancing. The other had gloves, had clearly sanitised stuff, was respectful of distance, and had clearly thought how to communicate and show me how to do stuff, again at a distance. Who do you think I’d use again? It’s a blunt example, but enabling customers to feel safe and secure in dealing with you is going to be a big deal for a...
by Robin Dicks | Jul 11, 2016 | Robin's Blog
The world (or at minimum the UK) feels different than it did on 23 June and the result and its’ aftermath of course will have implications for your clients. Much is still uncertain. But it’s an important time to reach out to clients; not just to tell, but to listen. Our thinking is that there are 3 areas worth additional focus on, in the coming months, and asking your clients. These include: What activities and developments are now planned by the client (and how have these changed ?) What is their sentiment, and level of confidence in the business environment? Where do they need more certainty? Where would they value more advice about the potential impact? Asking these questions can enable you to better help individual clients, but also to comment most meaningfully on key issues, and develop your events and communications programme to be most useful to your markets. Comments, or questions, as always welcome on 07940 886677 or...
by Robin Dicks | Aug 22, 2014 | Uncategorized
For most professional services firms, successful growth remains driven by how well aligned marketing, business development and the activities of fee earners are – and, of course, how well they are executed. But it’s not a perfect world: what is there is a gap in the key activities you cover, or people duplicate effort, or the person responsible for the activity doesn’t have the skills (or desire) to do it? Effectiveness declines. Accountability, ability and appetite. Not all is lost if you don’t have all 3, and people can still drive results. But you do need to understand where people are at and how to maximise the impact of what you do. How can you optimise the effectiveness of all the people involved in the marketing and BD effort? Phil Gott, my colleague in the Winning Firm Alliance, and I have created a diagnostic which very inexpensively and quickly identifies how the whole firm, a practice/team, or an individual can really enhance the results from their activity. Contact me if you’d like more information on 44 (0)7940 886677 or at robin @ thrivingcompany.co.uk ...
by Robin Dicks | Jun 19, 2013 | Uncategorized
Mary Dejevsky, one of the columnists in The independent newspaper, wrote pretty scathingly about process of gaining feedback (see this link). Its well observed and quite funny in pinning the practice of “bog standard” questions which don’t provide real meaning to the firm, don’t give value to the client, and which the firm doesn’t do anything about. It nails the still common practice of using templates that produce measures on things which may not matter. Does your process of gaining client feedback gain the value it could, for you and your clients? We’re happy to provide a free review if you’re not sure. Drop me to robin @ thrivingcompany.co.uk if you think this may...
by Robin Dicks | Dec 18, 2012 | Uncategorized
I think one of the key future activities which will define the continued health of any professional services firm is its ability to gather client knowledge and to use it. We’re hearing a lot about “big data” for good or ill, but what are the inputs of client knowledge that firms can pick up today and use, and how can they use this data to improve their performance in day to day, tangible ways? Budgets are tight. Resources are stretched. So its worth using the processes you have to get the most possible benefit (or adding processes which make an impact on your performance in not just one way but several. You may be able to add to it, but here is at least the beginning of a checklist of the outputs that you can get from client feedback on without a $$$ budget. 1. Better knowledge of overall capability required by clients 2. Better knowledge of demand for individual specialisms and areas 3. Identification of specific opportunities and risks 4. Clarification of best positioning (and killing potentially risky “wrong” positioning) 5. Sales and cross sell opportunities 6. Better pitches and proposals 7. Input into training (to improve marketplace impact of that training) 8. Input into recruitment, job descriptions and personnel specifications 9. Creating the right Key Performance Indicators 10. Gaining testimonials to provide 3rd party evidence of your...
