by Robin Dicks | May 14, 2020 | Robin's Blog, Uncategorized
I’m not going to say “this is a challenging time”. There’s no need to replay all that. You already know. What’s more important is that some of the unknowns may derail your competitive ability to retain work and clients over the next few months. I’ve written about this at more length elsewhere (see here) But some of the key bits are ensuring that not only do you know what your clients want, but you understand how emotionally capable staff – and their line managers – are to deliver it. That requires finding out, in a sensitive, and risk-free way. You can’t be resilient if you don’t know what you need to do to create that...
by Robin Dicks | Jan 20, 2020 | Robin's Blog
At the end of 2019 we completed a research programme for a major law firm into the future of in-house legal teams, what they would look like in 2025, and the challenges faced. The results were fascinating and it struck me that they might well also be true for many ‘intellect’ based professions and indeed in-house marketing, BD, HR and other functions within professional services firms. The key behaviours and skills which respondents said they needed to develop included a deeper understanding of the business and the wider sector, stakeholder management, influencing and the ability to understand technology. Soft skills and processes were a higher priority than technical functional skills, and a core challenge was balancing day to day demands with the ability to get ready for future challenges. While some people saw technology as a “magic bullet” most recognised that while it could help, there were many other aspects needed to get a team fit for the future. One of the key results that sticks in my mind was that the success stories we heard about, often were based on creating a team with shared goals, and real clarity of purpose that guided their behaviour, actions, and relationships with colleagues. That seems to me to be very true for marketers and BD people within professional services firms...
by Robin Dicks | Mar 8, 2018 | Robin's Blog
I’ve recently been looking at getting new car. So I make appointments for test drives etc. All good fun. At one car brand/dealer, once I’d made the appointment, I got an email reminder the day before, then on the morning, and subsequently I’ve had about 3 mails, apparently from the head of customer sales (though clearly automatically generated) advising me of the risk of letting the car I really want go by. All very fine, if a bit irritating and intrusive. But the real problem is that the salesperson didn’t turn up to the appointment I’d booked and I left after 30 minutes of wasted time. It turns out the receptionist didn’t pass the message on properly, the salesperson didn’t check. The closest I got to an apology was a voicemail saying ‘sorry I missed you’. I wonder how much effort has got into the automated message system and how much has gone into staff training and behaviour. The former has no impact on my purchase decision, the latter has quite a bit. I won’t be buying a car from...
by Robin Dicks | Jun 29, 2015 | Robin's Blog
Cross-selling, or as I prefer it to be terms, co-operative selling or successfully extending relationships with clients, requires a number of things to be in place. Fee earners need to be able to answer 5 questions with a “yes”. The link here to the Co-operative selling image shows you what these questions...
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 ...
