You’ve done an internal audit of your existing skill set and identified a deficiency. It might be that you never had that particular skill set in the first place. Or it could be you’ve recently lost the skill to a retirement or departure. Either way, you don’t have it, and you need it.
“Recurring revenue” = revenue that is expected to continue on a regular basis with a high-degree of predictability. “Reoccurring revenue” = revenue that is repeatable, but not necessarily on a regular or predictable basis.
When a client first asks you for a capped fee, you’ll likely not think too much about it. After all what can go wrong? All you need to do is to scope the work, workout the leverage, think about how long it will take you to do the task and then add in a little buffer. But, is this the best way?
For most professionals, the very thought of a meeting with a new prospect or an existing customer to talk through how you can help them with their problem(s) can be daunting.
Strong client relationships are critical to maintaining and growing business. With most service-based professional businesses – such as legal, accounting, and engineering – relationships with customers tend to be transactional. So, how do you balance a transactional practice with a need to foster long-term client relationships?
Every professional services firm collects huge amounts of data about their clients and the industry sectors they operate in each and every day. Few, however, take the time to apply the resources to interpret this raw data and apply the findings to its own business in order to improve the value of the service they’re providing.
At GSJ we believe that by not segmenting your client list to the relevant readership, you’re missing out on a ton of business development opportunities. If you want to rectify this error, you should start by classifying your current client and target client lists.
According to the results of a survey undertaken by BTI Consulting Group, 72% of professional services firms’ clients indicated that they want to give feedback on their service provider’s performance. Yet only 30% of firms actually ask their clients for feedback in any meaningful way.
A common question in business is whether it is better to be a generalist, full-service practitioner or a niche practitioner? As with so many things in professional services, our answer to that question is a cop-out: "it depends".
This post is inspired by Kurt Vonnegut’s ‘8 Rules of Writing’. If you’ve never heard of Vonnegut’s 8 Rules, Rule #1 is about as perfect an example of a rule that should apply to your business development activities. Read here for this #1 tip and 9 more!
Partner retreat season generally happens a couple of months before the end of the financial year, and regardless of whether it’s your first partner retreat or your 20th, you need to make sure you follow a planned strategy to maximise your networking opportunities at the getaway.
The holy grail of professional services firms is ensuring we provide excellent client service. Provide excellent client service and, in all likelihood, our clients will keep coming back to us. Provide a rubbish client service, and there’s a very good chance you’ll never see that client again!