There are competency frameworks, psychological profiles and considerable debate about what makes a great partner. So in a somewhat lighter spirit, and using 20+ years of observations of partners of all shapes and sizes (the good, the bad and the ugly) here are my thoughts on the 12 Ps of Partner (rather than the 12 days of Christmas).

1.       Profit

Without profit, there is no partnership and no partners. Obvious really. Except some partners pursue billable hours, work in progress, fee income or world domination without considering the impact on current or future profits. Numeracy and financial literacy are fundamental requirements. Bring on the accountants.

2.       Professional

Accountants and lawyers can’t practise without being members of a professional body, and while many property partners are RICS members there are a lot of agents that aren’t.  Take a look at how Wiki defines “professional”:

a.      Expert and specialized knowledge in the field in which one is practicing professionally

b.      Excellent manual, practical and literary skills in relation to the profession

c.       High quality work

d.      A high standard of professional ethics, behaviour and work activities while carrying out one's profession (as an employee, self-employed person, career, enterprise, business, company, or partnership/associate/colleague, etc.). The professional owes a higher duty to a client, often a privilege of confidentiality, as well as a duty not to abandon the client just because he or she may not be able to pay or remunerate the professional. Often the professional is required to put the interest of the client ahead of his or her own interests

e.       Reasonable work morale and motivation. Having interest and desire to do a job well as well as holding a positive attitude towards the profession are important elements in attaining a high level of professionalism.

f.        Appropriate treatment of relationships with colleagues. Consideration should be shown to elderly, junior or inexperienced colleagues, as well as those with special needs. An example must be set to perpetuate the attitude of one's business without doing it harm.

It makes you think doesn’t it? Reread David Maister’s “True professionalism” as well.

3.       Plan and Positioning

Yes, I know partners thrived for many years without a written plan. But times change and most markets now face non-stop pressure from deregulation, technology advances, consolidation, price resistance and increasing competition. Without a plan, your practice or portfolio will drift in response to the clients and work you react to – rather than grow in the direction that you want.  And what’s your position in the market? If you are not one of the heavyweight big firms then it’s probably niche time for you. Differentiate or die. No-one is interested in vanilla anymore – that’s the commodity market – you need a target market that you can call your own or to be a specialist where there aren’t thousands of existing “experts”.

4.       People skills, Personality and Progression

It is no longer enough to have a high IQ – you need strong EQ (emotional intelligence) skills too – to work productively with your partners, to manage and develop your staff (if you lead, will they follow?), to retain your existing clients and referrers and to win new ones. Whether in the traditional drinks reception networking or chatting-at-the-rugby style or in the online world of social media, you need to have some personality if you want people to remember who you are and enjoy working with you or referring to you. It’s a drone-free world out there folks. And what’s more, you need to think about who will progress into your very big shoes – yes, address succession early or your practice (and your pension) will not be sustainable.

5.       Pliable with Pride 

No, I don’t mean break the professional or statutory rules. But as the world and its markets change you must adapt. It is hard to accept that after 20 or more years of successful practice – especially if you are an expert with significant gravitas - that you may have to change. But it’s “adapt or die” time now. And if your pride in your team and your firm doesn’t shine through, then you won’t be an effective ambassador. A surprising number of partners know too little about or have too little faith in those around them.

6.       Project management and Pricing

This is a relatively new term for something that most partners do instinctively on large client matters. However, formal project management skills (particularly scoping skills for fixed fees) are becoming increasingly valuable when dealing with large client collaboration projects or in executing strategic management projects to move the firm forward.

7.       Promotion with precision

As a marketing professional, I have to have promotion – marketing, selling and relationship management – in the mix. There are some grand old rainmakers out there, but modern firms build teams who develop cogent campaigns that focus in on the market with laser precision and hit it with a competition-crushing proposition. Sometimes delivered partly through the intelligent (and I use that word advisedly) use of social media!

8.       Proactive about a Pipeline of Prospects

Pipeline may still be an issue for some partners who are so busy doing today’s work to  generate today’s fees and fire-fighting that they fail to consider what work is on the horizon for next month, next quarter and next year. Having thousands of contacts is of little value if there are no prospects (or prospective referrers) amongst them. And no matter how strong your existing client base is and how well you care for it, you need to add new prospects to the pipeline.

9.       Prying eyes (and ears)

Well, I don’t mean be nosey in an underhand way, but you need to be curious. Enquire about the changes that are coming in the market, what keeps clients awake at night, what makes team members tick and how you might do things differently. A healthy interest (backed up by research and dialogue) in clients and their businesses and industries is a touchstone of great marketing and selling.

10.   Passion and patience

Those that love what they do, do well. Whilst it is hard to stay motivated when you face a daily onslaught of challenges, problems and crises, those that continue to enthuse provide immense motivation and inspiration to others. They are irresistible! Some partners suffer from “short-termitis”. This is a usually fatal condition which means that initiatives are knocked down before they have a chance to yield results.  If the research is good, the cost-benefit analysis adds up and the programme and people are sound – please give it a chance!

11.   Pioneer

It’s a brave new world out there. Whilst some might cower in the office hiding behind their desks, others are out there listening to the market and interacting with clients, referrers and contacts.  And they come back with new ideas. Some call it innovation. The pioneers are hacking a path through the jungle of inertia and resistance to develop new business models, discover new income streams, open up new markets, create new products and services, design new ways to improve old processes, craft new pricing strategies and to reinvent their profession and their practice. But remember Harvey S. Firestone’s wise words “The way of the pioneer is always rough”.

12.   Pizzazz

It isn’t essential to have that certain “je ne sais quoi” or, dare I say it, “X factor” as a partner but it certainly makes life easier. And a lot more fun.

Wishing you a Merry Christmas. And a happy and prosperous 2013.  Kim Tasso (aka RedStarKim)

Earlier this week I led the first of a new training session on this topic with 18 delegates representing global law firms, medium sized law firms, accountancy practices, economists and actuaries with varied experience of pitching and selling.

Initial discussions centred around the challenges. The two key themes emerging were time management (getting fee-earners to involve marketing early, maintaining the schedule, deadlines) and qualification (managing the “Go-No Go” decision). See the diagram below.

This naturally led to a debate about what fee-earners most wanted from marketing/BD support, which raised concerns about the lack of awareness of what was involved in preparing an effective pitch (low sales awareness) and a discussion around ownership of the process. Perceived risk and reward for fee-earners were also a key challenge from a cultural perspective. The need to develop a better understanding of the sales process, particularly to make effective use of research and briefing/scoping meetings and identify the difference between rational and emotional decision making processes was an area identified for progress.

There was some debate about the level of involvement of marketing/BD and we explored the pyramid comprising: process and resource infrastructure, administration and processing, team support/coaching and ultimately strategic sales consultancy.

Most subsequent exercises revolved around the impact of these challenges on the process of strategy development, document production and the presentation/meeting preparation. There was valuable insight shared into how to improve the development of value propositions.

At the end of the session, the key images, ideas and actions were summarised as follows:

Thanks to DMH Stallard solicitors for hosting the event.

Further details of PM Forum training sessions can be found at http://www.pmforum.co.uk/training/index.aspx and this session will run again in February 2013.

At the start of July, I ran another of the popular PM courses on “Managing Change and Leadership” http://www.pmforum.co.uk/training/index.aspx. As usual, I promised the delegates a summary from the session and the delay was due to me reviewing a new book on Managing Change (see below).

We started the session with a review of the particular challenges that were faced:

·         Promoting a global identity

·         Building a sales culture

·         Managing leadership (managing upwards)

·         Establishing a bid process

·         Generating more enthusiasm for business development

·         Creating a culture of active client development

We spent a fair amount of time considering the impact of reward systems (for both partners and non-partners) that supports the status quo. There was also some discussion on case studies where the importance of physical environment, new markets and new services were examined. The thinking (cognitive), behaviour (emotions) and systems changes were placed in the context in the various models explored.

In the communication section, delegates talked about the use of internal social network analysis to assist with the identification of key influencers. To understand how such tools work, a simpler tool is available for exploring external networks in LinkedIn http://inmaps.linkedinlabs.com/

At the end of the session, I asked what they had found most useful:

·         Development of a compelling vision

·         Storyboard technique

·         The value matrix

·         Segmenting people based on their influence and needs

·         Taking time out to review the change programme holistically

·         The 10 commandments of change management

Books on leadership

During the session, lists of books for further reading on change management (especially Kotter) were provided. But I was asked to recommend my favourite book on leadership. Personally, I really like John Adair’s methodology - he has written many books but a good starting point is probably “Effective Leadership: How to be a successful leader”. For the time pressed seeking pragmatic advice, the books by Kenneth Blanchard are worth a skim.

Asking around, other favourites included: “Leadership: Plain and Simple” by Steve Radcliffe (Financial Times Series) and “The Three Levels of Leadership: How to Develop Your Leadership Presence, Knowhow and Skill” by James Scouller and, of course, HBR's 10 Must Reads on Leadership. Let me know what you think is your favourite.

BTW – I thought that the following blog on the six distinctions of highly successful women was worth a read http://www.wearethecity.com/authentic-leadership-the-six-distinctions-of-highly-successful-women/

The Sunday Times “Managing Change” by Patrick Forsyth

Patrick is a respected and long serving member of the professional services marketing community (although this book is aimed at businesses generally) and has written many books. This new 140 page paperback, published by Kogan Page, is a quick and easy read. It is probably best positioned as a book for change management beginners – or perhaps for a fee-earner newly promoted to a management position.

Change management is a large, multi-faceted subject covering organisational development, psychology, strategy and leadership disciplines. Patrick adopts a pragmatic approach (there are few theoretical or academic references) as he explores strategic, innovative, management and technical (where the case study is the use of QR codes) change.

Whilst there is acknowledgement of the influences on behaviour (and there are some good observations on motivation), there is little on personal, team or organisational psychology although there is some useful material on resistance. The use of technology and social media in the structured communications process is not explored.

There is reference to the Harvey and Brown readiness for change model – stability of the environment against management adaptability. I found the frequent mentions of the Japanese Kaizen principles (for quality management systems) somewhat strange – particularly as there was no other references to the cultural influences that have a significant impact on change management programmes.

There’s some good basic stuff on mentoring, training and appraisals and the final section on key questions is a helpful aide-memoire.

Patrick offers the following framework in a mnemonic:

·         Shared vision

·         Understanding of the organisation

·         Culture compatibility

·         Clear communication

·         Expert assistance

·         Strong leadership

·         Stakeholder commitment

And to add to the personal transition models, he offers:

·         Uninformed optimism

·         Informed pessimism

·         Realism

·         Informed optimism

·         Acceptance and support

Chapters include:

1.     The nature of change

2.     Preparing for change

3.     Prompting successful change

4.     Communication change

5.     Change in practice

6.     Fit for change

Last week I joined a web cast presented by an excellent HR consultant that I have worked with in the property sector – Alyson Pellowe (www.pvhr.com @alysonpellowe) where consultant Ian Crocker talked about personal impact. This is a topic about on which I write, train and coach a fair amount so I was interested to hear others’ views.

What is personal impact?

After some definitions of personal impact – such as presence: “Personal appearance or bearing especially of a dignified nature” and “air, appearance, aspect, aura, being, demeanour, personality, poise, self assurance” – participants were asked to nominate their ideas for people in the media with great personal impact – Davina McColl, Barrack Obama, Richard Bramson, Margaret Thatcher and James Caan were all mentioned. There was also a bit of chat about presence of mind – and the need to be calm, have self command in a sudden difficulty, alertness and aplomb.

A model of personal impact

Ian then introduced his model which I thought addressed all of the important elements of impact – both in real life and on-line. I was glad to see that personal branding was addressed as well as the need for authenticity in aligning your behaviour with your values and being consistent.

Appearance

Not surprisingly, a fair amount of time was devoted to how you look and there were some pointers on posture, personal grooming and appropriate dress.

Voice

There were some interesting points about your voice – and the need to project your voice with the right volume and tone was stressed. The need for clarity of speech by enunciating your words properly and ensuring that you were strong at the end of your sentences was stressed. There were also some helpful tips about the words you use. Those identified as being particularly impactful were: you, money, save, results, new, easy, proven, guaranteed, hassle-free, innovation, efficient and peace of mind.

Conveying warmth

There was an interesting piece on conveying warmth – by devoting your full attention to them, maintaining eye contact and making people feel important. These ideas are not new and I urge you to read Dale Carnegie’s “How to win friends and influence people” if you need a refresher. There was a great quote here: “people don’t care how much you know when they know how much you care”

Other models

One of the models that I often use addresses similar issues and uses a triangle to show how people achieve personal impact through a combination of their presence (physical appearance), authority (knowledge and expertise) and their impact (their ability to change things). And there are many FAQs and blogs which look at the importance of emotional intelligence, empathy and non verbal communication.

I have written extensively on some of the topics mentioned during the web cast, please see:

http://www.kimtasso.com/blogx/post/Getting-your-head-around-basic-selling-skills.aspx

http://www.kimtasso.com/blogx/post/Assertiveness-confidence-and-effectiveness-for-young-marketers.aspx

http://www.kimtasso.com/blogx/post/Take-a-walk-on-the-client-side-Empathy-and-emotional-intelligence-when-selling-professional-services.aspx

http://www.kimtasso.com/blogx/post/Selling-e28093-The-importance-of-face-to-face-contact-on-tenders.aspx

http://www.kimtasso.com/blogx/post/16-ways-to-remember-names-when-networking.aspx

http://www.kimtasso.com/blogx/post/11-tips-for-your-first-presentation.aspx

As far as I can make out, this book is one of those set for the CIM/CAM Diploma in Digital Marketing, It provides an excellent introduction to digital marketing. It’s a relatively easy and quick to read 276 pages although as well as the glossary and index it would have been good to have a list of the various (mostly American) web site references and tools (I compiled my own after reading it - let me know if you'd like a copy).

The chapters are:

1.         Going digital – the evolution of marketing

2.         Strategic thinking

3.         Your window to the digital world

4.         The search for success

5.         Website intelligence and ROI

6.         Email marketing

7.         Social media and online consumer engagement

8.         Online PR and reputation management

9.         Affiliate marketing and strategic partnerships

10.        Digital media creative

11.        A lot to look forward to

As expected, the preface starts with some statistics about the explosive growth of the online world – although throughout the book I feel that it’s impossible to keep up to date as even the 2008-2010 stats provided seem out of date. Although the fact that it took TV 22 years to reach 50m households and the Internet just five to achieve same level of penetration is a sobering thought.

The first chapter provides a fairly standard overview of the impact of technology on marketing and the birth of the Internet and the dramatic developments once Google and broadband came on the scene. The key messages of the book “it isn’t about technology or broadcasting but about people and engaging in conversations” and “the consumer is now in control” make an early appearance. The UK’s online advertising market noted at $2.64 billion in 2007 (IAB suggests that this is 10.5% of the total advertising spend compared to radio at 3.5%, consumer mags at 4.5%, outdoor at 5.1%, national press at 11.4% and TV at 22.7%. There’s the Jupiter research about the seven key ways in which the adoption of new technology is affecting consumer behaviour.

Chapter two on strategic thinking stresses the need to accommodate the dual digital impact of broadened reach and narrowed focus. Thankfully, the key message here is still that you need to thoroughly understand your market, how much your clients are using digital technology and how your business can best use technology to build enduring and mutually rewarding relationships with them. There’s then a review of behaviour of the digital consumer (comfortable with the medium, want it all and they want it now, they’re in control, they’re fickle and they’re vocal). I love the quote “Word of mouth on steroids” and the reminder to influence the influencers.

Chapter three is concerned with web site and the important role it plays in being the hub of your digital marketing activity and a conversion engine. There’s good guidance on building your web site (particularly bearing in mind your aims, your markets and how you will measure success) and some excellent, pragmatic advice on good web design and writing effective web content.

Search is the main topic of chapter four. Any book would struggle to keep up with the ever-changing nature of this topic but again there are some good stats about the extent of the online world and the focus on relevance (key words and great content) and authority (quality inbound links). There’s helpful link building tips and an exploration of the benefits of PPC while your SEO kicks in. Black hat and negative SEO are touched on.

Web site intelligence and return on investment as a chapter I found a little disappointing. There’s some decent stuff on analytics, KPIs and testing but it left me wanting more. Chapter six on email marketing I found more helpful and there is one small reference to accountancy firms using it to keep in touch with clients (otherwise the book is almost entirely consumer marketing focused). There was, however, great clarity on the laws and regulations around permissions and warnings about spamming although I was alarmed that the warning about using your main domain name wasn’t apparent. There’s good lists of Do’s and Don’ts for email design and email copywriting.

Chapter seven on social media and online consumer engagement provided a basic introduction to the various tools and rules of engagement and inviting a response but I would suggest you take a look at the Inbound Marketing book I reviewed back in February 2010 (http://www.kimtasso.com/blogx/post/Inbound-marketing-e28093-Getting-found-using-Google-social-media-and-blogs.aspx) which I think is excellent.

Surprisingly, for me, chapter eight on online PR and reputation management was the highlight of the book. There’s basic media relations advice here – but tailored to the very different online world and I particularly liked the material on blogger outreach. The advice on how to monitor your on-line reputation – and act when things go wrong - is excellent and likely to be helpful to all firms.

The chapter on affiliate marketing and strategic partnerships was less relevant to the professions at present and the chapter on digital marketing creative was likely to be beyond the budgets of all but the largest PSFs. I liked the line “moved away from the age of interruptions to the age of engagement” but recognise the difficulty this poses to social media averse lawyers, accountants and surveyors no matter what their marketing and business development folk might say.

The final chapter on future developments is a good summary and flags, as you would expect, continuing rapid change, humanising and personalising search, social search, mobile and geolocation, privacy and data protection, tracking and measuring behaviour and blurring lines and integrating media.

So overall it looks like a good, solid introduction with some sound, practical advice – and certainly good for the young marketing practitioner. But I suspect most senior marketers in the professions – digital natives or not – will hopefully know the majority of what the book covers and will want more strategic guidance, help with internal engagement and thoughts about preparing for the future.

On 1st July I went along to the lovely riverside offices of Norton Rose in More London to help lead a discussion on the topic of relationship management for a group of senior marketers and HR practitioners from legal, property and accountancy firms at the Managing Partners Forum. I co-presented with Christopher Masters, presently Director of Marketing and Business Development at sjberwin. Whist I am not at liberty to describe what Christopher said or to disclose some of the really interesting points raised during the discussion, I can share the main points that I used to open the debate.

Why is relationship management so important?

The reasons why relationship management is so critical to a professional firm are obvious but for the benefit of the HR people present we touched on the impact of a consistent high quality service on reputation, the economics of retaining and developing existing clients (rather than chasing new ones), sustainable growth dynamics and the role of service delivery (of which relationship management is a key element) in differentiation and branding and thus profitability.

So why is it so difficult?

If it’s motherhood and apple pie – why is it so difficult? I mentioned that the misunderstandings about CRM technology often poisoned the entire debate about relationship management behaviours and that sometimes the purpose of relationship management (service enhancement, client intimacy, cross selling etc) gets confused. Many nodded when I mentioned the silly situation where those often best able to help with relationship management – marketing and business development people – are kept away from the clients. Talk about keep a dog and bark yourself.

We touched on the difficult transition that many fee-earners have to make when it comes to moving from technical specialist to account manager role and the lack of structured skills training programmes that provide practical guidance on relationship management (and selling and account management) behaviours. And, of course, the pressure to record billable work making it hard to justify time spent developing relationships – particularly if the results are not immediately apparent and they may ultimately go to a different department or office. We also mentioned the “dinosaurs” that might lurk in the practice who will insist on clinging to the way that they have done things since time immemorial.

And we thought about how good relationship behaviour is so hard to define (although we are pretty sure when we witness bad relationship behaviour) – and, to make matters worse, how it can vary so dramatically depending on the particular individual at a particular client organisation.

I mentioned that many years ago I formulated an acronym to summarise all these barriers – MICROSCRIPT (TM) - motivation, interest, complacency, reward, ownership, skills, culture, risk, information, politics and time.

What can we do? An A – E guide

To provide a framework for the subsequent discussion I outlined five areas which I have found, from experience, will help embed the relationship culture within a professional firm.

A is for Aims

Set objectives to gain buy-in from senior management, manage expectations and help you select the right strategies and programmes. Provide an analysis of the expected return on investment – whether this is in terms of increased fees, improved profitability and/or reduced cost of winning new clients. Knowing your current position makes it possible to set SMART objectives against which the programme can be measured. A key element of this exercise will be to identify those clients where relationship management improvement is to be targeted – so client categorisation and profiling, key client analysis, client dashboards and relationship mapping may be used as well as historical and service line financial analysis. I mentioned several examples but drew attention to the time that can be involved – one firm took six years to get the average client revenue amongst its top 250 clients from £75K to £370K.

B is for Behaviours

Identifying, encouraging and propagating the right behaviours that exist within your practice was felt to be a good way to avoid the “top down” approach of trying to impose a system from the marketing, business development or client service team. The importance of focusing on the seniors – who sometimes pay lip service to such initiatives – was mentioned as being important to set good role models that younger professionals will follow.

I talked about my experience at a large property practice where we had “sitting down with Bob” sessions to get a senior partner with exemplary relationship management practices to share his knowledge, insights and approaches in the context of specific, real scenarios. The difference between strategic and day-to-day operational relationship behaviours was discussed. Mentoring, buddy systems and action groups were noted as ways to help fee-earners work together and motivate each other. The use of pilot projects, training and one-to-one coaching were considered as ways to provide a safe environment for senior partners experimenting with “risky” (to them) behaviours and for youngsters to break down the process into bite sized pieces. Mirror and match programmes for major clients helped include younger members of the team in the relationship management process.

C is for Carrots and Compensation

Most agreed that the present reward systems – whether the annual appraisal and pay increase systems or the partnership promotion track – often worked against the relationship management culture although property practices were felt to have more flexible systems to encourage the right behaviours. The need to avoid purely negative communications about relationship management (i.e. where it goes wrong) was balanced with the need to see regular, positive communications about where relationship management is working effectively. Systems for recording blue and green time (short term billable hours, long term business development hours), bonus systems on internal referrals, league tables for client satisfaction scores improvement, reduced fee targets for relationship partners and time/agenda allocation for relationship management at all meetings were also touched on.

D is for Development programmes

Firms need to be explicit about what is expected of its fee-earners and this needs to be articulated in best practice guides and training programmes – and tailored to the different levels of experience and seniority amongst fee-earners and with special support for those with specific relationship responsibilities. Sometimes there was confusion about how selling and account management training fitted into programmes that taught client care, service delivery and relationship management skills. The use of service storybooks, relationship legends, reverse client seminars and structured, focused workshops were explored. The need for marketing/business development to work closely with human resource and training teams was stressed.

E is for Establishing systems

To truly embed relationship management into a firm’s culture requires systems to be established that measure both the effort invested and the results. Capturing, managing and sharing the information to support such systems can be a challenge as can the processes to prompt, remind and chase further action. Without established systems, there is a danger that relationship management becomes “this month’s initiative” and quickly loses momentum.

Monthly reports that show progress against relationship goals should be as important as the monthly financial pack. Some firms have used the balanced scorecard approach to ensure that client measures are considered with the same importance as financial, process and people measures. The fact that larger firms, particularly the accountants, employ highly paid account and relationship management staff to work alongside fee-earners shows how far some will go to embed the right relationship behaviours.