Supporting you to make partner

Becoming a partner in a professional services firm can be a challenging business.

On this page you can:
  1. Discover unlimited resources to help you make partner with our subscriber-only site Progress to Partner
  2. Take our partnership readiness assessment to see how ready you are to make partner
  3. Create personal and business plans and support for job applications.

Progress to Partner subscriber-only site is your very own partner development membership with courses, videos, guides and live masterclasses to support you in your career ambitions

Quick links to learn more on how to develop your career in law, accountancy, consultancy or professional services in general.

Consultancy Firm Careers

Law Firm Careers

Accountancy Firm Careers

Big 4 Firm Careers

Partner – BLM LLP

“Thank you very much indeed for your significant help and support – as a result of your guidance, I felt incredibly confident in submitting my business plan and then giving my presentation and interview. In the days after the presentation and interview, I had some very positive feedback from the partners who interviewed me, saying that my performance was “outstanding” and that my presentation was “very slick and professional” – I doubt it would have been without your advice and guidance. I gained so much confidence from working with you, and I am extremely grateful.”

Is Partnership For You?

Progressing your career in professional services is hard. You need to be good at your day job, hit your billable targets and then learn to manage others. Then if that wasn’t enough, if you are going to make partner you need to create a business within a business. That means making the time for business development and gathering together a team of people that you trust. This change doesn’t happen overnight. It’s about those moments. The moments when you need to conquer your fears, challenge the imposter syndrome, take a step forward and not fall back into old habits. We can help you with those moments.

Building your skills and reputation can take a lifetime, but taking responsibility for your career can start as soon as you like. Are you committed to becoming a partner? Is there anything stopping you?

Will you manage the workload and still have time for family and friends?

  • Are you in control of your time? Particularly if you find yourself on back-to-back calls and meetings most days?
  • Do you choose when you finish for the day? Or do the demands of your partner or clients take precedence?
  • Are you able to do a little bit of work on your career each week? Or are you still waiting for the next quiet time?
  • Do you have powerful advocates in the partnership who are helping your career move forward?
  • Are you systematically delegating work down? So you can focus on the more important stuff?

Have you considered your career routes and paths?

  • Do you feel like you belong and can be yourself at work? Are you in the right firm for you?
  • Would changing firms help you speed up your career?
  • Would a stint in Industry give you a competitive career advantage?
  • How to ask for, and get, a pay rise and promotion?
  • Should you aim to have a Big 4, Magic Circle or prestigious firm on your CV or resume?
  • Should you start your own firm or still go for partnership?

The 12 Skills You Need to Develop to Become a Partner:

Access resources, courses and partner development programs to suit you at every stage in your career with a Progress to Partner subscription

Your on-demand courses, programmes, videos, plans, guides and masterclasses on tap

Get started with a simple, low-cost annual plan. Then when you are ready, progress to accessing unlimited courses, resources and live virtual masterclasses. Later, when you are ready to mount a charge towards becoming a partner, we offer premium services, such as discounted executive coaching to help get you there more quickly.

Click here to find out how a Progress to Partner subscription can help you to build your partner-ready skills.

Mindset Courses

Acquire the mindset to transition from employee to business owner

  • How to be on your A Game
  • How to say no to urgent requests from clients and partners
  • How to drive your own career progression
  • How to get a healthier work life balance
  • How to ooze authority and gravitas
  • How to be noticed by the people who matter
  • How to demonstrate you are ready for promotion
  • How to increase your confidence
  • How to balance all the demands on your time
  • How to have time to work on your career
  • Avoiding burnout
  • How to be at your best when working from home

Direction Courses

Do you know what really makes you tick and what you stand for?

  • How to deal with change forced on you
  • Exploring your personal values
  • Getting clear on what you really want from your career
  • Identifying your vision and direction
  • What makes you tick?
  • Harnessing your strengths?
  • How to refind your career mojo
  • Coming back from a career setback
  • Choosing a firm where you really belong

Career Plan Courses

Do you have a career plan guiding you to do the right things at the right time?

  • How to drive your career forward
  • Identifying a motivating career goal
  • Using the power of a ONE BIG FOCUS
  • How to build an achievable career plan
  • What to do when your career plateaus
  • How to keep moving your career forward when you are really busy
  • Getting the most out of your appraisal
  • How to get promoted
  • Bouncing back from redundancy 
  • Finding your dream job

Support Team Courses

Do you have the right support team in place to help you go all the way?

  • Who needs to be in your support team
  • Picking the right mentor
  • Using sponsors to get the right opportunities for you
  • Getting the most out of your mentor
  • Building a strong relationship with your sponsoring partner
  • How to use a mentor to build your business case
  • Future Course

Delegation Courses

Do you have the right people to delegate to so you can free yourself up to focus on partner type duties?

  • Delegate like a pro
  • Delegating when you don’t have your own team
  • Being more productive
  • People management skills
  • Remote and hybrid team management
  • Running a performance review
  • Developing a junior team member
  • How to systematically delegate
  • How to motivate your team

Go-to Expert Courses

Are you widely known and seen as an expert in what you do?

  • How to win your own work
  • How to create your marketing plan
  • How to convert leads into clients
  • What to do when a lead goes quiet
  • Steps to find your niche
  • How to monetise your niche
  • How to raise your profile
  • How to win work from existing clients
  • How to win work as a litigator or arbitrator
  • How to win more bids and tenders
  • Public speaking
  • Thought leadership (without it becoming your day job)

Referral Network Courses

Build referral networks to supply you with enough of the right type of work

  • How to reliably win work from introducers
  • How to get internal firm referrals
  • Building a networking plan
  • How to network less but get better results
  • How to work a room
  • How to use LinkedIn to network
  • Networking for shy & introverted people
  • How to stand out in your network
  • How to get a regular conversation with introducers
  • How to get the right referrals from your network

Business Development Habit Courses

Do you routinely do a bit of business development each day? 

  • How to create an achievable marketing plan
  • How to learn to love business development
  • How to do a bit of business development each day
  • How to do business development when you are really busy with client work
  • How to create and share content in less than 10 mins a day
  • How to create a rhythm and routine with your business development
  • How to decide on how much business development you need to do
  • How to get others to help you with business development
  • How to choose the right mix of business development activities for you

Personal Case Courses

Do you match up against the criteria required for partners in your firm?

  • Business case vs personal case
  • How to find out is expected of a future partner
  • How to find the time to do everything expected of a partner
  • Leading organisational change
  • How to keep progressing your career
  • How to take responsibility for your career
  • How to navigate the firm and partnership’s politics 
  • How to get clients to go to you not the partner
  • How to get clients to treat you like a partner
  • How to remain high profile even if working mainly from home

Member of the Club Courses

Do your partners trust you to deliver and have you as your business partner?

  • How to ooze authority and gravitas
  • How to build your profile amongst the partnership
  • How to be seen as the next partner
  • How to get time with influential partners when many of them work from home
  • How to create an internal PR campaign to support your business case
  • How to navigate the firm and partnership’s politics 
  • How to deal with professional jealousy towards you
  • How to turn up as the authentic you
  • How to rebuild a damaged reputation
  • How to create a trusted personal brand 

Business Case Courses

Are you implementing a robust business plan to help you grow the profits of your firm?

  • When to start and how to start your business case
  • Sample business cases
  • What data do you need for your business case
  • Persuasive writing
  • What is typically required from a business case
  • Writing your executive summary
  • Tools and templates to make it easy to create your business case
  • How to write a compelling business case
  • How to present a compelling pitch for your business case
  • Why business cases get turned down
  • How to create a business case when you are not a fee earner
  • How to create a business case when you are coming from industry
  • How to build your business case as a lateral hire

Partner Admission Process Courses

Have you prepared for each element of the process? Can you succinctly pitch your business case?

  • How to prepare for your firm’s partner admissions process
  • What to expect from a partnership panel
  • How to prepare for difficult questions at your partnership panel
  • How to be at your best in an assessment centre
  • How to create your business plan
  • What questions can you expect at a partnership panel
  • How to present your business case
  • How to deal with presentation nerves
  • What needs to go in your slides and handouts for your business case presentation
  • How to pace yourself when on Partner Track
  • How to cope if you don’t make it to partner
  • How to prepare financially if you make it to partner
  • How to announce your admission to the partnership

Partner Readiness Assessment

The Partnership Readiness Assessment is an ideal tool to help future partners identify exactly where to focus their personal development plans. It will complement and add real value to your firm’s emerging leaders/potential partner programme.

Unlike many psychometric tools commonly used (and rightly so) in development programmes, this tool can be used multiple times without incurring additional cost. This means you can use this tool to not only help your potential partner candidates understand the areas they need to work on but also to measure their progress and improvement during and after your programme.

Why Choose Us as Your Career Partner?

Grab our videos and courses at the right moment

Becoming a partner is a mighty undertaking, don’t try to do it all at once. Tackle problems in your role as they come up, with our help. Timely advice, broken into management chunks and selectable by topic.

Use our game plans

Know you want to get somewhere, but are overwhelmed with where to start and what to do? We’ve done that thinking with our game plans. Use our game plans to find out how to develop your skills or move your career forward.

Assess your Business Development Plans

Business development is a core part of becoming a partner. Having the skills you want to develop in your eye line will lead to many micro-decisions and progress.

Develop at your own pace

Whether you are still preparing, actively working towards partnership or are getting ready for the presentation, we offer a level of service.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Partnership requires a variety of personal and technical skills. Play to your strengths and cover your weaknesses, track progress with our assessments.

Coach Led Programs

Our team is vastly experienced and can often unlock progress to partner with a switch of mindset. The insights and aha moments are what we look for.

Entry Level Program

Preparing early for Partner is by far the easiest way to get there in the end. In small and subtle ways at first, your skills and reputation inside the business emerges. Give yourself time.

Premium Monthly

This is often for the sprint, cramming and final preparation. If you only need to work on a specific area for a short period then this is the level of membership that lets you do that.

Premium Annual

If you have decided on the path to partnership and are actively taking steps, this program gets you access to everything, and us. Work through the areas of your assessment with us to guide you.

Progress to Partner Pricing – What Will You Get?

PROGRESS TO PARTNER

Partner – BLM LLP

“Thank you very much indeed for your significant help and support – as a result of your guidance, I felt incredibly confident in submitting my business plan and then giving my presentation and interview. In the days after the presentation and interview, I had some very positive feedback from the partners who interviewed me, saying that my performance was “outstanding” and that my presentation was “very slick and professional” – I doubt it would have been without your advice and guidance. I gained so much confidence from working with you, and I am extremely grateful.”

Partner – BLM LLP

“Thank you very much indeed for your significant help and support – as a result of your guidance, I felt incredibly confident in submitting my business plan and then giving my presentation and interview. In the days after the presentation and interview, I had some very positive feedback from the partners who interviewed me, saying that my performance was “outstanding” and that my presentation was “very slick and professional” – I doubt it would have been without your advice and guidance. I gained so much confidence from working with you, and I am extremely grateful.”

How can we help you?

Please complete the form below to provide us with your information, and we will contact you as soon as possible to offer our assistance.

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Premium Membership Courses

When you are ready to move full steam ahead, join the premium program and get more in depth support with our detailed courses.

Frequently Asked Questions – Joining our programs

Is there a minimum membership length?

If you join as a monthly premium member, you will pay monthly and can cancel your subscription at any time on the Progress to Partner Dashboard.

Annual subscribers have paid for 12 months. We will send a reminder email to you before your subscription expires and you will have the opportunity to choose not to renew for a further 12 months

Do you guarantee I will get a promotion if I join?

We can’t guarantee that! The Progress to Partner subscriber only site will give you the knowledge and skills you need to get noticed but you do need to put the work in to build your skills; reading our guides, watching our videos and working through the self-study courses. This isn’t a quick fix! 

Make sure you also attend the Lunch & Learn Workshops (or watch the replays if you have Premium membership)

For even better results, don’t hesitate to schedule your private coaching sessions when needed. These have discounted rates for Premium members.

You will need to put the work in both in the membership site and then when you are at work to make sure you are doing all you can to get noticed as “partner-ready”.

I would like to sign up more than one person in my firm for membership – can you offer a discount?

Let us know if you would like to sign up more than 5 people in your firm and we will be able to offer you a discount.

Will I be able to ask questions if I get stuck?

Of course! You can ask questions in our private subscriber-only Facebook Group or ask questions during our live Lunch & Learn workshops. We’re ready to help!

I am already respected at my firm. Why would I need to join Progress to Partner

Even if you are already respected at your firm, it is still very easy to get stuck in your career and be relegated to “a safe-pair of hands”.  If you think it’s your firm’s responsibility to develop you, then you’re wrong.

If you’re relying on your firm for your own development, you’re putting yourself at risk by giving the firm control of whether you progress or not.

I know many people who have progressed their career on their own, why do I need to join?

Are you 100% sure they didn’t receive external help? You may have seen people that you felt were not as technically strong as you progressing their career.  This is because they learned what skills they needed to show and they have quite simply taken control of their own development and their own career progression.

Wouldn’t it be amazing to do it with the support of experts that have been training and supporting people you like you to progress in their careers for over 15 years?

Our Books

Paperback & Kindle

The Financial Times Guide to Business Networking

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Paperback & Kindle

How to Make Partner and Still Have a Life

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Paperback & Kindle

Poised for
Partnership

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Paperback & Kindle

The Go-To
Expert

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Heather Townsend

Heather Townsend is the leading global expert in what it takes to move from senior fee earner to partner – and when you get there, stay there. She regularly runs programmes to help fee earners take the step up to partner, and establish themselves as a new partner, for mid-tier law, accountancy and consultancy firms. It just so happens that she is rather good (and not really that modest either!) in helping individuals successfully market and sell themselves. Just the skills you need when you are aiming to grow your client portfolio AND make it to partner.

In fact, her clients have added over £1 million in fees to their client portfolio in the last year. Heather often works with private clients who want to drive their own career (regardless of the development options offered by their firm) via her Progress To Partner membership site. The membership site helps lawyers, accountants and consultants to:

  • Find the time to work ON their career development and business development
  • Grow their client portfolio
  • Develop a strong personal case so that they are seen as the next partner
  • Get onto partner track rather than been seen as only a “safe pair of hands”
  • Build, write and pitch their business case
  • Prepare for the partnership panel interviews

She is the author of 6 books including ‘How to make partner and still have a life‘ (co-authored with Jo Larbie), ‘Poised for partnership‘, ‘The Financial Times guide to business networking‘ and ‘The Go-To Expert‘. Her books have sold over 20,000 copies globally and been translated into over 6 different languages and attracted over 200 five star reviews on Amazon.Her coaching style has been described as challenging, friendly but very supportive.