You have been sat in front of the same client for years. The work is good, the relationship is good, and none of it has ever gone anywhere else in the firm.
Then somebody asks what work you have found for the rest of the firm this year. How do you have that conversation with a client without feeling like a second hand car sales person? That’s what this episode is all about.
Most of the mid-tier, global and multidisciplinary firms have made more work from existing clients their main route to market, which means you need to be good at introducing your clients to others in the firm. Almost nobody is taught how to do it. Account management is a skill, and it is one you will have to build yourself rather than wait for your firm to teach you.
I’m Heather Townsend, author of Poised for Partnership and co-author of How to Make Partner & Still Have a Life. I’m the leading global expert in what it takes to move from senior fee earner to partner . Here are 5 ways to work with me.
In This Episode You Will Learn:
- How to earn the right to ask a client what else they need
- The one question that tells you whether your client is ready to meet a partner
- How to spot the opportunity when casually talking with clients
- Which handful of colleagues you actually need to know to be great at introducing others into your client.
If you find this episode useful, don’t forget to like it and then subscribe so you don’t miss another episode.
What Help Is Out There For You?
If you’re thinking, ‘I do not know how to have that conversation without sounding like I am selling’, our Progress To Partner Academy can help you.
That’s precisely why we have ‘How to Develop Work from Existing Clients’ in the Progress to Partner Academy. It takes you through how to have the right conversations with clients that lead to new business.
You can also listen to this episode on Substack and on Apple Podcasts
Hello, and welcome!
Your challenge to find work for others in your firm. Your problem, no one has trained you how to do this.
And more importantly you and your clients tend to only talk about your on-going job, project or matter with them. So there never seems to be a good time to find out if they need more services from your firm than just what your team does.
Given that many large firms are actively wanting you to find work for others in the firm, this is a problem you need to solve if you want to make partner. It’s something that we look for when we assess suitability for partnership in our key indicators “personal case” and “member of the club”.
This episode is about how to introduce one of your clients to another part of your firm. It came out of a group coaching call I ran with a group of lawyers on one of our How to Make Partner programmes.
This is the How to Make Partner podcast with me, Heather Townsend. The author of Poised for Partnership, and co-author of How to Make Partner and Still Have a Life. In this podcast, I will be highlighting some of the great stuff in our Progress To Partner Academy. New episodes are released weekly, so press subscribe so you never miss a new episode.
Right. Let’s talk about how you find work for other people in your firm.
I was working with a consultant at one of the Big Four. She was a deal maker in M&A, and when we built her Business Case it had two halves to it. The first was the number of deals she would land in a year. The second was the amount of follow-through work those deals would generate for other parts of the firm.
That second half was not a nice to have. It was a significant part of her business case and she had personal targets for the revenue she achieved in what they called post deal work as well as the revenue from the original M&A deal.
Whenever I work with people in the big multidisciplinary firms and they start talking about being one firm, there is an expectation in the firm. You will be good at finding work for other people.
These firms have made this their main route to market, because the cheapest work to win is more work from a client who already trusts you. But almost nobody gets taught how to do it. Account management is a skill.
There is something else in the way, particularly in firms where you are remunerated on what you personally bill, or on who sits on your client list. Introducing your client to another service line can feel like handing over something you have spent years building. Or you find that even though you found the work, you get no credit for it as the partner in the firm who ‘owns’ the relationship on your firm system gets the sales credit. Firms just love asking for one firm behaviour whilst incentivising people to do the exact opposite.
But if you want a fast way to build a reputation with your partners, this is it. Finding work for other people is the quickest way to build a strong reputation, and most of your peers are not doing it.
The first thing to realise is that you have to earn the right to have this conversation with your client.
We worry that we will be the McDonald’s do you want fries with that, seen as an order taker. Your job is to support your client to get to what they are trying to achieve. Sometimes that means bringing in someone else in the firm. If it is helping the client, where is the problem?
Earning the right starts with delivering great client service. Not adequate. Great.
Are you responsive? Can they get hold of you? Are your bills arriving without surprises in them? Are you doing what you said you would do, by when you said you would do it?
Because if the basics are not right, you are not getting anywhere near a conversation about what else they need.
The second thing you need is a regular dialogue that is not about the matter, the audit or the project you are currently invoicing for.
This is the account management conversation. You step back from the work, and you ask how things are going. What are they trying to do as an organisation. Where are the constraints. What is getting in the way.
That might be once a quarter, twice a year, or once a year. What matters is that it is agreed and expected, so you are not turning up one day planning to have an account management conversation that they are not expecting.
But it is not only the formal meetings. Most of what you pick up comes from the everyday conversations. Most of us open any client conversation with the work we are doing for them. Instead of diving straight into the work stuff, Try asking how things are, and then actually listening to the answer.
When they mention something in passing, for example, a hiring freeze, a system that is not working, a board asking questions they cannot answer yet, ask the next question. How does that impact you? Is that causing you problems? Be curious rather than steering back to the the current work you are doing for them.
Now, we often get worried about whether the actually client wants to talk to another partner. Are they just saying they want to? I.e being very polite. So test this out and ask them:
Would it be helpful for me to set up a meeting with you and this partner, to talk about this challenge you have?
That is it. If they say yes, you have got something. If they say no, or not yet, you have qualified out this possible opportunity. You now know they will not put time and energy into moving it forward, which is what you wanted to find out before you tried to organise a meeting with them and another partner
That is a not yet, and their not yets were the subject of the last two episodes, on how to restart stalled leads and how to pre-qualify unsuitable leads. Silence or hesitation is rarely a hard no. What they are really saying is not yet.
By the way, if you struggle with knowing what to listen for, there is an on-demand session inside our Progress to Partner Academy called How to Develop Work from Existing Clients. I will come back to it at the end.
You can hold all the account management meetings you like. If you cannot recognise a lead for somebody else, none of it turns into anything.
Whenever I run panels with experienced business developers, this is the thing they say they wish they had more time for. Knowing What their other partners actually do, what outcome those partners deliver, and what to listen out for so they know when to make the introduction.
And these are the people who are already good at winning work!
The scale of it puts people off. There might be hundreds of partners in your firm, or thousands. That’s a lot of inter firm knowledge to know about
Here is what I get people to do instead. Think about what is upstream and what is downstream of the work you do.
My colleague Angela, who was at EY and who I work alongside on most of our clients, calls this adjacent work. I tease her about it being a consultancy word. What work naturally comes before you, and what work naturally comes after you?
In M&A, the tax people normally come in once the deal has completed. The employment lawyers might come in at due diligence, and then come back afterwards to help with restructuring.
So instead of trying to know everyone, do three things.
Get to know the people who work in your sector, with your type of client. Properly know them, not just recognise the name on the intranet.
Get to know who does the work your client needs after you have finished yours.
And get to know who does the work your client needs before they ever get to you. Because those are the people who should be selling you.
Your firm, particularly if it talks about being one firm, will be expecting you to be generating work for others in the firm. Whether that’s from your existing clients OR your network, it will be expected.
Now, if you are thinking, I do not know how to have that conversation without sounding like I am selling, that is exactly what our How to Develop Work from Existing Clients session in the Progress to Partner Academy is designed for. It shows you the process needed to win work from existing clients.
I’ve popped a link to our Progress To Partner Academy, which contains our How to Develop Work from Existing Clients session, directly in the show notes for this episode. Also in the show notes, you’ll find links to my books, Poised for Partnership and How to Make Partner and Still Have a Life, so you can easily find them on Amazon. And as a thank you for listening, there’s also a link for a 10% discount on annual membership for our Progress To Partner Academy using the code PODCAST10.
That’s all for this episode of the How to Make Partner podcast. What’s your action for this week? Pick the client you speak to most often, and write down the name of the person in your firm who does the work that naturally comes after yours. If you cannot name them, your job this week is to find out who they are.
If you have enjoyed this episode please leave us a review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or give us a comment on Substack. This helps us get the word out to others who may need this advice too. Remember to hit subscribe so you don’t miss next week’s episode. Thanks for listening!
I’m Heather Townsend, author of Poised for Partnership and co-author of How to Make Partner & Still Have a Life. I’m the leading global expert in what it takes to move from senior fee earner to partner – and when you get there, stay there. Here are 5 ways to work with me.
What help is out there for you
If you’re thinking, ‘I do not know how to have that conversation without sounding like I am selling’, our Progress To Partner Academy can help you.
That’s precisely why we have ‘How to Develop Work from Existing Clients’ in the Progress to Partner Academy. It takes you through how to have the right conversations with clients that lead to new business.
Take the Partnership Readiness Assessment
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Books mentioned
Poised for Partnership by Heather Townsend – https://amzn.to/3ETEYk3
How to Make Partner and Still Have a Life by Heather Townsend and Jo Larbie – https://amzn.to/4iLxugM
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