Chapter 6: Implementing key client programs

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I recently pointed to the launch of the second edition of Developing Knowledge-Based Client Relationships, including the free download of Chapter 1 of the book. Following on from this, the other free chapter from the book is

Chapter 6 – Enhancing Client Relationship Capabilities: Implementing Key Client Programs.

Over the last decade most major organizations have implemented key client programs or strategic account initiatives in various forms. Technology and institutional financial services organizations got there a little earlier in the piece, while most large professional services firms have developed solid initiatives just in the course of this decade.The fundamental issue is how organizations continually enhance their capabilities at client relationships. Whatever their organizational abilities at client relationships, they must develop these further over time. Increasingly the field of play that distinguishes competitors, particularly in professional services, are the firm-wide capabilities in engaging in collaborative, knowledge-based relationships. In this chapter I look in detail at the five domains that organizations must address to enhance their client relationship capabilities, as illustrated in the diagram below.

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However the most vital issues are in the realities of how key client programs are successfully established and implemented. The majority of these initiatives experience limited success. The chapter goes into detail on launching programs, selecting key clients, segmentation, remuneration, developing client strategies, establishing client action plans, and more of the nitty-gritty of making key client programs work. Have a read.

Professional networks and marketing without advertising

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One of my deepest interests is professional networks – how groups of independent professionals coalesce to serve clients. I’ve written about professional networks in both of my books, and this will be a central theme of one of my future books. Future Exploration Network is my own implementation of a professional network, in which we bring together global best-of-breed consultants and thinkers as required for specific client projects around the world.

One of the more interesting and successful professional networks I’ve seen is Connect Marketing in Australia, led by the energetic Carolyn Stafford. This started from a series of networking breakfasts for marketing professionals. It has now grown to a national network of professionals, with Connect providing clients with introductions to appropriate professionals, a series of packaged offerings, and the ability to create ad-hoc teams for specific projects. While Connect focuses on the small to medium size sector, it also does work for some top global brands.

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Carolyn, as part of her own very successful promotion efforts, has written a book, Small Business, Big Brand, that provides 33 marketing tips for business, together with a wealth of case studies. There is also a mini version of the book with just 5 tips, which Carolyn has kindly allowed me to put on my blog – you can download it for free here. You can also purchase the physical book here. The downloadable mini version includes a case study on Future Exploration Network on how we promoted the Future of Media Summit 2006, titled “Stop wasting your money on ADVERTISING”.

This section of the ebook, including the Future Exploration Network case study, is below.

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Seven MegaTrends of Professional Services – Developing and implementing robust strategies

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Download the complete White Paper: The Seven MegaTrends of Professional Services

Continued from Responding to Mega Trends – Evolve your business models. Full table of contents below.

Developing and implementing robust strategies

Professionals tend to focus on their domain of expertise rather than developing and implementing strategies for their firms. Yet in the face of powerful driving trends, it is clear that traditional approaches to providing professional services are under threat. Professionals need to become effective strategists, by setting and implementing strategies that go beyond simply their selection of practice areas and office locations.

One of the key issues for professionals is their positioning. There are four core professional services models, as illustrated in Figure 1. This is created by examining two key aspects to how firms create value for clients. On the one hand, firms can deliver their services either as a black-box, or using knowledge-based approaches, as described in the previous section. The other dimension is that of the firm’s domain of expertise, which can either be content, or the actual process of creating knowledge. Mapping these two dimensions against each other yields four core professional services models:

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  • Ask the expert. The history and tradition of professional services is centered on humble clients asking experts for their wisdom and advice. The professional has deep knowledge in a specific area of content, and delivers his or her advice as a black-box service. This model certainly has a future, but this is not where the demand lies.
  • Creative ideas. In this domain, a company knows how to come up with great ideas, yet just delivers its brilliant ideas to its clients once they’re done. This is how the advertising industry, for example, has traditionally worked. Again, this model is becoming harder to sustain, and many professionals in this space are starting to shift their approaches.
  • Outcome facilitation. A rapidly growing field is that of assisting clients to come up with the answers for themselves. Many design and innovation firms have build expertise in the processes of creating great ideas, and apply these from within their client organizations. Professionals in many other fields are starting to work with their clients in this way.
  • Collaborative solutions. The professionals that have deep content expertise, yet deliver that using knowledge-based approaches, are essentially collaborating with their clients to create solutions. While this is by no means the only way to position yourself as a professional, this is where the market is shifting, not least by client demand.

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Seven MegaTrends of Professional Services – Evolve your business models

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Download the complete White Paper: The Seven MegaTrends of Professional Services

Continued from Responding to Mega Trends – Create a highly networked firm. Full table of contents below.

Evolve your business models

In 1748 Benjamin Franklin first wrote the credo that seems to have become the foundation of modern society: “Time is money.” In 1865 Karl Marx supported that, proposing the “labor theory of value,” stating that value is proportional to the labor used. Contemporary professionals, by charging clients based on the time they spend working for them, are in effect modern-day Marxists. Hourly billing, the strategic foundation of many professional services firms, is a major constraint on success in a world driven by the seven MegaTrends. In order to create more value for clients and to lock them in, professionals need to find ways of charging that are more clearly related to the value created for the client.

An excellent example is providing risk services to clients. The MegaTrend of Governance means that companies have an entire array of new risks to manage, in addition to the usual strategic and operational risks. CEOs and CFOs who watch their peers regularly head off to the penitentiary are pointedly reminded of the personal risks involved. Yet assisting organizations to manage risk is not best done by the hour. Ernst & Young has introduced a suite of online services to help their clients manage risk effectively, including a board governance tool that clients can use first to identify and analyze risks, and then to generate action plans to mitigate those risks. The world’s largest law firm, Clifford Chance, has introduced a similar range of tools and systems to help clients manage their compliance risk.

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Seven MegaTrends of Professional Services – Create a highly networked firm

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Download the complete White Paper: The Seven MegaTrends of Professional Services

Continued from Responding to Mega Trends – Build strategic transparency. Full table of contents below.

Create a highly networked firm

Many professional services organizations are not really firms, they are a set of individual professionals working under the one banner. If, however, firms can bring together deep specialist expertise across their organizations, and integrate and apply it in ways designed specifically for their clients, they can create a uniquely relevant offering that no other firm can match. The value firms can create in this way both transcends and takes advantage of the seven MegaTrends of professional services.

Cross-selling is a hot topic in most professional services firms. In order to cross-sell services to existing clients, four conditions must be met. The first is that the relationship leader must be aware of the expertise of his or her colleagues. The second is a broad understanding of that person’s or department’s expertise, and how it can be applied to create value for clients. The third is confidence in the capabilities of the colleague. The fourth is personal trust that the colleague will do the right thing and effectively fulfil their role as a team member in working with the client. The reality is that in larger firms, spanning a variety of practices, locations, major clients, and even countries, these four conditions are met in only a fraction of cases. The perfectly networked firm, where all professionals are able and willing to draw in any other professional in the firm, is a pipe dream. Yet even slightly improving the internal networks in the firm along these four key dimensions will result in significantly better performance.

A rapidly emerging domain of management science, social network analysis, helps professional services leaders to gain deep insights into the essence of their structure and how their resources are combined to work with clients. These kinds of tools can assist greatly, by identifying blockages and opportunities, and providing a template for building truly networked organizations.

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Seven MegaTrends of Professional Services – Build strategic transparency

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Download the complete White Paper: The Seven MegaTrends of Professional Services

Continued from Responding to Mega Trends – Lead your clients into knowledge-based relationships. Full table of contents below.

Build strategic transparency

Don’t fight the trend—you’ll only end up getting run over. The MegaTrend of Transparency can be your friend, if you take a thoughtful, strategic approach. Rather than waiting until clients demand transparency, if you provide it proactively on your own terms, you can make it work for you, and in the process create real differentiation from your competitors. The first step is to create greater visibility of work-in-progress. This is a challenge for most professional services firms, both in implementing supporting processes, and in shifting culture. Professionals are used to providing clients with a clean end-product. However there is massive value in getting clients involved along the way. They gain comfort from being able to see what is going on, the understand the value being created, they feel they are participating in what is created, you gain deeper knowledge of the client and what they want, you build stronger relationships, and you demonstrate how you are different from competitors, all of which begin to create client lock-in.

It is now relatively straightforward to give clients access to everyday information on the projects and matters you are undertaking for them. However your relationship leaders need to understand the benefits of working in this way. Internal education is required in order to show professionals how and why to use these tools. Client education is required to show them how to get value from seeing and getting involved in the professional process. The intention is not to be absolutely open to clients about everything, at least not in the early stages of the relationship. The issue is how to use the MegaTrend of Transparency to build deeper, more embedded client relationships. Done the right way, that’s exactly what it can do.

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Seven MegaTrends of Professional Services – Responding to the MegaTrends

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Download the complete White Paper: The Seven MegaTrends of Professional Services

Continued from Commoditization. Full table of contents below.

Responding to the MegaTrends

The first imperative for any professional and professional services firm leader is to recognize the reality of the MegaTrends. Denial does not help. The days of working towards becoming an equity partner of a professional services firm, and then cozily tapping that sinecure until retirement, are well gone. However the changing environment, for those that work with it rather than fight it, offers the promise of intense stimulation and challenge, and even greater rewards.

There are four key action steps that professional services firms must take to respond to the seven MegaTrends.

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Seven MegaTrends of Professional Services – #7 Commoditization

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Download the complete White Paper: The Seven MegaTrends of Professional Services

Continued from Globalization. Full table of contents below.

MegaTrend Seven: Commoditization

A commodity is quite simply a product or service for which the customer sees only one significant difference between what’s on offer: the price. The drive towards commoditization is perhaps the most powerful force in business today. The reality is that we live in a desperate “me-too” economy, in which most companies, apparently entirely deficient in any creative instinct, look at what other companies are offering, and imitate them. The true innovators are in the minority. Today, the MegaTrend of Transparency means that their innovations are seen by and copied by competitors almost as soon as they get to market, or even before. Unfortunately, the imitators find no way to differentiate their offering other than price. The MegaTrend of Globalization means those competitors can emerge from anywhere.

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Seven MegaTrends of Professional Services – #6 Globalization

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Download the complete White Paper: The Seven MegaTrends of Professional Services

Continued from #5 Modularization. Full table of contents below.

MegaTrend Six: Globalization

Across the board, boundaries and borders are blurring almost into non-existence. It is no longer possible to ignore the fact that the economy is global. A pointed example is eLance, the world’s largest online services exchange. eLance allows organizations to specify the services they require, whether they be web development, graphic design, writing, adminstration or whatever else they need done. Service providers bid for the jobs posted, and the client can choose the best provider with the lowest bid. Over 40% of the services are provided across country borders. You may run a one-person show in Missouri, but you too can outsource services to bright, eager, highly-educated professionals in India, Eastern Europe, and other low-cost centers.

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Seven MegaTrends of Professional Services – #5 Modularization

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Download the complete White Paper: The Seven MegaTrends of Professional Services

Continued from #4 Transparency. Full table of contents below.

MegaTrend Five: Modularization

One of the most important, yet least visible, implications of the current phase of information technology is the ability to break down business processes and activities into their components. Web services is a standard for how computer applications—or parts of them—can be integrated. For example, Microsoft’s .NET framework, which it launched with its $200 million “one degree of separation” campaign to emphasize how it enables different organizations to mesh their business processes together, is founded on web services.

The implications for professional services firms are profound. Services can now easily be “unbundled,” or broken down into their components. This allows clients to pick and choose which of these elements they prefer to do themselves, if they have the resources and expertise available. They can then allocate the other elements to different service providers, based on which one can do the best job at the lowest price. Technology now makes it straightforward to integrate these different elements into a single business process that results in the desired outcome.

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