Professional Services
The Need
A highly respected financial advisory firm struggled with low profit margins and an overworked team, with many of their lowest profit clients consuming disproportionally large amounts of the Partners’ limited time.
The firm was delivering significant value to all their clients, and wanted to look after all of them, but the business growth was constrained by the finite time available to their most experienced team members.
Our Approach
- Strategy Advice
- Street Skills Training
Customized sales skills training was deployed to the Partners, with fees set based on Swagger’s monetized value methodology instead of on a simple hourly rate. This simple change de-coupled the revenue from the number of Partner hours required to create it. For existing clients, we developed customized playbooks allowing Partners to increase hourly fees across the board. This also allowed the business to successfully and co-operatively transition fee-conscious clients across to junior partners or associates.
We reviewed the client base and segmented them by profitability and desirability. This allowed the team to clearly understand their “home ground” – the types of clients most suited to the business. Our team’s analysis confirmed that the lowest-margin clients tended to be the longer-term ones who had inherited lower fees when the business was smaller. These clients also consumed an out-sized proportion of Partner time.
Growth Path
The Partners now focus client acquisition discussions around their “Home Ground”, and are confident moving discussions beyond price and fees, and towards monetized value. Revenue and profit are up significantly, and Partners are working fewer hours each week.
“The real world scenarios and practice was helpful in exposing our strengths and weaknesses. It highlights the importance and need for this sales training method.”
L. R. Area Vice President