Client Mapping (1)

Episode One - The Hidden Power of Client Mapping

Most organisations know which of their clients are the most profitable and would like their professionals to refer clients across practice silos. This is often met with resistance for fear of a professional losing the primary relationship with their client.

Professionals refer to this resistance as ‘owning’ the client. Client Mapping recognises this resistance while building stronger relationships across the professions within an organisation.

Clients need multiple professional services, both within and outside an organisation. They all need a banker, a lawyer and an accountant. Clients also have multiple connections. Marshall Wace is a successful hedge fund, but its beneficial owners, Paul Marshall and Ian Wace, are wealthy individuals who need private client services and are the founders of ARK, a charity for kids. The more connections that can be made across an organisation, the more likely the client will stay with the firm and the more profitable the client will be to that organisation.

Macfarlanes used Client Mapping to become the most profitable UK legal practice. The firm catered to the personal legal requirements of leading entrepreneurs such as Richard Branson, who brought with them their businesses such as Virgin. Client Mapping identifies client types through client criteria, the problems these client types may face and the experience and skills a professional needs to resolve them.

I used this strategy when I was made head of the private client department at Simmons & Simmons. I identified that the client type the firm most wished to cultivate was wealthy entrepreneurs. So I called a meeting of the department heads; company commercial, real estate, litigation, funds, banking and so on.

At the start of the meeting, there was unease. Several partners attending the meeting were there to be polite. However, at the end of the meeting, there was stunned silence. Behind every successful business takeover, real estate transaction, or successful fund, there is a beneficial owner. I intended to serve these people, and their business would follow. The senior partner, Bill Knight, broke the silence, he was excited to be part of something new.

My excitement did not last long. Bill Knight called me to his office. It was exciting, he said, to think that behind all businesses, there are people, but in reality, if I could not make sufficient profits to justify office space in a City of London law firm, I would be expected to plough my furrow elsewhere. Even if I succeeded in making a modest profit, I could not expect to reach the higher bonus grades in the partnership.

However, I was not deterred, I had high ambitions. I was not interested in drafting Wills and Deeds of Variation; I wanted to become an expert in the succession of power over family-owned businesses. I researched the Cadbury and Greenbury Report on Corporate Governance and the combined code and incorporated the principles into a new area of law, which I coined Family Governance.

‘Succession’ is a popular TV series that brings to life the concerns many families that own successful businesses face in deciding who and how decision-making will be inherited. These tensions can also be seen in the real-life drama within the Murdoch family.

I promoted Family Governance on the international speaking circuit and soon had wealthy entrepreneurs to work with. I then needed to weed out of my practice the unprofitable clients, which I transferred to other law firms which were better able to serve them. I was not tempted to extend my practice to other areas of private client work, such as family or cross-border succession. Instead, I made it a priority to know which professionals in other disciplines and skills worked for successful entrepreneurs to whom I could refer work and who would reciprocate in due course when the opportunity arose. This is Client Mapping both within and outside an organisation, and it worked.

Several years later, I met Bill Knight at a concert. We found ourselves chatting in the interval. I was proud to tell him that I was in the highest range of bonus grades and had been applauded for referring profitable clients to other departments across the firm, as I had promised. He smiled, peered over his Harry Potter-type spectacles and said, ‘Well done’.

That was years ago, but the principles remain the same. Client Mapping is at the heart of successful business origination; it can break down practice silos, works across jurisdictions and wins business from both within and outside a professional organisation.

If you would like to talk to me in person about Client Mapping and your organisation's concerns, please send me the answers to the questions below, rate your organisation's concerns in order of priority, and book a half-hour phone call to discuss how Client Mapping can resolve your organisation's concerns.

Next week, we will examine networking—great in theory, but in practice, most networking is a waste of time and money. I will then give you tips on using your network to smash your goals and build excellent working relationships while saving time and money.