It is your patriotic duty to grow profits
In a recent weekend FT edition, the financial journalist, Philip Coggan, said that voters want free public services but are ‘less content to pay the taxes to fund them. In the past,’ he says, ‘ this circle was squared through economic growth.’ However, it now looks like growth is stagnant in the EU apart from in the UK’s professional services sector.
Oliver Wyman, a leading international management consulting firm says, ‘Client revenues from the wealthiest group are the fastest growing portion of the professional services sector. Professionals focused on this group can expect to see revenues rise by 39% to $99bn in the next few years to 2028’.
With over three decades of experience as a City Lawyer, Caroline Garnham has collated her experience and research and launched Caroline’s Club to give professional service providers the methodology, tools and training to ‘increase revenue, cut costs and save time’. Could this be the economic growth the country needs?
But how does Caroline’s Club expect to harness this growth? Most marketing by professionals, even through their skilled Business Development teams or marketing consultants, is focused on the skill set of the professionals they serve, not on the most profitable sectors within their target market.
Flick through the pages of any investment magazine or paper. There are numerous adverts for financial services businesses. It would appear that these firms are keen to win business regardless of the nature and size of the client's portfolio.
UBS, the world's most significant global financial services bank, is highly focused on the clients it wants and does not want. It actively encourages its investment managers to set up a consulting business for their clients, provided that UBS keeps custody of their investments. Managing portfolios of investments for small to medium-sized portfolios, UBS has concluded, is costly, whereas providing custody of their assets without the management is cost-effective and profitable.
Therefore, most marketing by professional services firms aimed at winning any business for a specic service regardless of client, is a ‘shotgun in a blizzard’. As a result, the profits of the professional services frequently fit into the ‘Pareto Principle’ where 80% of the business is responsible for only 20% of the profits - often called the 80:20 rule.
This rule can be challenged, but to do so, focus and strategy need to be on the clients rather than the service. Two lawyers, for example, may be skilled at boundary disputes. The ideal client of one maybe the owner of No 4 Acacia Avenue, whereas the other is the government of an African country.
The theory of networking cannot be faulted. Professional service providers need to network with other professionals who serve the same client type and will recommend their clients to the services of others. It is an often overlooked fact that if you are networking with professionals who don’t serve your ideal client, the work they refer to you will not be your ideal client and probably unprofitable.
The solution is ‘Client Mapping’, and the vision of the Club is to connect professionals with colleagues and contacts who serve the same types of clients to build trust and develop strong professional relationships.
The Club's mission is to be the pre-eminent marketing club for the professional services industry.
At this point, some professionals may raise an eyebrow. Surely, LinkedIn is the pre-eminent platform for professionals.
Indeed, when Reid Hoffman founded LinkedIn in 2001, this was his vision, but when Jeff Weiner joined and became the CEO in 2009, he recognised that this vision was not achievable and repositioned the platform as a massive job board which features the curriculum vitae of professionals. This then leaves a gap in the market for professionals who want to market and network online rather than those looking for a job, or those looking for employees.
The award-winning training for members of the Club is a three-stage process.
Identify your ideal client and work. Weave it into a client story.
Identify who else in the firm and your network works for your most profitable client. Share and record client stories as audio and video clips and upload them onto the Caroline’s Club platform. Share the link with other professionals and clients. This is cross-selling, integration, upselling and networking that is highly focused and works.
Track, analyse and update the marketing activity through a digital tracking system and improve yearly profitability. Through its ability to track and analyse marketing activity, the feedback can guide future profitable expansion, which professionals to engage and who to let go, where to invest and how to monitor the return on investment.
However, the training program goes beyond business development. It also tackles the thorny issue of why bills are not paid on time, how to deal with clients who cannot afford the fees and how to convey the benefits of the services to clients without resistance.
To get started, professionals are encouraged to book a workshop to understand the methodology and how effectively to use the tools of the Club to increase revenue, cut costs and save time. With positive feedback, the firm can expand the project into a ‘networking’ workshop before rolling it out across the organisation worldwide.
If you want to increase the profits of your professional services, call Caroline’s Club on 07979 188 288 or email caroline@carolines.club for more information.