The Challenge for Professional Advisors

Neville Eisenberg, chair of the Advisory Board of the Managing Partners Global Forum said in his annual report that the professional services sector was the largest industry sector in the country. Therefore, this valuable sector must become the world leader by improving its business skills, innovation, productivity and levelling up.

When I became head of the private client department of Simmons & Simmons I was given two years to make my department profitable or leave. I had two young children under five, so could not work harder, I therefore had to work smarter. 

The first thing I did was to weed out the work and clients which could not pay city rates - a form of levelling up which I will come back to in week 4, I then needed to find an area of work for the type of clients the firm was looking to work with international entrepreneurs. I came up with the idea of Family Governance - the succession of decision-making such as we are witnessing in the Murdoch debacle, and promoted it on the international speaking circuit. I will come back to this in week 2.

Within two years, my department made a profit and was allowed to stay.

It is not uncommon for professionals to be asked to leave their organisation if underperforming, EY has recently axed 30 of its partners in their consultancy division to ‘maintain its profits’. The shock of being asked to succeed or leave, was made harder, since I, like other professionals in this position are not given a guidebook, mentor or training program, because it does not exist, so I decided to create a methodology to fill this void.

With a degree in psychology and twelve years of experience writing as a contributor for the weekend Financial Times on tax and trusts, I researched B2B marketing and the art of effective communication.

Many years later I put my research and leadership thinking into practice and formed Caroline’s Club. Although I have careered up many blind alleys and followed numerous false leads, I now have a methodology for which I have won my third Great Companies Entrepreneur of the Year Award for 2025.

Great Companies call my methodology a 'Client First Revolution' which I would like to share with you over the next four weeks in response to the four topics heralded by Neville in his annual report.

Alistair Beddow of Meridian West is quoted as challenging professionals on how much they know about the 20% of clients who generate 80% of their firm’s/department’s profits. This is called the Pareto Principle or the 80:20 rule and is at the heart of my award-winning methodology - ‘Client Mapping’.

I asked myself what creates the 80:20 rule, and then can this dial be shifted?

The answer is that the rule is due to non-strategic business development or what I call a shotgun in a blizzard.

Most networking and business development are non-strategic, which means the net is thrown widely and catches only 20% of good fish the rest are minnows and sharks which soak up the time of professionals and undermine the organisation's profitability.

My methodology has been distilled into an Executive Briefing, which covers

1. Why most marketing and networking produce only a modest return on investment of time and money - the Pareto Principle

2. What is the one central obstacle to effective business development

3. What are the 5 ways of sidestepping this obstacle (and why only 4 are commercially viable)

4. What are the best 2 means of communication, the 4 most effective digital marketing tools, and why? and

5. Where is best to promote your services and why?

The first step towards a ‘Client First Revolution’ is to follow Alistair’s advice, find out who are your most profitable clients and then decide on your strategic approach to winning good quality work through one or more of the following strategies

1. Upselling to existing ideal customers for more business and referrals. Your organisation may host events for clients and take them to galleries and shows. Still, it could add other gestures such as birthday cards and education promoting the skills of other professionals. They may even pay more for a holistic service.

2. Cross-selling its services across the organisation using Marketing Clusters and Client Mapping

3. Strategic networking using Client Mapping and Marketing Pods

If you would like to find out more about our Executive Briefing please contact me on.The

You can also sign up for our newsletter and listen to our podcasts ‘How to Keep Your Money’ on Spotify, Apple i Tunes and Caroline’s Club.