Welcome to Gro:Gossip, our regular email capturing our thoughts, opinions and experiences, sharing stories and commenting on what we are seeing, hearing and working on in the world of Professional Services.

The purpose is simply to inform, challenge thinking where we can and spark conversations and debate around relevant themes.

theGrogroup are a consultancy led by experts who have all held client facing and senior positions in practice and now support Accounting and Law firms in two ways:

• Strategic support – helping senior teams to create a clear picture of where they want to go, and more importantly how to get there and how to bring people on board to drive the plan
• Enabling people to build great careers through developing their Leadership, Management, Commercial, Client Relationship and Business Development capability

Ok so, the Gossip!

The ‘transactional’ label

A fair few clients and contacts have recently talked to us about their concern that many key clients view the professional / client relationship as transactional.

Of course, the ideal solution is to invest more time (outside of the ‘engagement cycle’) in building stronger relationships and gaining a deeper understanding of clients, their worlds, ambitions and challenges – not only to enable firms to be more proactive in identifying and delivering services and solutions…

… but to change the clients perception of the relationship away from ‘transactional service provider’ and towards that ‘someone, team of people or firm’ who are there for me and with me.

The challenge as always is the business model. A sobering fact is that the average client gets, on average, only 2.5 hours facetime a year with their professional contact – and naturally (given the time constraint) the conversations will be focused almost entirely on the ‘transaction’.

Food for thought for sure and for those who may resonate with this, maybe time to revisit the purpose and ethos of the firm, and the changes needed to deliver on those promises. With technology continuing to slowly devour traditional transactional processes, human contact and the ability to provide the story of the numbers in the context of the clients world will surely become critical.

The ‘return on investment of training and development spend’ conundrum 

We know that it has been budgeting time for a lot of firms over the last few months. Many of the’ people’ contacts of ours (HR Heads, L&D heads and Partners responsible for people) have been busy working on securing training spend and are being increasingly challenged on ‘ok, what do we GET for this spend?’ and rightly so!

Firms invest substantially in this area. Whilst the student and ongoing technical training is more or less a ‘have to’, most firms also invest in non-technical development (mainly management, leadership and business development) because they want to support the growth of their people and because employees have development high on the list of non-negotiables.

But ticking the ‘we do training’ box no longer cuts it for many.

The investment should lead to:

• Development of skills, confidence and mindsets
• Enhanced performance
• A positive impact on retention, engagement and motivation
• A better understanding of where delegates fit in, and how they contribute, to the vision and strategy of the firm

The reality is that the training itself, even delivered by the Lionel Messi of the training industry’ will usually only have a short term impact. Over the longer term the benefit will be minimal.

The good news is that the return on investment can be significant. But it requires digging deeper into the need and outcomes, shaping clear communication around L&D programmes to explain the why and create engagement and buy-in and to clearly link development to the vision and strategy of the firm.

Most importantly, it requires a focus on ‘locking-in’ learning and messaging into role through aligning performance metrics to drive accountability, reevaluating non-chargeable time allowances and maintaining a process of checking-in with individuals, mentoring and support.

You can find out more on our approach here. And for further insights on “why training alone doesn’t work”, you will find this previous article a valuable read

To niche or not to niche, that is the question?!

As we mentioned in the last Gossip, BD is firmly back on the prioritised business agenda.

We often see professionals tempted to go after everything. This is totally understandable – it’s fees right?

Yet, when you are already busy, when you know that existing clients should always be our major focus for growing profitable fees, you need to make sure that additional new clients are ‘right’ clients.

The criteria for ‘right’ clients can be wide ranging but should obviously be specific to the firm. But, whether or not a target or prospect is in (or could be in) an area of specialism should certainly be on the list, based on:

• 67% of professional services buyers want to work with someone who has a deep understanding of both their marketplace and their business
• 40% of all professional services buyers have a sector specialism in their top 3 buying criteria

It makes clear sense doesn’t it?

If you were a client it is likely that you are far less interested in the “…17 different service lines that might be useful…” and much more interested in how much you really understand about my business and the world in which I operate. As a client I want to FEEL that you actually ‘get’  my challenges and seeing a range of different firms in my sector, who you work with, gives me comfort that you must know the sector, be immersed in the sector, and MUST have some great advice in terms of best practice and benchmarking.

On top of the usual, what’s going on with the team?

Kate recently completed the London Marathon in a remarkable 4 and a half hours, raising an amazing amount for a local MND charity.

Paul has been attending conferences and webinars to quench his unrelenting thirst for tech and AI knowledge.

Alex has been trying not to let the emotions of Notts County’s predictable spectacular failure / turbulent slog towards promotion in League 1 affect his creativity!

Paul and Alex have also just returned from Marrakesh where they were delivering a global Leadership programme for an international network.

Gro:Quote of the month

“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take”

Wayne Gretzky

Gro:Moan of the month

The sunshine is most welcome and the walk to the office has been a most pleasant one. Late spring / early summer sun certainly has a positive effect on the mood of most. Yet having cafes with outside pavement seating generating excited and happy chatter directly outside of the office window should be banned 😊