If you want to grow your business and achieve additional growth in fees from existing clients, use the narrow and deep team structure and play people in position and not out of position.
The Senior Client Managers (SCM) are the ones responsible to grow their portfolio. They need to achieve Net Promotor Score (NPS) of more than 9/10 in order to get referrals from their clients. To get an NPS of more than 9/10, they have to spend more time in front of their clients.
So don’t send completed work out for signature without first speaking to them about their results first. Call the clients to explain their results. In order for the SCM to get in front of their clients to get more referrals, they cannot be grinding.
If they are busy grinding, then they are not doing their job. They won’t get referrals and won’t be able to grow their portfolio. Give them the right resource mix (staff) so the work gets done and does not end up on their desk. If the work gets done for them, they can spend more time in front of clients which will lead to more referrals from existing clients.
If you want to grow your business get the foundations right first. Design the deep and narrow team structure and make sure it’s made up of complementary skills working together as a championship team and not a team of champions. Remember SCM’s should not be grinding but finding–meaning more face-to-face time with clients.
I have never achieved success in trying to get grinders to become finders. I found it difficult to change a leopard’s spots. If accountants wanted to sell they would have done a marketing degree and not an accounting degree.
The Client Managers are the closest you will get to an accountant selling. So I have given up trying to turn grinders into finders because you run the risk of driving away some of your best grinders. Playing people out of position and expecting them to be something they are not is problematic.
The whole idea of deep and narrow teams is to bring complementary skills together to achieve one plus one is five which is why the deep and narrow team structure works so well. We don’t expect grinders to be finders otherwise we set them up to fail.
Remember to play people in their respective positions. Senior Client Managers doing the selling and all others the grinding. This team will produce enormous results when everyone is playing “in position” and not “out of position”. A championship team where everyone is playing in position will always beat a team of champions playing out of position.
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