Best practice referrals for professional services firms

October 23, 2019 | Posted in: Business Development Skills, Grow your business

Over the years JMA’s research has shown the most successful and profitable professional services firms benefit hugely from referrals (both from individuals external to their firm, and from internal referrals or cross-selling that occurs in-firm). In our latest study 70% of respondents rated their referral relationships or networks as “highly effective” and the number one […]

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Avoiding buyer’s remorse

February 18, 2019 | Posted in: Business Development Skills

Do your clients ever suffer from buyer’s remorse? For many expert professional services – especially legal and accounting – purchase is not optional: it’s mandatory, driven by compliance requirements, or as an essential component of project delivery. Worse still, a fair slice of consumption is a true ‘grudge spend’, mandated by lenders, regulators, and opponents. […]

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Better business development conversations

June 15, 2016 | Posted in: Business Development Skills

Hard sells simply don’t work in professional services; most of us don’t like being “sold” to. As we’ve discussed before, building brand and marketing activities are only the backdrop to real business development conversations and interactions. Unfortunately, when it comes to winning work from prospective clients, many professionals open business development conversations using material unlikely to […]

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Tender readability – tips to improve your tender presentation and some tender presentation no-nos

Tender readability – tips to improve your tender presentation and some tender presentation no-nos

Tender readability remains a problem for some in the 21st century. I still see submission documents that cling to a handful of really old hat tender presentation and formatting techniques. I suspect this is because some of these ‘rules’ are viewed as being more appropriate to a ‘formal’ style of document such as a tender. […]