Connecting with clients
in professional services

Cox Consulting specialises in research into professional and financial services markets. It focuses on the legal market in particular, but also works in the corporate financial advice, accountancy and advertising markets.

Cox Consulting works with both established leaders and fast-growing challengers in these fields to provide detailed understanding of the changing experiences and expectations of clients and potential clients.

The apparently simple process of talking to customers helps to clarify many of the strategic and operational issues facing senior managers in professional advisers. An example from the retail market makes the point. Sir Terry Leahy, chief executive of Tesco, says that the critical moment when Tesco began overtaking rather than imitating then market-leader Sainsbury occurred when he decided that the company would "follow the customer, not the competition". Extensive and regular customer research, combined with the willingness to act on it, allow Tesco to offer attractive new products and services and a customer-friendly approach.

In the same way, heads of professional services firms can save themselves much agonising about how to develop their business, worry about what their competitors might be planning and fees to strategy consultants trying to foretell the future by asking their customers how they are performing and how they should develop their services.

In fact, we all already know many of the key requirements for running a successful professional services business. Having high quality expert people is a given. Making these people available and responsive is obviously essential, but difficult in practice and therefore a source of differentiation. But the most precious commodity that clients seek from advisers is attention: they want advisers who build up an understanding of their individual requirements and preferably are familiar with the wider commercial issues they face. It is a real bonus if advisers actually offer some value-added beyond competently doing what they are asked to do - all firms claim to do this, very few deliver. This could be keeping them informed of relevant regulatory developments, providing access to internal knowhow materials or bringing business opportunities and contacts.

The other essential characteristic for successful firms today is that their people actively sell their firm to existing clients, target clients and other contacts.

The difficult part isn't deciding the strategy. It is implementing it continuously in practice. For professional services firms this is fundamentally linked to areas such as recruitment (finding people who are not only technically able, but can also build constructive relationships with clients) and operational processes (building in time for people within the firm to get together to review clients' wider business issues and identify additional contributions to offer).

Delivering a client-focused strategy requires periodic, structured discussion of these issues with clients. Some firms do this successfully themselves. For the majority it is most effective to use external consultants. This has the advantage of any outsourced service that the job actually gets done and done thoroughly because it is not competing for internal resources and the supplier is being paid to deliver. There are skills in conducting such interviews that a firm's own people may not have acquired. Also clients are often more comfortable discussing their firm's performance with a third party. Dermot Cox specialises in carrying out high level face-to-face interviews and has personally interviewed many hundreds of clients in large financial institutions and corporates.

This research approach is also very productive as a business development tool with potential clients and for learning from a firm's performance in pitches.

Ambitious firms also need to monitor their external image and profile compared to competitors in the wider market. This is generally only practical using telephone research because of the need to conduct large numbers of interviews. Cox Consulting carries out a major syndicated telephone-based study of this type in the legal market: Market Positions of Leading Law Firms. Many UK and US firms are regular subscribers. Telephone studies can also be used for individual firms wishing to analyse specific market sectors.

If you would like to discuss any of these services or set up a meeting, please contact Dermot Cox:

dermot.cox at coxconsulting.co.uk
Telephone: +44 (0)1494 680202