I Just Need Them on Special Teams

One of the clients who encouraged me to get into this profession was a leader of a regional tax practice for a large public account firm. He already had a dedicated sales team and so called "rainmakers" (a small % of his delivery staff) doing a decent job of driving revenue.  But he was concerned that the majority of his consultants did little, if anything to deepen client relationships and help identify revenue opportunities with clients.

As an ex-college football player, he described his concerns using a football analogy. He said Dave, "I'm not trying to turn them into "skill position players" ie. wide receiver, running back, linebacker.  I just need them on special teams!  All I want them to do is run down the field and they don't even have to make a tackle!  In other words, I just need them to contribute...because right now, they are on the sidelines.  And that is unacceptable!" 

He went on to say that he can't have 80 to 90 percent of his client facing staff - which by the way is the biggest asset of any consulting firm - on the sidelines when it comes to helping advance relationships and identify incremental revenue opportunities. 

His thinking made so much sense to me! Consider the power of the above approach...combined with your traditional go to market initiatives (dedicated sales teams, hiring rainmakers, various marketing and demand generation programs)...and you now have built real scale in your revenue generation system.  "Activating" your consultants creates additional revenue to the firm!  Why?  Because incremental work and opportunities are now being surfaced that otherwise would likely have not been identified through your traditional sales channels. 

Relationship Xpansion for Professionals helps consultants “get in the game” by teaching them how to expand their relationship comfort zone so they are a little bit more engaged, attuned and aware to what is happening around them. And when your consulting team practices Relationship Xpansion, the odds are that they could literally stumble across a nugget of information that equates to a need and/or opportunity that can be converted to revenue.

Get your team off the sidelines and into the game using Rx!

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