Shifting the Burden From the Few to the Many...

Traditionally within professional services firms, the people who own and carry the revenue burden of the organization are a small subset of the entire staff.

There may be dedicated sales people and/or business developers who are responsible for opening doors, creating opportunities, and bringing in the “subject matter expert” for a deeper dialog. What about another constituency that's on for revenue generation? Let's call them the "Rainmakers"- a small percentage of the service delivery organization, perhaps 5-10% of the billable staff of a firm. They are solid from a technical standpoint, AND they also have an affinity for building relationships. And let's not forget about your senior management team, directors and/or partners. They're not all full-blown Rainmakers, but they're  tasked with driving revenue.

At the end of the day though, this is a relatively small group of individuals who own a huge share of the responsibility around revenue generation. And that just isn't a scalable revenue model in my opinion!

I submit that there's another alternative...

Pro services firms have this huge client-facing constituency out there called their consultants.  Every day they are touching the client, supporting the client, more often than not-embedded at the client, and certainly credible with the client!  But for the most part, they are doing little to advance the cause of their firm in terms of deepening client relationships or helping to sniff out additional needs and opportunities that can be converted to revenue.

So why not shift the burden from the few to the many? Shift the burden of revenue generation shouldered by the few - your Rainmakers, sales team, senior partners/executives, to the many - your traditional revenue generators mentioned above PLUS all the other client-facing individuals - your consultants!  Activate the other 90% of your delivery staff and amazing things will happen.

And remember, we are not trying to turn them into something they're not (rainmakers or sales reps).  But perhaps, they could very well be "mist-makers"!

Comments (0)