There is a common misconception that marketing and selling are specialized skills possessed by a limited number of professionals (“natural rainmakers”). This view ignores the fact that, to develop its practice, a firm needs to invest in a wide range of activities, each of which requires a different set of skills and behaviors. For example, most fir

The power of these debriefings is such that some of my clients impose a firmwide requirement on their professional staff to file a debriefing report so that ideas for improvement obtained from their clients are formally captured and become part of the intellectual capital of the firm.

any strategy development process must be consultative, one in which individual partners can become convinced that the benefits to them personally of achieving the goals will be worth the personal “costs” of doing new things or different things.

there is a logical order to these practice development activities. First comes listening. Do this well, and all that follows will be easier. Next comes superpleasing. The better we can do there, the easier it will be both to win existing clients’ future business and to win new clients through word of mouth. Third, it makes sense to ensure that you