What is the firm of the future?
Professional service firms are changing. They have been evolving for some time and the process seems to be speeding up.
To be meaningful in the not so distant future, advisors have to adapt. Those that realise it have already begun to turn to a more specialised mode of operating their business. What’s more, many firms have started to outsource their non-core client work to have enough time and resources to focus on what matters the most and where they can add the most value (and find most interesting).
But what does all of this mean for your marketing? How will you be able to deliver all the support your clients need if you end up being highly specialised? And above all, how will you develop credibility if your firm is outsourcing part of its work? Let’s take a look at how your firm of the future should look to answer these questions and fix the issues they show:
Value is the new norm
For a long time, many professional service firms, regardless of your industry, have been increasing prices. Naturally, this benefited them greatly, but that doesn’t mean that value increased at the same time. Is there correlation in your firm between price and value? Are our clients happy with what they are getting for what they paid you?
The firm of the future needs to focus more on providing value and billing their clients differently, depending on how much value is provided. Not all the work you provide for your clients is the same, and the price should reflect that. This will lead to a much stronger relationship between you and your client, as the client will know that you provide them with what they need and charge them accordingly. It will also make it difficult for price comparison, because the true cost is associated with value, rather than the service.
Embracing collaboration
One of the main ways the world of business and client-work has changed is in how complex it has become. Across industries, professional service firms have started changing and focusing more on specific areas of specialisation. This reflects the way client problems and challenges have evolved as well. They are becoming equally more complex and demanding of specific sets of skills that are not always there and need to be developed proactively.
To keep up with your clients’ increasingly unique and complex needs, your firm needs to develop towards several different niche specialisations. More importantly, it would help if you strived to fully tap into the combined knowledge that will be a result of these niche specialisations through collaboration – with others in your firm and even other, complementary firms or experts. It will be of great benefit for solving complex issues that require new modes of thinking and problem-solving. Inter-firm collaboration is becoming far more prevalent and will soon be the norm.
Proper outsourcing
As we’ve stated in the beginning, outsourcing of non-core client work is becoming more and more widespread in the world of professional service firms too.
As you move to more specialisation in your line of business, you also have to move towards having the top talent and outsourcing non-core support.
If you want to learn more, feel free to reach out to the Thought Leadership Initiative.