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INDUSTRY: Professional Services

Using coaching to challenge existing thought processes and generate significant benefits…….

BACKGROUND

Our client is one of the largest professional services firms in the world operating in a highly competitive market. Many of our client’s best people have very high level technical skills. Indeed, some of them are recognised as world leaders in their fields. This particular case focuses on one highly specialised tax professional.

THE CHALLENGE

To help a technically-adept tax professional develop confidence to get client fees commensurate with the value the client derived from the service given.

HOW THE CLIENT BENEFITTED

By helping him do the analysis (and challenging his thinking) his confidence to ask for a substantial fixed fee with an additional performance element was built up. This element of getting him to do the thinking, with the right sort of challenges, was absolutely key. Our coach’s extensive experience brought sufficient understanding of the client’s business model to the situation and could therefore ensure the individual’s confidence built was based on reality.

WHAT HAPPENED?

Working with one of JA Consulting’s most experienced coaches a very productive coaching relationship with the tax professional rapidly formed.

The relationship involved relatively regular meetings with clearly identified actions – typically focused on target clients.

This process focused both on the individual’s strengths and on what he thought his clients wanted from him. That process showed that he was focussing with the client on highly technical things and not on the business results the client wanted. By getting him to think that through, and then analyse the payoffs that he thought mattered to the business, he was able to see that the value to the client was substantial multiple of the fees he was thinking of charging. 

RESULTS

Here’s what our client had to say about the coaching:

“Originally this particular opportunity was likely to generate a fee of £50k. The coaching challenged me to the point where a higher figure was quoted. We ended up agreeing a fee of £90k. With the same client on another opportunity we were sure the client would only be prepared to agree to this on a contingent basis. I reckoned the job would cost us around £50k. The likely recovery could be £3M so I was thinking of a contingent fee of 5% (£150k). The coaching challenged that at two levels: the value to the client and the value to my firm when there was a small risk that we might not get any fees. I ended up proposing a 15% contingent fee with the client. We negotiated a little and concluded with an upfront fixed fee and 10% variable element. So instead of £25k contingent we ended up with over £300k.”

What the client said

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“Originally this particular opportunity was likely to generate a fee of £50k. The coaching challenged me to the point where a higher figure was quoted. We ended up agreeing a fee of £90k.”

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Other Case Studies

All the work we do is based on deep experience and we utilise the most comprehensive research sources to ensure that whatever we do will deliver results. Our broad experience means we can quickly make interventions that are pragmatic and built on what the best do – and often brought to life with real case illustrations.

Check out more examples.

The JA Consulting Proposition

JA Consulting delivers development capability across a range of business environments – from the Defence industry to professional services – the typical situations dealt with range from few £ thousands to £ billions – and at all levels in industry.