CASE STUDY

How JA Consulting helped accountants build their confidence to engage in commercial conversations - and win £90,000 in new work

Helping specialists and new managers gain the confidence to engage in commercial conversations...

INDUSTRY: Professional Services

This large accounting firm (just outside the big 4) has, as every other firm has, a large population of people recently qualified as accountants or tax specialists. That population is characterised as being very intelligent, and the individuals have proved themselves by passing challenging professional exams. They reached a point in their careers where they needed to learn to manage others (not the subject of this case study) AND meet the expectations of their Partners such that they rapidly became experts in finding and winning new business.

The challenge

Most of these young people are brilliant at their technical skills and had chiefly focused on developing these over 4 or 5 years, and had done so very successfully. The group typically had the most exposure to clients; they were the ones who handled most of the emails and the calls. Clients trust them to do a good job.

But if they changed – seemingly overnight – into pushy salespeople, that hard-earned trust would have broken down.

How the client benefitted

A tailored workshop sparked a meaningful shift in how newly qualified specialists and emerging managers approached business development. By tackling their internal barriers and reframing their understanding of sales, participants discovered that engaging in commercial conversations didn’t mean compromising client trust. Instead, they learned to spot and develop opportunities in a way that felt authentic and aligned with their professional values.

The practical, inclusive design of the workshop allowed individuals across different service lines to relate the learning to their own roles, making the experience highly relevant and immediately actionable.

Beyond individual success stories, the programme contributed to a broader cultural shift within the firm. Participants began to see business development as part of their professional identity, not an uncomfortable add-on. This helped embed a more commercially aware mindset across the organisation.

Our approach

We developed a one-day training workshop. The design is flexible enough to accommodate different service lines. We started by getting participants to address their own prejudices about selling and being sold to. This helps them understand the barriers in their own heads to moving forward and helps them build a mental model of how they can manage themselves.

We used visualisation techniques to further develop their view of how things can be different. The beauty of the design is it appeals to all. Each person can relate the outputs to where they are in their own business development journey.

We tell them about what the deep research says is the best thing to do and then get them to apply that to three simple case studies. (Again designed to fit all service lines.)

This blend of knowledge transfer with “having a go” in a safe, supportive and challenging environment dramatically increased the participants expertise and confidence levels to spot sales opportunities.

The OUTCOME

A number of participants reported that they immediately applied the skills.

In one case, that was the following day and resulted in spotting an opportunity for ~£90,000 worth of new work, which was then further developed into a new assignment for the Firm.

The workshop continues to get very high ratings, and demand through word-of-mouth recommendations has tripled.

What the client says:

“The facilitators, Chris and John, were fantastic. Very insightful and very knowledgeable challenging us in the way we think and act.”