SUCCESS STORY

How sales coaching from JA Consulting helped one of the largest professional services firms negotiate a £300k contingent fee

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

INDUSTRY: PROFESSIONAL SERVICES

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 sales coaching for one highly specialised tax professional.

The challenge

To help a technically-adept tax professional develop the 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 a sufficient understanding of the client’s business model to the situation and could therefore ensure the individual’s confidence built was based on reality.

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 on 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 to the client. We negotiated a little and concluded with an upfront fixed fee and a 10% variable element. So instead of £25k contingent, we ended up with over £300k.”

Our approach

Working with one of JA Consulting’s most experienced sales 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 could see that the value to the client was a substantial multiple of the fees he was thinking of charging.

The outcome

The targeted sales coaching delivered by JA Consulting enabled the client to approach a complex negotiation with clarity, confidence, and strategic intent. As a direct result, they secured a £300,000 contingent fee—an outcome that not only exceeded expectations but also strengthened their internal credibility.

Beyond the immediate financial gain, the coaching led to a lasting shift in how the client engages in high-value sales conversations. They now approach negotiations with greater assurance and influence, applying the skills gained during the sales coaching to drive results across other areas of their practice.

What the client says:

"The coaching challenged 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 ....... we negotiated a little ........ instead of £25k contingent we ended up with over £300k."