When a professional services firm is busy but not growing, owners tend to reach for the same explanation: not enough new work. So they spend on marketing. Sometimes that is the right call. Often it is not, because the limit on the firm is not demand. It is the time of the few people who hold the firm together.
People are the product
A firm that sells expertise can only sell as much as its people can deliver, and the most senior people are the scarcest part of that capacity. Their time is also being drawn on from several directions at once: reviewing other people’s work, answering questions, handling difficult clients, covering for gaps and doing work that someone more junior could do.
Add new clients to that and the effect is not growth. It is more pressure on the same few people, slower turnaround and, in time, lower quality or a resignation.
Four steps worth taking first
- Measure where partner time goes. Two weeks of honest notes will usually be enough to show how much goes on review, administration and work that others could do.
- Decide what only a partner should do. Client relationships, judgement calls and winning work are on the list. Much else is not.
- Delegate with standards, not with hope. Handing work down needs clear instructions, checklists and a defined review step, otherwise it comes straight back up.
- Price for the scarce resource. If partner time is the constraint, fees for work that needs it should reflect that.
Then look at demand
Once capacity is under control, the case for more marketing is much clearer, because the firm can say which work it wants more of and has room to deliver it. Until then, additional demand simply lands on a team that has no room for it.
Hexarch’s work on people and capacity and operations starts from this question. If it sounds familiar, a first conversation is a good way to test it against your own firm.