TRP 280: The Growth Engine for Rainmakers with Jacob Parks

[00:00:10] You're listening to The Rainmaking Podcast, hosted by high stakes headhunter, author, and professional speaker, Scott Love.

[00:00:23] You're listening to The Rainmaking Podcast, and my name is Scott Love. Thanks for joining me on the show. I'm excited about our guest today because we're going to give you deep insights that will help you to take action and see results in your business development efforts. In fact, that's my promise to you. I promise I'm not going to waste your time. You're going to get ideas that regardless of where you are in your journey of being able to do your business,

[00:00:44] being a rainmaker, it's going to help you. Our guest today is Jacob Parks. He's been on the show before. I've actually had a chance to meet him in person, and he's got some great ideas that are going to make a difference for you. He's the president of Profitable Ideas Exchange. That's a large consulting firm that works with professional services organizations and helps them in the area of business development. His book is called The Growth Engine, and today we're talking about the growth engine for rainmakers. I've read the book. It's based on research, and I'd highly recommend it to you.

[00:01:14] And in fact, I put the link to order the book and also to connect with Jacob directly on the show notes. So wherever you listen to the show, go to the show notes, and you'll be able to connect with Jacob directly. As always, this show is sponsored by SurePoint Legal Insights, formerly known as Leopard Solutions, turning legal intelligence into opportunity. And also sponsored by The Rainmaking Magazine, for the intellectually driven and results-focused professional who wants to grow

[00:01:44] their book of business. Visit therainmakingmagazine.com today to chart your course to create a rainmaking success. Thanks for listening, and I hope you get some great ideas from my conversation with Jacob today. Hey, this is Scott Love with The Rainmaking Podcast. Our special guest today is Jacob Parks. He's a good friend of mine. I've read his other book, The Growth Engine, and we're going to talk about that today. Jacob, thanks for being on the show today.

[00:02:13] Thanks for having me on. I always appreciate it, Scott. Absolutely right. And it was great getting to know you when we had lunch in Richmond. I appreciate that. Reach out. It's great getting to meet your colleagues also. I'm a fan of your company, of your books that you've written, and we're going to dig into the growth engine right now. And so if there was one overarching theme that you think this book is about, what would that be, Jacob? Well, you know, it's a book that seeks to sort of give a maturity model for how we grow a professional services firm.

[00:02:40] But I will tell you the thing that blew my hair back the most was the research we did on client feedback. And there are a million different reasons why firms do a bad job with client feedback, cultural, structural, incentive-based. But to me, if I were running a professional services firm, an investment in client feedback is one of the first things I would do because I think there is so much value in doing it well.

[00:03:04] Right. Let me ask you this. Is there any hesitation that you've seen professional services firms have in pursuing client feedback? A ton. I mean, there's a joke I tell sometimes when I'm talking to clients about this where I joke that partners only win on brilliance, their own brilliance, of course, and lose on price. And so why would we waste the client's time asking them how we're doing when we know those are the two key things? And of course, that's not the reality.

[00:03:27] I think the research in the book also suggests that one of the most effective ways to enable cross-selling is to actually do client feedback and ask them how their business is going. It is missed all the time. And so frequently, a client gets to working with one partner or one individual and they get to know that firm as that service and they completely lose sight of the fact that the firm can do 30 other things that could add a ton of value to their business. That's great. Well, let's talk about that.

[00:03:54] Let's talk about how we can pursue these cross-selling opportunities by doing this client feedback. Now, you mentioned there are different aspects of that cultural, structural incentives. What did you mean by that exactly? Well, it's interesting because I do think just to put it out there, if you're doing client feedback to grow revenues, you're probably doing it wrong. But if you're doing client feedback right, additional revenue will almost certainly be part of the outcome.

[00:04:18] So one, I think that from a structural perspective, there's not a lot of momentum or energy to do the client feedback. The partner has the relationship. Typically, people on the business services side are the people who are thinking about feedback. And it gets kind of watered down to the least objectionable thing, which ends up being a survey with sort of an EMPS score. I'm a fan of EMPS, but I don't think it tells the true story.

[00:04:41] Most often, I think the most valuable insights come from the comments in those surveys where they tell us their experience, what's happening, what they found frustrating. And there's not a lot of incentive to do it either, right? We are very protective of our client's time. And so as service providers, we want to make sure that anytime they get with us, we are adding value or talking to them about their issues.

[00:05:03] The idea of having someone come in and I think a partner might say, waste their time with asking them how we're doing doesn't seem like a good idea. And so the person that has the relationship and definitely has the influence, you know, tries to block those things from time to time. You know, over time, we just don't do a good job of doing it. And I think a rigorous program should be in effect.

[00:05:25] And I also think that people who are chairs or CEOs or the top leader in the firm should spend a very big part of their time traveling around, meeting with clients and making sure they understand how we add value and what else we can do. Those meetings are incredibly powerful. That's interesting. I find it paradoxical that if you pursue this to get revenue, it's not going to go well. If you pursue this to really find out how you're doing, you're going to get more revenue. Is that an accurate assessment that you have, Jake?

[00:05:55] That's exactly how it happens. Because if I go to a client feedback interview and I'm like, hey, Scott, how are we doing? And you're like, no, you're doing okay. And you're like, but do you have a supply chain problem? That's not a client feedback problem. That's a pitch. But if I'm just asking you everything about your business and how it's going and what's keeping you up at night, and is there anything we could do to be better partners in that journey? Over time, you find opportunities to work together, but you have to actually be in search of feedback and open to critical feedback.

[00:06:24] That's interesting. That's interesting. So tell me about the research that you did that brought all these concepts to the surface. Tell me about that, Jacob. Yeah, so we did interviews with well more than 100 rainmakers, chief marketing officers, chief growth officers, CEO, practice chairs, all across professional services.

[00:06:45] So every professional services organization you can imagine, accounting, law, finance, legal, et cetera, all these different areas to find out what does world class look like when it comes to a business development function. And so that's sort of what we've tried to produce in this book is sort of a maturity curve of this is how you should be interacting with clients. This is how you should think about incentive. This is how you should think about talent. This is how you should think about data measurement.

[00:07:10] Kind of giving ourselves a roadmap really toward maturity and professional services growth. What was something that surprised you the most from this research? I think the thing that surprised me the most about this research is how common the challenges are across every single organization. Like the institutional challenges that come with growth and scale and professional services firm are ubiquitous.

[00:07:33] As we get better, as we grow, as we have more projects, the proactive nature of business development, reaching out all the time, staying engaged with potential clients, adding value to those clients. It sort of fades into the distance in favor of waiting for RFPs, in waiting for our clients or our colleagues to bring us opportunities that exist within their clients.

[00:07:55] And so the challenge is not necessarily having the right incentive or the right collateral, but it's about building a culture of hunger when you don't necessarily need to eat. And that is a very difficult thing to do across an organization where it doesn't have a typical hierarchy, right? Partners and firms have a lot of power. And so you can't just have a top-down approach to telling people what to do on business development. It truly has to be cultural. Yeah, that's interesting.

[00:08:24] So how do you think, and this is kind of getting tangential, but how do you think organizations, professional services organizations, how have they impacted or changed their culture in that way to become more of a rainmaking culture so that they're always going to be hungry a little bit? Yeah, so it's such a good question. And I think the best firms do it a couple of different ways. I was just on the phone with my co-author, Walt, and he was making a joke. He said, have you ever grown up in a bad neighborhood? He said, because I did.

[00:08:50] And he said, sometimes the only way to force change in a circumstance like that, if you're new to the neighborhood, is you get into the neighborhood and on day one, you fight the toughest kid. Because that's the one who's signal to everybody in the neighborhood that I am not to be trifled with. I will fight the toughest kid, no problem, right? And he was telling me this story. And then he said, professional services are exactly the same way. Sometimes you have to find the person who has the worst behavior, but also intersects with them having a lot of power.

[00:09:18] And I hate to use the term, make an example of them, but help them to see the way that we grow a firm together. Because subtle cultural changes don't seem to move the needle on this if you've already developed the bad habits. But lots of firms grow up with the right habits. And I think the right habit and the thing you want to interview for is curiosity. Do our practice leads, do our people delivering services have a truly healthy curiosity about our clients?

[00:09:45] Are they truly interested in what's going on with our clients? Because if you have that over time, it just pays dividends. But if you have people who it feels like are just trying to get to the next gig, the clients feel it. That's interesting. And that's one thing I've seen when I started the show back during COVID. And I was interviewing experts about what do you do when the world's falling apart and you're reaching out to prospects? How do you sell? And how do you try to get business? Well, you don't. You're just engaging and you're curious.

[00:10:15] And I think that through line of curiosity is what I've seen from all the experts, especially you and your repeat visits on the show, seeing that this is something that really drives business development. But you're right. It's almost counterintuitive. You can't really force it. You can't just say, I want to close, close, close, but I want to be curious. Always be curious. I guess that's the new ABC, the professional service. It is. Well, the new ABC is always be curious.

[00:10:40] And I don't think it's easy to keep that mentality going when you have metrics to meet, you have quarterly numbers to get to. The incentives drive you toward trying to be a closer. But the best closers I've ever met are actually just sort of curious people. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Because they know what the hot buttons and motivations are. So tell me this. Tell me of professional services leaders that you've observed. Maybe you've worked with them as clients.

[00:11:06] And you've seen how they have influenced their culture to become a culture of curiosity. What were some of the things that they did to really kind of influence that, Jacob? Yeah, so I think one is collaboration. So making sure everybody is working together on different projects, different pitches. Because you end up not having a silo of experts. Scott's our guy who does lateral partner work. He can only talk to us about lateral partner nonsense. No, it's nonsense. Scott knows about everything.

[00:11:35] He's done all this interesting work with law firms. And his deep expertise with lateral partners extends to a bunch of different areas on which he can add value. So I think one is collaboration. Don't let people live in silos. I think that's incredibly important. I think number two is having a culture of celebration and celebration of failure. So you're giving each other high fives in the hallway when you have a good meeting. You're giving each other high fives when you make a big daring pitch and you don't win it.

[00:12:02] There is a culture around we're working on this together, not just a culture of who wins. And then I think lastly, you just have to have an investment in development for people. The kinds of firms that have curious people have healthy investments in learning. And that might be right now, you know, development on how to use AI tools. But I think continually investing in learning is an excellent reinforcement for everybody in the organization. That we haven't learned our thing. We don't have our shtick. We are curious people.

[00:12:31] And the stuff, by the way, that we sold 20 years ago, it's not a service anymore. Like people don't need that service. What were we doing 20 years ago? We were outsourcing everything for cost reduction. And I don't think we're doing that anymore. And so you have to stay fresh and curious. This is interesting. I think this kind of aligns with what I see in recruiting partners and firms. And each year I talk to at least a thousand new people, engaging them. What do you like? What do you not like? And there's always an emotional context.

[00:12:57] But I think those that see that the firm is investing and it's keeping them fresh, those are the ones that really don't want to move. When firms really have that investment and the leadership development. And yes, they're hiring associates, but they're also developing them. They're investing in that. That really keeps people there. It all kind of ties together, right? So let me ask you this. Kind of going back to these client feedback. Would you call them systems? Would you call them initiatives? First, how would you categorize them?

[00:13:25] What do you describe those when you work with your clients on this, Jacob? Yeah, so I would call it a system and it should be a system. So I think most of us have had the experience in our data where roughly 80% of our growth comes from our existing clients. Like we don't get the majority of our growth from brand new logos, right? We typically get a small gig with those logos and then grow them over time. And so client feedback should be the spine of business development for people.

[00:13:54] And so the way that I think that starts is having a robust client advisory board. We in professional services could learn a lot from our friends in technology about the importance of client advisory boards as a way to drive improvements in services. Have you ever seen three consultants in a whiteboard? I have. And it's terrible.

[00:14:13] It's dangerous because all they're doing is inventing the next thing that they think their clients might need without ever asking their clients, which I honestly is sort of criminal if you ask me. And so you should have a board of your very best clients, the people you get the majority of work from, and you should constantly be in engagement with them about the value you're creating, about the things that they're worried about or they're kind of staring around the corner for, and how you could improve what you're doing as a business.

[00:14:42] They should co-create the future with you. That doesn't mean you shouldn't do all the other stuff we talked about as part of your system, and each firm should decide or should design a system that makes the most sense for their clients. But as part of your client advisory board, you should be interviewing those people to find out how it's going and being responsive. Like the other thing is there's a Hippocratic Oath with client feedback is if you're going to ask for it, you better do something with it. Because if you ask for it and don't do anything, it's actually worse than not asking for it at all.

[00:15:11] Even if the act is just to say, hey, Scott, I heard you on that. We're not making an investment in that particular service line this year, but maybe next year. I just wanted you to know that I hear you and I'm pushing for it on your behalf inside of the organization. Even that is enough to give people the feeling that they're being heard. That's great. I like that. It's almost like you're setting an expectation when you get that feedback by asking them. You know, I think that's what do you think about that? Is that true? That's exactly right.

[00:15:39] But you also need to have the room for just straight up feedback on how it's going, like how we're actually doing. So often firms do this thing. And I think I want to quote the person, but I'm not sure I'll get it right. So with apologies to this person, she calls it random acts of marketing. And too often client feedback programs end up being a random act of marketing or a random act of a practice where we decide on an initiative. We do 30 interviews. It's super powerful.

[00:16:08] We put it on the shelf and it collects dust. It has to be an ongoing system if you want to get the true value out of it. Right. So what are the components of the system? How would you break that down, Jacob? So I think the components of a system are, one, decide who the most important people are from a client perspective. So, one, who are you currently serving? Who are your biggest clients? And the element that people often forget about is, who do you want to serve going forward? What is your ideal client profile?

[00:16:34] Because if you're trying to serve the biggest banks in the world, you don't want Spokane Teachers Credit Union in your client advisory board because it sends a signal to the market. The next step is, of course, the obvious one, which is decide who the key person is in that particular cohort that you want to engage. So if you're an accounting firm, you probably want to engage a CFO. If you're a law firm, you probably want to engage general counsel or someone like that. But you want to build a robust set of peers from that company that you're engaging. So understanding who that person is.

[00:17:04] And then you have the kind of activities that go along with it. And what I would remind everybody about the activities is there is a ton of value in peer-to-peer connection. CFOs like talking to CFOs. General counsels like talking to other general counsels. That's something that's valuable. And you should have that as a through line to your client advisory board because that's the reason they're going to keep showing up. Because they get value from engaging with other people.

[00:17:29] And along that journey, you get to collect incredible feedback, understand their priorities, and deliver solutions that are completely crafted around those pain points. It is truly the right way to go to market in professional services. That's great. I mean, it sounds very bespoke, very custom to exactly what your clients are looking for. And everybody loves that, right? I mean, I do think that the client advisory board is like one of the most effective techniques to use for what people now call account-based marketing. Yeah.

[00:17:56] Like, I think a client advisory board where you're collecting a ton of insight from a very senior leader over there is so powerful to delivering a great account-based marketing program. I think sometimes we can fall in love with the technology associated with ABM and forget that we need to feed the tools with good data if we're actually going to make it feel like it's unique to that client. Do you think some people would say this is too contrived? Contrived. It doesn't feel like it's organic.

[00:18:23] I just feel like it's just a contrived system that's just uncomfortable. Have you seen people have that response to something like this? Not if it's done properly. Yeah, wow. Why is that? Well, because I think that if it's done properly, the people who are in the client advisory board get value. I've seen client advisory boards. I won't name names, but for very successful professional services firms that go on. I mean, I have one in our firm right now that's been going on for 15 years. One of your clients? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:18:52] If you create a circular loop with the people you want to serve and you're in constant conversation with them about their priorities and you're changing and creating solutions for them, you can really kind of own a market. And it creates an incredible barrier for your competitors trying to get in with a white paper that they've written or some piece of research that they've done. When I walk in and I say, Scott, I know everything about you. It's pretty hard to sort of penetrate that layer of connection. Yeah, that's absolutely right.

[00:19:21] And I think as professional services firms become smarter and they realize that they just can't rest on their laurels and who they used to be over the past few decades, they've got to really take this seriously. And I think the pressure is on for firms to not just say we want to get more business, but we want to keep our clients from going to other firms that are doing some of these things. Now, this client advisory board, I've never heard of that in the legal context. Is that something that exists within the law firm world, Jacob? I don't see it a lot in law firms.

[00:19:49] I see it a lot in professional services. You tend to see it on the IT consulting side. Yeah. You tend to see it sometimes in accounting. I don't tend to see it all that frequently in legal. Yeah. I've seen variations of that. One firm I knew they would have an annual event. They'd invite their clients out to talk about their relationship and give them feedback. And I think that was something, I don't know if it was, it was more, I think it was more of an ad hoc sort of thing, but I just haven't seen that. Who knows?

[00:20:14] Maybe somebody that's listening to this could really kind of own the market and have you guys help them with that to really that sort of, that sort of system. You mentioned something though about an annual thing, which I think is one of the challenges with, with client, client engagement, client feedback is our proclivity is to do a big event, right? Big event, fancy speaker, nice food, good environment. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's wonderful. But then what we do is we often table it till the next year.

[00:20:42] We don't stay in continuous engagement with those clients from a feedback perspective. Sure. We're doing assignments for them. We're doing projects for them, but we're not constantly engaging with them at a high level about what their priorities are. And if you can find the mechanism to do that on an ongoing basis, you can literally, you know, build an ocean size moat around your office. Wow. That's fantastic. What a great idea. Are there any danger spots or pitfalls of doing this?

[00:21:08] You think people should watch out for as they build these types of programs? Not following up. Yeah. If they build it and they don't follow up and they don't, you know, take the advice and change their practice or change the way they behave. Like, you know, every now and again, you will get feedback from a client who says, I don't really like working with that partner, Jacob. He's kind of a bozo. And if you just keep me, Jacob, on that project in perpetuity, that is an indication that you're not listening to that client at all.

[00:21:38] And so, again, take the action that they suggest you take. Yeah. Interesting. So let me ask you this question. Let's look at three action steps. Somebody wants to initiate this within their firm. How could you give them three action steps to help them get started on that, Jacob? Yes. Okay. So one, decide about who your ideal client profile is. Who are you actually serving? And I mean that from a variety of different slices. So like what geography, what industry, what executive function, what size revenue? Are they public? Are they private?

[00:22:08] What kind of organizations do you serve? Okay. And then I would say, I want to take a look at the cross section of my very best clients and my very best clients that have a bunch of potential for growth. And I want to engage them, third step, engage them in an ongoing series of in-person and virtual conversations about their priorities. If you're talking about yourself, if you're pulling up a slide deck too much, you're doing it wrong.

[00:22:33] You want to make the conversation about their interests, about their priorities and reserve the right to follow up and have more valuable one-on-one conversations about how you might solve their individual problems. But you should have a client advisory board as part of your practice if you want to own a particular segment. This is fantastic. In 20 to 25 minutes, secret to the universe right here. This is very insightful. This is a very potent episode. I think people are going to get a lot out of that. Tell me about your company, Jacob.

[00:23:03] What do you do? Tell me about your colleagues. What are the services that you have? And by the way, we're going to put the link and all the other contact info on the show notes and also the link to order your book. Thanks, Scott. Yeah. So we're Profitable Ideas Exchange Pi, we call ourselves. And we are focused on owning the value chain and professional services basically from the side of client acquisition. So how we think about going out there and meeting clients, engaging clients, expanding our remit inside of clients, getting client feedback, you know, all the way through.

[00:23:31] But effectively, what we do in a lot of instances is we run client advisory boards for people. We do strategy work on how they should structure and incentivize their team to go to market. And then we do sort of business development communities where we help people get to know key executives via value add virtual sessions. But I always love coming on your show, Scott. So I can't thank you enough for having me. And I'll write another book at some point so I can get back on here. Sounds great. I'd love to have you back on in a few months and we can continue this conversation as well, Jacob. Thanks so much for being here today.

[00:24:00] And I wish you the best of luck with your book. And thank you for sharing this important wisdom today. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Thank you for listening to The Rainmaking Podcast. For more information about our recruiting services for international law firms, visit our website at attorneysearchgroup.com.

[00:24:21] To inquire about having Scott speak at your next convention, conference, sales meeting or executive retreat, visit therainmakingpodcast.com.