If it's not chargeable, it's not work?

Nobody carries a larger burden in an accountancy firm than its senior fee earners. As a result, even if they recognise they have an important role to play in marketing the firm, historically many have not viewed business development as 'real' work, as it does not directly generate income for the business.

As the main (and, all too often, only?) change agent within your part of the practice, you thus have a tough task in bringing about change in your fellow senior professionals - getting them to spend more time 'unpaid' with clients and encouraging them to spot, make and seize opportunities for sales conversations.

In short, the problem you face is to make them feel comfortable about being involved in business development activities - and to stop them viewing 'selling' as a dirty word.

Yet the widespread belief that only chargeable work is 'real' work is especially curious when you examine its effects on the practice:

• An obsession with utilisation rates can blind the practice to its strategic, longer-term needs;
• It diminishes the willingness of partners to feed work to others rather than doing the job themselves; and
• It provides an excuse for not spending more time with clients.

So how do you start to bring about a fundamental change in behaviour and attitude? Linked to this email is a case study which looks at how Huthwaite worked in partnership with a top accountancy firm to change attitudes to selling and develop with them a more consultative, client-focused sales culture.

We are talking here about the real world and not some unattainable 'holy grail', no matter how attractive or beneficial that might be. In an ideal world, for example, behaviour change would in part be supported - and indeed driven - by a reward structure which positively encouraged non-chargeable marketing and selling activity. Yet such a change is unrealistic in the short term in an environment driven by utilisation percentages and so any change must accept the status quo as a 'given'.

Thus we have to find other ways to bring about lasting change. As the case study highlights, you need to kick-start the process by targeting those changes without which you won't get any further, or which will generate quick wins and so help get key people 'on-side'. Here are just two of the techniques which were successfully adopted:

• Start with those people and teams who are inherently more receptive to change in general and training in particular. Once you have them performing better, use the evidence of success as a powerful proof tool, to create demand from the sceptics and those less open to change.
• Don't try to remove major organisational blocks: rather, accept the situation and work around them. It must be accepted at the outset that bringing about attitudinal change (to selling for example) is tough with such blocks in place. The key therefore is to bring about behaviour change first: provide people with a clearer insight as to how they naturally behave and how they need to behave - and, through a process of skills development, the realisation that they can change their behaviour and that it feels OK. Once again, armed with the 'proof' that it works, a change in attitude is much more likely to follow.

Hopefully this will have given you some ideas which you can apply to your own change initiatives. If so, please contact us as the first step towards turning them into a practical reality within your practice.