There are seven divisions in a business. Division 4 is Production (your accounting firm’s engine room responsible for delivering the services that your clients are paying for) and Division 3 is Sales.

In the Sales division, the Senior Client Manager’s (SCM) job is to sell, and their KPI is not time on the clock but rather the number of proposals sent. In Division 4, the Senior Production Manager is the grinder, who is responsible for reviewing, checking and training staff, and doesn’t interact directly with clients.

In the Capacity Planner that we use, the SCM’s budgeted productivity is only at 50-60% versus the grinder’s, which is at 85-90%. This is because much of their time is spent in sales, not production.

We allow 5 to 10 minutes of free advice, but predominantly they need to take the client through the sales journey:

1. Discovery (to identify the problem and possible solution)

2. Send proposal with price

3. Move to production

Upon acceptance of the proposal and price, the new client then goes to Division 4 (Production).

The most successful SCM goes from the discovery stage to the proposal extremely quickly, and they always seem to send out a record number of proposals each day. Their KPI should be the number of proposals sent.

In the proposal, there will be a price. Clients then will have time to consider the proposal and the price and if agreeable, they will sign the proposal and send it back. Only after acceptance of the proposal should it be sent to production.

This has several benefits:

1. You are not giving all IP away in a conversation

2. The SCM is the only one that does this and not all staff

Because the grinders complete production work, you shouldn’t expect them to sell. The right person (your SCM) should be the person with the strong communication and interpersonal skills, and ideally, should love sales, and are skilled in the art of moving people from discovery to proposal in the least amount of time.