These are the stickiest clients in professional services, paired with some of the softest pricing. Clients stay for decades; fees rise by less than costs, because raising them means a conversation nobody wants to have with someone they have served for twenty years. What most owners have never done is run profitability by client rather than in total.
When they do, the picture is uncomfortable and useful: a book with genuinely unprofitable long-term clients everyone is fond of, propped up by the ones that are underpriced too. Add the compression of tax season and a cost base that does not share it, and a stable-looking firm can be quietly losing ground every year.
The larger issue is usually succession. A partner group approaching retirement with no one positioned to buy in, and a firm whose value lives in partner relationships and review, is stable and unsellable at the same time. That is solvable, but only with runway.
What makes it hard
- Profitability by client never run, only firm-level totals
- Long-tenured clients quietly served below cost, protected by the relationship
- Fees that lag cost increases because no one wants the conversation
- Partner dependence in both relationships and review
- Succession arriving faster than the plan for it
How we partner
We start by running profitability by client and by service, so the book is finally clear, and the work being carried can be repriced or released. Done with care, that lifts margin on revenue already in hand without losing the clients worth keeping.
The harder, more valuable work is succession and dependence: moving relationships and review off a shrinking partner group and building a firm someone can actually buy into or buy. We work alongside you over the runway that takes, and where it fits our fee follows the result.
Who this is for
Firms that have never run profitability by client rather than in total.
Partners approaching an exit with no one positioned to buy in.