The Practitioner: Partners Pottering about

WE HAVE BEEN AS BUSY as I can remember us ever being in recent times.

The firm is being approached by larger organisations to submit audit tenders, we are getting more outside enquiries than ever before, and the staff are pulling their hair out with stress from the overload of work.

Seeing the staff stressed out is never nice but better being stressed due to too much work as opposed to having nothing to do.

New client activity is always great, as it adds fresh excitement into the office. We have set ourselves up with a ‘new client’ board so we can see how the activity progresses.

This isn’t really meant to create adverse competition among the staff teams – but it does at least give them some idea of how the organisation is moving forward. It also puts pressure on the partners to convert leads into wins.

Who am I kidding? Most of the partners don’t even record their leads on the board, let alone fill in the results of their sales activity.

Trying to understand the cause of the recent upturn in new client activity I can only try to achieve by asking leads where they heard about us, or how they first found us.

As long as it continues I’m not really that bothered. It would be nice however if a few more of my partners played the game.

One partner in particular is starting to indicate he is losing interest in the practice. He has said as much direct to my face, and his recent lack of appearances in the office, lack of time spent on client work (other than his mates), is all indicating towards a difficult conversation brewing between us in the New Year.

I wouldn’t mind so much but most of the client work he does deal with never seem to bloody pay us!

I watched ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ for the first time last weekend, and I find myself feeling like ‘Potter’ the miserable old scrooge who asked ‘Are you running a business here or a charity?!’.

I’m not saying for one minute that I’m as miserable as old Potter but I do sometimes feel more like Bob Geldof than Richard Branson…