Product Description

Professional service firms differ from other business enterprizes in two distinct ways. Firstly, they provide highly customized services, thus cannot apply many of the management principles developed for product based industries. Secondly, professional services are highly personalized, involving the skills of individuals. Such firms therefore compete not only for clients but also for talented professionals. Drawing on more than ten years of research and consulting to these unique and creative companies, David Maister explores issues ranging from marketing and business development to multinational strategies, human resources policies to profit improvement and strategic planning to effective leadership. While these issues can be complex, Maister attempts to simplify them by recognizing that "every professional service firm in the world, regardless of size, specific profession, or country of operation, has the same mission statement, outstanding service to clients, satisfying careers for its people and financial success for its owners".

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #21850 in Books
• Published on: 2003-01-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

Customer Reviews

An utterly excellent guide to managing a consultant firm
If you have ever worked in, been a partner or managed a consultancy firm, this book will not only answer a lot of your troubling questions, it will also explain matters that you did not know the questions to - just the obnoxious frustration of something that was not working. It is with incredible ease, yet depth and understanding that David H. Maister plough through the important issues that concerns not only managing partners in a consultant company, but anyone who wants to climb up the ladder. He explains why you got to balance your workcrew (juniors up to partners) and why it is so vitally important to mix people on the right combination of projects (brains, grey hair and procedure projects) as this builds up the firm's human capital, and provides the means and profitability to continue to grow steadily. I could go on but space does not allow me to. This book is not filled with theoritical babble but practical and useful information, no - knowledge and experience!

The book is divided into seven parts (personal highlights inside brackets): basic matters, client matters (quality work does not mean quality service!), people matters (building human capital, the motivation crises), management matters (creating a strategy), partnership matters (the art of parner compensation), multisite matters (the collaborative firm, hunters and farmers, etc.) and asset management. All in all it comprises of 32 chapters.

You won't find many books that explains service business any better than this one. I know because I went searching.

Like the Bible for Christians and Capital for Marxists
It is for consultants like the Bible for Christians and Capital for Marxists

This book is like a Bible for all professionals, regardless of whether they are working on their own or for a company. It can be read again and again and every time you can find something new. I think that even Maister did not suspect how great it would be. I feel able to declare that everybody who wants to be called "a consultant" must read this book.

Although this book consists of articles by different years it can be read without any difficulty. Maister also used international English and therefore it is easy for non-native English speakers to read.

I found especially interesting the following chapters:
1. Marketing to Existing Client
2. Attracting new Clients
3. Managing the Marketing Effort

The core ideas of all these chapters are:
1. Demonstrate you ability do not declare (Marketing works when it is demonstrative not
assertive)
2. The most effective type of marketing is client-level marketing (face-to-face meeting not to-broadcast marketing)
3. Existing clients are the best sources of new business (and often the most profitable ones)
4. Marketing activities represent an investment and therefore should be budgeted for.

The author puts all these principles into practice. In this book (and all the rest of his books) he demonstrates his quality. He treats all his readers (all of us) if we were already his clients and which means he shares some top secrets of this business.

All in all, I can say that it is amazing how many new ideas I managed to get from this book for so little money. Buying this book was one of my greatest investments. I only regret that I did not read this book in the eginning of my career in consulting.

A great text on managing professional service firms
David Maister is one of the best exponents around of managing professional service firms. I came across the hardback edition of this book seven years ago when I was doing a course run for board directors of the global public relations firm, Burson-Marsteller. Now as independent public relations practitioner I find it an invaluable source of guidance. While I am generally none too keen on Amercian management textbooks - a little too evangelical for me - this is different. Full of cogent, well-reasoned and useful advice from the viewpoint of a practitioner. Highly recommended.