The New Buzz Phrase – Sector Focus
The New Buzz Phrase – Sector Focus
– Just make-up caked on an ageing face?
“Sector Focus” is the rage in the big law firms. By it they mean that they are putting effort into presenting their firm’s industry expertise to their prospective clients. They realise that it’s so much easier to show that you are a ‘client focussed’ firm when you portray the world through the industry lens that your client uses - rather than the internally focussed language of practice groups.
Does it work? Well at worse sector focus is just cosmetic - as convincing as make up caked on an ageing face. Not only does it fail to attract, but it distracts busy partners from other things that matter. We see already overworked partners struggling to concoct voluminous industry thought leadership. articles are worked and reworked but end up as ‘me-too’ platitudes. Events are organised which fail to ignite the interest of the industry.
Yet bad execution doesn’t mean that the direction of travel is wrong. So how far down should sector focus permeate the hierarchy? How do you effectively grow the industry insight? Should there be shadow revenue targets? At Pennington Hennessy we are witnesses to the triumphs and disasters that have befallen sector focus in other professional services firms. The first lesson is that to do sector focus well, you first need to see what you can happily do less of.