We recently won some business from a firm we had been pursuing for six years. With little encouragement from the client, I had remained optimistic all this time of winning them, believing that when they were ready, we would get a shot. It is a fine firm with good people, a valuable set of offerings and attentive service. How could I be so certain that they would one day be ready?

My confidence was based on experience with other firms which suggested that this one would, one day, find itself lead hungry. The firm had enjoyed a steady flow of leads generated by an institutional marketing effort, and the firm's partners would convert enough of them into assignments to keep their professionals working hard. Living off this lead flow, the firm's partners had never learned how to generate leads on their own. When the institutional lead generation ceased to work, these partners didn't know how to go out and dig up their own.

I have seen this happen at firms as large as the late CSC Index and at small firms. I have seen it happen at firms as different from each other as strategy consulting firms and structural engineering firms. And I have seen it happen to whole firms or just one practice or studio.

That we at Harding & Company flag over reliance on an institutional lead source as an indicator of future need for our services should be a caution to any firm heavily reliant on such a source. And it should be a caution to anyone rising through the ranks of such a firm without learning how to bring in business.

In the corporate world, as people rise though the ranks, they often move away from front-line sales activity. In the professions, the opposite occurs at most firms; the higher in the organization you go, the greater are the expectations that you will bring in work. If this is not happening at your firm, there are two possible consequences. For the firm, the failure of the institutional lead source will cause a crisis which your senior people will be ill-equipped to solve. That could result in buckets of red ink.

The individual partner set free from such a firm is likely to find prospects for employment within professional service firms limited. Other firms will expect people at that level to be able to bring in business. Unless there is strong evidence you can do that, they won't want you.

Institutional lead flow is a great asset to a firm, practice or studio. But it can be seductive. It should never be allowed to replace the requirement that partners go out into the market and bring back business for the firm.