Grow the firm the way you'd choose to
Some growth is worth far more than the rest: the most profitable direction, the clients you'd pick, the work you want more of. We decide that together, and I make it happen, beginning with the client book you already have: kept, and grown. I run a specialist business development department for professional-services and B2B firms, from outside the firm, built to pay for itself early and then take the firm where you've decided it's going.
★★★★★Five-star Google reviewsDone before, inside firms like yours
- 1Your book
- 2New names
- 3Being seen
- 4Winning the work
- Champion moved · your contact is now FD at a larger group, Corkrow 14
- Charge registered · development client, Dublin 8 · funded, about to startrow 22
- Buys audit only · you sell six services · 14 months since last callrow 31
- Planning permission expires in 5 months · 2021 scheme, Docklandsrow 40
What changes, in your numbers
Clients are hard to win and expensive to court, and losing one is a terrible way to learn it was drifting. So the department starts with the book you already have, then the market, in the direction you'd choose. Three things change.
- None of your clients slip through the floor
Your current book, read account by account: the growth in it gets chased, and the ones going quiet are caught while there's still time to act, so you hear about it before they do.
- New names to call, briefed
The companies showing they're about to need you, each with a page on who decides and why now, and the first note drafted in your name.
- A programme partners can follow through on
Each partner gets a short, doable list of who to contact and why, with the draft already done, ready for a gap between client meetings. A dashboard keeps track of it all, and the follow-up is done for them.
Done before, inside firms like yours
I'm Jennifer Chamberlaine. Twenty-five years leading marketing and business development inside law firms, consulting practices and financial services groups, and five years since doing it for growing firms from outside. The partners and teams inside those firms did the growing. I led marketing and business development through it, and I know what it takes.
“Her insights, guidance and tools are an invaluable part of our marketing process.”
“Working with her is one of the best decisions I have ever made for this business.”
“Real results are delivered in a fraction of the usual time.”
“It is rare to find someone who combines strategic thinking with this level of execution.”
Quoted from the reviews on our Google Business Profile, all five stars. More about me and how I work.
How we start
A conversation first, then one piece of work, then the rest only where it has earned its place. Each step stands on its own, and the order bends to the firm.
First
A conversation
Where the growth is in your firm, and what I'd do first.
Half an hour on the firm, the market and the gap between them, written up as a one-page view afterwards. The Growth Map, if you want its name. It's where we work out what the first piece of work should be.
Book a half hourThen
One piece of work
Small, about your own firm, and judged on what it produces.
For most firms that's a read of your book: your top fifty clients, kept and grown, with names on it. When the direction itself is the question, it's Where to Grow, the strategy. Either way, you see what it produces before deciding on anything more.
A read of your bookAfter that
The department
Growth every month, with the groundwork done for your partners.
Engines switched on where the plan says, and only there: the clients you hold, the names you want, being seen, winning the work. Each one is trained with you, runs under your own accounts, and earns the next.
The four jobs
Reach further, sooner than you thought possible
Thirty minutes on the firm, the market, and the gap between them.
- Where you are
- Where you want to get to
- What's in the way
- What I'd do first
The things people ask first
Our partners are flat out with client work. Where does business development fit?
Around the client work, which rightly comes first. The partners I meet are brilliant at the work and generous with their clients, and business development tends to stall only when it arrives without a brief or a reason to call this week. So each partner gets a short list of who to contact and why now, with the note already drafted in their own voice, ready to send between meetings. I keep track of what happens next, so the managing partner has one less thing to hold.
How much partner time does it take?
Less than most expect. At the start I'll want a couple of short working sessions with you and the partners who lead each part of the firm, to agree where growth should come from. After that, a partner's time goes on reading a draft, making the call and having the meeting. That's the part only they can do.
We already have someone doing marketing. Where do you fit?
Alongside them. Most firms I meet have a good marketing person or agency stretched across events, posts, the website and whatever the partners need that week. I bring the business development side: a plan for where growth comes from, and the account-by-account follow-up that turns it into meetings. Your marketing lead gets a clear brief to work to, and more of their week back.
Why not hire a business development manager?
Some firms should, and a good one is worth having. The difficulty is usually time: the right person takes months to find, needs a plan to work to, and takes a lot of what they've learned with them when they move on. What I offer is a different shape: a specialist business development department from outside the firm, started small, so you can see what the first piece of work produces before deciding on anything more. Whatever gets built along the way stays with the firm.
Where would you start?
With something small and tangible that needs no strategy work first. For most firms that's a read of the clients they already have, fifty accounts at a time, which comes back as a short list of who to talk to, about what, and why now. A firm that keeps its clients well might start with the next fifty names worth winning instead, and some firms start with the strategy. The first conversation is where we work out which.
How will we know it's working?
We agree what counts before we start, usually meetings booked and work won, from existing clients and new ones. Each piece of work has a named output and a date, and you see the numbers as they come in. Some engines bring work in within weeks; others build for a few months first, and I'll say which is which before you commit. If something isn't earning its place, you'll hear it from me first, and we change it or stop it.
Will it sound like us? And who actually sends it?
Every message starts as a draft in the voice of the partner it comes from, and the drafts get closer to that voice with every edit they make. It lands in that partner's own email drafts, or with your marketing lead first if you'd like someone to check it, with a short note on who it's for and why now. The partner reads it, changes what they like, then sends it from their own account or deletes it. I never write to your clients or contacts from my side.
What happens to our client information, and where does AI come in?
Your client information stays yours. I work only with what you choose to share, keep it apart from every other firm's work, and I'll sign your confidentiality terms before anything changes hands. I use AI tools I've built and run myself, under my direction, the way your firm uses its practice software: what's worth acting on is my call, and what gets sent is your partner's. I keep my client list small, and I won't act for two firms chasing the same clients.
Have you done this inside a professional-services firm?
Yes. I led marketing and business development at DLA Piper in Dublin while the office grew from 19 people to 120 in three years, and before that spent eight years at BearingPoint in Ireland as it grew from 150 people to 300. That's 25 years beside partners who are brilliant at the work and short of time for business development. I'm happy to put you in touch with current clients so you can ask them yourself.
Who is Scale Marketing for?
Professional-services firms first, accountancy, legal, engineering, architecture and wealth, and any B2B firm whose growth runs through relationships and repeat clients, across Ireland and the UK. Firms with deep expertise and a good name, where the accounts between engagements have never had an owner.