David Ackert, CEO of PipelinePlus and bestselling author of The Short List, had spent years advising law firms and other professional services organizations on business development when he noticed an opportunity that had little to do with the services his company was selling.
His clients needed each other.
Managing Partners wanted to know how other Managing Partners were handling the challenges of leading their firms. Chief Marketing Officers wanted candid conversations with peers facing the same pressures. Business leaders wanted a place where they could compare notes with people who understood their world.
So Ackert began bringing them together.
What started over a decade ago as a way to create additional value for PipelinePlus clients eventually developed into a series of invitation-only peer communities for senior professional services leaders.
The premise was simple: put the right people in a room, create the conditions for candid conversation, and make their interaction with each other the centerpiece.
The result became much more valuable than another marketing initiative.
PipelinePlus helps law firms and other professional services organizations optimize growth through strategy, coaching, training, and technology. That work often requires deep relationships across a client organization.
The roundtables created another dimension to those relationships.
Instead of interacting with clients only during an engagement, Ackert and his team were convening them around issues they genuinely cared about. Members developed relationships with one another. Conversations continued between meetings. New ideas surfaced. Trust accumulated.
For Ackert, this is also an exercise in building Short Lists and playing the long game.
The Short List, the concept at the center of his book on business development, is the small group of influential people who are instrumental to your objectives. You don't earn a place on those lists through constant pitching. You earn it through relevance, trust, and consistent value over time.
Community creates the conditions for exactly that.
Because PipelinePlus is consistently present in these conversations, its team also develops a deeper understanding of what firm leaders are experiencing. That creates a virtuous cycle. The better PipelinePlus understands its clients, the more relevant its work becomes. The more useful the community becomes, the stronger the relationships grow.
Commerce can follow, but it isn't the premise.
Why it matters to you.
Most professional services firms devote significant energy to winning an engagement, doing good work, staying in touch, and looking for the next opportunity. Community adds another dimension. Instead of asking, “How can I get more business from my clients?” ask, “How can I create more value for my clients even when they aren't buying anything from me?” One answer is to help them build meaningful relationships with one another. That requires resisting the temptation to make the community about you. Ackert's roundtables aren't PipelinePlus seminars with networking attached. The members and their experiences are the primary source of value. PipelinePlus provides the structure, facilitation, perspective, and continuity that allow those relationships to develop. People rarely need another vendor event. They do need trusted places where they can speak candidly with peers who understand the challenges they face. Building those communities also takes patience. Trust doesn't compound on a quarterly marketing calendar. A valuable peer network becomes more useful as relationships deepen, members contribute, and the quality of the conversation earns a reputation of its own. For PipelinePlus, the benefit of playing the long game has extended well beyond the roundtables themselves. The communities have strengthened existing relationships, expanded the firm's network of professional services leaders, provided greater insight into the issues facing its market, and created opportunities that would have been difficult to generate through conventional business development alone. Sometimes the most valuable thing you can give a client is access to their peers.
Your one thing.
Think about the clients you serve best and ask yourself one question: What do they need from each other that they can't get from me? Then consider whether you can create the environment where that exchange happens. Don't start with how you'll monetize it. Start with the room worth entering, even if you never made a sales pitch. When you take this route, you have the beginnings of a community, and you truly take the position of a trusted advisor.
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