When the people experience becomes the client experience

HLB International Global Summit, Nashville, October 2026

In October I moderated a panel at HLB International’s Global Summit in Nashville, in the Country Music Hall of Fame. The room was managing partners and senior partners from member firms around the world. I was joined by Bill Bradshaw of Withum, Andy Koller of GHJ and Shoneva Abraham of HLB Bahamas.

I opened with one question, answered anonymously on screen as people came in.

Think of someone in your firm who stayed when they could easily have gone. In one word, why did they stay?

The words appeared as they were typed. Culture. Opportunity. Trust. Listening. Empathy. Relationship. Security. Leadership. Appreciation. Comfortable. Money.

Not one person wrote anything about technology. This was a week when artificial intelligence featured on almost every agenda in the building.

Why this is a commercial question

A firm is worth something because its clients stay, they refer, and they pay fairly. Clients do that because they are served well. They are served well by people who are able, who are motivated, and who are still there. Those people are still there because somebody invested in them.

Every link in that chain is a commercial link. We measure the client end of it closely. The people end is harder to see.

Take a senior associate who feels trusted. Something goes wrong on an assignment and she raises it in week two. The problem is still manageable, it costs less to put right, and the client remembers being told early. Somebody equally able, in a different firm, might wait and hope it settles itself. By week ten it is a different conversation.

Or a manager confident enough to raise something outside the scope of the job. A tax implication nobody had looked at. A risk in a transaction nobody had priced. Both of those become better outcomes for the client, and often more work for the firm.

Both professionals are technically excellent. Both meet every formal measure. The environment they work in changes what they are worth, and almost none of it shows on a timesheet.

The client had a person

Every firm has clients whose relationship sits with one individual.

When that individual leaves, the handover can be done properly. Files complete, introductions made, the client reassured that nothing changes. The relationship still thins over the following months, and eventually the client goes.

That is rarely about the technical work. It is about the fact that the client had a person. Now they have a firm.

The harder problem sits underneath it. The firm never built a relationship with that client beyond the one individual.

Bringing colleagues in earlier, and giving emerging professionals real responsibility in front of clients, protects relationships the firm has spent years building. It also gives younger people the chance to develop the judgement clients will expect of them later.

What I took from it

Artificial intelligence is already changing how firms work. Research, drafting, proposals and the preparation ahead of a client meeting are all getting faster, and the technical groundwork that used to separate one firm from another is becoming more similar.

That makes the question of where the next generation learns judgement a live one.

It is also why the people side of a firm belongs in the same conversation as clients and markets, rather than in a separate one owned by HR. Bill Hagaman, HLB’s Global Chairman, made the same point after the session. With so much attention on AI that week, he named the people discussion as the one leaders should take home.

Questions the session explored

Why do people stay in a firm when they could go somewhere else?

What has the people experience got to do with what a firm is worth?

Who really owns a client relationship, and what happens when that person leaves?

Where will the next generation learn professional judgement, if the work that used to build it is being done faster?

How do firms give emerging professionals real client responsibility early enough for it to matter?

Where to start in your own firm

Identify five people who stayed when they could reasonably have gone, and ask them why. The answers usually say more than an engagement survey does.

Then look at your twenty most important clients and ask who each one would ring first if something went wrong tomorrow. It is not always the partner on the account.

My Market Development Plan sets out eight questions covering people, clients and markets, which is the same argument in a form your partners can work through in two hours. It is free, with no form to fill in.

I speak at conferences and moderate panels for international accounting, legal and corporate finance networks, on business development, client experience, visibility and practical AI. Recent sessions include the HLB International conferences in Osaka in Japan, Prague, Vancouver, Dubrovnik and Nashville, the Oaklins global conference in Dublin, and the Managing Partners’ Forum in London.

If you are planning a 2027 programme, my speaker page sets out formats and topics, or email mary@marketingclever.com.