In the seller-doer model, where professionals both deliver services and generate new business, relationship selling is a powerful approach for driving growth. By focusing on authentic connections, you build trust and credibility, positioning yourself as a trusted advisor while fostering lasting partnerships. Join this session with David Ackert, CEO of Pipeline Plus to explore how to leverage the seller-doer advantage, tailor your approach to client needs, and create genuine value in every interaction, enabling sustainable business development through meaningful relationships.
TRANSCRIPT
Greg Alexander: Hey, everybody. This is Greg Alexander. You’re listening to the pro. Serve podcast brought to you by Collective 54. If this is your first time with us, this is a show dedicated to founders of boutique professional services firms. So if you’re in the expertise business—consulting firm, training firm, marketing agency, IT service provider, accountant, lawyer, etc.—if you sell expertise for a living, this is for you. On this show, we try to help you make more money, make scaling easier, and make an exit achievable. On this episode, we’re going to talk about one of the very popular go-to-market models used in a lot of professional services firms. The slang term for it is called the seller-doer model.
We have a Collective 54 member with us today who is an expert in this model. In fact, he just released a great book that I read and endorsed, called *The Shortlist*. His name is David Ackert and David is going to share with us his wisdom on the seller-doer model. So, David, it’s good to see you. Thank you for being here. Please introduce yourself to the audience.
David Ackert: Hi, Greg, thanks. Appreciate the opportunity. I’m David Ackert. As you mentioned, the author of *The Shortlist*. I’m also the CEO of Pipeline Plus, a company through which we’ve been offering business development strategy, training, and coaching to professional services for over 20 years.
Greg Alexander: Okay, fantastic. All right. So let’s start with the basic definition. Please provide the audience with a definition of the seller-doer model.
David Ackert: Sure. I don’t know who coined the phrase “seller-doer model.” I think it probably should have been termed “doer-seller,” frankly, because that’s really the order in which this seems to get prioritized. But we all know the drill, right? We got into what we do because we were passionate about helping people, advising people. We developed a craft, a trade, a profession—whether it’s consulting, advising, law, accounting—you listed all the various disciplines. This is what we wanted to do.
Those of us who are founders, those of us who are rainmakers, also, as it turned out, were pretty compelling in talking about what we do to the point where we built a book of business and a company around ourselves. But most of us never had any formal sales training. We never really developed a strategy. Most of us are just sort of winging it, and we’re successful by virtue of passion and personality alone.
What I’ve found over the years is that you get to a choke point leveraging those characteristics. At some point, you need a strategy. At some point, you need leverage. At some point, you need to be held accountable to some sort of roadmap that enables you to systematize your business development. Otherwise, it’s one of those things that’s always on the back burner. You get to it when you get to it, or you call someone because you think of them—not because you necessarily have a clear strategy where you’ve identified, “Okay, these are the people on my shortlist. These are the clients who I’m absolutely going to go after. These are the ways that I’m going to do that.” It all gets reverse-engineered against your favorite word, which is “exit.”
Greg Alexander: That’s right. All right, very good. That is an excellent definition of it. Let me ask you this before we jump into some specifics, particularly around some of the numbers you mentioned in the book, which I find interesting in terms of how many people you need to have at a given time. Why do you think the seller-doer model is so popular within professional services? Because in other industries, it’s almost never used. So why here?
David Ackert: Sure. Well, Greg, you know, in this industry, we don’t really have customers. We have clients, and clients aren’t interested in the handoff.
David Ackert: They don’t want to talk to somebody who’s going to dial for dollars, cold call them, and talk them into something, and then say, “Here’s Greg. He’s going to be the person who’s going to deliver all the services.” They want to talk to Greg, be closed by Greg, and have a relationship with Greg because Greg is ultimately the person who will help them be successful. So that seller-doer has to be involved in the process almost from the start. And that’s a big ask of someone who’s also billing time, building a business, or managing a team. This is not a full-time salesperson with that kind of bandwidth.
Greg Alexander: Yeah, very good. And I agree wholeheartedly. All right. So when I read your book, I was surprised by your opinion on how many names need to be on your shortlist at any given time. I was expecting you to advocate for a huge funnel with hundreds, if not thousands, of names, but you have a very different opinion on that. Would you share that with the audience?
David Ackert: Sure. This is not just my opinion; it’s based on a couple of decades’ worth of experience. One of the things my company did early on was develop a product called Pipeline Plus Tracker. It’s a software app that seller-doers use to track their leads. We developed this as an alternative to CRM because we saw that a lot of seller-doers struggle to use Salesforce, HubSpot, and other traditional products. These tools require a lot of data entry and operational management. So, we created a simple app where people can plug in a few names and keep them top of mind.
What we found was that when we looked at the subset of users who were most successful in the app—those reporting growth in their book of business—they were focused on a shortlist. Now, let’s make this distinction: we’re talking about people who pursue clients, not customers, which means they have to develop relationships. Building relationships takes time. You have to earn trust and help clients understand how you can help them. This means focusing on quality over quantity.
I’m not an advocate of a huge funnel because no seller-doer has the time to manage one. What we have time for is managing the bottom of our funnel. When we look at that subset of successful users, we see they have a target list of between 9 and 35 key relationships. These are either top clients, highly likely prospects, or proven referral sources. Users with fewer than 9 have too few opportunities to grow, while those with more than 35 become overwhelmed. That’s a lot of lunches, Zoom meetings, and customized thought leadership to move people to the point where they’re ready to buy.
Greg Alexander: You also talk in your book about a period in your life when you were an actor, which I found fascinating. As an actor, like many others, you were trying to get roles and network. You drew a comparison to the professional services business development process and how much of a waste of time networking can be in the classic sense. Would you expand on that?
David Ackert: Sure. For the record, I don’t think networking is a waste of time. I think the way most people do it is a waste of time. It’s similar to how most actors audition repeatedly, hoping to win the lottery and land a big role. It’s the same strategy—random acts of lunch or networking without a plan. You’re taking someone out to lunch or spending time with them because they reached out, and you didn’t have a good excuse to decline.
The strategy behind the shortlist is to get clear on the characteristics of the people you want to spend time with. These are people influential enough to help you reach your exit goals. There will be a certain number of these people and a certain number of interactions. Doing the math around this helps focus on the conversations that truly make a difference.
Greg Alexander: Great advice. I think back to my own career when I was the founder of a boutique called SBI. If I think about the big relationships—the clients we won that moved the needle—almost all of them were referral-based. There was a time in our history when we did a mapping exercise, and they all ultimately routed back to a very small number of people. The tool we used came from the sports world.
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Greg Alexander: In the sports world, there’s a thing called a coaching tree. The person that made this famous was Bill Parcells of the New York Giants. That was his first coaching job, and all the assistants that worked underneath him, their assistants, and their assistants eventually, over a long time period—5, 10, 15 years—all became head coaches. It was like 60–70% of the head coaches in the NFL came from the Bill Parcells coaching tree. So we took that coaching tree and applied it to our business and said, “What are the branches on our tree?” And sure as day, we realized that there really were just a small number of people that created a tremendous amount of value. The clarity of that was liberating because now the pressure and the sense of failure around whether you were a good networker or BD person, etc., kind of went away. You really got focused on quality over quantity, which is fantastic.
Greg Alexander: Okay, I also would like to hear from you because you do so much work with law firms. In my opinion—now you may disagree with this—but relative to the other professions, like accountants, consultants, etc., I have come across some world-class rainmakers in law firms, people that really, really know how to bring in that next big client. What have you learned from the legal profession that might be applied more broadly to our community?
David Ackert: Well, I’ll tell you. I think that in the legal profession, you have a real situation of extremes. You’ve got those rainmakers who you describe, who are multi-multi-million-dollar, very, very successful business developers at law firms. When you think about the average deal size, if they’re selling bet-the-company litigation, one deal is worth millions and millions of dollars. So you’ve got the people who are uber-successful, and then you’ve got everyone else who’s sort of feeding off of those rainmakers, and not much in between. One of the reasons that we really targeted that industry is that there are so many people who are potential seller-doers, but they’re not rainmakers, and without some assistance, some coaching, or a strategy, they’re probably never going to get there.
David Ackert: What I will say about our community is, you have a lot of people who are much more in the middle. They’re pretty successful, they know they could do better, they’re coachable, and they’re open to maybe some new approaches—which is not always true of lawyers. But they just struggle because they have too many plates spinning, and they never step back from the running of the business to create that plan or decide to reverse-engineer where they are to where they want to be, relationship to relationship. I’ll just echo one more thing that you said, which is that the things that move the needle in our businesses—those moments, those transactions, those clients—they all come down to one conversation with one person at the right time. If you can have the right conversation with the right person at the right time, you can double your business. But it’s got to be the right person, and it’s got to be the right conversation. Most of us, again, are just not reverse-engineering those moments for ourselves.
Greg Alexander: Yeah, you know, I’ll tell a story to bring this to life. When I was starting my firm early on, there was a large telecommunications company called Alcatel, and they were a big deal back then. They were spinning out their call center software firm called Genesis, and they were spinning it out to a private equity firm called Primera. There was a young up-and-coming rock star assigned to that deal. His name was Brian Ruder. On the odd chance that Brian hears this—hey, Brian, it’s been a while—I doubt it. But he was this young guy; I literally think he was in his late twenties or early thirties. Anyways, he and I built a relationship. They ended up winning that deal. He hired our firm, and we did a really good job. Brian became a star, and he rose all the way up. In fact, I think he runs that firm now. They did many, many more deals on the back of that deal, and every single time they won a deal, we got hired. Then all these guys that worked for Brian became stars, and they all started becoming practice leads, and we just spread like wildfire. It was this one conversation with this one kid at the time that nobody even really took seriously. He was starting the tech practice in Menlo Park for a company that was based in Germany, and the rest is history, so they say. You’re so correct—it’s the one conversation, but to your point, at the right time. I’d love to tell you that I planned that, but it was just luck. Granted, we made the most of that lucky break, and it was very good fortune. But you never know when you’re talking to someone—you never know.
David Ackert: Let me say this. In the book, I actually apply some science and research to this. There’s certainly the “you never know” factor. The problem is that’s most people’s strategy: “You never know, so I guess I’ll just talk to a lot of people, and hopefully, they’ll keep me in mind because you never know.” That’s the strategy, right? But, in fact, if you look at the stages of engagement, there is a moment where that decision gets made. We know that. There are things that precede that moment that we have some influence over in terms of building relationships and trust. There are actions you can take that advance a relationship to that moment. If you can figure out who those relationships need to be—even just by characteristic or profile—and take the actions that move them to that point in the conversation, you start to get a picture of what this is going to look like. You can visualize it, plan around it, and focus yourself on it.
Greg Alexander: Yep.
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Greg Alexander: The reason why I wanted to talk about the law firms is because those characteristics, the profile, make up the majority of our members. What I mean by that is outside of the law profession, you might have one brilliant person, oftentimes the founder and CEO of the firm. Just through sheer will, charisma, grit, etc., and God-given talent, they grow the firm to a certain point. Then they have to replicate themselves in others, and they often think they can’t. They think it’s some kind of secret sauce. “Founder magic” is a term that they all use, and they can’t replicate themselves. I believe they can, and I feel that way because I’ve seen it happen time and time again. It sounds like your system is designed to solve that very thing, to take those people in the middle, to use your term, and turn them into effective rainmakers in and of themselves. Did I understand it correctly?
David Ackert: Yeah, that’s right. But I will say that most of the time in the seller-doer model, those people also have to be seller-doers. What I see happening a lot, and I see it in this Collective 54 community that you’ve built as well, is you’ve got founders, and they get to a certain point. They say, “Okay, now I’m ready for a sales team. So I’m going to hire a VP of sales. I’m going to hire full-time salespeople,” and they really struggle to do that handoff. At the end of the day, remember, you’re not selling customers. They don’t want to talk to salespeople. They want to talk to the seller-doers who are going to have something to do with the expertise that they will ultimately be buying.
Greg Alexander: Yep. Now there is a limitation to the model, so let’s be balanced here. The limitation is that if you’re a seller and a doer, there’s only so many hours in the day. Let’s say you’re going to work a 50-hour week. Well, if you’re spending 25 hours of those 50 hours delivering work for clients, that’s half the time you’re not out there making it rain. Those that advocate against the seller-doer model, and I do advocate against that in very specific situations, argue that limitation. So what would you say to that counterargument?
David Ackert: Two words: Big Four. Look at their model. They have plenty of people who are doers, but even the doers have a certain degree of their time dedicated to selling. They calibrate that based on their propensity for effective business development. Those who are really good at it, their billable requirements are almost zero, but they still have a little bit. They have to keep their hand in the game and have some oversight over major projects. They’re going to be doing the whale hunting, but most of their time and compensation is oriented around business development. Why? Because they’re great at it, and they need to be rewarded accordingly. What’s broken about the seller-doer model is the idea that everyone must do 1,200 hours a year of billable time to keep the lights on, and then hopefully, the people who have business development propensity will wedge more in just because they’re going to take one for the team. That’s nonsense. You need to calibrate the reward system to the behavior that not only plays to people’s strengths but also grows the organization.
Greg Alexander: Yeah, you know, if you think about those mega firms, even the McKinseys of the world outside of the Big Four, if you look at their pyramids, their career ladders, you start off as an associate, an analyst, a manager, a director, a managing director, a VP, etc. What changes as you go up the ladder? Well, there’s a point on the ladder where you have to bring in work. If you don’t bring in work, you get pushed out of the pyramid. The up-or-out system spits you out because you’re just a great expert who can deliver. If you want to make partner, that’s not enough.
David Ackert: Right, because at some point you’re going to want equity, and you’re going to want a piece of the pie. So you better be growing that pie.
Greg Alexander: Yeah, fantastic. All right, well, listen. Tell everybody how to get a copy of your book.
David Ackert: You can go to Amazon or Barnes and Noble. Ultimately, you just want to type in “The Short List.” “Short List” is two words. The subtitle is “How to Drive Business Development by Focusing on the People Who Matter Most.”
Greg Alexander: Okay, well, congratulations on publishing the book. I believe this is your first. Is that correct?
David Ackert: This is the first book. Yeah, we’re already an Amazon bestseller, so we’re doing good out of the gate.
Greg Alexander: Yeah, congratulations. I mean, I read it. It’s truly fantastic. I was glad to provide a quote to it, and we look forward to the private Collective 54 Q&A session which we’re going to have on Friday. On behalf of the community, thank you for being a member. Thank you for contributing to the community. We really appreciate it, David.
David Ackert: I appreciate what Collective 54 has been contributing back. It’s been a fantastic journey so far. Thanks for what you’ve built, Greg.
Greg Alexander: Okay, a couple of calls to action for listeners. If you’re not a member and you want to become one, go to collective54.com and fill out an application. We’ll get in contact with you. If you are a member and this topic, the seller-doer model and how to make it happen, is of interest to you, attend the role model session on Friday. You’ll have a chance to listen to more from David and ask your questions to him. That’s the end of the show. Until next time, I wish all of you the best of luck as you try to grow, scale, and someday exit your firm.
Note: This transcript was generated by Zoom.