It’s late summer – 2011. How does your company (and your desk) look right now?
Across the years, I found this time – late summer – to be an important point of recharge and renewal. I’m invigorated by the ‘back-to-school’ energy, and promise of the coming Fall. It’s a good time for review and adjusting the business plan – highlighting important goals still left to be done this year. Likewise, it’s a good time to update the business development plan – focusing on clients and prospects I’d like to connect with in the next sixty days.
Some AEC firms are always busy this time of year -particularly those with heavy construction and/or other field-oriented activities. Other firms wrestle each summer to maintain their productivity as key client contacts are themselves lost to holiday and vacation focus. Still others are unpredictable – busy in some summers, less so in others.
However – beyond current activity – most CEOs, CFOs, and other senior leaders I speak with today voice real concern for the declining level of backlog in their firms. I’ve heard this in all sorts of companies- large and small, generalist and specialist, those just keeping busy and those completely overwhelmed. Backlog is shrinking, and bringing with it considerable angst. This change is the result of several factors – including insufficient project funding, political gridlock, and economic uncertainty in the nation and the world. Other factors are more structural (and perhaps permanent) – a rapidly evolving marketplace, increasingly characterized by customer-driven schedules, last-minute decisions, and near-constant business volatility.
So, what to do? It is for me a common theme, but let me share it again: success-oriented professionals must stay focused on what they (and their organizations) can control – and not on factors they can’t. In the topsy-turvy, upside down and inside out, Fast Future world ahead of us -staying focused on the plan is incredibly important – and as valuable as gold.
Perhaps now – late summer – is the time to update your own personal business development plan – to review, renew, and recommit? Here are five areas where business development action can Excelerate your personal success:
- Audience – the best of marketing efforts fall flat without a focused and targeted audience of clients, prospects, and partners. Professionals should always be adding new contacts to their audience. Now is a good time to add 20, 50, or 100 new contacts to your list. Use a database that works for you – Salesforce, ACT, Outlook – but make sure to link and share your contacts with the firm’s CRM system.
- Message – most organizations desperately need to update and refocus their core message -pointing more directly to the key “hot button” issues of today’s clients. AEC markets are not ‘business as usual:’ many have slowed dramatically, have very uncertain outlooks, or are in complete disarray. The professional’s message must address this and other new market realities. Client work will continue to get done – but ever more so by providers who understand and speak to this new world order.
- Content– successful professionals reinforce their value through writing and speaking on technical issues, capabilities, and solutions. It’s not enough to sit and wait – for the phone to ring, for e-mail inquiries, for the economic recovery. A simple start: choose a topic within your professional expertise, develop an outline for 4-5 related articles (800-1000 words each), and draft these (one per week) over the next month. Publish the articles individually on the company website (look also for opportunities to publish elsewhere- client, trade, and business venues abound). Finally, combine the series into one larger piece – a white paper or e-book – and subsequently publish this as well.
- Plan – quickly review and update specifically all business development plans in place: project/opportunity plans, client/account plans, market plans, and/or personal activity plans – whatever it is you have and use. Focus on very short-term activities – initiatives over the next sixty days. With a little commitment, each and every technical professional could add an extra connection (phone call, e-mail, or social media connect) each day – and that’s fifty additional connections by Halloween.
- System – now is also a good time to update and strengthen your business development system – e.g. how you plan, manage, and improve your own business development efforts and results. In particular, professionals should look now to build additional business development acumen and skill. Even the best of sales professionals benefit from regular training, mentoring, and coaching.
Professionals often avoid business development until it’s absolutely necessary. Most firms are at this point now- in critical need of more business (and thus in critical need of more business development, and from more people in the firm). It’s easy to over-complicate the response, but personal business development success really boils down to direct effort in these five areas: 1) building a target audience, 2) crafting a core message of client value, 3) creating relevant and interesting content that demonstrates client value, 4) developing and executing an action plan of contact, communication, and connection, and 4) systematically managing and improving the comprehensive business development effort.
It’s not complex – just difficult to execute and achieve. (But it’s not likely to get any easier anytime soon). So, my best advice is to start small (with these ideas) – but to start now. If you’d like some more specific advice, or suggested and targeted action – please give us a call.
It’s late summer, and time to get busy – to Excelerate your own personal and professional development success.
Good Hunting!
John
