And we’re back – this time with five additional ideas for business development elevation in your firm. These action initiatives will help you to take a next step up in growth, profit, and sustainable business success. I’m offering these as suggestions, but they’re really mandates. They must be done – in one form or another.(And if you haven’t yet read and onboarded our last post — with the first five ideas — do that now … read here.)
Ok, here we go …
Action Move 6: Educate Everyone in Marketing and Messaging
In top firms, marketing isn’t a department – it’s a movement. Extraordinary marketing is a mindset, a culture, and an organizational and organizing force. Given that, it’s puzzling that so many firms desperately under-leverage the asset they have – or might have.
We’ve long called the team (the staff of the firm) ‘Target Market #1’ – and highlighted that if the internal team doesn’t know, or doesn’t believe, then how can they sell anything to anyone else?
Few staff have had any real training in marketing as a subject, and few typically understand all there is to know about the firm itself (products, services, approaches, team, and differentiators).
What makes sense then is more basic training. Not necessarily a deep, expert understanding of the full subject – but instead (and at least) a general awareness of the basics, and how to help others connect the dots. Just enough to get or keep things moving, to overcome inertia, and ‘not invented here.’ Again, this isn’t about closing deals but opening new opportunities.
What we’ve developed (and delivered now many times over the years) is a ‘Marketing 101’ seminar (generally 2-4 hours in total) for all staff – with the basics of marketing, brand, positioning, differentiation, messaging, and key roles. This idea focuses on the team as ‘growth ambassadors’ of the firm – promoting awareness, confidence, engagement, and participation.
A second, related training effort – often conducted in-house by the firm’s own leaders – creates a more detailed awareness of what the organization actually does – products, services, projects, clients, departments, disciplines, and such. Many organizations have done some of this, but generally not enough. We’ve seen lots of one-offs, but sustained, institutionalized efforts are too rare. What the firm needs really needs is a repeatable product and process, delivered to staff on a regular, consistent basis.
Action Move 7: Go Deep in Teaching BD to the Professional Team
While general awareness training for all is important, it’s not enough for the professional seller-doer core. Good sales expertise and technique isn’t something most firms have a lot of – and outsourcing this effort to ‘salespeople’ usually doesn’t work well at all. In most firms, principals and other leading professionals will be those with more effective seller-doer skills – especially those with more “s” than “d.’ (yes, ‘d’ is important, but many more staff have that in hand).
Most technical staff are undertrained, under-prepared, and lack the confidence needed as the business growers of the future. Building BD acumen and experience across a broader range of staff is thus existentially important (there is hardly, we think, anything more important) – for the growth-oriented, future-focused firm.
So, you’ll need a comprehensive, full scope curriculum for business development training – including 10-12 contact hours (or more) of material on lead development, prospecting, positioning, pursuit strategy, closing, and ongoing client relationship development. Strategies and tactics. And not just basic vanilla stuff you can get from any sales training course or book – but stuff specifically translated and tailored to providers of professional services.
We’re biased, but we think this work is best led by professional training and development specialists (like us) with specific and relevant experience. (Be warned though: lots of folks who pitch marketing and sales training themselves, haven’t sold much of anything in their own businesses). You probably do have a few really good seller-doers in your firm – but they’re not necessary content or training experts (it’s been said that Mickey Mantle was lousy at teaching others how to bat). Further, your best seller-doers are undoubtedly busy (as they should be) with growing the business; we can involve them without overwhelming their calendar.
Action Move 8: Refine (or Redefine) Your Market:
Effective opportunity development doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and the context of any organization’s success isn’t static. Good marketing must be strategic, and thus it must be tied to the firm’s strategy. The best of firms return regularly to their strategic business plan and ask (over and over) if the focus of that plan is tied intentionally to the growth engine of the business: marketing, sales, organization delivery, client experience, team development, and so on.
If you try to serve everyone, you serve no one well.
Most professional firms are good at accreting new business that don’t at first fit. This comes naturally when smart people get together and ask the question “can we do this?” New project, new client, new market, new city … Almost none of these same people ever get together to ask the question “should we keep doing this?” or “what should we do instead of this?” It’s no wonder that firms grow through time to become more complex, more diverse, and less focused.
Every once in a while, you’ve just got to open the big door, clean out the garage, and have a sale right then and there.
Could your team today define (and then agree with one another) on which strategic markets the firm should focus on, what services make up the core of the offer, what locations the organization should invest in more (or less)? Is there a clear sense now of who the “ideal client” is, what the firm is actually after, what percent of current clients fit that definition, and where to go from here?
Remember, no matter how well-run your organization is today, the bottom 20% of clients still represent the bottom 20%. So – more strategy, more focus, more value, more profit.
Action Move 9: Rethink Growth Leadership and Team:
Who owns the “growth department” in your company? Is it all working well – just as you’d like?
When a professional firm considers an investment in its core discipline (like a law firm recruiting a new partner, or an engineering company promoting its next principal) it makes intuitive sense to spend as much as you can afford. Experience, expertise, and skills sets matter a lot – and are directly tied to contribution, impact, and business success. Nearly everyone agrees.
But consider a similar investment in any of the support areas of the business (marketing, human resources, accounting, Information technology) and you’re likely to find a different attitude – “how little investment can we get away with?”. This is the (age-old) over-head argument (and curse) that leads to underinvestment in also important experience, expertise, and skills. So, the receptionist begins working on marketing things, the bookkeeper becomes the accounting manager, the IT help desk guy is now the tech lead. It’s natural, but often shortsighted, with an inherent, built in risk: as the firm grows and evolves, it’s almost certain to develop beyond the capabilities of many of these support professionals. When that occurs, you’re left with a question: can these folks elevate to meet the new opportunity, or do you need different people to step up or step in?
With marketing, many firms have a very narrowly defined view of things – namely, finding, fielding, and responding to RFPs and other client-initiated efforts. At the other end of things, the firm may have someone responsible for “business development” – but again often with a narrow definition focused on certain types of prospects or clients. What’s missing (often) then in this organization are those who’ll define, design, and direct strategy (not tactics) in the effort.
We believe that this work – driven through the engine of the business development system – is one of the three most important efforts in the firm (the other two are project execution and people development) and that all of this must be powered with vision, strategy, and leadership.
So, again, we ask – where are you today in all of this? Do you have the growth and leadership team you need for the next two, three, or five years ahead?
Action Move 10: Build A True Business Development Culture.
Business development isn’t just an approach, a system, or a group of core processes. When right, it’s also a mindset, and a culture – at least in the top firms we’ve seen.
I’m almost reluctant to say it this way – it sounds so trivially easy. In reality, a true business development-focused culture is anything but, and it’s as rare in the professional firm as any unicorn or alien spacecraft. Extraordinarily challenging, and fundamentally elusive. And yet – again, we think its existentially important.
My own working definition of culture is this: ‘people doing the right things, even when no one else is looking.’ To accomplish this, all staff must know what business development really is (through and through); they must understand how human relationships develop and influence happens; they need to have the firm’s products and services offerings and capabilities in mind; and they must exhibit the confidence to step in, be curious, ask questions, and serve. And that’s a tall order for even 10% of the staff – much less nearly all of them.
Most professional organizations are filled with staff highly competent in the core disciplines (architecture, planning, design, environmental science, law, medicine). Way too few have the people and client skills necessary to contribute at a high level to the growth machine. Still, a firm in which most of this business development magic is held by just a few heroic rainmakers – is not a firm that’s set up for growth, acceleration, and future, sustainable success.
I encourage you to look around in your organization today. Who is leading your growth efforts? Who’s actually doing the work, carrying the load of lead identification, prospect nurturing, and client relationship management? Are more people getting involved over time, or less? Are key people not only digging their own holes, but also teaching people how to dig their holes – training, mentoring, coaching? Are you working to create and uplevel a growth mindset and acumen at scale – all over and across the firm?
Do you really, truly, exhibit a strong business development culture?
A Final Thought: Don’t Begin Tomorrow:
Let me go first and admit this: I’m guilty too.
Guilty of being too busy with today’s business, opportunities, and headaches. Too busy cashing checks because they’re right here, right now. Too busy to better scale my own firm by involving and investing in other people.
Too willing wait one more day before addressing the longer-term strategies that we’ve already defined – and chiseled into our own vision story-stone.
So, I do get it.
That said (and you know where I’m headed with this) – it’s one thing to put off something important just because today is a nightmare. We do have short term priorities, unexpected challenges, and real emergencies. Things that must be done or must be addressed. That’s just real life.
But, if we do this day after day, week after week, and year end and year out – then all-too-soon we’ll look back (and likely with regret) at all of the missed opportunity, misaligned focus, and constant chasing of the dreams of others. We’ll realize we’ve been on a ride – sometimes exciting and even exhilarating – but we’ve not been driving. We’re now somewhere else, in the wrong city, the wrong country, wrong world. And by then it’s too late.
The rough math is this: you have about 250 workdays (or 2000 hours) each year. You begin working at about 25 years old, and end at 65. Forty years. All total, that’s 10,000 days in a career.
How many of those 10,000 days will be important to you – days when you do something truly meaningful, when you make a decision, or a change, or lean into something truly magical –that transforms you, your team, and the firm itself? Something that will last.
Mentoring, equipping, and leading a new generation of hungry disciples into the world human connection and influence, extraordinary project delivery, amazing client delight, and profitable business growth – this is a mission worthy of us all. If you’re already acting in some of the areas above, fantastic! Now, do more! If you’re not doing much, or enough in these areas, that’s OK – as long as you begin today (and not tomorrow) to take real action.
And if you need help, advice, support – give us a ring. We’re on this same journey as well – and sometimes just a step or two ahead.
We believe that most all of us (as individual, extraordinary professionals) have most of what we need already onboard – to become something more, something extraordinary. Agree?
If so, let’s get to it. Let’s be extraordinary.
