I recently completed a webinar about business development, and one of the participants asked a follow-up question that I wanted to answer here. The question was, “What do you recommend professional service firms like ours have people do to build business?” We do see a number of answers that are going to be consistent for most firms.
In one category of business development, you want to generate leads, and there are two categories of things that we see your team members being able to do to generate leads. The first thing is for senior folks or subject matter experts; they can get out and speak. What you want to do is work with them, get clear on how you want your firm to be known, what value you want your firm to be known for, and look for opportunities to get your subject matter experts out there to talk about a project that they succeeded with recently, that communicates themselves, their team, or your firm.
The second activity is far broader than that. The way we see it, you can have just about every member of your firm, whether they’re client-facing or not, participate in representing the value of your firm wherever they go. Now, there are going to be two kinds of conversations that can be had by two kinds of folks in your organization. For those of your team members who do go to industry events, they can introduce themselves, they can communicate the value proposition of the firm, and they can get to know whoever they’re talking to and qualify those folks. In that process, they can determine, “Oh, this would be a good person for somebody in the firm to follow up with.”
For those members of your team who don’t go to conferences but get out of the house, get out of the organization in some way, I think you want them to be able to communicate the value proposition of your firm so that when they meet anyone else, if that person is a prospect, they can say, “Oh, I’d be interested in learning more about that.” Or if they know somebody who could be a strong prospect, they might say, “Hey, I’m next-door neighbors with somebody who you just described that you guys help. Could I make an introduction?”
Now, the next category of business development activities is follow-up. This might be a bit of a pet peeve of mine, but the idea is that you’ve generated leads, you’ve identified the right person within your organization to follow up with them, and it is critical, absolutely critical that that follow-up happens. And in this category, there are two key activities that have to happen. One is the near-term follow-up. And you want to get clear on this when the lead is generated, and then you want to get clear on how your team member is going to do it. Typically, the near-term follow-up is going to involve a one-to-one conversation in person or a phone call.
The other kind of follow-up activity is long-term. This is where you need to establish a keep-in-touch strategy for each of your prospects so that you can be top of mind when the time is right for them to work with you. And again, you want to be clear about your overall strategy with this, and then you want to get clear on what it looks like for each individual lead.
The next category of business development activity is pre-positioning, which involves actively working on an existing relationship after lead generation and qualification. This process entails building trust and fostering connections through regular communication and understanding the nature of their business, professional life, and personal life. It’s all about cultivating a relationship where both parties get to know each other.
Another category is listening for possibilities. This involves being attentive to potential opportunities, whether during pre-positioning or while working with existing clients. Your team members should be trained to identify these possibilities and connect potential clients with the appropriate team members who can provide value to their future projects.
Lastly, following up with existing clients and maintaining relationships is crucial for business development. Assign carefully selected team members to sustain these relationships over time, focusing on continued value provision for ongoing and future projects.
These are the major categories of business development activities. Feel free to share if there are any significant areas you’d like your team members to focus on that we might have overlooked.
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