What Should Your Team Be Doing?

What Do You Actually Want Your BD Team to Do?

I find myself having the same conversation with business development leaders over and over again inside professional-services firms.

The question is simple:

What exactly do you want your client-facing team members to do?

And surprisingly, it’s often hard to answer clearly.

I hear things like:

• “Get out there and meet people.”
• “Build relationships.”
• “Talk about the firm.”
• “Follow up and provide value.”

All good intentions. All directionally correct.

But also… pretty fuzzy.

Clarity Drives Performance

If you want your team to succeed in business development training and business development coaching, they need more than general guidance. They need clarity.

That clarity starts with the fundamentals:

• Can you clearly articulate your firm’s value proposition?
• Do you know exactly who you serve?
• Can your team explain the problems you solve and the outcomes you create?

This is not just a marketing exercise. This is the foundation of business speaking and confident presence in the field.

If your team can’t easily communicate what your firm does and why it matters, they’re going to struggle to build meaningful connections.

Define the Right Conversations

The next layer is about focus.

Who do you actually want your team talking to?

What does a strong prospect look like?

When they’re in conversation, what is the goal?

• Are they qualifying the opportunity?
• Are they building the relationship?
• Are they positioning the firm for a future pursuit?

These are critical questions in networking training and networking skills development. Without clear answers, your team is left to guess—and that leads to inconsistency.

Ownership Matters

Another area where things often get blurred is ownership.

At what point does a relationship belong to that team member?

At what point do they hand it off?

How much of the sales pitch coaching and pursuit process are they responsible for?

These decisions shape behavior.

If your team doesn’t know where their responsibility starts and ends, they will either overstep—or disengage.

Map the Entire Client Journey

The most effective BD leaders think beyond individual interactions. They think about the entire lifecycle of a client relationship.

From:

• Initial awareness
• To early conversations
• To active pursuit and shortlist interview training
• To winning the work
• To long-term client partnership

At each stage, the question is the same:

Who is responsible for doing what?

This is where AEC interview preparation, group presentation coaching, and presentation support all come together. Each phase requires different skills, different behaviors, and different ownership.

From Intuition to Intentional Process

Many experienced BD leaders operate on instinct. They know what works because they’ve lived it.

But that intuition doesn’t automatically translate to the rest of the team.

To scale success, you have to move from instinct to intention.

That means defining:

• The message
• The audience
• The actions
• The ownership

And then reinforcing those expectations through leadership presence coaching and consistent communication.

Set Your Team Up to Win

If you want your BD efforts to improve, don’t just tell your team to “get out there.”

Give them a clear path.

Define what success looks like at each stage of the process. Clarify who owns what. Equip them with the language and tools to communicate effectively.

Because when your team knows exactly what to do—and how to do it—they show up differently.

They engage with more confident presence. They build stronger relationships. And they create more consistent results.

Make It Clear. Make It Repeatable.

At the end of the day, great business development isn’t just about talent.

It’s about clarity.

And as a leader, that clarity starts with you.

Define the process. Define the roles. Define the expectations.

Then watch what happens when your team finally has something clear to execute against.