9 Business Development Strategies

It is not a secret.

Business development strategies for professionals are changing. Old strategies that have worked for many years are losing their effectiveness and fierce.

There is a clear switch for new strategies that can bring new exciting opportunities for professionals and help them grow their practice faster.

In the professional business world, you’re only as good as the business development strategies you use. New tools and their rapid evolution have had an increasing impact on the way professionals developing their practice.

Here are the top 9 strategic opportunities that you may want to consider to boost and switch your practice business development in 2018:

1. Identify & Separate Business Development and Marketing

 

It seems that many more professionals and professionals firms understand the importance of business development to grow their practice.

Many of them start to separate and Switch the business development responsibilities out of the marketing personnel into the hands of special BD manager and even partly (or completely) back to the hands of the professionals.

This is a very interesting development (and very unique in some jurisdictions) and I warmly encourage it, specifically because professional business development (and even international business development of the practice) demands a totally different set of skills and completely different mindset.

When we deal with business development – we speak about building and nurturing the relationships with potential clients, referral sources, strategic alliances etc.

While the core efforts of marketing are only about being found, as a professional (offline and online).

That explains why nowadays, joining a professional network as a professional is not enough. A network can, in the best cases, help professional with the marketing efforts (assuming the people within the network supporting these efforts have marketing experience!).

But no wonder these marketing efforts do not lead to actual work, in many cases.

For these marketing efforts to lead to actual work, however, these efforts should be supported by business development, within the professional network or within the professional practice. And this part in most cases is missing!

It demands a dedicated personnel to develop and nurture the relationships with the potential clients.

We believe that from 2018 many professional will Switch away from the traditional marketing to a more marketing-business development approach that helps them in the complete cycle of their practice growth.

 

2. Insert the Business Development as part of the Client engagement process

 

The opportunity for professionals is to use business development as important part of the client relationships and client engagement process.

As you learn more about the prospect, your interaction with the prospect could (and actually should) be more tailor-made and personal.

For example, you can invite them to a special event organize by you to like-minded prospects or you can send an item of value to them – an interesting book that can give some valuable input; invite them to join you to a seminar etc.

In this way, your business development efforts not only be more efficient but also more joyful and easy part of your day-to-day operation. Moreover, you continue to be on top of their mind.

3. Implement “Attentional Leadership”

 

We are living in a time that many things demand our time and our attention.

While marketing in our days is all about “Getting Attention”, business development is more about “Giving Attention”.

 

As content has grown increasingly abundant and immediately available, attention becomes the limiting factor in the consumption of information, also by your prospects and connections.

As a leader of your practice, you should learn to practice “Attention Leadership” as part of the business development of your practice.

That means, that you learn to give Attention to your connections to stand out. 

This attention will be used by your connections (actually by their brain) to filter out the most important information from a large pool of information surrounding the human in the digital age (including information from your competitors that are trying to get their attention).

This approach also will help and stimulate the participation of many professionals in your practice that will need to “pay their attention”.

4. Niche your practice and your BD efforts

 

In this ultra-competitive professional marketplace, professionals are realizing a more effective approach to business development is focusing on a narrower group of prospects to guarantee success.

Actually, from a practical point of view, it will also be more efficient and right to invest your time in building relationships with a specific group of potential clients. 

Anyway, it is proven that every individual is able to sustain a limited number of stable or meaningful social relationship (usually considered to be roughly 150 – It called  “Dunbar’s number” – you can read a separate post I wrote about it here).

I trust you agree, that It is better to build a narrow and deep approach to business development rather than being wide and shallow.

 

5. Know your BD ROI numbers

 

It seems that many professionals cannot point to the direct results and accurate ROI from each business development initiative within the practice.

It is time to change it. You need to learn to Switch on this measurement.

Why?

First, it will help you reveal what works and what doesn’t. No more guessing. You should double down on things that works and stop business development project that do not bring any or not enough ROI to you and your practice.

I should mention that within a professional practice, ROI should not only be measured by monetary parameters [but that for another post].

Second, the secret of growth of your practice in by knowing your numbers, Your ROI on the business development efforts is very important part of your practice numbers.

 

Professionals who know their business development ROI numbers have a tremendous advantage over those who do not. The business development ROI number tell a story–and understanding the story behind your numbers can be one of the most important ingredients for long-term business development success.

6. Switch from practice-focused to client-focused

 

Many professionals get the opportunity to participate in a request for proposal to clients with complex matters in their area of expertise.

This is if you did not realize until now, a great opportunity for you as a professional to boost your practice business development.

How? By taking a more strategic approach for this projects.

In other words, instead of pitching only on your specific capabilities, add more your strategic approach of dealing with this client matters and serving their needs. Convey that you understand complex client problems, and share how you’ve resolved issues for similar clients.

This is again a switch from focusing just on your practice (the ‘getting attention’ approach), as many professional mistakenly do, to showcasing client issues or case studies (the ‘giving attention’ approach), which is more client-focused.

7. Create a systems approach

 

Increasingly, many professional looking for ways to generate new clients leads and prospects for their practice.

Many professionals see this task as the heart of their business development approach.

These coming years, will mark a significant switch in the way professionals will address this need.

Based on our services in the last 2 years to many professional firms, many choose to adopt and help them implement a lead generation system as part of their business development of the practice.

This system includes generating contacts through content distribution in the right channels (not only online but also offline), tracking activities with key prospects, measuring the results in different stages of the client engagement process, and analyzing data to identify potential clients.

All important tasks that will become more useful and give the professionals who use them a significant advantage over their competitors.

8. Stand out & Differentiate

 

If I ask you what are you known for? What is your firm known for? Do you know the answer?

Without using any slogan, like “we are more professional” or “we reply fast” are you aware of your sustainable advantage?

You need to learn to stand out and differentiate your firm also by its innovative business development approach.

Focusing your business development efforts also to help you stand out in the marketplace and get the right exposure, will help you to attract new clients as well as a global industry recognition.

9. Look for new revenue opportunities

 

Is that something you have in mind as professional?

Many of your connections, people in your network that like an trust you, are willing to pay you money now if you share with them your knowledge, experience, ideas etc.

We have proved that again and again in the last years with many professionals.

For example, we help a firm to conduct a special training in their area of expertise to their clients. Their clients enjoyed it so much, so we helped them to develop a new internal (online) training that was marketed to their clients. It created a new 6 figure profit center for the firm.

You can learn (and we believe you should learn) how to effectively turn a cost center in your practice into a new profit center.

The only thing you need to be able to succeed in that – is to have the right mindset, keeping your self-open.

 

LAST WORD

 

We see an interesting change in the business development market of professionals. This change is based on the wide access many clients get nowadays directly to professionals globally.

Macro-trends indicate that clients have made fundamental changes to the ways they purchase professional services, which has driven professionals to embrace new approaches to business development.

What do these strategies mean for your practice? Here are a couple of key implications:

• The days of trying to be everything to everyone are numbered. The newer strategies favor the specialist professionals.
• As professionals, you need to combine both online and offline business development strategies. Do not ignore any of them.
• Professional competence and excellent client service is no longer enough. They are merely the cost of entry. Your firm must develop a robust business development capability if it is to compete effectively.

We are certain that professionals who best adapt their strategies to these market conditions and execute on well-defined strategies we shared in this short post will make the most progress in maturing their business development evolution in 2018 and beyond!

Which strategy is the most appealing to you? Which strategy are you planning to implement right away? Please share your input.