The full article is below the video summary.
This is one of my 12 beliefs about business development. It won’t be popular with everyone, but it reflects the reality for professional services firms that want to maximise growth opportunities, reduce the risk of depending on ‘the few’, and help individuals progress their careers.
In this article, I’ll look at:
- Why client-facing people are best placed to do business development
- Why this matters for firms
- Why this matters for careers
- How firms can get started
- How individuals can get started
1. Why client-facing people are the best people to do business development
Client-facing individuals know their specialist area of expertise. Listening to prospective and existing clients to understand what they need, explaining how you can help, and demonstrating your credibility for doing so (as well as explaining to introducers how you can support their clients) are best done by the people who actually deliver the work.
For those who work with clients regularly, it’s important to be able to articulate the value you bring. This is often a risk you mitigate, a benefit you create, or a challenge you solve.
A simple example illustrates this. Everyone can benefit from having a will, but why do they really need one? To ensure that the people they care about are recognised when they pass away and that their assets are distributed as they wish. It’s not really about the legal document itself.
As a client-facing professional, you are best placed to understand a client’s needs and explain how you can help—provided you develop the skills to articulate this clearly and engage with people effectively.
People buy people. Even in business-to-business professional services, clients think about who they will actually be working with.
There are many professionals with similar expertise. Prospective clients will assess whether you are competent, but they are also asking themselves:
- Will this person understand my situation?
- Will they communicate clearly?
- Will they be easy to work with?
It’s almost impossible for someone else to represent client-facing professionals entirely. Some firms have business developers whose role is to raise awareness of the firm, identify potential clients and introducers, support strategy and contribute to pitching. But client-facing individuals remain best placed to build relationships with existing clients, prospective clients and introducers.
2. Why this is important for firms
Where a business development culture doesn’t exist, meaning the majority of client-facing individuals contribute to business development as part of business as usual – firms are not maximising their opportunities.
This doesn’t mean everyone needs to carry out every business development activity themselves, but they should contribute to it. For example, junior team members could research potential introducers or help compile lists of clients where a more structured contact strategy would be beneficial.
Involving junior people early also helps them become comfortable with business development. It reduces risk for the firm too. If a firm depends heavily on only a few individuals, there can be a significant impact if those people suddenly become unavailable.
Firms with a strong and dynamic business development culture also tend to develop their people well, which often helps attract and retain talented individuals.
3. Why this is important for careers
If you’re reading this as an individual and you’re not yet involved in business development, now is the best time to start, unless you plan to stay in exactly the same role indefinitely.
Most senior client-facing roles come with an expectation that you will contribute to business development.
It takes time to build relationships and develop the habits that support business development. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. You can’t suddenly start from scratch and expect immediate results. It’s a bit like expecting a glass of water when there’s no plumbing in the building.
The earlier you start in your career, the better. It becomes part of your role rather than something that feels like an added pressure later on, or something you feel unprepared for. Confidence comes from practice.
I often see individuals who want to be promoted to Partner or another senior role being told they need to strengthen their business development first. That can delay promotion by a year or more. Technical ability alone isn’t, and shouldn’t be, enough for senior leadership roles.
4. How to get started as a firm
Start with your firm’s strategy and vision: where does it want to be in the next two to five years?
Two practical ways to approach business development differently are:
1. Involve junior people early
Consider how junior team members can support senior colleagues with business development activities while also beginning to build their own networks. This might include strengthening internal relationships as well as maintaining connections with people they already know externally—such as former work experience contacts or university peers.
2. Approach business development by department or practice group
Firms may launch a firm-wide initiative to improve business development, but the strategy and plans will ultimately differ across teams because services, sectors and client bases vary.
Taking a practice group approach makes activity more focused and manageable. While some principles of business development apply across the firm, the way they are applied will differ between teams.
5. How to get started as an individual
What you can do will depend on your level of seniority.
If you are in a leadership position, consider where your firm currently sits and what the next steps might be. My recent article, What is business development really like at your firm?, may help you think this through.
If you are more junior, think about actions you can take to raise your profile and support senior colleagues with business development. My framework, The 5 Ps of Proactive Business Development©, can help you work through this. You may find it useful to ‘traffic light’ each of the five Ps to identify where to focus first.
What’s next for you?
If you are client-facing, business development needs to be part of your role.
Firms may have dedicated business development professionals, and they can be extremely helpful. But they cannot build relationships with clients on your behalf.
Clients want to know the people who will actually be helping them realise opportunities, mitigate risks or solve challenges.
Which is why this belief matters: if you are client-facing, business development is not optional, it’s essential.
If you are in a leadership position at your firm, imagine the difference if even 20% more of your client-facing team contributed to business development activities—never mind 50–70%.
When firms address why business development matters (for both the firm and individuals), what needs to happen, and how to make it work, meaningful change becomes possible.
Structured, skilled & people-centred
This article explores some of the key elements that drive successful business development.
They come from my proven framework, The 5 Ps of Proactive Business Development© – the key practical elements to help professionals win more work by being intentional and consistent.
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