What are the benefits of having a structured approach to business development?

Having a systematic, structured approach to business development can feel time-consuming. Often, the firms I talk to are concerned about the time that needs to be invested to get this right.

Specific business development skills training, such as networking skills or how to cross-sell, is highly valuable. However, it should support a structured approach to business development and include skills that people will have the opportunity to use soon after the training, so individuals get to practise those skills and form new habits, rather than the training being simply interesting and thought-provoking, but with no clear next step.

There should be a direct link between what action you want your people to take and the training that gets agreed and delivered to support them in doing so.

It is true that establishing a structured approach to business development (a Business Development Culture in my terminology) takes upfront time investment, but once your firm and the departments/teams within it have a structured approach, it will pay huge dividends for many years to come.

The time spent establishing a Business Development Culture is like constructing the strong foundations of a building. It’s a long-term solution rather than a short-term fix. A building without strong foundations will go up quicker, but it won’t last as long and will require more maintenance.

A structured approach to business development supports more consistent, sustainable revenue over time.

What are the key benefits of having a structured approach to business development?

• It creates a firm-wide mindset rather than a departmental-only or, worse still, individually focused mindset.
• It gets people to think clearly about which services they want to focus on and for which clients — services that are profitable, use the firm’s expertise and those that are in demand in the market. Without this focus, business development will be random and have limited success. It’s impossible to talk meaningfully to potential clients and introducers about a long list of services.
• People are aligned; they know why business development is important, what the focus is and what their contribution needs to be.
• It sets out clearly which business development activities will be implemented, who will be responsible for each action, and how activity and success will be measured.
• It means even if only a short amount of time is available for business development, individuals will be more motivated to do something, and what they do will be easy to decide, as it’s the next step on the plan, rather than an ad hoc activity. An example might be building a list of existing clients to reconnect with rather than posting a random LinkedIn update.

These benefits add up to a focused plan that involves more people (and gets junior people engaged earlier), reducing the risk that only a small number of people shoulder all the business development responsibility and making it easier and more motivating for individuals to take business development action. This supports more consistent, reliable revenue over the long term.

How to get started

• Remember this is a journey and it will involve change and time investment – more time upfront and some ongoing.
• Explain clearly to your people why more commitment to business development is needed. What’s in it for them? (This is a key consideration to make sure a Business Development Culture becomes business as usual.)
• Agree the key services you want each team to talk to the market about according to profitability, expertise and market demand. Also, consider the ideal client profile for each.
• Develop a business development activity plan that is broken into manageable actions with responsibility allocated and activity and outcome measurement defined. Top tip: Avoid trying to do too many activities at once; doing fewer things well is far more effective. It’s also important to use people’s strengths for different activities.
• Consider what needs to happen to embed business development in your firm. For instance, reviewing progress, sharing ideas and learnings, and the impact on other business processes such as recruitment and appraisals.
• Finally, consider which skills your team need to be able to implement the plan.

The term ‘fail to plan, plan to fail’ is probably extreme in this case. Some business development activity is better than none. However, having a focused plan where there is alignment and commitment will achieve much better results than a few people doing occasional ad hoc business development activity.

Do you have a structured approach to business development? If not, what is missing? What more could your firm achieve with some upfront time investment?

If you want to achieve more from your business development efforts and are willing to consider time and financial investment, take time to reflect on these questions.

If you’d like to talk it through, then feel free to get in touch.