In my experience the bulk of business development work tends to fall upon one or two individuals, who are seen as rainmakers and good at ‘marketing and selling’. Think about your firm, or firms you know… rainmakers often have an official (or unofficial) title of business development partner or have been given a high, compared to other people, new business target.
In my view, business development is a team activity that every member of the firm should play a part in. I have yet to find a firm which gives everyone a target for business development activity – often marketing effort is expected to occur in employees and partner’s own time. Very often gaining partnership in a firm is recognition of an ability to win business. However in many professional practices you are expected to ‘magically’ be able to do business development. If you are given a very high billable hour’s target, how can you be expected to experiment, learn and develop business development skills?
Often business development is seen to be solely the writing of proposals and pitching for work. In reality business development activity is anything that contributes to winning new business; this is everything from generating interest and awareness in the firm’s products and services, through to the glory moments of winning a competitive pitch.
This could be:
- Networking – both face-to-face and on-line
- Writing articles
- Speaking engagements
- Organising and running seminars (both face-to-face and teleseminars)
- Conducting proprietary research
- Spending time with existing clients getting to know them better
- Market research
- Attending industry conferences to understand new needs within the industry
- Writing proposals
- Writing and delivering pitches
If you read through the list of non-chargeable activities which contribute to business development, there is something for everyone. The true technical specialists within the firm may relish the opportunity to write articles and contribute to on-line forums – but would be like a duck out of water if asked to go in and ‘sell’ to a client. (You probably wouldn’t want them in front of a client ‘selling’ as well!) The ‘sellers’ may get bored rigid conducting proprietary research, but love the opportunity to go out face-to-face networking.
If you think about you and your practice, how have you divvied up your business development efforts between the whole team?
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