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Professional Services Business Development
Selling Professional Services is Different. It takes sustained effort to engage the business development team, high commitment from the partners and a performance monitoring methodology to make it work. In most professional services practices we see:
- Intermittent Business Development –
everyone commits to one or two seminars then forgets about
business development for the rest of the year
- Feast and Famine – too much work
then too little. This is typically linked to intermittent
business development but the causal link is not clear within
the firm
- Cross selling - very rarely. Leads are
rarely generated and when they are, follow up is poor
- Practice Leverage – most chartered
professionals fail to leverage other practices within the
firm. The client is therefore left with a view that the
firm is only as good as the last service provided and will
not engage with other practices
- An historical view that “selling”
is not appropriate
- Over reliance that the brand will bring
business through referral work
The Plan Backed by a Methodology
Sustained Behavioural Change
Value to the Organisation
The reasons why these factors are well known but seldom acted
on is that business development programs are difficult to
sustain. Staff who sell services are often those delivering
services. They get distracted by assignments which can be
billed. They have pressing client needs. When the individuals
finally get a break in billable work, they stare down the
abyss of an empty pipeline, not enough work. With lead times
varying from instant engagement to several months, the pressure
to bill then increases to fever pitch with negative consequences
for the individual often resulting in poor quality of life
both within the firm and at home.
There are no simple fixes for this dilemma without a methodology.
Many Professional Service firms have instigated short term
programs that need to be re-invented each time. Partners get
enthusiastic, staff act in response to the partners. Everyone
is appalled to find the program in disarray after a few months.
Enthusiasm declines and reinvigorating any program becomes
infinitely more difficult with a pessimistic audience.
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The Plan Backed by a Methodology
When selling professional services, a plan is needed to drive
your business development effort. Once you have a plan, you
need to make all relevant staff understand their part of the
business development program. Staff must understand their
contribution to the plan and what they need to do to achieve
the plan. At PeopleStreme, we assist clients in producing their business
development plan and then define the behaviours that each
person will play in order to achieve the plan. For example,
a typical objective for the partners would be one referral
lead per month. These objectives are typically defined for
all aspects of business development including the following:
- Fee Budget
- Account Management (farming)
- New Business (hunting)
- Initiatives
- Activity
The objectives are then loaded into SSD Professional Practice
which provides the methodology and system for driving the
desired behaviour and measuring the achievement of these objectives.
This multi dimension focus ensures you are making progress
on all dimensions of person's business development objectives,
not just on billable hours.
Benefits to the Partners:
- Increased accountability for business
development throughout the firm
- Get the team to do what they should be
doing
- Ensure they keep doing it
- Reduce you effort in reviewing their progress.
The structured approach means you can review and set new
objectives very quickly
- Finally the new way to manage business
development with full reporting
Those trained in sophisticated management will recognize
the methodology, its heritage in performance management and
the power the methodology has to consistently drive business
development.
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Sustained Behavioural Change
Professional Services firms have very little latitude to
drive business development behaviour through traditional means
such as remuneration and consequence management. This is because
remuneration is typically based around billable hours, not
business development.
This is one of the major reasons why business development
is sporadic in professional services firms, the industry has
a standard remuneration expectation that is not based around
incenting for new business development. Therefore to achieve
sustained behavioural change, you need a systematic way of
driving behaviour to unsure you have long term change.
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Value to the Organisation
By implementing SSD for Professional Practice, the partners
now have a way to drive sustained behavioural change within
the firm that focuses individuals on the business development
program. By measuring an individual against their objectives,
you get certainty as to what was achieved and what was not.
Everyone knows what is expected of them and that they will
be reviewed against their objectives each month. Most professionals
aggressively change their behaviour to ensure success at the
review.
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Summary
PeopleStreme provide a clean tight framework to drive business development
for firms selling Professional Services. The methodology stems
from tried and tested Performance Management techniques complemented
by extensive business development expertise, specifically
tailored to Professional Practice.
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