Developing An Effective Business Development Strategy
Many professional service firms put themselves at risk by only focusing on one single approach to business development. It could be networking or SEO, it could be word of mouth and referrals. Typically, it’s whatever they feel the most comfortable with, not necessarily the approach that will actually work the best to bring them in new clients.
This works fine when times are good and there’s plenty of work for everyone. However, when times get tough, if that single source stops working, they’re left high and dry.
My suggestion to clients is to protect against this by always having multiple approaches to win new clients. In particular, I suggest a Business Development Strategy which focuses on 4 types of client:
1. Current Clients: investing in “superpleasing” their highest potential current clients to secure their business, win expansion and extension projects, and get referrals to new clients. To do this, a Key Account Management or Client Relationship Management approach must be used.
2. High Probability Potential Clients: targeting 3-5 specific companies which meet the core criteria for being a good client ( in terms of their size, sector, location, leadership, cultural fit, etc.) and where there are alredy pre-exisiting relationships to increase the chances of winning work. For example, an ex client, or a contact that’s been nurtured over recent months. This requires the use of personal approaches – either direct contact with the potential client where there’s a pre-existing relationship, or asking for a referral if there isn’t one.
3. Ideal Potential Clients: focusing on 3-5 specific, named businesses who meet or exceed all the criteria for an ideal client – but where there’s no pre-existing relationship whcih could be leveraged to increase the chance of a sale. This, of course, is a long-term approach. It requires them to begin nurtuirng their relationship with the client – perhaps offering to run a seminar for free, or sending them a sequence of high value articles and ideas.
4. “Bluebirds”: the seemingly serendipitous clients that “drop in your lap” rather than being directly targeted. How can you attract and win business with these types of client? By having a method of getting in front of a broad range of prospects. E.g. speaking at seminars at client industry conferences, or optimising your website for keywords you know your potential clients use. Here, the trick is to find tactics which open up a broad range of potential clients, rather than the narrow focus of the previous approaches.
The starting point should always be to win more work from your current clients. Because they already know and trust you, the likelihood of winning new business is so much higher than with a “cold” or even “warm” prospect. After that, it’s important to use a portfolio approach. Balance the greater probability of success with a High Probability prospect with the higher potential of an Ideal Prospect. Wherever possible, still try to leave the possibility of a nice “bluebird” by having one of these channels live.
Bigger firms, able to invest more into marketing, can expand on this strategy simply by adding more individual names to the lists of current, high probability and ideal potential clients; or by adding and extra “bluebird” channel.
My advice for most firms though is to always add resources in that order. For many professionals, the “bluebird” channels (e.g. web, speaking, articles) are seductive ones as they offer the hope of attractive new clients without the challenge of personally engaging in the process. Resist the urge to focus too much effort on these channels – the most successful Business Development Strategy will focus on the more targeted, personal approaches.










