,

Picking Your New Business Development Program Apart

The New Business Development continuum is a long and winding one…but when set up well, and managed effectively, it can deliver great things to your Professional Services firm.

The new business development process and your new business program overall can be broken down into three distinct, but overlapping components:

  1. Your Prospecting Process
  2. Your Market Facing Position
  3. Your Closing Effectiveness

Shoring up one or two without building up the other(s) won’t win the day for any firm.

Might look and sound really good!

You can have the greatest and most well-tech stack supported new business development process in the world, but if your front face/market face isn’t optimized, prospects are going to come to your site or hear/see your messaging and will not be impressed.

Our outsourced new business programs for Professional Services firms can drive leads to a client’s site all day long, but if what they see when they get there doesn’t match the expectations of what they’ve been sold, they’re probably lost for life.

He seemed so handsome!

Or you can look marvelous to the outside world – your website and AI optimized messages can be near perfect, but if what I see when I meet you and have you pitch or present to me, doesn’t line up with what I had been sold, it’s makes for a hard sell.

It’s kind of like when I first started in advertising and our agency, DDB Needham, had the Sears account.  It was during a time when Sears was spinning downward and they wanted an agency to build them up.  We made them look beautiful…so inviting!  Problem was when customers walked into the store, it was the same old Sears.

Same holds true here. You can put lipstick on a pig…but at the end of the day, it may just be, the same old pig.

So what does a Professional Services firm do?

Shore up your process

  • Technology support is key.  Both in terms of making the activity of outreach more efficient and in terms of giving you the intel you need to stay a step ahead of competition.
  • Identify the right person. The principal typically doesn’t have a lot of time and the account executive isn’t really a hunter.  Talk to your people and see who has interest in sales – you might be surprised.
  • Get organized. Employ an easy-to-use CRM, identify a reputable list source, plan your weeks ahead of their start, organize messaging by type of prospect or sector you’re pursuing.

Better your market facing position

  • Why did they buy?  Think about your last few competitive wins.  Why did you win?  It’s answers to questions like that, that can help shape your firm’s positioning.  Without a meaningful point of difference that’s easily articulated, it’s going to be tough to get prospects to pay attention.
  • Are you being consistent? Is why you win reflected on your site…and across all the customer-facing touch points prospects come in contact with?

Optimized to close

  • Is it all about them? Don’t “yell and tell and sell” how great you are.  Make your presentations and your RFP responses about the prospect you want to work with…not so much about you.
  • Making it easy.  Have you made it easy for prospects to understand what you’re trying to sell them or are you overly complicating it?
  • Do you have the right people?  Bringing the right people into a pitch/presentation is critical.  And just having folks who serve as “window dressing” will be points off of your firm.  Everyone needs to have a purpose.

Needing help in any one of these three areas?

Happy to help out.

Here’s a one-pager that talks a bit about how we help Professional Services firms: New Business Consulting

 

/by