In most professional services firms, when I’m working with people on actioning their BD plans and strategies, they start to share with me all the things that are stopping them from executing their plans. In most cases, these perceived blockers aren’t really stopping them from doing BD at all.
In fact, perhaps they shouldn’t even be labelled as blockers, instead, they are simply excuses. We are highly effective as humans at finding distractions and obstacles to prevent us from doing those things that we deep down don’t want to do. It’s why the snooze button was invented on alarms, to enable us to over-ride that early morning call and skip the task we were driven the night before to get up, especially for.
To help you get motivated and face down those false obstacles, below are some of the most common ones I hear and how to either overcome them or even ignore them. After all, a successful BD plan is one that is actioned, not one that is ignored!
The BD Blockers that aren’t blocking you from doing BD
The Partner/Director won’t let me talk to their clients
It’s amazing that even now, people refer to firm clients as theirs solely. Yes, people buy from people, and you may have a great relationship with a client, but they are a client of the firm as well as being one of your clients.
However, when I run alignment sessions with the Partner/Director and the person or people in their team who are taking on more BD responsibility, this perceived blocker tends to reverse - in fact the Partner/Directors tend to be delighted to have extra help with developing and maintaining client relationships. Most feel the more conversations with the client the better.
As an aside, a sign of a strong client relationship is one where you are happy to introduce other people to your client, safe in the knowledge of the value you provide them. It tends to be the weak or fragile relationships where people can’t or won’t introduce others.
We need a CRM system that is used by everyone
Ah yes, data. It’s helpful to know who has spoken to who and what has been sent. It’s ideal. However, most CRM systems in professional services don’t easily show this, and notes aren’t made by those within the delivery of the services. Yes, many now scrape emails, but that just uploads all communication which is sometimes way too much for anyone to quickly navigate and make sense of.
However, do you really need a system?
You could just ask your colleague if they have spoken to them or emailed them recently. You could cover this off in your team meetings – which a lot of firms have weekly. Bring a list of who you want to speak with and then run through who will be doing what. Which leads me to the next one.
I don’t know who is following up who – post-event
Really? This is such a simple fix. If you have a team or wider firm networking event with clients etc. Simply book in a time the next morning and agree in that meeting who is following up with who based on the conversations last night. It takes very little time and makes you look super-efficient and avoids any confusion.
I need to do research - and lots of it
A lot of time you need to arrange a meeting with a client, referrer or prospect. To avoid doing this people will find ways of doing hours, even days of research. Yet the email or call to get the meeting is usually simple and talks more about what you will discuss in a meeting.
Trying to become an expert in some-one’s business based on internet research is ultimately doomed. They know all about their business including information not publicly available, so meet with them and ask!
Most businesses want consultants to understand them, their industry and provide expertise to help solve their problems. Not for them to be experts about their business.
I don’t have time to do BD
Then make it! Or at least build a plan that works to the time you can make available. Outreach work can be done in as little as 18 minutes, and some people have been successful in doing that just once a week and have seen real growth. You can read how to do BD in 18 minutes here, or if you prefer, you can watch the video below:
Perfection leads to inaction – doing BD requires action
The main theme from above is that doing nothing means that no BD gets done. We live in an imperfect world. BD is about interacting and building relationships with people. It isn’t an exact science. However, the more you do, the easier it gets and the more successful you are. The more excuses you find the more you’ll always put off doing it. Ultimately, to succeed and build a sustainable practice the more BD you do, the more regularly you do it, the better.
