Author: Renée Taylor
Published: 4 October 2024
OK, that’s a bit flippant, equating business development with the long lunch, but you know what I mean. Working from home much of the time means we’ve all changed the way we work, and it’s made business development harder.
Face to face interactions are more meaningful and create the incidental conversations that help us understand the world our clients are living in. But now there are so many fewer in-person meetings, catch-up coffees, drinks after work, and dropping by to introduce the new addition to the team.
Add to that a lot of the traditional formal networking activities like in person seminars and drinks events are not as popular as people spend less time at the office. So, establishing and maintaining relationships calls for new approaches and particular skills – skills that few firms are teaching, like how to network virtually.
This might seem unnecessary, given that most of us live life on social media these days, but the professional approach to this is different. It’s about developing targeted campaigns, strategic messaging, and leveraging digital channels effectively. A common irony is that many firms include business development as a KPI for promotion, yet don’t understand what good looks like and don’t measure it successfully (if at all). So ineffective efforts are simply replicated. These can often be self-serving rather than client focused, and without oversight even cause reputational risk and brand erosion.
And all this is not just with clients. Effective human interaction is harder internally as well. Those valuable incidental chats in the kitchen, impromptu coffees, and in-person meetings where you make a real connection are less common. Not just because we’re in the office less, but also because when we are we cram so much more into those days. We tend to shoot off an email, text, or Teams message, are economical with words, and often lack context.
This predominantly digital world means we need to replace what used to happen organically with targeted effort. Internally, we need to create structures to share the business development and client information, so we are coordinating our efforts and making the most of them. Externally, we need to listen to our clients in a different way, know what we’re looking for in our interactions, and do more with less.
And most of all, we need to take a lesson from those who tell us content is king. Like everyone, our clients give up their time only if there’s something in it for them. So, whatever we do – whether it’s an event, coffee catch up, thought leadership, or even a social media post – needs to be relevant, interesting, and valuable in order to engage them.
Author: Renée Taylor
Published: 4 October 2024
OK, that’s a bit flippant, equating business development with the long lunch, but you know what I mean. Working from home much of the time means we’ve all changed the way we work, and it’s made business development harder.
Face to face interactions are more meaningful and create the incidental conversations that help us understand the world our clients are living in. But now there are so many fewer in-person meetings, catch-up coffees, drinks after work, and dropping by to introduce the new addition to the team.
Add to that a lot of the traditional formal networking activities like in person seminars and drinks events are not as popular as people spend less time at the office. So, establishing and maintaining relationships calls for new approaches and particular skills – skills that few firms are teaching, like how to network virtually.
This might seem unnecessary, given that most of us live life on social media these days, but the professional approach to this is different. It’s about developing targeted campaigns, strategic messaging, and leveraging digital channels effectively. A common irony is that many firms include business development as a KPI for promotion, yet don’t understand what good looks like and don’t measure it successfully (if at all). So ineffective efforts are simply replicated. These can often be self-serving rather than client focused, and without oversight even cause reputational risk and brand erosion.
And all this is not just with clients. Effective human interaction is harder internally as well. Those valuable incidental chats in the kitchen, impromptu coffees, and in-person meetings where you make a real connection are less common. Not just because we’re in the office less, but also because when we are we cram so much more into those days. We tend to shoot off an email, text, or Teams message, are economical with words, and often lack context.
This predominantly digital world means we need to replace what used to happen organically with targeted effort. Internally, we need to create structures to share the business development and client information, so we are coordinating our efforts and making the most of them. Externally, we need to listen to our clients in a different way, know what we’re looking for in our interactions, and do more with less.
And most of all, we need to take a lesson from those who tell us content is king. Like everyone, our clients give up their time only if there’s something in it for them. So, whatever we do – whether it’s an event, coffee catch up, thought leadership, or even a social media post – needs to be relevant, interesting, and valuable in order to engage them.
