Author: Renée Taylor
Published: 8 November 2024
When you work in professional services, winning work is just part of the job. And the more senior you become, the more important that is. It’s long been expected that new recruits will watch and learn as the senior partners conduct business development in their network by way of coffee, lunch, and drinks.
This has been successful for generations of rainmakers, many of them charismatic extroverts for whom networking comes naturally. It can be tough for introverts who might find this difficult, and even harder for those who end up in a team where the leader is not a natural BD superstar and sets a poor example, expecting others to follow their bad habits.
It’s little wonder that many professional services experts are reluctant to engage in business development and do so under sufferance. Luckily, there’s more than one type of personality in professional services and there’s more than one way to do business development.
Generally, people fit into three categories. Here are the categories and some suggestions for how to get the best out of them (we’ll leave the superstars till last):
BD Hesitants: unlocking hidden potential
Those who don’t want to do BD often feel that way because they think they can’t. This may be because they have a strong technical bias or expertise focus, have had a negative experience with BD, fear ‘selling’ is unprofessional, or simply don’t believe they can do it.
Often they have misconceptions like BD and technical skills are mutually exclusive, that BD means aggressive selling, or that BD requires extroversion and they must emulate that behaviour.
This group benefits enormously from foundational support that helps them develop unique, authentic approaches that break down the false correlations between personality type and BD success. Basic BD education that focuses on relationship building creates a safe space for skill development and enables them to create alternative BD paths. This way they can leverage their technical expertise and develop thought leadership opportunities. It will also enable team-based BD approaches with a focus on content creation and sharing.
Demonstrating that professional BD aligns with career growth, focuses on value creation for clients, and values relationship building over the long term will give greater confidence to this group.
The Ad-Hoc Developers: from sporadic to systematic
This group appears successful but relies more on circumstance than skill and often achieves short-term wins without building lasting relationships. Their efforts are sporadic and inconsistent and they often display defensive attitudes toward feedback and show resistance to change ("My way has always worked").
This group benefits from structured BD training and mentoring when they receive support in expanding beyond their usual comfort zones. Learning to implement basic BD processes helps them focus on relationship-building versus transaction-based approaches, and clear metrics and accountability systems keep them motivated consistently.
The BD Superstars: Building Sustainable Success
These professionals already succeed by building trust and deep client relationships that extend beyond immediate opportunities. They demonstrate genuine understanding of clients' businesses and challenges and create long-lasting, profitable partnerships through systematic approaches. They manage to follow best practice while maintaining authenticity.
The opportunity with this group is to leverage their success through relationship depth and longevity, strategic network development, and market intelligence monitoring. There may also be opportunities to strengthen their personal brand development.
So what?
So, what’s the point of all this analysis? BD is important and any firm that wants to be successful in this regard needs to set its own people up for success, rather than hoping for a transference of skills from those who do it well. It needs to make BD part of the culture, with systems and processes that make it not just an individual activity, but a team undertaking in which people share information.
And most importantly, it needs to support people to do it their way according to their own strengths. And give them the training and encouragement to be able to make their way successful.
Author: Renée Taylor
Published: 8 November 2024
When you work in professional services, winning work is just part of the job. And the more senior you become, the more important that is. It’s long been expected that new recruits will watch and learn as the senior partners conduct business development in their network by way of coffee, lunch, and drinks.
This has been successful for generations of rainmakers, many of them charismatic extroverts for whom networking comes naturally. It can be tough for introverts who might find this difficult, and even harder for those who end up in a team where the leader is not a natural BD superstar and sets a poor example, expecting others to follow their bad habits.
It’s little wonder that many professional services experts are reluctant to engage in business development and do so under sufferance. Luckily, there’s more than one type of personality in professional services and there’s more than one way to do business development.
Generally, people fit into three categories. Here are the categories and some suggestions for how to get the best out of them (we’ll leave the superstars till last):
BD Hesitants: unlocking hidden potential
Those who don’t want to do BD often feel that way because they think they can’t. This may be because they have a strong technical bias or expertise focus, have had a negative experience with BD, fear ‘selling’ is unprofessional, or simply don’t believe they can do it.
Often they have misconceptions like BD and technical skills are mutually exclusive, that BD means aggressive selling, or that BD requires extroversion and they must emulate that behaviour.
This group benefits enormously from foundational support that helps them develop unique, authentic approaches that break down the false correlations between personality type and BD success. Basic BD education that focuses on relationship building creates a safe space for skill development and enables them to create alternative BD paths. This way they can leverage their technical expertise and develop thought leadership opportunities. It will also enable team-based BD approaches with a focus on content creation and sharing.
Demonstrating that professional BD aligns with career growth, focuses on value creation for clients, and values relationship building over the long term will give greater confidence to this group.
The Ad-Hoc Developers: from sporadic to systematic
This group appears successful but relies more on circumstance than skill and often achieves short-term wins without building lasting relationships. Their efforts are sporadic and inconsistent and they often display defensive attitudes toward feedback and show resistance to change ("My way has always worked").
This group benefits from structured BD training and mentoring when they receive support in expanding beyond their usual comfort zones. Learning to implement basic BD processes helps them focus on relationship-building versus transaction-based approaches, and clear metrics and accountability systems keep them motivated consistently.
The BD Superstars: Building Sustainable Success
These professionals already succeed by building trust and deep client relationships that extend beyond immediate opportunities. They demonstrate genuine understanding of clients' businesses and challenges and create long-lasting, profitable partnerships through systematic approaches. They manage to follow best practice while maintaining authenticity.
The opportunity with this group is to leverage their success through relationship depth and longevity, strategic network development, and market intelligence monitoring. There may also be opportunities to strengthen their personal brand development.
So what?
So, what’s the point of all this analysis? BD is important and any firm that wants to be successful in this regard needs to set its own people up for success, rather than hoping for a transference of skills from those who do it well. It needs to make BD part of the culture, with systems and processes that make it not just an individual activity, but a team undertaking in which people share information.
And most importantly, it needs to support people to do it their way according to their own strengths. And give them the training and encouragement to be able to make their way successful.
