eTips 2003
So you've slipped up ... big time ! |
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All of us slip up once in a while. And, unfortunately, sometimes we make a big mistake. Properly handled, your slip up doesn't have to damage your client relationship or impede longer term business development. |
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Reflection |
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There is enormous learning value in the process of reflection. |
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Christmas greeting cards |
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Here are a few tips to help you make the most of the Christmas cheer you deliver to your clients, supporters and friends this year. |
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Put lunch in its place |
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Lunch has long been a business tradition - sharing hospitality and breaking bread together is a time honoured bonding experience. But, too often, lunch is used out of its rightful place. |
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Add weight to your brand |
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Here are some specific actions you can take to add weight to your brand. |
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Making emotional connections |
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In most fields, technically competent lawyers and professionals are in oversupply. Clients and prospective clients select from the available talent pool on both logical and emotional grounds. |
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Making the most of telephone enquiries |
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Efficiently and effectively converting telephone enquiries - from both prospective clients and established clients - into real, live files is a key competency for every professional. |
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Don't flog dead horses |
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Lawyers and expert professionals are supposed to be super smart people, but they sometimes make poor business development decisions and often flog dead horses. |
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Do things differently |
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Some of the greatest professional success stories are based on sustained commitment to breaking with tradition and doing things differently. |
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Health-check your business development |
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Check the health of your business development efforts by assessing its vital signs. |
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Take control of your business development time |
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By taking control of our time, we can often achieve more than we previously though possible. |
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Professional put offs |
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Check that you're not putting off clients through any of these behaviours: |
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Great networking |
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If, like most professionals, networking is pivotal to your business development and professional success, it's worth working on. |
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Build your credibility |
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If you're a professional who takes pride in high credibility, check that its not being undermined by missing any of these items. |
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Big marketing ideas |
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Big ideas can really make a difference and be effective for your business development and marketing. |
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Turning aspiration into action |
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Strategy is great, but it's worth little without implementation. Make certain you put the disciplines and resources in place to make your strategy happen. |
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Pitching for government legal work |
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Key issues for government agencies reflect differences in power, accountability, and the cultural set of the public sector. Many government agencies are now astute buyers with access to sophisticated advice and support from experts within the public sector. |
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New financial year resolutions |
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Every year, we make resolutions, and most years we break them. Let's not continue to set ourselves up for failure. |
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Set your course for a successful new financial year |
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Make sure you set yourself on a course for successful business development in the new financial year. |
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Plain English - what is it ? |
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We've all heard lots about the importance of writing in plain English. However, what is a plain English document ? |
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Getting the most from your consultants |
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If you decide to work with a business development or marketing consultant at any time, you'll want to be sure that you get the most you can from the consultant's involvement. |
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Soft selling |
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Lawyers and other expert professionals are right to be wary of applying "hard sell" tactics to their clients and prospective clients. Hard hitting pitches, peddling, misleading information, or harassing prospects into submission, do not belong in the repertoire of an honourable profession. "Soft selling" resources and behaviours should figure prominently in the kit bag of a successful professional. |
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Getting colleagues thinking business development |
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Keen business developers often ask our advice about how to fire up their colleagues. Here are some conversation-starters and stimuli to help you get your colleagues to "think business development". |
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Competitive intelligence |
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You need to know how you and your firm stack up against the competition. Even basic, simple competitive information can be a powerful tool. |
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Forecasting business |
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Here's a useful formula to forecast business: |
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Make yourself magnetic |
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There are sure-fire ways to make yourself magnetic to clients. These are the five "Ps" of magnetism - some might call it charisma: |
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Crystallise your strategy |
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Take ten minutes to crystallise your business development strategy - it's important. |
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Communicate your credibility |
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Establishing credibility is key to developing successful relationships with clients of choice. |
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Write in the right tone |
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Everything we write communicates a mixture of verbal and non-verbal meanings. It can sometimes be quite challenging to convey a positive, efficient, yet reader-friendly tone in your writing. |
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Time to take stock |
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Lawyers and other professionals rarely benefit from the best disciplines of business or sales management. |
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Setting the right tone |
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The personal pronouns you choose play an important part in tone. |
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Making initial contact |
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Check that you're au fait with these critical components of effective initial contact. |
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Getting noticed - making it onto clients radar screens |
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With competition getting harder, fields tighter, and clients generally reducing (rather then expanding) their panels of professional service providers, it's more important than ever to be noticed in a positive way and make it through into the consciousness of clients and prospective clients. |
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Training professionals to market themselves |
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The right training can make a big difference in performance in business development situations. |
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Framing, reframing, and naming |
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How we talk about a thing influences how we think about that thing. And, how others think about it, too. We often fall into old, familiar, and comfortable ways of talking about our services, without taking stock of how the words we use influence how others see and value those same services. |
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First impressions count - lots |
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When you're developing business, first impressions really matter. You know how difficult it is to overcome a negative first impression. Some studies indicate it takes up to twenty positive experiences to make for a negative first impression. So it's worth considering what kind of initial impression your proposals make. |
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Getting more than your "fair share" of the work |
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Because so many corporate and government clients appoint multiple firms to provide their professional services, winning a place on the "panel" is only a preliminary to getting the work you really want. |
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First encounters |
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We all know that first impressions matter a whole lot. How well do you handle first encounters with new clients ? |
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Building your brand |
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Nowadays, savvy professionals recognise what marketers have known for years: strong brands are worth having. It's the strength of the brand that delivers Heinz a price premium every time a tin of its baked beans is sold. Designer name goods we aspire to are all about brand power. |
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Cost of proposals, bids, and tenders |
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Winners are grinners, as they say. But losing can cost more than you think. |
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