eTips 2004
Measuring business development success |
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Too often the “feel good” factors and recency of wins overtake facts when it comes to evaluating success of business development initiatives. It’s a great idea to develop some metrics for business development. |
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No professional is immune |
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For expert professionals, lawyers especially, the world has changed dramatically, even since the beginning of this century. Think: globalisation; downsizing; industry concentration; technological revolution; outsourcing; huge stress on business ethics; increasingly astute consumers. |
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Helping associates transition to partnership |
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These days, it’s far more than technical expertise which counts when assessing associates and senior associates for career progression to partnership.
While business development skills training should start right from induction of a new lawyer into your firm, here is a quick checklist of activities, skills, and competencies which will help your senior lawyers more onwards and upwards. |
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Putting self-coaching into practice |
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Self-coaching can be a powerful tool to improve your business development performance. When you come out of a meeting (or finish a phone call) which went especially well, before diving into the email or getting on with returning your calls, pause for a couple of minutes. |
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Getting young professionals involved in business development |
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Nurturing business development skills should start right from the time a new lawyer or other professional comes into your firm. At each stage of his/her career, different levels and styles of participation will make useful contributions and be appropriate both for firm business development and personal career progression. |
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Critical business development success factors |
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Rate yourself on these factors, each critical to your business development success: |
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Coaching yourself to do a whole lot better |
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Instead of sighing, shrugging shoulders or getting depressed when things don’t go as your hope, use self-coaching to: put the situation in perspective; analyse what happened and why; learn from your mistakes; reduce prospects of repetition; mentally rehearse better alternatives. |
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Coach yourself |
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Successful professionals are tuning in to the benefits of coaching, including in business development and client relationships skill sets. But whether you’ve yet formed an effective relationship with a mentor and coach, you will always have much to gain from your constant companion with heaps of coaching potential: you. |
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Keep clients when you lose a partner |
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When a partner or senior team member departs (or even retires) there’s a good chance that clients will leave, too. |
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20 strategies for keeping clients (happy) |
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Keeping clients happy is an ongoing challenge in almost every firm. Here are some strategies to help. |
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What drives corporate buying |
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Many factors - often complex and intertwined - influence corporate buyers of legal and other expert professional services. |
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How clients find you |
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High-minded items like client acquisition, profile raising, public relations and sponsorships can camouflage an important reality: it’s about how clients find you! |
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Off to a conference ? |
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Make the most of business development opportunities when attending your next conference.
Rather than merely depending on the general networking possibilities, you’ll benefit from a little pre-conference work. |
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Making the most of a conference |
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Here are some simple tips to leverage the business development possibilities of the time you spend at industry and professional conferences. |
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Getting your message across |
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When confronted with complex, detailed information, its frequently necessary to simplify in order to communicate effectively.
Whether in a proposal, tender, or at a presentation, clear and simple information will make far more impact.
Here are some tips and techniques which you will find work well to simplify complex information and convey your meaning. |
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Do yourself four favours today |
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There's never been a better time than today to pick up the phone - or dash off a few emails - to do yourself a power of business development good by calling in a few favours, as well as doing some. |
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Conference contact follow-up |
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So you’ve been to an industry or professional conference, and met lots of interesting people. Where to from here ? |
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Setting your price |
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Be strategic in pricing your services. To get the price right for any given client, consider these factors. |
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Radically different from (and better than) the rest |
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The world has changed. Clients have changed. Have you kept abreast ? |
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Marketing to local government |
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Here are some proven techniques to successfully market your expert services to local government. |
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Price - one size does not fit all ! |
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Price sensitivity depends on market conditions: oversupply; supply/demand in balance; small oversupply; severe shortage. Your pricing need not necessarily correlate with your production cost, but must mesh with your business strategy. |
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Presenting a persuasive service plan |
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Astute, quality clients want to be persuaded that you have a well-devised plan to deliver service to them. |
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Getting started on marketing strategy |
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If you haven’t developed a clear marketing strategy, here’s a good way to get started. |
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Competitve pricing |
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Competing on price is sometimes the black sheep of the marketing family. You can’t ignore price competition - and sometimes you should engage it ! |
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All important first meetings |
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When you have an opportunity to meet with a new business or commercial client, be prepared. |
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Be prepared for tenders and proposals |
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Tender time is always pressured, no matter how capable the tender team. Here's a quick list of things you can work on now to be better prepared for your next tender or competitive proposal. |
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Client comfort |
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Most probably, your clients already hold you in high regard. But even the most loyal clients appreciate extra comfort. |
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Authenticity and frankness build crucial trust |
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Humans have well developed “crap detectors”: some have remarkable capacities to work out who’s on the level, who’s not being completely frank or straightforward, and who’s not telling them the whole story. Strong client relationships depend on the trust that develops in an open, frank, and truly authentic dynamic. This goes well beyond mere technical honesty - and may at times call for the courage and gumption to speak fiercely. |
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Acceptance and empathy build crucial trust |
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For an expert professional, it’s often easy to see the foolishness and errors which have disadvantaged a client or led to an awful predicament. |
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Unspoken questions |
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Before a client selects a new lawyer or other expert professional, s/he needs answers to several questions.
While it might be easier if these questions were clearly articulated, you’ll score high marks for anticipation by dealing effectively with “unspoken questions”. |
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Focus group research |
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Client and prospective client feedback is essential to good marketing planning and business development. |
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Reliability builds crucial trust |
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Trust is crucial to effectiveness and longevity of relationships between expert professional advisers and quality clients. Because trust depends on: reliability; acceptance and empathy; openness and authenticity. It is rarely “instant”, and generally builds over time. Being trustworthy is at its foundation. But, because your clients aren’t God and can’t read your soul, they have to rely on what you say and do to work out whether you’re worthy of their trust. |
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Emotional intelligence and business development |
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Most lawyers and other professionals have high IQ, but no higher EQ - emotional intelligence - than the population at large.
"Emotional intelligence" describes our capacity to read the emotional climate and respond appropriately with empathy, adaptability, reality testing, flexibility, and a whole lot more. |
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Bid or no bid ? |
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Tenders and proposals are costly: time, energy, money, morale, and other opportunities are all at stake. Here's a quick checklist developed by Julian Midwinter & Associates consulting team to help you determine whether to bid, or not, this time. |
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Angry clients are business opportunities |
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An angry client is not usually a threat to your practice. |
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Negotiating for business |
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Most lawyers and expert professionals value negotiating skills and use these effectively on behalf of their clients.
But, negotiating to secure more business for themselves doesn't always get the same attention. |
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Getting the price right |
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Run through this checklist before you price your next big proposal. |
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Focus on client retention |
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Most lawyers and expert professionals recognise that new clients are hard to find, and that retaining and growing clients is critical to professional success. If you want to improve client retention - and development - take a fresh look at the situation. |
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Uncovering opportunities |
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We’re often asked how to go about finding opportunities for new business which can convert into real, live projects and matters. And, most of those questions arise from situations where lawyers and other professionals are surrounded by a multitude of contacts and possibilities, but not serious prospective clients. |
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Identifying and reconnecting with disappointed clients |
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Last week’s eTip covered the growing phenomenon of disappointed clients. As your marketing, promotion, and service promises improve, so client expectations grow. And, with them, the danger of reality falling short… |
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How to murder a client relationship |
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An angry client is a problem to your professional practice. But consider for a moment: a disappointed client may be a much greater danger. |
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Buyer perspectives |
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While each consumer of legal or other expert professional services has a unique set of preferences driving their buying behaviour, various groups or "clusters" of consumers share common characteristics. |
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