Business Development Best Practices

We urge clients to adapt a special set of best practices when focusing on ways to measure business development success. Some of these might surprise you but are essential to new revenue growth.

1. Designate partner-leaders for each client target. This is not the usual industry focus, or practice area niche. Rather, it means a senior partner must take the lead for each new designated target.

2. Part of the job is to establish timelines for each step leading to a final close of new business. The partner-leader must designate someone to hold each attorney and marketing professional accountable for the actions they are assigned.

3. Provide the environment to encourage greater strategy debates before investing in responses to RFP’s, or even in pursuing new contacts. A “go/no go” decision making session is a must.

4. Constantly review the failed business development efforts in formal post-mortem meetings. This discussion could be part of a “go/no go” debate. And make sure out of these sessions, you codify the steps that do lead to successful new business acquisition.

In our next column, we’ll add 4 more best practices to challenge and energize your efforts.