What is Business Development?
Not every lawyer is a Harvey Specter or an Alan Shore; some need external help to make sure clients keep coming through your door. That ‘external help’ is your business development strategy. Business development for law firms means pursuing strategic opportunities for your law firm. This includes building new long term relationships, finding and identifying new revenue streams and sales opportunities. Examples are cross-selling or up-selling to existing clients and adding new practice areas to your firm. It might involve geographic expansion, or setting up procedures for your client intake team to follow up with prospects.
Business Development (BD) is different from marketing in the sense that business development is for the long run. As compared to the short term gains one might achieve marketing their services without having a comprehensive BD policy. John Grisham once famously wrote a book about a rainmaker; that’s exactly what one would call a marketing person, a rainmaker. In business development, you’re still making it rain. But instead of the sales-focus one-time transactions of marketing, you build bridges, relationships, and revenue streams.
Typical business development goals include establishing your market position, expansion, client acquisition and brand recognition. Business development professionals will typically use tactics more closely associated with sales than marketing to achieve those goals. Where business development differs from pure marketing or sales is the element of not only targeting prospective clients. But nurturing existing ones through account management, listening to and acting upon clients’ feedback, and adding value to existing relationships.
When it comes to organizational growth and expansion, business development for law firms acts as the singular thread that ties together all of a firm’s functions or departments, helping to expand business and improve its sales, revenues, product offerings, talent, customer service and brand awareness.
Why is Business Development important?
There are a number of key areas in which someone tasked with BD can help effect change growth across departments. Here are four reasons why business development is important for law firms:
It builds important relationships:
Whether cultivating new talent, networking with prospective partners or courting potential customers, relationship-building is an integral piece of the business development process. A savvy business developer can hone in on the relationships that demand the most attention. Connecting with clients, colleagues and other members of one’s network can be fundamental to identifying new business opportunities, generating leads and even making critical hires. And, strengthening existing relationships will help deliver repeat customers, bring in recurring revenue or provide an opportunity to cultivate and enhance talent from within.
It’s a key strategy for boosting revenue and lowering cost:
Growth is the end game of BD, and one of the most common metrics for measuring that growth is profit generated. Key to the business development process is devising strategies to help increase the amount of money that’s coming into an organization, while making sure less money is going out. Focusing on business development can help an organization identify which markets and products have the most profit potential, and which deals to concentrate most on. Business development also entails making decisions that help keep costs down as well as identify areas of growth and the funding needed to facilitate such expansion.
It can help improve the company’s overall image:
Marketing is vital to a business’ growth, and a business developer can help an organization build a better brand. A business developer can work closely with the marketing team to develop campaigns that solidify the company’s target audience and reach new customers and markets. A significant aspect of business development is understanding the inner workings of a company’s products and services, as well as its customers. Business development leaders can use these insights to help inform new marketing campaigns that guide potential customers to products and services that could benefit them
It may open up expansion into new markets:
Tapping into new areas of opportunity could be a lucrative growth strategy. Business development involves staying on top of market trends and opportunities. By analyzing demographics and customer data, a business developer can find ways to enter these markets and segments.
Today, every company in the world is subject to evolving expectations and goals in some sense. In companies that sell products, goods, or services, the tides of sales trends are particularly applicable. The rise of social media has necessitated firms to stop their medieval practices and to strategize about their client outreach.
As it turns out, that’s also one of the primary functions of a business development manager’s job. Business Development professionals keep companies agile and ready to pivot. They step in to track and stay on top of changing sales trends.
Want to grow your business using outsourced business development techniques, contact us now and let us guide you!
Comments are closed