Business Development Engagement

12 Questions You Must Answer: In our second mod, we introduce the 12 Critical Questions you must answer to write the business development plan.

We go deep on sources of income, including

• What’s currently in contract.
• How much we’ll generate by bringing new ideas to existing clients.
• Additional income that will result from existing clients bringing us additional assignments.
• What may come in “over the transom,” and then most important.
• How much we need to generate from “new,” new clients.

In follow-up sessions, we’ll identify:

• Key industry categories in which the agency is truly expert.
• Industry segments that are most likely to need you in the coming year.
• Key practice areas in which you truly excel.
• Key practice areas that will be most valued by your prospects, thereby generating the top and bottom-line growth.

The First Seven Steps To Write The Plan: At this point, the agency writes the first draft of their plan. I’ll then review it and respond with a Recommendations Memo outlining my perspective on what’s missing and should be added, what can be eliminated (because we want to keep it tight!), and recommendation on fine-tuning.

This is followed by a phone or Zoom session where I walk you through the Recommendations, and answer any questions the agency may have.

At that point, the agency modifies the plan, and then jumps into implementation.

We have a phone or Zoom session every other week, preferably for six months, to determine what business development activities are working (and let’s do more of them), what’s not currently working (let’s keep an eye on them and fine-tune or modify) and what’s clearly not working, despite modification, (so let’s kill it.)

Equally important, in those business development coaching calls, I’ll help the agency’s business development team to overcome any hurdles that they’re experiencing as they implement the plan, as well as fine-tuning those actions which might not be working, as mentioned above.