Do You Know Where Your Next Piece Of Work Is Coming From?
Understanding where your work originates is critical to sustainable growth. Explore the four key sources of revenue and learn how to prioritise your business development efforts.
Understanding and knowing where your work comes from is critical to the overall success of your business development activities. Have a good understanding of this process and you'll have a viable, sustainable practice. Miss read the tea-leaves, and all you'll be doing is rounding around in circles.
So, for this BD Tips Wednesday I thought I would provide a high-level overview of the four primary sources of revenue for professional services firms:
Existing clients. Top of the list, without doubt, is existing clients. This is true even in transactional practices. By "existing clients" here I don't literally mean clients you are currently working for - although that does go without saying, but also clients who you have worked with over the past 3 years. That's why I always suggest that when you look at your 'client list', that list be a list of clients you have worked with over a rolling 3-year period. This is the group you should be spending 80% of your business development time, resources and budget on!
Former clients. Next up is former clients. These are clients who you have previously worked with but have not done any work with for more than 3 years. The trick here is to work out why you have not worked with this client for more than 3 years and see if you can rectify that. If you can, this is a good source of work because you are a known product. If not, move on.
Referrers. Next up is referrers. Always a good source of work and a very much overlooked group. Again, you are a known product because in most cases you have worked with or for this group previously. This what I like to call your 'Google Review' crowd - those people who would happily leave a great review about you and your services on Google.
Prospects. Last but not least on your list is prospects. What I call the 'Rabbit down the hole' crowd.
It is important that you include prospects in your business development activities; but it is vital that you do not let the possibilities that prospects might offer cloud your business development judgment to the detriment of the other 3 groups, who rightly should have preference.
All too often though, when I'm reviewing the activities of a partner/principal who isn't currently having much success with their business development endeavors, it's typically because they are 80% focused on prospects and 20% focused on existing clients [maybe because they don't have too many existing clients], rather than the other way round!
So, go away, get a piece of paper, draw 4 boxes and write the names of clients and targets in the 4 boxes ranking them according to the above.
What you end up with is something like this:
And what you end up with is a ranked target client list for your next business development campaign.
Need Help With Your Business Development?
Get in touch if you want to talk about any of this. We also offer a very affordable BD Audit and Training package.