Success in your marketing and BD is more likely to come if you fine-tune your approach rather than making wholesale changes or searching for the next big thing – if you focus on making improvements to the way you are already doing, it will be time well spent.
So where could you start? Here are 5 ideas:
1. Follow up. And follow up the follow up. Then follow up again! Initial silence is more likely to be down to timing and the fact the contact’s simply missed your message than because they have rejected your advances.
2. Go to networking events your clients, referrers and targets go to not the ones the holistic therapists and life coaches go to. Instead of following your competitors, network ‘under the radar’.
3. Build calls-to-action into your presentations, client meetings and marketing copy. Tell your clients exactly what you want them to do next and end internal and external meetings with the next steps agreed.
4. Invest time every week with colleagues in the other departments within your firm and work out how you could help each other develop your practices.
5. Ring fence time in your diary to do the BD stuff that’s important but all too often gets put to one side because you’re busy. This includes preparing materials for talks that you plan to give and staying in touch with contacts via email and telephone … and (OF COURSE) follow up!
This is taken from Bernard’s regular marketing and business development posts on LinkedIn but if you’d like to find out more about the BD training courses we run, click here.Or, if you’d like to discuss how you would run a BD training session for you, please email us and we can find a time to chat.