Do you want your fee earners to win more and better clients? The answer is obviously yes but who do you do it? Well, the easiest way is to create an effective business development training programme.
To create an effective business development training programme, you should focus on 5 key factors:
1. Agree how you’ll measure success before you start your programme
You might set financial or non-financial goals or a combination of both but are these goals going to be inward looking (e.g. staff retention and delegate engagement) or outward looking (e.g. new leads, client satisfaction, the number of new referrals, or the number of enquiries you convert)?
2. Design your BD training programme to fill actual performance gaps
What can you learn from staff appraisals, performance metrics and consultation with both the delegates and their line managers? It is critical you avoid simply repeating previous programmes. More than ever before your business development tactics need to be adapted to meet the demands of a completely different and constantly changing trading environment.
3. Use quality materials
This involves more than a slide-deck of bullet points! Think about setting some pre-reading to set the tone and prepare your people ahead of session one. Also, training always needs to be practical so the participants can apply what they’ve learned as soon as they get back to work. This means checklists, 3-step models and templates will be very helpful tools.
4. Experiment with your delivery
With training facilitation is more effective than lecturing. Small groups work better than large groups. If you have to deliver virtually, your trainer needs to know how to build rapport and establish a connection with their audience over video. This will involve a lot of questions and the ability to flex their approach depending on how the delegates are reacting.
5. Collect feedback after the programme
It is important to ask for feedback from everyone included in the programme; the trainer, the participants and their line managers and clients so you can see if there have been real changes in behaviours and actions following the programme.
And the next step is to use this feedback to make any necessary changes to the programme before it is run again.
Would you like to find out more about our approach to BD training for lawyers and accountants? Or, if you’d like to discuss a specific business development training programme, please email us today to arrange a call.
In the meantime, why not help yourself to some tips that will help you do better BD from home?