Winning the Business Development Battle Part 2: Battle Plans

While business development battles are often waged on many fronts, ultimate success almost always starts with a battle plan. No matter how large or how small the battle, a well-thought-out strategy can fortify your defenses and prevent unacceptable losses.  

Think of business development strategy and planning as a chess game. The moves you make will depend on a variety of factors. You have to understand where you are now, where you want to be and the best way to get there. 

How do you want to grow your practice or your firm? Do you want to try to cross sell to expand business with existing Clients, or should you attempt to bring in new business from prospects. Is your best opportunity to leverage your referral sources or to emphasize your experience and knowledge in a niche area or industry? Should you focus on reputation building activities or would it be more productive to get face-to-face with Clients and prospects? Only when you have considered all of these moves will you be prepared to battle it out.

You must also take into consideration the moves of your opponents. The better you can anticipate their moves, the better prepared you will be to outflank them. You need to pay close attention to what your competitors are doing – and what they are failing to do. Which markets are they in now, and which ones do they plan to enter? Which Clients do they have now - and who do they plan to go after? Which practices areas do they currently focus on, and which ones may they be thinking about adding or eliminating? How are they perceived in the market – and what are they doing to affect or change this perception. 

Before you can answer all of these questions and really plan your strategy, you will likely need some intel…

Categorizing CRM Contacts - Let me Count the Ways

Categories are frequently used to break your CRM database into more manageable groups or classifications or to target or segment your contacts. There are many reasons - and variety of ways - to categorize your CRM contacts:

They Love Me

One of the most frequently used categories is 'clients'. These are often ripe targets for cross selling and other business development efforts. The idea is that, since they already are writing you checks, presumably they like you - and might want to do even more work with you. They are also the ones you want to make sure you keep in contact with and communicate with regularly.

They Love Me A Lot

Some firms go a step farther and break out their 'top clients'. These are often the ones that contribute 80% to 90% of the firm’s revenue. As a result, you may want to single them out for special treatment. Some firms focus their most strategic marketing and business development activities, such as Client teams or Client surveys, on this group.  

They Could Love Me

Another useful category might be 'prospects'. For firms that are interested in developing business with new Clients, targeting prospects may pay dividends. Plus you may just want to keep in touch with these folks on a regular basis so that the firm is top of mind when that big case comes in.

They Love Me Not

Another type of useful category is ‘status.’ No, this doesn't refer to your really cool or celebrity contacts. It's actually a good way of identifying contacts of specific types that you may want to include or exclude from a particular list or activity. For instance you might want to categorize your adversaries or competitors so you don't send them your newsletters or invite them to your seminars. 

Winning the Business Development Battle

I just spent the day at John Remsen's Managing Partner Forum with a room full of law firm Managing Partners discussing business issues and challenges, and one of the recurring topics was business development. From the level of frustration during the discussion, it appeared that, when it comes to business development, many firms seem to be fighting a losing battle.

In a law firm, getting attorneys to take any kind of marching orders is never easy - especially when it involves non-billable time. This is compounded when it comes to business development because even the thought of having to 'sell' makes quite a few attorneys rebellious. Hence the frustration among the managing partners. It's bad enough to be at war with your competitors, but it's even more challenging when you are also having dissension among your troops.  

There are many additional reasons why business development has been challenging for some firms including: a failure to make business development a priority, inability of current compensation systems to adequately reward and encourage business development efforts and alack of attorney business development training and coaching. The discussion also surfaced some fundamental misconceptions about business development.

So for the next few weeks, I’ll be addressing some of the fundamental concepts – and weapons – for winning the war on business development… 

Strategies for Effective Intercultural Communication

In today’s society, diversity in the workplace is a fact of life. The probability of organization members coming from diverse cultural backgrounds, as well as customers and clients coming from diverse cultural backgrounds is very high. That said, the way in which organizations communicate, both internally and externally, must reflect this changing demographic, because communication is greatly affected by culture.

Becoming an effective intercultural communicator does not just happen by chance. To the contrary, in order to become an effective intercultural communicator, one must be motivated, and take the necessary steps to do so. These steps include becoming transcultured, asking oneself what preconceived notions about the other person’s culture may hinder the communication process, letting go of any ethnocentrism, and simplifying the meaning of culture to understand the communicator for who they are as a person. While following these steps can help one increase their effectiveness as an intercultural communicator, it is imperative to remember that just as communication is an ongoing process, becoming an effective intercultural communicator is also an ongoing process that takes work.

In order for effective intercultural communication to be achieved, there has to be a shift in consciousness and the identity of the self on the part of the communicator—a hybridization of consciousness and identity, meaning that the communicator must make a conscious effort to open one’s self up to understanding, which may actually alter the communicator’s identity.

               

Becoming an effective intercultural communicator also involves making a conscious effort to avoid communication dissonance. Prior to interacting with a person from another culture, or during the communication exchange, one should ask oneself the following questions to ensure that no preconceived notions or biases exists that may hinder the communication process:

• What preconceived notions do I have about this person based on social identity characteristics (whether we seem different or similar)?
• Are those notions positive, negative, or neutral?
• What’s the source of those preconceptions?
• Will my preconceptions facilitate or impede communication?
•  Am I open to learning about this person and myself during this interaction? Why or why not?
• Am I willing to be changed as a result of this interaction or experience?
• What communication tools can I use to try to create genuine communication

The next step to increased effective intercultural communication is to attempt to let go of any ethnocentric feelings you may have. While many of us may feel as though we do not have any ethnocentric feelings or ideas, that is, esteeming one’s nationality, culture, or ethnicity above another’s, taking a moment to truly examine one’s way of thinking could reveal otherwise. In a multicultural setting, simply assuming that one’s own culturally-accepted gestures or style of communication is appropriate to use amongst others is a form of ethnocentrism. Therefore, one must strive to be aware of the accepted verbal and nonverbal communication for various cultures, and not esteem verbal and nonverbal communication in one’s owns culture over others. This is similar to cultural relativism, in which all social practices are equally good. However, unlike cultural relativism, the goal of effective intercultural communication is not to state that all cultural practices are good, but to strive to develop an intercultural consciousness and understand others in order to enhance communication to increase understanding amongst all communicators.

Another way to improve intercultural communication, both internally and externally, is to simplify the situation. Culture is a very complex topic, but viewing culture as simply a community of practice, histories of community of practice, a way of doing things, and as a community in general can help organization members find ways to communicate in a more effective manner with diverse organization members and customers and clients. The key is to understand the individuals’ communities and to communicate with them in a way that would be acceptable or appreciated in their community. To understand what is culturally acceptable in another’s community, one must make it his or her responsibility to become aware of what the social norms are in the other person’s culture. This could include minor research or casual observation. However, jumping to conclusions could be detrimental and result in communication dissonance. To avoid jumping to conclusions, one should take cues from the other people he or she is communicating with, or if the relationship is close enough as in a co-worker-to-co-worker relationship, sometimes it is ok to simply ask what styles or methods of communication are preferred or appropriate in various situations.

J. Mariah Brown is the owner and editor-in-chief of Writings by Design, LLC. To learn more about how Writings by Design can help your business flourish, please visit us at http://www.writingsbydesign.com, email your question to inquiry@writingsbydesign.com or call 866-937-2361.