Ask ten people inside a technical services firm what business development actually means, and you will get ten answers. Sales. Marketing. Proposals. Conferences. What the directors do when they are not billing.
They cannot all be right, and the disagreement is not harmless. Twelve senior people carrying twelve different definitions will pull in twelve different directions, and no system built on top of that will hold.
This episode settles two questions before anything gets built.
What business development actually is. The definition worth using: the structured approach that converts strategy into opportunity, by identifying, shaping and pursuing work that creates value for clients and sustainable growth for the firm. Strategy comes first, because there is nothing to convert until the firm has decided where it is going. Strategy here does not mean a six month exercise. It means honest answers to five questions: where do we play, who do we serve, what do we want to be known for, how do we win, and what will we not do. The fifth is the only one with a cost attached, which is why it usually gets left off.
What growth actually rests on. Three foundations that have to be tended together: excellent service, trusted relationships, and visibility. The episode works through why the order matters, because the direction of failure is asymmetric. A firm with excellent service and limited visibility has a fighting chance. A firm with high visibility and poor service is in a much worse position, and no amount of business development recovers it.
It also covers why visibility is the foundation that disappears first, why the best source of new work is almost always a client you already have, and what David Maister found when he studied where professional firms actually put their business development effort. The short version: the activities with the highest return get the least deliberate investment, because they do not look like business development from the outside.
The episode closes on the objection everyone has, which is not wanting to sell to a client mid-delivery, and on why the second half of a client relationship manager's job is almost universally left to chance.
One thing to do this week. Take your five largest clients. For each one write down two names: the person who owns delivering the work, and the person who owns growing the relationship. The first column takes thirty seconds. If the second is empty, or it is the same name five times, or it is the managing director by default, that is the finding, and it took ten minutes.
Next episode takes the third article in the series, on what a business development approach designed for technical services actually looks like, starting with an honest look at what already exists: capture management from government contracting, solution selling from enterprise sales, and the professional services writers. Some of it is worth borrowing. None of it quite fits, and the reasons why are the interesting part.
The written article this episode is based on, and the rest of the BDF Insights series, are at bdfpartners.co.za
BDF Partners was founded by Frans Oosthuizen, who built and ran business development for a global engineering firm across sub-Saharan Africa before starting the practice. BDF Partners helps technical and professional services firms build a business development system light enough to survive a busy delivery month.
What is BDF Insights?
Business development for technical and professional services firms, and where their markets are heading.
Most engineering and consulting firms grow on delivery and reputation until that stops being enough: the work is good, the relationships are real, and growth still depends on whoever has time for it. BDF Insights looks at what makes growth deliberate. It also looks further out, at reading a market early enough to position before a shift becomes a tender.
Frans Oosthuizen is the founder of BDF Partners. After a international career in Europe, Russia and Africa, he now works with owner-led firms that sell expertise and judgement.