Back
PM Forum - London
Increasing your involvement in strategic development
One of the biggest challenges facing marketing and business development experts in professional services organisations is increasing your involvement in strategic development. Tony Reiss of Sherwood PSF Consulting (one of the first qualified Professional Services Marketing Directors in the UK) give some useful tips on what we can do differently to make this happen at the London June event hosted by Smith & Williamson.
Tony illustrated the issue with an interesting BD Service 2x2 model. Business development work can be operational or strategic and it can be reactive or proactive. People usually start off their career in an operational / reactive role focusing on delivery. They typically then develop into an operational / proactive role creating process to do things more efficiently. This creates additional time to potentially increase strategic involvement. The biggest challenge is making the jump to strategic work. It is one thing freeing up the time for strategic thinking, but credibility and trust also need to also be gained before this can happen. A detailed knowledge of your firm’s business, its services and the markets in which it operates are also needed. This helps to build credibility, trust and rapport which are necessary ingredients to influence. The greatest value can be added doing strategic / proactive work, where something the firm doesn’t realise it needs is brought to its attention. It is crucial to get the operational bit right, but too many teams have too many people focusing on operational side and they could add more value by focusing more on the strategic side, bringing new strategic ideas to the table.
Tony went on to explain different behavioural styles that will help influence the result of conversations. Using ‘logic’ is the predominant style in 90% of conversations in professional services firms, but is not the most effective as there is little emotion attached to the outcome. Using an ‘assertive’ style outlining the consequence of not pursuing something does not always achieve the buy in that is so important for success in the professions. ‘Building a vision, describing the benefits of an ideal outcome can be very effective. ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we could …’ type arguments can be very helpful in generating the motivation to make things happen. Lastly, ‘consulting and involving’ to get buy in is very important as it helps to get people committed to the outcome.
If you think carefully about when and how you use these styles, you will improve the outcome of conversations. In summary, you should start with a vision of where you want to go, then consult and involve, then use logic and be ready to get tactfully assertive if necessary.
Des Greene
Back
