How to prepare a Personal Business Development plan
I know many lawyers struggle with where to start with this. Sometimes they will be given a template and guidance but often they can be left trying to find their own way with this task. This is how I would approach this:
Who is your target audience?
This is the best place to start if you understand who your clients are then you will know how to reach them and where you should place your efforts.
Generally, the more detail you can go into the better as will help when you are planning on how to contact them. For example, map out who this audience is from their location, sector, business size or if they are individuals their age, sex and occupation can be helpful. The reason why we do this is you can understand the best way to contact them.
As an example, let’s pretend you are a family associate. Based on your past clients and the work you want to attract you could start with:
- More clients have been men, aged between late 30s to early 40s.
- They are all based in London and work in the City
You could take this information as a target audience but also add on the fact that a lot of your work comes from other lawyers. This could be a secondary audience that could look like:
- Referrals from other law firms based in London
- Referrals from corporate lawyers who do not have a family practice
- Referrals usually come from Partners
Having these two defined audiences makes it so much easier to decide on how best to target them. The first audience could be nurtured through a mix of marketing but also investigating if you are able to develop relationships based with large companies in the city. The second audience would be approached purely through developing relationships.
Research how best to contact this audience
Once you know who you are trying to target then the best way to approach them will be clear. Are these people you already know or will you need to make a cold list? This research section will take the longest time but it means you will be able to be very targeted in how you spend your time.
Let’s give another pretend scenario. If you are a tech lawyer wanting to target start up media firms, then you could investigate what different groups and support organisations already exist for this audience. That could be a good place to start as the organisers of these groups will have a solid understanding of their market.
Planning how to do it.
This is the tricky part. You will need to consider what your goals are, how much time you have to devote to the plan and if you have any budget. I find this is the part that people struggle with the most as they set unrealistic goals of how to do it. Set achievable but realistic goals and remember what your long term goal is. I often say let’s look at your billable target for the year and break down what you estimate you need to bring in as new business. It can be smaller than you realise initially, and you will recognise how much BD you should aim to do in order to achieve this.
If your goal was to have one online or face to face meeting a week with targeted people that can be so valuable to you over the course of the year. Whenever I was starting out to grow my network, I attended one networking event per week in the industry I was interested in. It sounds like a small action but it gradually built over time which gave me a solid foundation of going into business.
If you are interested in training for your team or talks on business development please contact Eileen Donaghey.