Creating a Blueprint for Business Development Training: The Stakeholder Square©

Successful business development doesn’t happen by chance; it requires a deep understanding of client needs, a clear strategy, and individuals who are motivated to do it. At Client Talk, we’ve spent years refining a blueprint that empowers professional services firms to build lasting relationships, drive growth, and stay ahead of the competition. In the first of three articles where we set out our blueprint, we introduce the heart of our approach: the Stakeholder Square©.

Stakeholder Square©

Business Development is fundamentally all about creating relationships. It comes as no surprise then, that at the centre of our blueprint is our Stakeholder Square©. This sets out the four key stakeholder groups that need to be understood and considered when firms think about Business Development and how to equip their professionals with the skills they need to excel at it.

The four corners of our Stakeholder Square© are:

• The Client

• Strategic Partnerships

• The Firm

• The Individual

  
  

You will notice that two squares relate to external stakeholders, and two squares relate to internal stakeholders. Whilst there are undoubtedly longer lists that could be created, we focus on the groups that have the biggest impact on business development strategy, training and coaching.

External Stakeholder: The Client

The Client is perhaps the most important stakeholder when it comes to Business Development. The Client Corner extends beyond live clients, and covers target clients, aspirational clients and former clients. It is arguable the corner that should be the focus of Business Development efforts. Business Development training and coaching should reflect and help professionals act on the insights that the firm gets from its clients.

When we conduct client listening exercises, we uncover what it is that clients want from their advisors. Their needs and preferences should shape your business development activities, including training. When we speak to clients, what we often hear is that they are looking for advisors who they can work with. Who they get on with. Who are friendly. These things sound trivial, but in a competitive environment, where many firms can deliver the advice that is needed at a high level, relationships and EQ can help differentiate one firm from the next.

Clients are the best source of understanding when it comes to firm branding and knowledge of what you do well, and where you have fallen short. A desire to gather these insights drives client listening programmes. However, it is not enough to just know; the firms that gain value from their insights are those who reflect on them, and who connect these insights with their professionals, so that their professionals can act on them. These firms use insights to shape the customer journey and they make sure that the voice of the client is present not just in strategic decision making, but also in the implementation of that strategy, including in business development training.

External Stakeholder: Strategic Partnerships

From a business development perspective, external stakeholders extend beyond clients. It is important to understand your firm’s wider network and web of contacts. Strategic alliances can help deliver increased value to your clients and boost your business development efforts. Referrer relationships can provide a steady stream of income, as well as provide you with key insights into how you are seen in the market. This corner is about the wider ecosystem of individuals and businesses with who professionals need to build relationships.

The relationship and networking skills that you build in your professionals should extend to broader stakeholder awareness and should enable them to leverage who they know.

Strategic Partnerships are important for another reason too. Increasingly, clients are interested in more than just the individuals that reside in their advisory firm. They want to understand the broader web of suppliers and investors. This is particularly important for certain clients – those who are starting to think about business as more than just for profit.

In the UK, more than 2,800 companies have signed up to the Better Business Act (we are one of them!). There are more than 8,000 Certified B-Corp Corporations across 162 industries in 96 countries. These companies want to have a positive impact on the planet and its people. Your firm might not be a signatory, or a B-Corp, but your clients might well be. They are increasingly likely to be thinking about it. More than 280,000 companies manage their impact with the B Impact Assessment. Are you aware of what these companies are looking for from your firm and do you measure up?

Internal Stakeholders: The Firm

As with the client corner, there are different elements to this corner too. First of all, there is the firm as an organisation/entity. The brand which is “the firm” needs its professionals to bring relationships to life. We have found that high-growth firms see all of their professionals taking part in business development. The old adage that people do business with people is as true today as it has ever been.

However, there is more to this stakeholder than an intangible concept of a firm. There is the team in which the professional resides, the other teams that exist alongside, including the teams that exist to support professionals with business development.

To do Business Development individuals need not only to leverage their own strengths but to also leverage the strengths of the collective. Business Development is never about one person doing everything, it should be amount many people complementing each other and collaborating.

Cross-selling sits within this stakeholder, and the importance of moving away from a "my client" culture. Bringing in other parts of the firm is good for everyone, including clients who don't have to go to the hassle of engaging multiple suppliers when they have found one they like. Again, we often hear in our client listening exercises that clients want to find out more about the firm and what other opportunities there are.

Internal Stakeholder: the individual

This might seem like a strange stakeholder to include, but it is the stakeholder that is most often overlooked, the one who has to do the work, and the reason why most business development training doesn’t have the desired results.

Regardless of the infrastructure that exists around a professional, it is at the end of the day the professional that has to do business development. They have to have the conversations that create the relationships that ultimately sustain the firm’s growth. We all know about the concept of rainmaker. We have written about the fact that firms don’t need to have an army of rainmakers. That is not what this is about and, we believe that the focus on “rainmaker training” is why most business development efforts fail. Being a rainmaker doesn’t work for everyone.

We believe that individuals need to understand their strengths.  They need to do business development in a way that aligns to those strengths and they need to understand and connect with business development in a way that motivates them to do more of it. Don't get us wrong, this isn’t about staying within their comfort zones. It is, however, about understanding what their individual comfort zone is and moving into a learning zone that feels right for them. It is about bringing all the individuals together so they are more than the sum of their parts.

When we deliver business development training and coaching, there is a huge element of self-awareness built in, this is itself the foundation of emotional intelligence and a key super skill for relationship building.

Before embarking on any project or learning journey, we start with gathering insights that will inform and shape that journey. We can combine client listening with our business development audit, and 1:1 coaching, to help you gather the insights you need to understand what the Stakeholder Square© looks like for your firm and reflect on what needs to be the focus of your business development training. To find out more, why don't you contact us.