Business development blogs & articles
Complimentary Business Development Review for law firms worth $750.
Covid 19 has seen many lawyers pull back from business development activity. Find out what the proactive, successful firms have been doing to generate new instructions and stay ahead of the competition.
Complimentary Business Development Review for law firms worth $750. Covid 19 has seen many lawyers pull back from business development activity. Find out wha...
Professional services firms are often hesitant to raise their fees in a challenging economic environment.
But consider your firm’s growth in expertise and value to your clients as a proportion of the movement in fees you charge – you will often find that fee growth is lagging behind.
Increasingly, firms are pricing their services too modestly for the value they provide and perpetuate the problem by promoting themselves as the leader in their field with a “reasonable” price.
Top clients don’t expect low fees for the services of real experts – you get what you pay for.
If it’s been more than a year since you last reviewed your professional fees, then this blog post is for you.
To decide if you need to rethink your fee strategy, ask yourself:
Is the value you bring to your business keeping pace with the value you’re delivering to your clients?
How are we better this year than last when it comes to delivering value to our client?
You may worry about compromising your competitive position by changing your fees in a tight market. But remember, the state of the economy won’t impact clients’ perceived value of your services assuming you’ve done a good job expressing that value.
The secret of human psychology in consumer spending: if you can show real value, then price does not become the pivotal component in the decision making process.
All things being equal, if two people offer the same service without a clear distinction between them, then price will be the ultimate consideration. So in order to justify charging a higher price (which you will as an expert), you need to distinguish your service from your competitors and be good at expressing your value to your clients.
Your clients may fall into one of three groups:
Price-only shoppers – These clients will never spend more than the bare minimum and will drive across town to save three cents on a litre of petrol. They are frugal and unless you have the lowest price, you will not win their business.
Top-quality shoppers – This group will never settle for less than the best and they can usually afford it. Quality is number one and they know they’ll pay more for it. Low prices will chase them away.
Value shoppers – This group will spend more for something proven to be superior. When no proof is evident, price again, becomes the deciding factor.
If you are still struggling to justify a fee change or what you can do different to avoid becoming seen as a ‘commodity product’, contact Professional Services Business Development to see how we can help you.
Let’s start this fresh calendar year with some tricky and difficult questions.
When asking these business development questions, challenge yourself to take a frank and realistic approach to evaluating the progress, success or otherwise, of your business.
Thrashing out answers to these questions will also help you highlight achievements, identify gaps and shortfalls, and focus your efforts (time and money) for the financial year.
Use the following list to stimulate debate and (ideally) garner consensus with key players within your firm.
1. What is our largest business development challenge?
2. How are we dealing with it?
3. How long have we had the problem?
4. What have we done to address it?
5. How is it impacting the firm?
6. What is it costing us?
7. If it continues, what will the effect on the business be?
8. What are we good at and should do more of?
9. What are we poor at and must stop doing?
10. What will we do differently tomorrow to ensure we hit our business development, financial and wider goals?
Don’t underestimate the power of work-shopping these issues as a group. These questions will help you focus, prioritise, and get back on the rails. Simple questions can be a great catalyst for clarity and change.
As ever, if you need help to run the session, do get in touch.
Recently, I had an interesting experience on the receiving end of half a dozen pitches from firms offering their services.
In each instance, I asked myself which ones would make good partners for the business, and decent referrals for our client base?
Some talked a lot without asking me any questions or finding out what I was looking for.
Others, when asked why I should choose them over the competition, had no real perception of who the competition were, and how they were better than them.
Nobody gave me a definitive reason as to why they were different from anybody else. Most offered “good service” as the reason why I should choose them, but couldn’t verbalise what “good service” was. One provider even forgot to turn up for our meeting!
My experience is consistent with findings from Julian Midwinter & Associates and ALPMA’s Taking the Pulse research: firms are really struggling to positively differentiate from competitors.
Fewer than half of the respondents (44%) agreed or strongly agreed that their firm is strongly differentiated from the competition.
Comments included: “we are undifferentiated generalists in a crowded market place”; there are “too many firms offering the same services with no remarkable distinction”, making it difficult to “stand apart from the ‘vanilla’”.
With this in mind, please, please, please, sit down with your colleagues and come up with a list of challenges that your professional services help solve. Add to this three reasons why clients should do business with you, rather than someone else. What is your competitive advantage?
You must be able to articulate how your services differentiate from your competitors’ – is it based on your experience, technology, speed of delivery, specialist sector knowledge, value for money, or some other feature?
I cannot stress enough how powerful it is to be able to clearly differentiate yourself from competitors to potential clients. And for those firms who remain undifferentiated generalists, they must expect price competition to become central to their world.
If you need assistance in working out how you are different to the competition, do get in touch.
Answer these 20 questions in less than 3 minutes to find out how you can boost your business and increase your revenue.
