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How many meetings with clients have you been to that were aimless, unstructured and poorly planned? If you're like most professionals, probably quite a few. The problem's particularly acute when it comes to business development meetings: your first few meetings with a potential client when you and they are trying to figure out whether you sh Read More

You know that your old clients and contacts are your best sources of new business and referrals. You've even got a pretty good “little black book” of names — people who already know, like and trust you. People who could be good sources of referrals or even new work with their companies. But there's a problem. You're hesitating. You haven' Read More

Sales presentations should be all about the client - not you. Read More

A common problem many professional firms face is overly relying on only one approach to business development. They focus all their efforts on word-of-mouth & referrals, or on networking, or on responding to tenders/RFPs. Typically, the basket they keep all their eggs in is the one they are the most comfortable with: it's worked for them before, th Read More

It seems strangely ironic that my post on pitching should coincide with the death of TV pitchman Billy Mays. Pitching is not always the most appropriate sales approach - but when the time is right, you need to know the skills of the old-time pitchmen to succeed. Read More

In the current economic climate, many professional firms are facing the challenge of bringing in new business in a very short space of time — for example, to replace the lost revenue of a major client who has stopped buying, or to “fill the gap” when engagements are delayed. In some cases it's a “do or die” situation — they need to chalk up new sa Read More

One of the biggest challenges I find clients have when trying to get more referrals is that their referrers (the people they've asked to introduce them to someone) struggle to make the introduction sound attractive to the potential client. By developing offers which your referrers can make to their clients, you change the relationship from doin Read More

For many decades, perhaps the most successful client development strategy for both professional service firms and individual professionals has been one of focusing on a small number of high value clients. More recently, strategies have focused on building large "follower" lists - e.g. for email marketing purposes. Either strategy can work Read More

New book launch: A Lawyer's Guide to Creating a Marketing Habit in 21 Days. It's an excellent book - and for 48 hours you can get 34 free gifts when you buy it... Read More

Article highlighting the four key factors in gaining more and higher quality referrals. Read More