We created the PipelinePlus Platform solution to be the perfect complement to professional service firms’ CRMs. Here are the top three ways PipelinePlus optimizes business development that your CRM can’t.

Let’s face it, the mundane business of keeping on top of business development can be tedious.

That’s why we specifically designed the PipelinePlus Platform to make business development simple, fast, and engaging. Here are the top five ways.

In our 2021 State of Business Development Coaching and Training at Law Firms, we learned that, on average, firms invest 5% of their marketing budgets in coaching, and 79% of firms have implemented a business development coaching and training program. 

For the webinar, “How Professional Services Manage Opportunity Pipelines,” Ackert, Inc. assembled a panel of business development leaders from across professional services industries, including legal, accounting, financial advisory, and architecture/engineering/ construction. To understand what business development looks like at their firms, Ackert CEO David Ackert posed three key questions.

Competition today is fiercer than ever as professional services firms increase their investments in the technologies that can help them attract, target, and acquire new business. Firm leaders who used to view client development as a function reserved for rainmakers look for ways to leverage contributions more broadly across the firm, and marketers work hard to keep up with increasing demands. But one thing hasn’t changed: seller-doers such as lawyers, accountants, financial advisors, and consultants continue to resist the idea of “selling.”

Today’s top talent is not only interested in compensation but in skills development that helps them advance through their careers. Is your firm enabling the next generation of talent to become effective business developers? 

Your typical firm relies on successful seller-doers for new business development but avoids the term “sell,” instead referring to its best seller-doers as rainmakers. Unfortunately, very few people have the rainmaker’s unique ability to excel at both client service and bringing in significant business

Forward-looking firms, however, operate more like their corporate counterparts to maximize business development success. Here are the top three things they’re doing that your typical firm isn’t: 

In the seller-doer model, business development is typically an afterthought, and any platform that enables it will have to compete with the technologies that enable client service.

That’s not to say that sales enablement software won’t work in the context of law, accounting, or other advisory firms, but it must be driven by the following seven best practices.

In early June, I discussed the state of business development with a group of legal marketing and business development experts during a virtual session of the LSSO Global Sales Summit. They were candid when asked about how their firms are currently faring in three critical areas: lead sourcing, lead tracking, and new business forecasting.  

If you’re wondering why business development is so hard, it’s because you may be contributing to a system that treats its prospects poorly.

Historically, Rainmakers have been – and often continue to be – heroes at their law firms. And with good reason. Their seemingly effortless ability to regularly bring in large clients is a significant factor in a firm’s financial success. But beware, the Rainmaker can be a double-edged sword when it comes to the firm’s future growth.   

There’s never a shortage of work to do when you own or manage a book of business. With an endless list of tasks, business developers have to decide which items to cross off today – and which will have to wait until another time.