All Clients and Prospects are Not Created Equal

Having worked with no fewer than 12 of the most well known professional services firms in this industry, both large and small, we’ve had a unique opportunity to see the good, the bad and the ugly when it comes to business development and selling effectiveness within these firms.

One of the striking conclusions from our work with these firms is the consistent appearance of “pitfalls” that exist in their business development efforts.  While we’ve identified many more than will be highlighted here, I’d like to reveal two that are both critically important to improving sales effectiveness and are surprisingly common.  There is an obvious opportunity here – if you can identify and overcome the challenges.

The first major pitfall we will cover when it comes to business development and selling effectiveness is the tendency brush past the importance of client segmentation.

Indicators that you may lack critical client segmentation:

1. There is very little strategy and effort to distinguish amongst clients or to differentiate between clients and prospects, for that matter.
   • That’s great for the small, non-strategic client; not so great for your most important clients that warrant special focus.
2. “We never meet a prospect we don’t like” is often heard, and your firm suffers from “opportunistic” distractions.  You rarely meet an opportunity you don’t pursue – even a blind RFP or unsolicited inquiry from a new, unqualified prospect (or suspect).
   • The discipline to say “no” is the missing ingredient and nothing could be more damaging to your “worthy” clients and pursuits.
3. There is no proactive strategy to sell and serve a well defined and differentiated client segmentation strategy.
   • Without the “guard rails” a well defined segmentation provides, the organization can’t be discerning.
4. The pressure of short term quarterly earnings often trumps your long term commitment to strategic accounts and tempts you to re-deploy resources opportunistically – at the expense of your strategy.
   • Once the segmentation is established, the hard part starts – having the discipline to sustain a long-term commitment to your most strategic accounts with a resolve to be successful.