Planning business development shouldn’t merely be a long list of activities - rather, effective planning must be based around clear goals. Goals are important parts of doing well - and striving to do even better - in just about every aspect of life, including developing business in professional practice.

Get smart about business development goal setting with the help of this succinct distillation from a plethora of academic research, supported by lots of practical experience.

Goals should be realistically attainable. An over-ambitious goal won’t help much.

The right level to set a goal is where you stretch beyond what’s normal and comfortable at your current level of achievement.

Research confirms that goals tend to be self-limiting.  So if you want improved performance, you must stretch. The unintended consequence of an insufficiently challenging goal may be performance or achievement which falls some way short of what might otherwise have happened.

A goal which you see as attainable, but challenging, is most likely to positively impact your performance.  Set goals accordingly.

If an objective is necessary and important, but simply so far away that it seems too hard to reach - or impossible, try working out an achievable interim goal, as the first step on a path to your ultimate objective. Same goes for goals which will take quite some time to realise: identify milestones along the way to help you track progress.

Don’t juggle too many goals at once.  Around five to seven clear goals is sufficient for most of us at any time. Plan to focus on these targets, achieve these goals, then set a limited number of new objectives and work towards them.

Getting smart about goal setting - whether goals for yourself, or goals for your team - will help you produce your best results.

Copyright 2006 Julian Midwinter & Associates Pty Ltd

Niche business development strategies are hardly new, but too often they’re overlooked in a rush to sell professional services to well-known, large, popular, ready-made market segments.Taking a niche focus is the antithesis of scattergun, broad-brush marketing.

Niches which are small, specialised, low volume, or poorly understood may not yet have drawn large or strong competitors.

By focusing on niches which are:
• clearly definable
• closely matches for your skills
• good candidates for specialisation
• suitable for the economics and resources of your professional practice
• large enough to be profitable and sustainable
you may enjoy the many benefits of strong competitive advantage, including premium prices for your professional services.

Focusing your business development efforts in this way will:
• give you rapid traction in a niche
• help you to develop clear, appealing messages to prospective clients you’re ideally positioned to serve
• reinforce your reputation and profile among your established clients in this niche
• allow you to carve out a position of strong perceived advantage
• give you opportunities to enter larger markets from your niche toehold.

Put possible niche opportunities to these tests:
• Does the niche really exist ?
• How many participants and who are they ?
• Where could we source data to assemble a list of participants ?
• Is this a niche where participants meet through professional bodies, industry associations, or interest groups ?
• What specific professional services will you offer to this group ?
• Can you make a distinctive offer which will appeal strongly to this niche market ?
• Is there an opportunity to achieve premium price for your services by focusing on this niche ?

You’ll discover niche markets through a deep understanding of how markets segment and consumer participants behave.

The best starting point will be some of those clients with whom your professional services already achieve the strongest resonance.

Copyright 2006 Julian Midwinter & Associates Pty Ltd

The dream of just about every enlightened professional is to be so different and sought-after that there are few credible alternatives and minimal competition in a distinctive niche - one carved out to fit like a glove.That dream is reality for a privileged few. It’s a far-fetched rainbow-chase for most because they lack the tenacity or commitment (or both) to do what it takes to turn dream into reality.

Differentiation means having the courage not to follow the pack. A current example: “we are a full service commercial law firm”. It’s hardly a differentiation strategy. More like a sentence to undifferentiated middle-of-the-pack status for most.

Many professionals proffer, as differentiation statements, what are, “sameness” statements.

To attempt to stand out with claims like these is to relegate oneself and one’s practice to the “hard to distinguish from all the others” category.

Ill-informed professional service differentiators include claims of:
• long-established
• caring for clients
• [non-specific] better service
• cost-effectiveness
• friendliness and courtesy
• skilled and experienced staff.

There are lots more. Just grab a handful of professional practice profiles and do a “global search and replace” - most firm profiles would readily fit another. Sadly, almost any other.

If you’re determined to be different, think through what you do which is substantially different from most or all the alternatives.

Here’s a list to get you started:
• markets or industries you serve
• geographies on which you focus
• categories, characteristics, or scale of clients you serve
• special or unusual services or work processes you offer
• unique characteristics of your personnel or culture
• special needs or problems on which you focus your efforts
• price - structure or quantum - at which you offer your service.

Put your answers to the test: do they really make you different ?

If you’re determined to be different - and to profit from distinctiveness - be tough with yourself in working out what sets you apart and don’t settle for the anonymity and pressures of middle-pack.

Copyright 2006 Julian Midwinter & Associates Pty Ltd

A marketing strategy often overlooked by professional practices is participation in industry based awards. Award entries are an opportunity for professional practices to promote their brand, highlight differentiation, and ultimately create or increase competitive advantage in the marketplace. Here’s what to watch out for when preparing a submission.

Common mistakes include:
• Not responding to all of the criteria
• Entering awards that are ill-suited to your practice
• Unclear responses where judges have to unravel content and images
• Entering a “standard submission” for multiple entries
• No data or evidence to back up claims
• Poor presentation.

Tips for award entries
• Format your entry around the ‘criteria and points weighting’
• Start preparing your submission as soon as possible, involving all appropriate team members
• Keep the response focused on a real need, perceived problem or an opportunity
• Enlist the help of clients where financial, statistical data or measurable results are available
• Start with bullet point responses to each question/criteria, and then flesh them out after further consideration
• Keep sentences and paragraphs concise
• Use images and charts where appropriate
• Get a second opinion. Ask someone impartial to view and evaluate the submission before you enter
• Always include an executive summary
• Do not exceed the word count
• Adhere to all rules and guidelines of each award.

Copyright Julian Midwinter & Associates Pty Ltd

Each year, lawyers and other expert professionals are confronted with a series of decisions around listings and presence in myriad business and professional directories, and the Yellow Pages.  While most would prefer work to flow from our hard-earned reputations, stand-out profiles, or referrals from trusted network contacts, for many professionals, directory listings or Yellow Pages are necessary elements of work acquisition.

Yellow Pages remains an important general directory of business and trade services for many community members. Whether in old tree-ware form, or on-line, it’s a source for certain socio-demographic groups shopping for some legal services.

Yellow Pages plays - not at all - to many markets and psychodemographics.

As a doyenne of the advertising industry once said, 90% of all advertising is wasted - the trouble is, working out which 10% is effective.

Given how easy it is to make expensive mistakes, here are some Yellow Pages insights [framed in terms of legal services] to help you make better business development decisions.

While just about all firms are “listed”, a relatively small proportion pay for Yellow Pages advertisements.

Smaller law firms dominate the advertisements. Few take large, high-priced space.

Our sample research indicates that return on Yellow Pages advertising expenditure varies widely. Disappointingly few firms rigorously measure results and benchmark them against other avenues for work acquisition.

Law firms who have large, well-placed ads early in the listings report satisfaction with this choice but others who’ve made more modest investments are similarly satisfied. Quality of leads generated is mixed, regardless.

In the United States, research by the American Bar Association reveals that including photographs is especially effective and offering consumer information (such as lists of credentials) is the next best thing. Beware: reactions in other markets are not always in line with North American experience.

The clean, uncluttered “less is more” style of many modern graphic designers is probably not the most effective ad layout for this medium.

Local sampling indicates that private client services are more effectively promoted through the Yellow Pages than small business services. Services where a lawyer is needed “in a hurry” - for example, criminal law - or in an unfamiliar location, are good candidates for Yellow Pages promotion.

That same sample of law firms tells us that their Yellow Pages campaigns have increased their revenues together with increasing time they spend dealing with enquirers, screening for suitability, and “selling” themselves over the phone.

If you choose to invest in Yellow Pages, evaluate outcomes - quantitatively and qualitatively - and benchmark against the alternatives so you can refine decisionmaking with time.

Copyright 2006 Julian Midwinter & Associates

As I write eTips each week, it’s often the product of business development challenges and behaviours I’ve observed among our clients, or learned second hand. Now, I need your input on the eTips topics you find most relevant, how eTips can improve, and what you’d like more of.

This week, please take this brief, three to five minute survey, and tell me, and the whole JMA team, what you think.

As a thank you, you will be entered into a draw to win a bottle of fine wine.

Of course, if you have any queries or other comments, do get in touch.

Thanks for your support and important feedback.

Linda and the team at Julian Midwinter & Associates

Much marketing wallows in a sea of sameness. Enormous efforts are expended searching out small advantages in the quest to create differentiation among many apparently qualified, capable, and often similar professional service firms. Pursuing the holy grail of differentiation is often much less effective than going for the end game: impact.It’s an equation: insight + ideas + innovation = impact.

High impact is the product of:
• drawing on deep insights
• bright ideas
• lots of innovation.

You’ll gain great business development advantage when you:
• actively draw on deep understanding you’ve accrued about significant problems and business issues before your clients and target clients
• take a hard (and fresh) think about their challenges and opportunities to which you might make a positive contribution
• brainstorm to formulate some big ideas in response
• experiment with what may prove radically better ways to tackle the problem or work
• show the positive and measurable results your client can expect from your well-conceived and innovative service.

Rather than endlessly pondering minor points of difference which are unlikely to resonate with clients and prospective clients - or, worse, be meaningless and valueless to them - invest your efforts in increasing your impact, using our formula. We’ve proven it over and over.

Copyright 2008 Julian Midwinter & Associates Pty Ltd

The eTip I wrote last week presented a checklist to help you assess which of your client relationships are truly strategic, and which belong in the categories of just long, or costly, or both. Here’s how to get to strategic relationship status with like-minded clients who will value what you do - beyond its cost.

Go beyond baseline expectations and service levels. Do more than the minimum in most or all of the areas which matter to your client.

Exceed client expectations. Don’t just assume - make sure you really understand what each client expects now, then take it to the next level.

Truly focus on each client. Make certain you know what really matters to this client and that they know this now matters to you, too.

Become truly proactive in identifying, addressing, and constructively engaging potential future issues. Seize the advantage by getting in ahead of your client listing a neat and clearly defined set of needs. Anticipate problems and show you’re ahead of the game.

Invest in superior service. Constantly upgrade the service experience with the very best people and resources you can find.

Expertly manage relationships. Make certain this critical success factor is front and centre, where it belongs. Allow non-chargeable time in professional budgets for this important activity.

Add value to clients and their businesses well in excess of your cost. It goes way beyond value-added services: ensure that your services produce results, are a good buy, and truly valuable to your client.

Engage clients with a constant stream of ideas and recommendations to do better in future. Never take the client for granted - keep them interested, and keep your team on its toes, with constant improvements.

Audit outcomes and evaluate relationships. Invest in independent client interviews and other reviews to help you identify areas to do even better and take your business relationships to the next level.

A strategic relationship is a journey rather than a destination.

Delight in your achievements and progress, but never be satisfied. Always be restless to do better.

Copyright 2008 Julian Midwinter & Associates

When professionals talk with me about their “strategic client relationships”, I’m sometimes struck that what they describe sounds more like a costly relationship, or merely a long one, or sometimes even an old and expensive one. Earning strategic relationship status with your client is a privileged and valuable position.Use this checklist to see just how strategic is each relationship:

• Are you the “go to” firm ?
• Are you truly a trusted adviser ?
• Is your trusted adviser status well ahead of others ?
• Does your client invest in its relationship with you ?
• Does your client frequently ask you to go the extra mile and place high demands on you ?
• Do they acknowledge this ?
• Are you always there when your client needs you and consistently deliver ?
• Do you share mutual goals with your client ?
• Is there genuine partnership dynamic to achieve objectives such as improving value from their investment in your services ?
• Is there measurable two-way benefit from relationship ?
• Do you really invest in the relationship ?

A genuinely strategic relationship is a valuable business and professional advantage and likely to be lucrative.

Next week, how to achieve a strategic client relationship.

Copyright 2008 Julian Midwinter & Associates

Clients have needs: some recognised, others unrecognised. Among the needs they recognise, some clients may have unmet needs - needs for which they have not yet found a professional service solution. Unmet needs present business development opportunities for an expert professional.By implication, unmet needs can be classed as:
• those which are unsatisfied - no satisfactory service has been availed
• those which are unaddressed - no solution has yet been sought
• those which are unrecognised - they don’t yet know they have a need.

Unsatisfied needs are great business opportunities since the client understands what they need and is likely to be open to a well-conceived solution.

Unaddressed needs yield the myriad benefits of greenfield opportunities for an imaginative and persuasive professional.

Unrecognised needs only become worthwhile opportunities for professionals prepared to do the groundwork to create need recognition with an action-oriented client.

In the legal services sphere, our research reveals several clusters of unmet needs. These include:
• intellectual property
• commercial dispute resolution, without recourse to litigation
• information technology services
• communication and entertainment technology services
• compliance awareness and training for front-line client personnel
• streamlining multi-handled processes involving internal and external resources and expertise
• workforce risk reduction and legal support for best practice in human resources
• financial risk reduction
• small business structuring and risk management
• family financial arrangements, estate planning, and intergenerational wealth transfer
• part-time outsourced general counsel.

Rather than battling for market share among clients whose widely understood needs are already being satisfied by others - and possibly with a long queue of aspirants jockeying to competitively displace the incumbent - why not create business development leverage by pursuing unsatisfied, unmet, or even unrecognised needs ?

Copyright 2008 Julian Midwinter & Associates