Challenge

A well-known accounting firm challenged its people to deliver an ambitious growth target over five years. The managing partner felt that there was real untapped potential within the business, with a huge opportunity to both grow fees from the existing client base and bring in new clients.

There had been little recent investment in the Business Development engine and the top team wanted to ensure that client facing professionals were supported in developing plans, approaches, skills and behaviours to drive growth.

Solution

We spent some time inside the firm to gain an understanding of the culture and systems and to collate data to create a clear picture of ‘where are we now’ in respect of BD performance:

• Quantity and quality of pipeline
• Cross selling results
• Numbers of client and prospect meetings
• Numbers of proposals and pitches generated
• Conversion rates
• Quality of team and individual BD objectives
• Results against these objectives

We then worked with the management board, marketing and business development teams to create an approach to building an effective BD operation, underpinned by a tried and tested process that theGrogroup has developed underpinned by single point accountability.

The solution adapted: processes, target setting, metrics and built confidence in:

• Clarifying key selling messages and creating a sector approach
• Building a high quality, targeted pipeline
• Growing fees from the client base
• Pitching and converting prospects into clients

Live client and prospect lists were used throughout these sessions, and cross service line collaboration was encouraged to drive learning and real action. All delegates created dynamic personal marketing and BD plans to drive team and individual fee growth targets.

Results

• Business Development activity increased and measurement simplified.
• Over 100 new client and prospect meetings were secured over 3 months
• All delegates grew fees from new and existing clients 10% above their usual run rates
• Conversion rates were improved by 22%

Contact us

Call us now on 01892 610060 or email hello@thegrogroup.com to discuss how we can help you improve your business performance