5 Reasons Why Your Business Development Strategies Fail

Every professional service provider needs to deploy strategies at different levels for their organisational growth, yet some still fail even with the most impressive plans in place.

In our experience working with professional service providers, we have identified some common reasons why the deployment of good business strategies may fail for certain organisations. Here are five of the most common for law firms.

1. Your business model; this plays a major role in what strategies you choose. This model must be deep-rooted in the organisation, to the point that it becomes your known identity. Once determined, you can then work with the right teams to start implementing. The problem with this simple yet confusing concept for some is that only a few members of many law firms buy into the idea of what their firm stands for. 

2.Your team; As a Manager or Managing Partner, if the people tasked with running the day to day operation of your firm do not feel valued or relevant to the vision and goals you set, then how do you expect your firm to be prosperous? Your team constitutes a very valuable part of this equation. Do not take them for granted, sell to your team first.

3. A bias for action; for your firm to maximise its full potential as a market leader, you need to test out solutions and test often. Professionals, especially in the legal service industry tend to dwell too much-discussing outcomes than implementing. Do not fall into the trap of analysis paralysis and when in doubt on what business strategy to deploy for e.g better customer service; simply listen to the constraints and solve them as they appear. Then adjust as you go along.

4. Don’t look at your competition; this could be disagreed with, especially when your firm is going after the same pool of clients. The aim here is to prevent your firm from deploying costly or misaligned strategies that may have failed at the competing firm. A shiny new office or a major event sponsorship may not be the best strategy for your firm at the moment and may drain your marketing budget without giving any results.

5. Have a marketing budget; this goes without saying, but having a marketing budget for each business year helps firms cut their “coats” to size. You need not invest in marketing options that may not be designed for your firm or team size. Carefully map out the budget for what already works and to achieve this, your need to measure marketing results effectively, talk to us about our market intelligence analysis and guides to help you get started.