Business Development Coaching Insights

September 22, 2024|Accountants, Kim's Blog, Lawyers, Management Skills, Relationship Management, Selling|

At next week’s 29th Annual PM Forum Conference 2024 – PM Forum I’m presenting on coaching alongside Richard Chaplin | LinkedIn and Keith Hardie | LinkedIn. I thought it would be helpful to do a round-up of recent coaching articles which focus on business development. I’ve mostly drawn from PM Magazine but did look at some other media. PM Forum members can access all Magazine – PM Forum articles in Skills Development – PM Forum. The articles highlighted share opinion, insight and case studies. Business Development Coaching Insights.

BD or not to BD – Is coaching the answer? (Deloitte, Simmons & Simmons, Ropes & Gray, Norton Rose Fulbright, Fried Frank)

In July 2024, James Lumley investigated views of BD coaching in various firms.

Understand the client journey

Amit Champaneri, Head of Clients and Sales at Deloitte, said that direct influencing of a sale is rare but BD professionals are there to enable sales. Their role is to help fee-earners understand the clients’ journey and build a solution to meet their needs based on the challenge they are facing.

It requires navigating complicated organisations, identifying clients, exploring their needs, leveraging propositions, highlighting opportunities and initiating conversations. Fee-earners are the ones who go toe-to-toe with clients to make (or miss) the sale so there’s a need for sales training for fee-earners.

Sales training

Lee Curtis, formerly global head of sales at Simmons & Simmons, has trained hundreds of lawyers to sell. He suggests lawyers are very skilled in some areas but less skilled in others. Like eggs, they have a hard outer shell but are actually quite fragile – they don’t like rejection (so often don’t follow up). They can take things personally.

There is a formula to sales and it can be taught. As AI advances they are going to need their personal skills more and more. Key behaviours include: confidence, perseverance and resilience. BD coaches help people become more emotionally literate.

Reappraising involves identifying an emotion that appears to be holding someone back, understanding it and making it constructive.

Coaching and mentoring

Julia Robinson, head of training for law firm Ropes & Gray in Europe and Asia, agrees that selling is about relationships rather than presentation skills or thought leadership writing. Core BD skills are best learned through coaching and mentoring – with an emphasis on coaching. Mentors share personal experience and advice whereas coaches help people develop their own communication and relationship style that is the best fit for them and their clients.

Work-winning competences

Lisa-Marie Sikand, former CMO at Norton Rose Fulbright, says all BD coaching is about developing and enhancing work-winning competencies. Amongst those are self-awareness and managing their own and others’ emotions (this is emotional intelligence An introduction to emotional intelligence (EQ) and empathy (Video) (kimtasso.com)).

Mindset change

David Sheldon, a former partner at Fried Frank and former general counsel, suggests coaching in BD and relationships is a delicate task – taking highly skilled professionals out of their comfort zone.

He mentions Marshall Goldsmith’s dictum “What got you here won’t get you there” as lawyers move from “doing” to growing the business. It requires a change in mindset. Group coaching means that the experience of senior leaders can be leveraged. And there is value when senior people show a degree of openness and even vulnerability.

Peer networks are often neglected in the first few years of careers as professionals focus on developing their technical expertise. So this is often a component of business development coaching.

BD or not to BD Is coaching the answer? (pmint.co.uk)

Coaching and training is part of the business development professionals’ role

Matt Baldwin’s leader in July 2024 started with “Whether it is something we do consciously or not, we will be there helping colleagues to better network, use LinkedIn more effectively, prepare for a press interview, pitch or client meeting and so much more”.

Call the professionals (pmint.co.uk)

BD coaching case study (Ropes & Gray)

In the same July 2024 edition, Ropes & Gray’s business development coaching programme was described by Julia Robinson (Head of Professional Development and Training for Ropes & Gray in Europe and Asia., a certified business psychologist and accredited executive coach) and David Sheldon (a former GC and law firm equity partner).

The new Ropes & Gray CONNECT programme offered a group of lawyers starting on their business development journeys the space and time to think about how they could develop a mindset and the habits that would work for them as individuals over the long term. Transitioning from technical expert to trusted advisor
The programme was offered to senior associates and counsel in the London office and was entirely opt-in. The only ask was that they commit to six sessions over five months. These consisted of three learning modules for all participants augmented by three small group coaching sessions, held between modules, where the participants were split into cohorts based on their level of experience
The three modules, whilst primarily content-led, were structured to be interactive and involved case studies, some light-touch theory, as well as the sharing of real-world, lived experiences by the facilitator, David Sheldon, and two partners who had volunteered to support the programme
‘In Conversations with…’ segments were included in the first and third modules, which involved the facilitators talking about their personal experiences developing client relationships
Larger group sessions provided an overview and wider forum for sharing ideas and experiences while the smaller coaching groups enabled them to take a deep dive into more focused, detailed and specific areas of how to develop client and relationship-building skills
The conversations were outcome-focused, exploring in practical terms what was getting in the way of actioning next steps and providing a supportive accountability framework to assist in moving learnings into actions

Ropes & Gray CONNECT – Building deep client relationships (pmint.co.uk)

Partner and fee-earner coaching – An inhouse perspective (Case study from Moore Barlow)

Also in the July 2024 edition, Michelle Wheeler talked about creating a BD roadmap for strategic business development and personal brand-building.to give fee-earners the confidence to step out of their comfort zones. Her key points included:

One of the major challenges marketers face in delivering effective BD coaching is persuading partners and fee-earners to think differently and adopt a new mindset
Although law school teaches students how to be a good lawyer academically, it often fails to instil business acumen: lawyers aren’t necessarily taught about the importance of building relationships with their colleagues and clients, how to engage with different internal teams at the firm, or how to view the practice of law through a commercial lens
The only real way to get prospective clients to sit up and take notice is to offer them an exceptional client experience. Fee earners have a key role to play in the perception that is created: how they make their clients feel is vitally important but it isn’t a skill that you can teach fee-earners from a PowerPoint. Emotional intelligence and ‘soft skills’ are something that they must develop and refine for themselves
The senior leadership team must be seen to be engaging in BD activities on a regular and routine basis
Firm-wide coaching encompasses multiple teams to foster a different dynamic and break down any silo mentality. This in turn boosts the internal culture and creates a lot of positivity which radiates outwards
When people attend training sessions with content and lessons they feel benefits them and their career directly, rather than just the firm, they come away feeling positive about the training.

Partner and fee earner coaching : An in-house perspective (pmint.co.uk)

Consistency – Create habits (Deloitte)

In May 2024, Martin Bragg, Business Development Lead at Deloitte, wrote an article on “Business Development Coaching – why consistency is more important than intensity” in PM Magazine.

He argued that habits beat gestures when building a BD culture: “If we want to change results, we need to change behaviours”.

Many rush to the MBD team as they look towards a directorship in hopes of “doing some BD”. Whilst sharing content and attending events is important for awareness raising – what they need to do is have more conversations with clients and targets

“The art of managing and growing the relationships develops our understanding of what makes the client tick is at the heart of business development coaching”. He coaches assistant directors and, over the course of a year, demystifies the process of business development.

One technique he uses is to ask those he is coaching “Why is BD hard for you?”. This reveals how some may have the wrong idea about what BD involves.

One of his leaders shared that she promises herself to try and speak to a client every day. There’s a need for habit and discipline in business development. (This supports the research from Matt Dixon et al whose research revealed what makes a successful rainmaker – see Rainmaking best practice in professional services firms (Selling) (kimtasso.com))

Martin says that in BD coaching he focuses on two things:

Encourage good habits – Make small changes that fit around a busy professional’s day to day work
Solve today’s problem today – Ask them to identify a BD challenge they are facing right now and discuss how they can effectively tackle it

Progress comes incrementally which is why he does coaching over extended periods. After nine months in the programme, he asked them what they had learned:

Discipline – You never find time for BD, so you have to make time for BD. Even if it is just 10 minutes a week
Habits beat gestures – Smaller investments in time (e.g. calling a client every week) often have better results than large investments in time (e.g. hosting a round table, attending an industry dinner or writing a regular column)
Business development is not sales – It is about developing the relationships that will sustain your career

He concludes by suggesting that BD is like a game of snakes and ladders – you just keep rolling the dice and keep doing the little things to help you move up the board – one step at a time. Creating small new habits is covered in the book “Tiny habits – the small changes that change everything” BJ Fogg | Tiny Habits

Business development coaching – Why consistency is more important than intensity (pmint.co.uk)

Business Development coaching for reluctant partners

In November 2022, Peter Kane urges coaches to cement expectations with peer support.

He suggests asking questions to determine how likely a prospect is to move forward:

Have they used us before? Or do they know of us?
How immediate and compelling is their need?
Will our value be easy to communicate to them?
How strong are our current relationships?
What level of contact and support do we have from the main decision-maker/budget holder?

Conversely, the following red flags signal that it might be time to move on:

Never commissioned any other external advice or help before
Can’t find time to do something simple that requires a few minutes of their attention
Appears to see the work as personally threatening
Is vague and non-committal when asked when they’d like to act on a specific need or want
Tells repeatedly that it’s nice just to chat

Nurture confidence by reframing BD as being helpful to clients rather than ‘selling’. By understanding their needs, fee-earners can improve their service, develop a client-centric approach and be seen as a trusted advisor.

Training and coaching are vital to make fee-earners feel more comfortable with relationship building and appreciate its value. To help follow through, the coach provides frameworks and templates that can guide future activities.

It’s also worth getting the message across that BD doesn’t require learning a new and unfamiliar set of skills. Fee-earners must already be confident networkers and persuasive communicators, or they wouldn’t have got this far.

Business development for reluctant partners (pmint.co.uk)

Coaching for pitches

Claire Mills, at leading firm actuarial firm Barnett Waddington, focused on business development coaching for pitching and tendering in July 2022.

“Business development professionals helping fee earners to present in new business pitches has always been a labour of love. I’ve been doing it for the past 24 years with lawyers, surveyors and actuaries”.

Her key points were:

Do not underestimate the power of personal attention in one-to-one coaching sessions
Often fee-earners’ biggest fear is looking stupid in front of colleagues and clients
Coaching improves their confidence and reduces stress and anxiety
Use coaching to find their authenticity and their “why” (“pitch mojo”)

Conveying the human side of professionals (pmint.co.uk)

Too busy for business development?

In May 2024, consultant Bernard Savage addressed the common issue of being too busy for business development. His key points to include in educating fee-earners (during coaching) of the need for business development were:

At the heart of sustainable growth lies the imperative to stay close to existing clients and referrers
Beyond immediate gains, business development serves as a linchpin in succession planning – a crucial aspect often overlooked in the daily grind. By honing the skills of junior fee earners, firms lay the groundwork for seamless transitions and long-term sustainability.
It’s imperative to recognise that the fruits of business development efforts do not ripen overnight. Rather, they often necessitate a sustained investment of time and resources
From initial outreach and needs assessment to proposal development and negotiation, the business development life cycle spans a spectrum of activities, each demanding patience, perseverance and strategic acumen
Beyond its immediate commercial implications, business development serves as a conduit for collecting invaluable market intelligence
By attracting better and more profitable clients aligned with the firm’s vision and market positioning, practitioners fortify their competitive edge
Client attrition and the departure of key rainmakers pose existential threats to firms, underscoring the imperative for proactive risk management
Embracing a holistic approach to business development entails a fundamental shift in mindset – one that transcends the confines of immediate tasks and embraces the imperatives of growth, resilience and strategic agility

The business development imperative (pmint.co.uk)

Future of learning and development for MBD professionals

In March 2023, Julie McConnell, a former lawyer and now a business development professional at White & Case LLP talked about the future of learning and development. The firm is firmly embracing modern best practice: “If you are coaching or training them, in order to be the coach or trainer, you need to have a higher level of skill. And, I think you have to have a higher level of skills early on in your career, including a real understanding of the world around you.”

“In our roles, we are often thrown into the deep end and have to manage difficult situations. Some skills are very difficult to train but we know can be trained. For example, things like stakeholder engagement, managing teams, resilience, collaboration, strategic thinking, influencing and negotiation.”

This means marketing and BD professionals should feel empowered to take control of their own development, both by seeking out and asking for training programmes, and by developing their own networks, meeting other marketing and BD people, listening to podcasts, following blogs and taking advantage of the full functionality of LinkedIn.

Amit Champaneri is Head of Client and Sales for Risk Advisory at Deloitte in London. He commented that his firm’s ability to offer large-scale, sometimes year-long academy-style development programmes to ‘top talent’ across all parts of the firm is a real differentiator. Typically, these are offered at key career development stages, involve regular in-person meet-ups and have some sort of graduation at the end.

The future of learning and development (pmint.co.uk)

Questions to explore the current situation

There was a great LinkedIn post by Sean McPheat (2) Post | LinkedIn in August 2024 with a neat infographic on questions to ask to explore the present reality in more detail.

The best coaches focus on goals and actions. But understanding the current reality is key for making meaningful progress. It’s not just about asking questions. It’s about asking the right questions.

What’s happening right now?
- This question opens up the conversation and helps the coachee reflect on their current situation
- It sets the stage for deeper exploration
What have you tried so far?
- This question helps to uncover past efforts and strategies
- It sheds light on what has worked and what hasn’t
What obstacles are you facing?
- This question identifies the challenges and barriers
- It helps in understanding the root causes of issues
How do you feel about this?
- This question brings emotions into the conversation

It helps in understanding the coachee’s emotional state and its impact on their actions.

Articles on leadership coaching

I’ve included some articles on leadership coaching as the concepts can help in business development coaching too.

High performance C-suite team

In May 2024, Nicole Bachman of leadership and team development business Home – Haywood Mann explored coaching to enable the C-Suite to operate as one team. She outlined eight characteristics of high-performing C-suite leadership teams:

Trust
Conflict (as a catalyst for change and to resolve conflicts immediately)
Commitment
Communication
Collaboration
Accountability
Results
Practice

This needs facilitation in an intense process of learning by offering gentle questions for the team – for example:

What works well in our current way of collaborating? What doesn’t work well?
What would ideal collaboration look like? What are we willing to change to make that happen?
What is every person willing to contribute to achieve it? What are the five behaviours we want to stop in our collaboration?

Is your C-Suite a high-performing team? (pmint.co.uk)

Life-long learning leaders

Beverly Landais, a veteran marketer, business developer and leader in professional services, is now a full-time coach. In July 2022, she talked about coaching for leadership development.

“Great leaders are also lifelong learners who are curious about the world and seek to learn and develop continually. The best leaders are active listeners who seek feedback and input from others.”

Mentors can provide reassurance and a guiding hand to succeed in a new leadership role
Pause before diving into something significant and consider it against your personal and professional goals (use reflection)
A coaching leader focuses on developing the potential in people. They will encourage independent thought by asking: “What are the options?”
A coaching technique is to encourage people to think back to when they successfully overcame a challenge with questions like:
- What motivated you to push on?
- How did you go about this?
- Which personal resources did you tap?
Key questions include (to help reframe thinking):
How do I know for sure that I can’t do this?
What other ways are there of looking at this?
If there was a way of doing this, do I want to find it?
Evaluate beliefs by asking for feedback from people who know you well
- What do they think is your leadership style, and how well does it work?

Leaping into leadership (pmint.co.uk) Beverly Landais July 2022

Coaching models

How to Have a Coaching Conversation | CCL This helpful article (from March 2023) contains some gems:

The ability to start — and hold — a coaching conversation is a transformational leadership skill
through coaching, you help people become more self-aware
Some of the most powerful coaching conversation experiences are informal exchanges in hallways, cafeterias, workspaces, virtual chats, and video calls in the course of everyday work
Identify when there’s an opportunity for a coaching conversation – recognize when someone is open to having a coaching conversation, pay attention to their cues and listen for key phrases
Three guidelines to hold a coaching conversation: Listen carefully, respond thoughtfully and resist imposing your own solution
Coaching isn’t about the quick fix or first solution. It’s about uncovering answers through inquiry, openness, and exploration. Start by asking powerful questions that draw out more information or stretch the other person’s thinking
Informed by neuroscience, the real art of conversation is balancing an appropriate mix of challenge and support

The 12 Challenges Most Coaches Face – Coaching Outside the Box Lucia Baldelli, an ICF MCC credentialed coach and co-author of the book “The Human Behind The Coach” shows the most common challenges for coaches and mentors:

Explain what coaching is and not solving their problem
Setting boundaries
Building trust
Finding the direction
Handling talkative people
Focusing on the person, not the problem
Letting them do the work
Building accountability and commitment
Helping them see the behaviours that need to change
Dealing with strong emotions or no emotions at all
Dealing with people who are pessimistic
Opening up a new topic at the end of a coaching session

I’ve included some common coaching models for reference:

GROW

The GROW coaching model (source: John Whitmore)

Goal: What are the essential process goals, and what results must be achieved by the practitioners?
Reality: The next coaching model step should include attaching your team to the set goals based on reality indicators and ideas.
Option: As a coach, you must explore the executive options in front of your coachees based on their desired goals, process stages, and workplace reality.
Will: The last point of GROW coaching model is where the coach helps the coachees to set their core action plan and implement it effectively.

OSKAR

Helpful to address complex problems and accomplish long-term goals – beneficial for those who are feeling overwhelmed or stuck. Sometimes used to explore your team process and framework to highlight problem-solving skills, functioning steps, and all other negative and positive details:

Outcome: What is the required result?
Scaling: Analyse the current frame’s situation and indicators and attach the required outcome to a realistic expectation
Know-How: Know what you need from skills, resources and time to achieve your program’s goals.
Affirm and Action: The coach should guide this coaching model until each individual finds the best actions to improve his/her method
Review: Coaches work to compare and review the actions to the process progress to provide the best edition of the working frame with no key challenges

CLEAR

Helpful for transformational change

Contract: What growth and success results do you want to achieve from this framework model?
Listen: Hear out your employees, clients, and leaders to understand better about each issue
Explore: After listening, these coaching model coaches will start asking questions better to meet the psychological needs
Action: Define a strategic solution for the situation to achieve the goals
Review: Know if your team finds what is missing and whether the coach met their expectations

ACHIEVE

Assess the current situation
Creative brainstorming
Hone goals
Initiate option generation
Evaluate options
Valid option programme design
Encourage momentum

AOR

Analyse the in-the-moment situation with competitive and encouraging coaching techniques:

Activities: What are the attached activities to the current studied framework?
Objectives: What you need to achieve from the previously designed activities.
Results: This coaching model attached objectives and expected results to make this developing coaching practice successful.

SOAP

Professor Donald Schön, a professor, philosopher and leading reflective practice expert, developed this model in the 1980s

Situation
Observations
Assessment
Plan

Hawkins’ (2011) five disciplines of team coaching

Commissioning (what stakeholders require of us)
Clarifying (what the team is there to do)
Co-creating (how the members work together)
Connecting (what they do when they are not together)
Core learning (how the team as a whole develops and learns)

The Coaching Skills Academy (CSA)

The Managing Partners’ Forum and PM Forum have a Coaching Skills Academy offering a range of training workshops for leaders and marketing and business development professionals in coaching and mentoring.

Coaching Skills Academy – PM Forum (a joint venture between Managing Partners’ Forum | (mpfglobal.com) and Home – PM Forum)

Coaching teams – a practical toolkit (1^st October – Jamie Butler)
Meaningful mentoring (15^th October – Andy Lopata)
Introduction to coaching and mentoring skills (5^th November)
Developing people’s resilience (25^th November)
Advanced coaching skills (19^th December)

The Managing Partners’ Forum and PM Forum operate a free Mentor Match service for members: Mentor Match – PM Forum and Mentor Match- General Guidance | Managing Partners’ Forum (mpfglobal.com)

Books on coaching and mentoring

Introductory coaching and mentoring books

Book Review: The Coaching Manual by Julie Starr – Kim Tasso July 2024

A complete guide to effective mentoring (kimtasso.com) September 2024

Book review: Coaching skills: A handbook by Jenny Rogers (kimtasso.com) June 2022

More advanced coaching and mentoring books:

The Fertile Void – Gestalt coaching at work by John Leary-Joyce (kimtasso.com) August 2024

Transformational Mentoring – creating developmental alliances (kimtasso.com) July 2024

Neuroscience for learning and development by Stella Collins (kimtasso.com) September 2023

Helping people change: Coaching with compassion (kimtasso.com) October 2019

Coaching models – book review of Stephen Gribben’s book (kimtasso.com) August 2017

Other books and some coaching qualifications are listed here: Coaching and consulting skills for M&BD workshop (November 2021) (kimtasso.com)

Organisational and cultural change books:

Book review: The Thriving Lawyer by Traci Cipriano (resilience) (kimtasso.com) June 2024

Neuroscience for learning and development by Stella Collins (kimtasso.com) September 2023

Book review: Neuroscience for organizational change by Hilary Scarlett (kimtasso.com) May 2020

Change management – Change Catalyst book review by Kim Tasso September 2018

change management and organisational change (kimtasso.com) January 2017 “Making sense of change management: A complete guide to the models, tools and techniques of organisational change” by Esther Cameron and Mike Green

Classic management book reviews – The McKinsey way, Good to great (kimtasso.com)