3 min read March 2022 — Kristo Sween, fractional business development leader and founder of RFP-Ready and consultant with BanyanRFP caught up with Invest: to share how he assists professional services firms by enhancing their business development strategies. In this interview, Sween discussed his initiatives, the challenges firms encounter and the impact of marketing technology on their business development.
In what unique ways has your role impacted the clients you served this past year?
I work exclusively with professional services firms (attorneys, accountants, architects, engineers, etc.) who have sophisticated practices but haven’t grown to a size where their business model supports a full-time marketing & business development leader. I’ve set up RFP-Ready to support businesses on a project-by-project basis, or on a fixed-fee basis to match their budget so they have access to C-suite expertise without the C-suite price tag. This enables my clients to compete with much larger firms for higher-value work.
In your 25 years of experience, what initiative have you led or contributed to that you are most proud of and why?
The answer I’m most quickly drawn to is the emotional one — when the attorneys and teams that I coach begin to see improvement in their business development success. I’m happy for them and proud of what we accomplish together. But I think at the end of the day, I’m most proud when I can help an organization launch or improve a process that helps the business save time and money and increase their odds of winning new work. At a large national IP firm, the pitch and proposal team streamlined the production of proposals, made more full use of our knowledge-management tools, reduced the amount of time billable professionals spent on the process and enacted a more strident go/no-go process for responding to RFPs that dramatically increased our win-rate. I am proud to have led and been part of the team that accomplished that.
What is the key to developing strategies that ensure “apples-to-apples comparisons” of legal services providers?
I’m fortunate to consult on the legal services buyer-side as well as the seller. At BanyanRFP, our whole platform is designed to enable the apples-to-apples comparison of law firms—their price, their approach, and their talent. This helps the business issuing the RFP cut through the all-too-standard marketing speak of law firms being “uniquely qualified” and provides a pathway for firms to stand behind the claims they make. Outside of my work with BanyanRFP, when consulting with any professional services firm on the RFP process, I don’t allow language in the proposal that we can’t back up with at least three recent specific examples. I help law firms build their story, understand their market and only pursue winnable opportunities. With these elements in place, firms spend less time figuring out how to justify their rates and more time explaining their winning strategy and the value they bring.
What is the biggest challenge you face in accomplishing your mission?
As the marketplace continues to get more and more competitive, professional services firms feel they need to pursue any and every opportunity that comes their way. It’s difficult for firms to let go of the notion that they must have 100 lines in the water to catch the big fish. The truth is, firms need to spend more time putting the right bait on fewer lines to land work that better aligns with practice areas and projects. By focusing marketing and business development efforts on these strategic areas, momentum will build and soon the return will outpace the effort.
What has been the impact of marketing technology on business development and how do you help your clients catch up if needed?
CRM platforms remain the most underutilized tools in a professional services environment. In a traditional sales organization, the sales team utilizes CRM tools fully because their whole job is to sell. It’s different for professional services firms. The service provider is also the salesforce — and they are a reluctant salesforce. Firm leaders will blame the CRM platform and spend money and resources to switch to a system that promises easier use and better results. At the end of the day, if the firm doesn’t have a business development culture and understands the difference between business development and sales, they won’t know how to make best use of their CRM platform or any BDM technology. I work with reluctant salespeople who gradually add sales infrastructure to their business development activities and get them to a point where they’re asking for more and better tools to enable their process.
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