The Growth Engine: A Guide to Building a World-Class Business Development Function in Professional Services

Summary

The Growth Engine describes the main challenge professional services firms face as they grow and shows how to develop a scalable business development effort, covering everything from CRM systems and metrics around utilization, to service development and expansion, to account planning and cross-selling, to winning new clients, to team structure and roles, and to performance management.

This book is supported by extensive interviews with rainmakers in professional services firms including marketing, law, consulting, financial advisory, and IT advisory companies. Interviewees include senior executives at McKinsey, Bain, BCG, Accenture, IBM, AWS, KPMG, Deloitte, Publicis, and Omnicom, as well as a number of Am Law 100 firms. Some of the concepts covered in this book include:

• Identifying buyers, niching services to create awareness and strengthen brand, and using talent to leverage consultants' time and amplify their reach
• Developing new services, aligning sales with marketing, and using tools, processes, and metrics to drive accountability and growth
• Training talent, measuring and managing business development performance, and incentivizing and compensating key roles