Business and Client Development, Support & Coaching   

The skills needed to develop brand new clients from prospects, and grow existing clients into larger, more consequential clients are not skills professionals will just stumble into or “learn on the street.” Lawyers, accountants, consultants and other professionals also will not learn them as part of a typical professional development curriculum their firm may offer. Cultivating referral sources, converting prospects into fee paying clients, and expanding a firm’s relevance beyond existing work streams are not the product of serendipity but rather require new skills and strategies, and behavior change.

Edge offers small group business development training programs, including its Rainmaking program, and coaching support for individuals to assist firms that want to invest in their lawyers and put them in a position to support the firm’s growth mission while accelerating their own career development. The approach consists of:

• isolating the critical business development and client relations skills and breaking them down into a few key steps
• delivering to individual partners and other professionals a working vocabulary of “consultative selling” concepts and skills
• developing and applying the toolbox necessary for client cultivation success
  • defining market of prospects and “force multiplying” connecters
  • gaining prospect/client contact access
  • diagnosis of needs
  • building sponsorship
  • positioning and differentiating your firm and/or service
  • implementing retention decisions

For existing clients that represent untapped potential, Edge will help you design and implement a client team strategy that treats each client as a market in and of itself so that you can make full use of the incumbency you enjoy to solve more problems for these clients. 

Finally, Edge can assist in organizing and managing the business and client development efforts through

• definition of a set of priorities and development of a business development plan
• adoption of appropriate processes and maintenance of data and information (e.g. CRM)
• establishment of goals and their measurement
• monitoring of progress and obtaining client feedback