Peer to Peer Magazine

PEER TO PEER: THE QUARTERLY MAGA ZINE OF ILTA 60 BEST PRACTICES Be prepared to include additional data one piece at a time so you can track how it affects outcome patterns. Set milestones along the way, and monitor your progress against them. THE RIGHT TRACK Some of the most important metrics to track include: • Success rates broken out by practice group, type of work or industry • The typical time it takes for an opportunity to become a win • The prep time the BD team has when responding to opportunities with an RFP and its impact on win rate • Which clients you are losing (and to whom) by practice group, industry, etc. • Which marketing activities are producing the greatest ROI To maximize the value of the data collected, illustrate historical trends. This will allow you to forecast results for your future business development efforts and refine revenue projections. The better the quality of the data you capture and analyze, the clearer the picture of variables affecting your new business win rate. Nomenclature is very important here. For instance, clearly define opportunities, wins and other parameters at the outset and make sure everyone involved in the process understands. Once you have established the criteria, dig deeper, comparing win rates by business segments or practice groups. Are there any outliers, any exceptionally high or low win rates? If so, it is time to dig even deeper, determining the source of the anomalies. If you can identify which actions are most closely associated with an unusually high ratio of wins, you might turn the anomaly into (new) business as usual. Track what the data is telling you continually throughout the 100-day journey. Sometimes, the data could almost immediately provide compelling insights; in others, you might need to track additional categories of data before the most meaningful patterns emerge. Although there is no such thing as tracking too much data, tracking smaller amounts of accurate data can wield big benefits. FEATURES Six Data-Driven Steps To Improving Business Development Analyze your wins and losses to pinpoint where you are seeing success Compare success rates by practice group and type of work or industry, then identify meaningful data patterns Understand the typical length of an opportunity, how much prep time the team has and the impact on win rate Improve your positioning by seeing which clients you are losing (and to whom) by practice group, industry, etc. Get a grip on your marketing ROI, and know what is bringing in the right opportunities Translate historical data into trends to better forecast and predict 2 3 4 5 6 Even spreadsheet data can provide actionable intelligence that can improve business development outcomes.

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