Sign North Dakota Banking Business Plan Template Myself

Industry sign banking north dakota business plan template myself

[Music] hello and welcome i'm amy franco presenting on behalf of bill.com and i'm here to talk about how to build a rockstar business development plan for any of you out there whether you are an accounting professional you are a small business professional this is something that is mission critical to you and your business growth going forward into the new year so i am really excited to be here with you today talking about the elements that you will need for this business development plan and then some strategies to help you keep it alive throughout the rest of the year here's the agenda that we're going to be covering in our conversation today first i'm going to walk through seven key elements that you need to be thinking about when it comes to creating a rockstar business development plan and then i'll also be talking about how do you choose verticals to help you amplify growth we have so much choice out there today in terms of the types of clients that we can be building relationships with that we can be building business with so i'll give you some strategies to be thinking about how you can intentionally plan for those verticals and then use them to amplify your business growth i'll also be sharing some ideas about how to keep your plan from gathering digital dust how to keep it alive and then lastly some diversification strategies these strategies are going to help you thrive through disruption whether it's the disruption that we're facing today or something that's off into the future that might be affecting your business somewhere down the road all right let's go ahead and dive into those elements of a rockstar business development plan here's the first element your goals and your milestones very foundational but also really important to where you want to be headed into the future so here are a few things that you can be talking about when it or thinking about when it comes to those goals and milestones so the first is thinking to 12 months from now what would you like your business to be looking like at the end of the year whether you are running your own small book of business as an individual or maybe you're a business owner and you have a team of people what would you like your business to look like at the very end of the year and as specific as you can get in terms of what that vision is going to be the more you'll be able to hold yourself and your team accountable to that growth and you'll be able to put those plans in place to make sure that you're taking those steps along the way so one of the levers that you can be thinking about in your business is a revenue lever what are our revenue goals and specifically what are your revenue goals by service line if you can really dig into your different service lines and look at what you want those revenue figures to be looking like that's going to give you a nice strategic picture of the business and also it's going to show you where are your growth or your innovation opportunities so when you look at the choices that you have in terms of where you can grow revenue we want to be looking for growth opportunities and you also want to be looking for those innovation opportunities with your top clients and also your prospective clients another lever to be looking at which is as important if not more important than revenue is your profit level what is your bottom line growth goal by service line revenue is definitely an important lever to be looking at but when you get through the year and you look at all of your your costs and you look at everything that goes into building that revenue what do you want that bottom line profit number to be looking like and if you can do it by service line or product line just depending on what your particular business looks like you'll be able to see very clearly here's the here are the parts of my business that are extremely profitable here are the parts of the business that maybe aren't as profitable and you can dig into a little bit more of the why behind each of those that's going to help you think strategically about where you want to be in the next 12 months and then again similar to revenue where are your opportunities to either increase profit in a service service line or perhaps uh reinvest into the business so you you are building profit in a certain service line maybe that can help fund innovation in that line or perhaps in another line so again seeing all of that laid out in front of you can help you to make better decisions about the business all right so here's another another couple of levers to be thinking about this next lever is all about client growth what are your new client growth goals and per service line so you want to be looking at new client growth and then you'll also have an opportunity to look at existing client growth so new client growth is absolutely something that we need in order to have a vital business but many times we aren't looking at where we can grow our existing clients so you have some ideal clients that are really integral to your business what if you could invest more time with those clients you can introduce new innovative service lines to them new ideas to them a loyal existing client is going to be three times more likely to continue buying from you than earning a net new client so we need the balance between the both but look at existing clients as much as you're looking at that new business and as i mentioned here on screen this signifies major opportunities that many firms and businesses overlook so make sure that you're looking at that existing client growth and then lastly what is a game-changing goal for you in your your personal your personal goals or your business goals game changing stretch goal that you and your firm could really rally behind it's one thing to grow grow clients grow revenue grow profits is there something that you really want to go after in your business in the next 12 months that you can really build a vision around and rally your firm behind that you can go after that's going to energize everybody in your firm so make sure that you're thinking about at least one of those game-changing goals for your firm or your business all right so that's element one all about goals and milestones all right the second element in a rockstar business development plan this is all about your verticals and the vertical choices that you make when it comes to outbound business development those choices are going to help you amplify your business even further faster verticals can lead your firm or business to rockstar status for a few major reasons here and one of the big reasons is opportunity cost when you start to build a level of expertise in a vertical then you start to become known in that vertical you start to attract more clients to you because you become known in that vertical all of your marketing efforts all of your business development efforts even your client service delivery efforts can all be focused into those verticals you get more uh momentum you get more acceleration in order to grow the business so as you are thinking about your client base where do you start to see some natural vertical majors and minors and i'll give you a couple of working definitions here and an example from my own life so a major for myself is a professional services so i do a lot of work with different types of professional services firms helping them with business development strategy and also skill development but that's a big umbrella so if i break that down in my world i work a lot with accounting firms so public accounting firms is one type of professional services firm that i do business with i also do business with technology professional services firms and management consulting professional services firms they have some things in common but they also have some differences so i can focus my efforts into those minors while still being able to take advantage of the lift that i can get by the fact that i'm purely focused on professional services you likely have some of these natural majors and minors in your business as well so take a look at your existing client base and see where you start to uncover some patterns some majors and some minors and that's going to help you in a couple of ways you will see where you have a cluster of clients in majors and minors and then you might also see some outliers and when you see those outliers you can evaluate them make some decisions about whether or not you want to continue building that major or that minor or do you need to redirect your efforts back to where you have a stronger client base so whether or not you're a business owner or maybe you're a man managing partner or an individual you can do that exercise for yourself in analyzing your majors and minors you also want to be asking yourself which verticals do what verticals does our firm our business already have some recognized expertise you will start to see that in your patterns but then also ask yourself where you see that naturally because that can start to signify where you want to be spending your time and then which verticals most interest you or where can you leverage these verticals to build a brand identity and that brand identity can be the expertise that you become known for personally or the expertise that you become known for as a firm or a business so which ones make the most sense that you want to be building brand awareness around and then lastly which verticals presents the greatest opportunities for you over the next one to three years we're facing so much disruption right now there are some verticals that are thriving in this disruption and then there are some verticals that are really struggling in the disruption so as you're doing your analysis look at which ones are thriving which ones might be struggling and determining what that's going to look like as best you can a year out or three years out taking that long-term view in addition to the year out view is going to help you determine where are my greatest opportunities and then also maybe where are my greatest risks if you are investing a lot into verticals that are struggling right now you may need to redirect some resources into verticals that are thriving right now and being able to balance out that book of business so these are some questions you can be asking yourself to help you really hone in on amplifying your verticals and help you bring yourself or your business to rockstar status the next element in this business development plan this is all about building your ideal clients who are the best clients that are fit for you and for your organization ideal clients can 25x your growth when i first heard that statistic i was a little bit skeptical of it and as i dug into it a little bit further and you can see the source for that statistic on screen here it made a lot of sense because when you are working with ideal clients that are a fit for you and a fit for your business you can naturally sell more of your services into those clients loyal clients are three times more likely to continue to buy from us and they are more open to allowing uh expansion of the relationship so over a 10-year period if you analyze your best clients look at what the growth was in those clients and look at what type of revenue and profit they brought to your firm the chances are good those very ideal clients you have grown with them over the last 10 years and if it's not 10 years whatever that longer term period is for you but you will likely be seeing quite a bit of growth you will likely see more than one service line that you are bringing to that client and that should give you some indicators of where you want to be investing your time and then if a client is less than ideal you can make some plans to potentially um off-board that client at some point in the future or find another way to continue servicing them but really focusing your top personnel and all of your business development efforts toward those ideal clients but the first thing that you have to do is you have to get really clear on who those ideal clients are and i'm going to talk a little bit about uh relationship personas in another element but that's going to help you get clear on your ideal clients and do you have a curated list of those top 25 ideal clients per vertical major and minor because you want to have a healthy list of those ideal clients curated out into your verticals so that you have a plan to run with you know who you need to be reaching out to and developing those relationships with so your ideal client and then the high impact relationships that are in those clients you need to identify the top relationships that you need to be building and then you need to have a plan to access those relationships and there are four high impact relationships that i always recommend you build with your ideal clients the first these are your decision makers which is probably kind of an obvious group but but who are the people that are making the decisions around the types of services that you provide you need to have relationships with those folks you also need to have relationships with advocates who are the people in your ideal clients that are willing to maybe open a door on your behalf they're willing to use their reputational and social capital to maybe even sponsor you for an opportunity they are the people that are in your corner and they're championing you you want to be building those relationships as well two other relationships you want to be giving thought to are your centers of influence and your strategic alliances centers of influences those are those folks that usually have the ear of the decision maker they are people that are in that organization that are influencing how that decision maker thinks and the processes that they go through so you want to be keeping tabs and building relationships with them and then lastly your strategic alliances they might be inside the organization but more often than not they're outside the organization they are similar uh consulting experts to you but they are not selling competitive products or services but they might be working with the same types of majors and minors that you are they can help you identify and curate ideal clients they might be able to make introductions for you they're very critical relationships to be thinking about in your business development plan and then lastly this last point is really important tracking your activity in a customer relationship management tool you need accountability you need good data and whether you are a small business or a large business having a crm tool that you can all leverage you can track good data you can build these relationships and build these opportunities is really critical without it you'll be flying a little bit blind and you won't be as successful if you don't have a place where you can curate your data all right so that's a little bit about ideal clients the next element that you want to be paying attention to this is your advisory intelligence and advisory intelligence is made up of a couple of things and ultimately what it's going to do it's going to help you uncover more opportunity and it is going to help you really build that coveted trusted advisor status and advisory intelligence is a combination of the depth of knowledge that you have about your client and what are the major trends opportunities challenges that are impacting them and then secondly and this is really important what types of unique ideas or insights do you bring to these clients it is one thing to be able to say that you do this type of work or you provide this type of service a lot of firms and businesses provide services that are similar to you what can set you apart is going to your clients and your prospective clients and being able to offer them ideas that help make their business better even if they aren't doing business with you right now today that is going to make you stand out and be different from the other firms and the other businesses that are looking to earn business with the clients that you want to be earning business with so as you're thinking about advisory intelligence i want to give you some categories to be considering so the first one that you see on screen here these are your industry tr nds industry trends are the indicators that are impacting their business over the next one to three years and very specifically right now what's going to be impacting their business in the short term in the next year will be really critical to your success another category to be thinking about leadership vision do you know who the c-level leaders are in the organization and other executives and do you know what they are looking to accomplish over the next one to three years when you know what leadership is looking to accomplish any of your business development conversations any of your planning can be geared to what is important to them because when you know what's important to them and you can have conversations about what's important to them you are going to be important in their eyes you are going to be seen as that advisor because you've taken the time to understand what they want to accomplish so that's leadership vision the next category these are your organizational changes what are some of the or organizational challenges i should say what might be some of the limitations that are hampering leadership's ability to accomplish goals what's going to be standing in their way and typically challenges are going to be around people process product technology maybe internal external sources of all of these things but when you have a good grasp on what's challenging the organization that's going to help you better position yourself with good intelligence and you're also going to be able to uncover better opportunities in these ideal clients and then the last thing to be considering the last category what are their key initiatives and what are their um fiscal goals for this year major products and major projects in performance indicators what are the big things on their plate and what are the performance indicators that will tell them that they're headed in the right direction these things take time to uncover now some of these things you are going to have already at a high level you can uncover through some baseline baseline research but a lot of these things are going to take time and the more that you dig into these ideal clients the more that you know about these categories the better positions that you're going to be to earn business in the future so what you want to do with this advisory intelligence is go back to those majors and minors go back to those ideal clients and start to build these out for those verticals and for those clients element number five these are your relationship personas your relationship personas are going to play a big role in helping you further yourself with those ideal clients and in those uh vertical majors and minors so what i like to suggest here is to create a persona first for your key verticals so when you know what your key verticals are and the majors and then you also know what the minors are you can start to build out those personas based on the advisory intelligence that i just shared with you on the previous slide and then you also want to be building personas for those high impact relationships that i just mentioned your decision makers your advocates your centers of influence and your strategic alliances these are going to be so important for you to understand what their motivations are what their decision-making processes are so that you can be positioned to build that relationship and also to earn their business and if you're looking for a place to start probably the two best places that i could recommend are with your decision makers because they are typically the people that are holding the budgets authority and your ideal clients and then also your strategic alliances those outside relationships that you can be building they can help you build relationships internally within your ideal clients so here are a few questions that you can be thinking about to uh guide your persona creation and then also guide the conversations that you ultimately have so first who are those decision makers can you name them and do you know what their roles are within your ideal client do you know what their top responsibilities are what are they being tasked with what are the goals that they need to be accomplishing that you need to be aware of and then what are they measured on so if you know what their goals are do you know what type of metrics are going to be important to them so for example if you are looking to build a relationship with a ceo let's say and you know that that ceo has a goal to grow a certain segment of their business do you know what those growth metrics are so that's just one example that you can use but really looking at your own roles who are they what are their responsibilities what are they measured on what are the things that are going to stand in their way what are the key challenges that they're facing to get to those goals and then this one's an important one what is going to make change difficult change is hard and especially change during disruption and the status quo is probably one of the biggest competitors that you are ever going to face because people will tend to stay the same until they have to change so knowing what is going to make change difficult whether it is for that person individually or it's for the organization that's going to help you to decide is this an ideal client that we continue pursuing are these some things that we can work through together in order to affect change and then lastly what does success look like for this person for this relationship when you know what success looks like and you can even ask them what success looks like to build out your persona you're going to be better positioned to help them accomplish it so those are some things to be thinking about when it comes to creating personas all right home stretch here element number six strategic alliances you've already heard i've alluded to this already a couple of times strategic alliances are an extension of you they're an extension of your firm and your business what key partnerships are going to accelerate growth and also create mutual benefits this is an often underlooked element of any business development plan but when you can hone in on the partnerships that are going to be mutually rewarding you enjoy working with them they enjoy working with you you have common goals you can accelerate growth you will see a major amplification to your success so i'm going to light up a few here for you to be thinking about first are your centers of influence these are individuals or organizations that can give you access so think about the associations that you belong to think about the well-connected individuals that you know and you might be considered a well-connected individual for someone else but they influence your clients they influence the industry that you're in they are people and organizations that you want to get to know and be a part of uh industry association so i just mentioned that what are the industry associations that you want to be a part of that can put you in touch with your ideal clients and when you know your vertical majors and minors it makes it easier to decide which industry organizations get your time attention and resources and which ones don't so you can better focus your efforts another example of a strategic alliance these are your complimentary business partners these are your attorneys your bankers your other consultants tangential organizations where you might be calling into the same types of clients but you do things that are different you complement one another that is a great source of collaboration being able to work together in the service of a client again a very uh overlooked type of collaboration but one that can help you enhance your growth in a vertical or enhance your growth with a specific client and then lastly a research organization can be a strategic alliance for you what type of data and research are important to your ideal clients are important to your verticals so let me use myself as an example i do a lot of work with mid-market-sized organizations so there is an association that does research specifically for the mid-market so i access that research i'm a part of that organization and i'm able to leverage that resource research to share advisory intelligence with my verticals and with my ideal clients so hopefully you can start to see how all of these things connect together and they feed one another so your plan can really be a rock star plan and elevate so if you're looking for a place to start i recommend creating a list of strategic alliances based on your verticals always go back to your verticals and you can create a nice succinct list of strategic alliances then determine what you think the appropriate investment is is it financially is it with your time is it with both your finances and time when you can focus your decision making around your vertical majors and minors it can help you be more decisive about where you're going to invest whether it's a financial investment or a time investment all right last one coming up here your brand's presence elements number seven your personal brands and your firm brand elevates loyalty you heard me mention it already that loyal clients are three times more likely to invest in us to buy our products and services loyalty is a game changer in any business development plan it used to be that satisfaction was v-bar if you had a satisfied client you had arrived if they checked 5 out of 5 stars you had arrived right satisfaction is now no longer enough we live in a huge world of choice for any given product service experience whatever it is there are exponentially more choices today than ever before which means in the eyes of a client or a prospective client we can look the same as everyone else so we have to be very intentional about how we position ourselves in the marketplace but also position ourselves as individuals so if we can move a client from merely satisfied to a client that is very loyal to us they recommend us to other clients they are willing to buy more than one product or service from us they are willing to open doors on our behalf those are just a couple of the indicators that you have a loyal client hold on to those loyal clients and really work to grow them and you can do that through your brand your firm's brand along with some other things of course excellent client service delivery really paying attention to what's important to them it's really a whole package but in terms of brand presence what is your plan to consistently build your firm's brand and also your own personal leadership brand don't forget yourself in this your personal leadership brand is equally as important your clients your your firm might be the logo on the business card but your clients are looking for a relationship and a partnership with you and your team so your leadership identity matters to your business development plan and it matters to your growth and your strategy to build your presence should be both digital and offline so when i'm looking to build relationships i'm looking for those ways that i can do it both in the digital sphere and the social sphere and i'm also looking for ways that i can do it one-on-one in offline type of situations so let me give you a couple of ideas to be thinking about when it comes to your loyalty or building loyalty first is your social media we can't we really can't have a conversation about brand presence without having a conversation about social media and if you are in a b2b space so this is this is really for b2b linkedin is probably one of the best social media tools at your disposal disposal for that if you're more of a b2c space you probably have some other options available to you but but for b2b looking at linkedin and other key social media sites where your target clients and verticals spend their time so really make sure you're optimizing those digital sites do you have marketing campaigns and email list building strategies for all of the social media that is out there all the followers everything that we create your email list is as important today as it ever was those are the people that have opted in to hear from you they want to hear your expertise and they are looking to hear from you on a consistent basis so one place that you can look for your vertical majors and minors you can look for ideal target clients are with your email list what who who's on there today and where do you maybe have some opportunities to improve that events and forums are another place that you can elevate your brand loyalty now given right now a lot of events and forums are virtual and that presents its own set of challenges which i won't go down the rabbit hole on that but do you have some events forums roundtables that you can share advisory intelligence with your verticals with your target clients that make them want to be a part of your world get creative here there's probably something that you're already doing well that you can amplify so that's events and forums uh webinars is another one webinars are huge right now and there's probably a little bit of fatigue when it comes to webinars so again looking at your vertical majors and minors looking at your ideal target clients what type of content and problem solving is important to them right now and how can you create that to serve that vertical or to serve that ideal client original thought leadership that goes along with these events and forums and also webinars your original ideas thought leadership strategies matter to your ideal clients so what are you creating and what are you putting out there whether it is individually on your own or in collaboration with your firm consistent blogging on your firm site or consistent guest hosting or podcasting those are other ways that you can build your brand build your firm's brand and also figure out where your verticals are and where your ideal clients are and i just mentioned podcasts so those all kind of go together so podcasts are a fantastic way to be interviewed or interview people that are in your verticals or in your target clients so a few ideas for you on building your personal brand and elevating loyalty with your existing clients and your ideal target clients all right two more topics to cover here before we wrap up digital dust and disruption make no mistake the best business development plans always have um they have a propensity to gather dust you make this great plan you're so excited about it you are ready to put it into play and then a quarter goes by maybe two quarters go by and what the heck happened to my plan right it's gathering digital dust somewhere on a hard drive we want to prevent that from happening because no rock star plan get the best rock star plan isn't a rock star plan if you aren't implementing it and holding yourself accountable so let's talk about some strategies to keep momentum and to make continual step-by-step progress one of the best ones is an accountability partner who can you run with either at your leadership level or at your team level who will want to be accountable along with you in order to grow can you set up consistent touch points with them there is nothing worse than coming to a touch point and not having made any progress so having an accountability partner can help you be accountable to yourself and to that other person if you are a leader in your organization consistent reviews of your business development plan firm wide company-wide when your teams know that this is important and you're going to be reviewing it and creating accountability that's going to change the game in term of in terms of their engagement with it again if you're a leader you can use these plans in one-on-one coaching calls how are you coaching your teams to stay accountable to their plants another way that you can keep accountability alive is to integrate it with your crm if you have a crm and you're using that consistently you can put these elements of your plan into the crm or do a plan for your ideal clients and attach it in there make it easily accessible and commit to reviewing it weekly my business development plan i i have an old school version and i have a digital version and i am looking at that plan a minimum of every two weeks and to keep myself accoun able and then i have a coach that helps keep me accountable as well but make it easy if it's not easily accessible and easy to work with it's going to be hard to stay accountable and then lastly if you can integrate this into your p l if you can use it as part of your financial review process so going way back to the beginning of the conversation we talked about goals and milestones you have revenue goals you have profit goals game changing goals and for your service lines if you can use this as part of your p l conversations as part of your financial reviews and service line health that's going to help tie it all together and keep everyone accountable and lastly what are some things that you can be doing to thrive in disruption one of the best things that you can do to thrive in any disruption is to have diversity in your business plan disruption is going to continue to be around us and the best leaders the best professionals that i know embrace uncertainty even if it makes them uncomfortable they understand and accept uncertainty and disruption is going to be around us and they make the decision to thrive in that disruption anyway they don't let it stop them and your business plan diversity can help you to help you get there so let's talk about a few ideas here first vertical choices and curating the vertical choices that you make if there's diversification in those majors and minors that is going to help insulate you against uh disruption and it's going to help you thrive in disruption if you can innovate in your services if you uh can innovate in your offerings and uh your structures that is going to help you as well and innovation doesn't have to be huge it can be a small tweak to something that you're already doing a different way to approach it but if you have that innovation mindset and you approach things as experimenting and being able to change and work with your clients they're going to appreciate it and it's going to help you uncover new ways to serve them maintaining your ideal clients don't give in to the pressure of bringing in less than ideal clients onto your roster especially right now it can be really tempting to bring clients into the fold that aren't the right fit and while that may be okay for the short term it's going to hurt you in the long term so especially as a leader really be challenging your teams to make sure that we are building relationships and building business with our ideal clients our ideal verticals and don't give in to the ones that are less than continual pipeline management this is going to help you thrive a very honest healthy consistent review of your pipelines that is going to be important to maintaining health when you know the opportunities in your pipelines that are going to move through to closure and you know the ones that are either going to be stuck for a while or maybe they will be stuck indefinitely knowing that is going to help you make better decisions a clean clear honest pipeline will give you a stronger view into the business and will help you with your decision making so that you can thrive going forward anticipate pivots they're going to be here with us always and always remain open to change especially if you're in a leadership role you have to be someone who is open to change and your teams have to experience you as someone who is open to change so that they are willing to bring innovative ideas they are willing to be honest about what's in the pipeline what's going to close what's going to be stuck so openness to change and the willingness to anticipate pivots and kind of look around the corner and making decisive strategic decisive nimble decisions about where you want to where you want to be next stay market forward when we are in disruption it is really easy to want to shrink back and to wait things out and to see when things will calm down even out you know get back to normal right but our job is to stay market forward our clients and our prospective clients expect to see us out in the market they expect to see us sharing thought leadership they expect us to be reaching out to them and connecting with them so don't shrink back stay forward and you'll be rewarded with that into the future all right to wrap up this conversation let's talk some key takeaways we talked about quite a bit today so where are some places that you can start and what are some things to take away from this conversation first your business development plan is going to provide your path to success create the plan commit to the plan execute on the plan that is going to be your best path forward building verticals to amplify your growth i think i've said that a number of times already but if you're looking for a place to start start with those verticals start with those majors and minors and get some clarity around that that is going to help you just to uh it's going to help you guide your other decisions use the seven elements as your guide we just walk through seven elements of a rock star plan build those out just one at a time one right after the other remember that simplicity can be powerful a business development plan that is simple is so much more effective than one that becomes complicated i'm reminded of a quote from uh sir richard branson and i'll paraphrase it here and and i keep it with me all like always and it's something like goes to the effect of any fool can make something complicated but it a someone who is really brilliant can take the complicated and make it simple look to keep things simple for yourself and for your teams choose one or two strategies for accountability i covered a number of those strategies pick the one or two that really stand out to you and that you can run with and then lastly as a mindset take the mindset to welcome disruption take the mindset to stay agile because that this disruption will always be with us and it's our choice to keep a positive mindset to keep a positive outlook and to stay agile especially if you're a leader in your organization this is something that you want to be modeling for your teams and if you're an individual this is something that you want to be modeling also for your clients and your prospective clients they will pick up on your mindset and your outlook and it will be it will be part of their choice in doing business with you all right to wrap up our conversation uh thank you so much for uh being here with me today you can see here on screen a couple of ways to stay connected with me the best way to stay connected is uh through amyfranco.com and as i wrap up our conversation today your business development plan is as much a leadership plan as it is anything else so make the decision to create that business development strategy make the decision to execute it make the decision to stay accountable and you'll be seeing success in the next year that's it for my presentation for today a big thank you to build.com for sponsoring this session and to you for tuning in