Best Strategies for Winning New Business in Professional Services

The professional services industry is quickly growing. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, not only has the number of employees steadily increased every month since April 2022, but the number of firms has grown as well.

With increased competition, it’s no wonder that business development strategies for professional services are a top priority for firms. Between professional services technology, marketing technology and marketing automation for professional services, firms are looking to win more new business.

Here are three of the strongest strategies for winning new business.

Hire a Strong Team

A company is only as good as its employees. Great employees work hard to achieve goals that align with your firm’s overall strategic plan. According to the 2020 State of Talent Optimization Report, business and professional services executives say 76% of company value is attributed to employees.

Benefits of Having a Strong Team

Less stress.

Having a strong team means you can delegate whenever possible. Team members can assist marketing professional services by creating tombstones, writing proposals or creating content. 

Delegating your workload reduces stress, which your other staff members will benefit from as well. According to Indeed, strong teams have a sense of shared responsibility which helps reduce the pressure that someone working alone may feel.

Reduced turnover.

A great team that leans on each other, instead of stressing over workload, helps reduce burnout and turnover. According to McKinsey & Company, almost half of all employees report being at least somewhat burned out and that’s likely an underrepresentation of the real number. Employees who are less stressed and happier, will likely stay longer.

More time for big picture goals.

The more tasks you delegate, the more time you’ll save, allowing you to focus on strategic planning and other big picture goals. A professional services firm can’t reach its full potential if employees are only focused on the day-to-day.

Become a Thought Leader in Your Industry

In professional services, potential clients are seeking out expertise. This sets organizations like yours apart from consumer goods companies whose products are physical. Because your expertise is what is for sale, becoming a thought leader can help put you on the map for your potential clients. 

This can start long before your prospect is even aware they have a need that you are able to fill. By providing relevant resources like blog posts, podcasts, whitepapers, and videos, you're establishing your organization as a source that people can trust and will go to in order to find the information they need. 

Take Hubspot as a great example. They invest a lot in creating resources for marketing, content management and business development strategies, which is complementary to their product. 

Build your SEO authority in your niche, create an informative and compelling newsletter, or start a new video or podcast series that makes it easy for your target audience to discover your content. You may also want to consider teaming up with other thought leaders in your space to bolster your authority.

This makes it much more likely that once they are in need of paid services related to the content you produce, your firm will be a natural first option to seek out. 

Make the Perfect Pitch

One of the best ways to gain new business is by having the perfect pitch. A pitch lets potential clients know about your firm, your services and how those services can benefit their business. A good pitch could be what gives you an edge over the competition.

What Makes a Good Pitch?

A good pitch is thorough, detailed, clear and shows your client exactly what you offer the client.

• Prepare for the presentation by understanding the client and whom you are pitching to. Tailor your decks to target the client’s decision-makers, keeping them streamlined and on-point for the ones who will report to the decision-makers by giving enough relevant information they can take back to their bosses. Research who else might be giving the client a pitch and distinguish what sets your firm apart from others.
• Keep your pitch clear and to the point. Address exactly what your services do and how they’ll help your client. Illustrate if your services will save the client time, money, reduce risk or liability. Show your client exactly how your services will be a great return on investment for them. Add any measurable points to drive your points home.
• Include relevant tombstones in your pitch to show potential clients similar companies you’ve helped. A marketing tombstone proves that you know what you’re doing as a firm and have experience delivering value to clients just like them. Marketing technology like a tombstone builder can help.

Download our eBook, The Pitch that Seals Deals

Easily Generating Tombstones

Generating tombstones simply requires grabbing and sorting your existing client data, formatting it and inserting it into a PowerPoint. While the best way to present data is in PowerPoint, a tombstone builder makes it easy to do.

The Pitchly Tombstone Builder makes your job easier by putting all your client data into one place, making it easy to access, sort, build and place tombstones.

Here’s how it works:

1. Import your data from Excel or connect to an existing database. Data typically includes company name and description.
2. Manage and edit Pitchly’s Tombstone Builder’s fields to normalize your data.
3. Add more Excel files, databases, data sources or connect our open APIs to your existing systems to cross-segment your data in order to get the best results.
4. Add the documents app to build templates and generate tombstones directly from the software.
5. Build your template with relevant fields like client name, company name, logo, deal amount and role description.
6. Search, filter and segment your data.
7. Select only the relevant tombstones you want to use for your proposal.
8. Format the tombstone for PowerPoint and Word and customize the size, columns and rows.
9. Quickly make any adjustments and insert the tombstones into your pitchbook with a couple of clicks.

Pitchly’s Tombstone Builder reduces the time it takes to generate tombstones by at least half.

Leverage Your Data

There is no denying that data is king. The better your data, the easier it is to make sound business decisions.

And firms have loads of data at their fingertips from contact information, deal stats, client demographics and hundreds of proprietary data points that can be used to make new deals. Data management software takes your data and makes it work for you.

What is Data Enablement

Data enablement software takes data and makes it actionable, accessible and flexible. It puts all of your data in one database workspace that all team members can access for marketing professional services and more. Data enablement software, like Pitchly’s, can automatically transform your data into tombstones, case studies, logo slides, team bios/CVs and company profiles. When you automate these design processes, you don’t have to wait on a designer and you can create on-the-fly pitch assets.

Why Enable Your Data

One of the biggest benefits of data enablement is that it saves you and your team valuable time. Because data enablement software puts your data into one accessible space, it reduces and even eliminates the time it would usually take searching multiple databases every time you need to put together a pitch. Analysts and associates have said with Pitchly’s data enablement software, they save 93% of the time previously spent preparing credentials and researching firm deal experience.

Download our eBook, Data Enablement 101, How to Put Your Data to Work and Why it Matters, to learn more.