Refinement

Business development programs are living things.

After they're born, they grow, change and evolve, in response to their environment. The third part of our role is to help this process along.

Sometimes, what we do is simply monitor a program, and chisel off the rough edges, or adjust it. For example, we built an intake program for a law firm, to screen possible new clients for its plaintiffs' practice. The partner in charge found he was devoting too much time to interviewing new clients, so we altered the program and trained a paralegal do it.

We are also not shy about recommending that a program that's not working be scrapped. Our job is to get results, and we're not fans of sacred cows.

The most dynamic, fun, and potentially effective aspect of the refinement stage is what you could call ideation. We think things up. We're innovation agents.

By working closely with our clients, and drawing on years of experience in all kinds of businesses, we often see opportunities they don't. It's our job to point them out, research them, test them.

• A law firm had an associate with a background in, of all things, fireworks. So how about launching a pyrotechnics practice?
• A mortgage brokerage was marketing a complex, novel product to a network of referral sources. How about a webinar?
• A large medical practice was moving to a high-end, fee-for-service model where they would contract to oversee all the medical care for families. How about building relationships with family offices?

In the refinement phase, we act as a conductor between our clients and their markets, striving to keep information moving in both directions.