Mastering BizDev in Your Career: From Junior Practitioner to Managing Partner

The role you play in developing new business changes as you grow throughout your career.

Whether you're a junior practitioner, mid-career professional, or seasoned industry veteran, this episode is for you. John and Mark explore how firm employees—regardless of tenure—can (and should) contribute to developing new business. In this conversation, we cover:

• The importance of research and being exposed to BD processes early in professionals' career
• Building peer-level relationships within client organizations for long-term success.
• Strategies for mid-career professionals to build their personal brands and engage in content creation.
• Mentoring the next generation by allowing them to learn through their own experiences and mistakes.

Connect with Mark on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markhwainwright/
Connect with John on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johntyreman/

www.breakingbizdev.com

Transcript

John Tyreman: 0:19

Welcome back to another episode of breaking biz dev. If this is your first time here, thanks for joining us on this podcast where we like to beat up and break down topics related to business development. My name is John Tyerman. And as always, I'm joined by my trusted cohost, Mark Wainwright. And today we're going to beat up business development along the way. Your career path and break it down. What you should you be doing at your early and your early career and mid stages and later career. So I'm excited to dive into this topic with you, Mark.

Mark Wainwright: 0:53

Good. I think it's a, I think it's a great one. And if you are not here for the first time, just disregard that. Preamble that John had there because we know you're a regular listener that you're part of the team You're part of our you know, breaking biz dev squad, If everything goes goes well, you'll get your you'll get your t shirt in your in your your branded cap One of these days so yeah, so we'll have the merch ready to go Right, if you're a frequent flyer and a longtime fan, thank you for joining us on this journey You And, speaking of journeys, we're going to talk a little bit about the careers of all of our dear professional services experts out there and look at it through a specific lens or maybe two lenses. We're going to look at people's careers, like you said, Early, early career, mid career and late career through a marketing lens and through a sales lens, John, it's a critical for me to always say this business development. Our good pal business development always takes those terms, activities, everything that is marketing and sales throws in a big pile and says, all right, good luck. Go get it. They're different. There's different activities. There's different behaviors related to both. And we're going to talk about those two things. We're going to break them down and we're going to look at marketing and sales throughout the career of a professional.

John Tyreman: 2:19

And the inspiration for this topic actually came from, you did a guest appearance on this structural engineering podcast with Max and Zach talking about this, focused on an engineer over the course of an engineer's career. But I think that we can broaden that a little bit and talk more of a kind of general about experts and practitioners, because I don't think this is unique to the, just the engineering industry. I, I

Mark Wainwright: 2:45

totally agree. We can both broaden it to, to bring in other experts, other individuals in professional services firms and trim it down a little bit, because that was an exhaustive exploration I had with Max and Zach. That was a long episode. They were, they're, they're fantastic hosts. And, I had a really great time walking through the life of an engineer with them in those early, mid and late career, stages. And, and you know, what's happening with different, marketing and sales activities all throughout that point. So that was a great episode. If you've got, enough discretionary time, I would recommend that you go Have that a listen. It's a good podcast in general. If you are an engineer in general, or specifically a structural engineer, that is a great podcast. They are, good, early and mid career professionals. And it's, it's definitely, definitely worth a listen.

John Tyreman: 3:40

And they embody curiosity too, which is one of the sales competencies, or one of the, you know, a major contributor to some of the six sales competencies we went over on an earlier episode of this podcast. actually in that we talked about the different levels of mastery along those different skills. And I think, you know, that's, that's a great foundational kind of thing. Podcast to listen to after you listen to this one, go back and check that one out too. if you're interested in improving your sales skills as an expert or practitioner, so let's dive into, let's start at the chronologically. Let's start early in, a practitioner's career. Maybe they're not an expert yet, right? So they still need to gain that technical knowledge. But, there's also business development, sales and marketing skills that all practitioners who aspire to be experts need to kind of contribute to in a firm,

Mark Wainwright: 4:41

we had talked about one little, there's our little asterisk, our little caveat on this, this whole thing. And before we kick off into this specific topic is I think in, in your education as a technical professional. I think this, this, this thing starts to creep into your mind that says the better you can be at your craft, the more, the more skilled you can be at your craft, the more degrees, the more certifications, licenses, et cetera. If you can assemble this, unassailable expertise in your career, that will be the sole determinant of your, success. And it's a bit of a fallacy because there's, there's, there's much more. To it, and we're going to talk about two really important components that lead to both individual and organizational success over your career, which is marketing and selling. So absolutely, it's important that technical professionals be, you know. Operating at the peak of their, their craft, right? That they're skilled, that they have lots of, specific technical know how, but that's just not enough in order to create a, frankly, from, from our perspective, a really successful. As a, as an expert. So that's the, that's a little caveat here at the beginning of that is that this stuff is important. These are, these are important elements of that.

John Tyreman: 6:02

Yeah. And when I was in my early career, when I was first going out fresh out of college and I was. applying to different marketing positions. One of the things that I would say is what I lack in experience I will make up for with an open mind and a willingness to learn.

Mark Wainwright: 6:18

Yeah. Right.

John Tyreman: 6:19

And employers like that. I was able to get a job and one of the, my, my first job right out of college was as a research assistant. And I think that really set me up for success down the road because, research is absolutely something that an early career. Professional can do. And what I mean by research is you can go and you can look at competitors. Right. You can look at influencers in the marketplace, in your industry, you can go and research different challenges and topics. So if we recall that last episode that we did Mark, where we talked about the five different levels of mastery, this is absolutely a level one where you are. you're, you're aware of these different topics, these different, influencers and competitors in the marketplace. so I think that that's some, that's a marketing activity that. early career professionals can absolutely put into practice.

Mark Wainwright: 7:15

Good, good, good. What, what, what else can early career professionals do with specifically related to marketing?

John Tyreman: 7:22

well, first of all, I don't think that firms should send early career professionals to events and say, here, go do some marketing, right? Go manage a booth at a conference. I think they're ill equipped for that because they're not ready for that. Quite yet, right? instead, I think that there are some operational things, some operational marketing activities like managing the website, managing the blog, not managing social media, not necessarily creating the content because there needs to be a level of understanding before they can practice content creation. But I think managing the content that's created from mid and late Later career professionals. I think that's absolutely something that they can do. So these early career professionals can gain an understanding of the process, the marketing process.

Mark Wainwright: 8:12

Yeah, good, good. And speaking of a process that totally dovetails in with this whole world of. Sales. There you go.

John Tyreman: 8:21

So what are some sales activities? I'm glad that we're differentiating these. What are some sales activities that early career professionals can contribute to?

Mark Wainwright: 8:30

So as they're taking those first few steps into their career, they're starting to be exposed to new ideas, building awareness, building, building knowledge, just exposing Young career professionals to sales language, sales processes, just the whole concepts of, how a maybe turns into, into a contract. Just exposing them to that is really important, showing them how proposals are generated, how you generate your pricing. You know your your fees showing them the nitty gritty of of contracts and everything that's that's included in that, just keeping them aware of, you know, the dollars and cents is super important way too often. I talked to young career professionals and they say. Have you seen the contract? Do you know the, the level of, you know, whatever level of detail that's in that contract, the work to be done, the desired outcomes of the client, the, the, the dollars and cents, the tasks that are involved in that, you know, whatever, all that stuff. And they're like, no, actually I don't, I just come in and I do my work and I'm done for the day. And then when that's done, I, you know, move on to the, to the next thing. So I think there's a big opportunity just for the young career professionals just to open up there. Their, their eyes and be exposed to these, sales tools, you know, sales processes, sales steps, all that, that stuff. And I think that exposure starts laying the foundation for some good future behaviors so that when they're there, when they're assigned to a project or they start working with a particular client, they come into that asking the right questions. Why are we doing this? What do they want to get out of it? how can we best. Best help them achieve these big outcomes they want. How much money do we have to spend on the work? How much profit can we make? You know, like, what are the financial details of that? Just exposing them to that is super important.

John Tyreman: 10:25

Totally. And that can be done by simply, you know, there's some simple tasks like maybe proofreading a proposal. Or sitting in on a sales call, not necessarily asking any questions, but just sitting in and listening. And that can lead to, you know, those questions that bubble up like, well, what if we did this differently? Right. Why are we doing this and questioning and challenging the status quo? Um, there was something that you said on that structural engineering podcast that I think is also applicable here and it's around. can be a little bit ambiguous. Is it sales? Is it marketing? I think networking kind of sits in that messy middle that we like to say. but you, you mentioned matching, early career professionals with a cohort of their peers in either associations or other client organizations so that they can grow together. I think that was a really great point that you made.

Mark Wainwright: 11:20

Yeah, that's a, that's an important one. when we think about that. Yeah. Pulling younger career professionals into a client relationship, people almost default to what we have to introduce our young career professionals to their, to their senior team to, to continue that relationship. You can do that, but the reality is the, the senior team members of. And the client organization are, are going to be gone at some point, you know, they're, they're going to retire or leave or, you know, whatever it is. What I think is, is most productive and smartest for sort of the future of both organizations is creating this laddering effect so that individuals at a certain career level in your firm are developing relationships with their career level peers in the client organization. Organization and maybe a lot of times that means that they're not necessarily in these big sort of contract negotiation conversations, but they are developing a working relationship. So at some point in the future, they can look back on this relationship that they've developed over the last 10, 20 years or so. They're in those contract negotiation conversations, and they can benefit from those same long term sort of mutually beneficial relationships that their senior members. you know, 20 years previous. So that, that laddering effect I think is important. It's kind of like a

John Tyreman: 12:44

farm

Mark Wainwright: 12:44

system

John Tyreman: 12:45

for your sales organization. Right? Yeah. Right.

Mark Wainwright: 12:49

You're listening to breaking biz dev

John Tyreman: 12:51

the podcast that beats up, breaks down, and redefines business development for the professional services firms of tomorrow. Your hosts are John Tyerman, founder of Red Cedar Marketing, the podcast marketing company for experts and professional services firms,

Mark Wainwright: 13:05

And Mark Wainwright, principal consultant and founder of Wainwright Insight, the fractional sales manager and sales consultant to professional services firms.

John Tyreman: 13:15

If you find this podcast helpful, please help us by following the show and leaving a review on Apple podcasts

Mark Wainwright: 13:21

and now back to the show.

John Tyreman: 13:25

So great. So those are all, some marketing, some sales activities, some networking kind of guidelines for, early career professionals. And these are folks that have, you know, maybe it's within their first five years, in the field. So let's shift gears a little bit. We're moving along the timeline to this mid career, which let's say is between five and 19 years. Do you think that was a good time range to think about the mid career?

Mark Wainwright: 13:51

I mean, that 15 years is a heck of a lot of time. Maybe it's a little bit less than that, right? You know, and maybe it's, maybe we're in the plus or minus 10 sort of, sort of ballpark there, But yeah, that's, uh, mid career, people, experts in firms. These are people who are, you know, maybe starting to lead projects or, or at least sort of, you know, one of the more senior team members, whether they're an engineer or an architect or an analyst, or, you know, a consultant, they are working very closely with the, the senior team, they're getting exposed a little bit more to. the clients, maybe they are, you know, leading or very soon to be leading the client engagement. So yeah, these are, these are people who, you know, have a level of comfort and confidence working with, with clients. they are people who are, good, you know, technical professionals, good at their craft. so they are, they are developed from that standpoint. what types of marketing related activities and maybe behaviors. do you think these people should be exhibiting?

John Tyreman: 14:56

Well, I, I like using the, those five levels of mastery is kind of a framework to guide this conversation. So if we're thinking about it from that lens, the activities that these professionals should be doing, they should be practicing. And then that leads to the, the, a continuous improvement, right? And so from a marketing standpoint, I think this is where experts and practitioners can start to create. Content, they can work on their personal brand and everything that comes along with that. So how to position your personal brand in the marketplace, how to contribute content to your personal brand. Maybe that's publishing on LinkedIn. Maybe that's starting a podcast or a newsletter. So I think that those are activities that, that are absolutely kind of match that match very well with the mid career professional. I think curiosity, there still needs to be a sense of curiosity at this level, right? So, if you're practicing and you're continuously improving, you haven't arrived per se, right? There is still, you still need to hold on to that sense of continuous learning and development. I think this is where you can extend, kind of spread your wings a little bit as a professional. and go outside of your firm, your internal organization and start to learn from peers and colleagues, at other firms or in associations going to networking events and maybe shadowing, an older mentor that you have. Right. So I think this is where professionals can kind of spread their wings a little bit from a marketing standpoint.

Mark Wainwright: 16:29

Yeah. I, I, I love the fact that you bring up that whole concept of a, of a personal. Brand I think that's that's great. It's it's and that's not you know Just that's not sort of wearing the company logo on your shirts or towing the company line, right? That's that's something you're developing in in in parallel Well

John Tyreman: 16:50

firms always say our people are our biggest asset right and one of the many things that firms do is they point to their people as a differentiator But what I find very frustrating, quite honestly, is the reluctance for firm leadership to invest in the personal brands of their people, right? It doesn't make any sense. If you're going to tout your people as your biggest asset, you should be willing to invest in their personal brands, or at least encourage. Them to invest in their personal brands,

Mark Wainwright: 17:18

right? Right. That, you know, and, and, and I think that that comes from a place of fear that, you know, senior team members are afraid that, you know, a particular individual in their, their firm is maybe spending too much time, promoting their, their own individual expertise or, you know, publishing a blog or participating in In a, you know, of, of, of podcast or, or whatever it is that isn't necessarily associated with the, with the firm. I think that comes from a place of fear, but you can just flip that. You can totally flip that on its head and say, wow, what a fantastic opportunity this is for the organization to have these individuals who want to grow and advance their own personal careers. I know by the way, this is in fantastic alignment with our organizational goals and where we're headed. So, And it's a way

John Tyreman: 18:08

to generate new business. It's a way to attract the kind of business that, that you want to, if you position your personal brand the right way. And I think that's kind of the key to that whole thing is how you position your personal brand. because there is absolutely an alignment that happens between what's good for the individual and what's good for the firm.

Mark Wainwright: 18:27

Great point.

John Tyreman: 18:28

well, Mark, let's, kind of change, you know, turn the tables a little bit. What is some, what are some sales activities that mid career professionals can do to contribute to business development for firms? Some of these people are

Mark Wainwright: 18:41

starting to maybe support sales efforts, support proposal. Creation, maybe they're contributing content. Maybe they're, hopefully they're participating in the series of conversations that I like to refer to as, you know, the sales process, the sales conversations that are a series of, qualification conversations, deep discovery, conversations, proposal, conversations, et cetera. Sometimes they are supporting and hopefully they're getting to the point where they're starting to lead those, Those conversations, which is, which is great. They are developing, their own, client relationships and sort of developing, maintaining sort of organizational client relationships as well. I think this lines a little bit with that whole personal brand thing is that they are establishing these, these trusted advisor expert relationships with their, specific connections and clients, they start to, embrace and they start to undertake prospecting, you know, which is that targeted one to one outreach to, you know, prospective clients that they don't, they don't know. maybe they have great professional connections that they've had for 10 plus years or so, and they start really leveraging those relationships and start asking for referrals and introductions to prospective clients, folks, they don't know. So, so they start to build that, build that, that, that muscle around, creating new opportunities. Through prospecting through asking for referrals, you know, they sort of embrace that as an individual and ultimately they are practicing and then improving on all of this. And we look at again those five steps of mastery. They are, they have, they have, they know the concepts, they understand how they work, they're practicing. They're practicing pricing, they're practicing proactive, you know, proactive outreach and prospecting. They're, they're doing great, sales planning, you know, they're showing good energy, all those things that, you know, a, a, a professional who is, who is advancing in their career or their levels of mastery to practicing and then, you know, Improvement and that all leads to this, you know, late career stage that we're going to talk about last.

John Tyreman: 20:47

And I think that one thing that's just kind of dawned on me was at this point in, in these professionals careers, there could be I don't know. Would you say that there's a fork in the road, right? Where you could kind of lean into maybe some more of these marketing skills or lean a little bit more into some of these sales skills, or do you think there, there needs to be a healthy balance between those, these two, as they, as these professionals kind of evolve along their career?

Mark Wainwright: 21:14

Yeah, good point. I think there's absolutely forks in the road. I think that if individuals early career, mid career, even late career, start showing interest and, and abilities, and just get excited about different parts of their, practice. That's great. I mean, you have individuals who become managing principals and managing principals are a lot of times involved in the other functional areas, areas of a professional services firm, their finance and, and. operations, HR, all those things. Sure. You can see that, right? you can have some individuals who start to show greater interest in, in doing marketing related activities or sales related activities, or you can even have individuals who, you know, just want to be the best practitioner that they possibly can. And they're really focused on just deepening and deepening their, their technical expertise. All those areas are possible. The caveat on all of that is that you cannot have too many people focused on You know, operations, technical excellence, you know, financial management, you need to have a, a, a wealth of individuals in the firm who are engaged and excited about marketing the firm and then, selling your services, creating those. Potential clients and, you know, walking them through to a contract. You need to have a lot of people focused on that because, you know, as we know, John, the whole business development thing, marketing and selling stuff, it's a lot of work. It's not second nature to most. You know, professionals, most experts in these firms, and it's hard. So you have to have a lot of people that are working together as a team supporting each other and really, really focused on, you know, growth and having their firm succeed.

John Tyreman: 23:08

That's right. That's right. Because without clients and without revenue, there is no accounting, there is no architecture, there is no engineering. Right. No need happen without the clients. No need for it without clients. That's right. So let's, let's transition from the mid career to kind of late stage careers and what experts at this point, well known experts, they've been practicing their craft for maybe 20 years or so. let's talk about what they can do to contribute to both marketing and sales.

Mark Wainwright: 23:39

I think what we've kind of talked about here is that there's this wonderful dual path of these late career professionals, right? One is, you know, continuing to, to, to push forwards, you know, and with this whole expertise thing. And then the other is starting to open the door, and make room. So on, from a marketing perspective, what does that, what does that mean to you?

John Tyreman: 24:03

I was, I was blessed to have, two mentors early in my career who were both in, their later careers and they both exhibited, I thought, really strong, marketing traits, Kelly Waffle and Lee Fredrickson. So Kelly and I co hosted the visible expert podcast and Lee was managing partner of hinge when I was at hinge. And in both cases, they, they both made a point to create the time and committed to publishing content. So whether that was Lee writing a blog post, you know, every other week, or if it was Kelly and I creating content on the Visible Expert podcast, we were, they were both making time, even though that they were inundated with all sorts of other things, right? So, Lee was managing partner of, of the agency. And so he had his hand and he was managing a whole lot of other things, but he always made time for marketing. And so I think, that's something that I've noticed, you know, I'm not in that late stage of my career, so I can only kind of speak from what I've seen and observed, um, from others. And one thing that you mentioned, Mark, before we got on this, this recording here was speaking engagements and you like to say, be the sage on the stage. I love that. Yeah. Super, super

Mark Wainwright: 25:22

important. you know, and this relates to whatever conferences, events, you know, whenever there's an opportunity to be a recognized authority. You know, late stage professionals need to embrace that. So yeah, that's a, that's a big deal. And I think that, that most, most event organizers, conference organizers are, are really receptive to that. That's what they want. They want these, these tenured experts to be, to be, to be out there, to be recognized authorities, they will help them do that. So that's a, that's an important part of this. Absolutely.

John Tyreman: 26:01

So what about from a sales perspective?

Mark Wainwright: 26:04

so from a sales perspective, you, you would think that, the number one priority, for these, late career professionals is to be. Continue to lead the charge, right? To be putting firms on their shoulders and doing all the revenue generation, doing all of that work, constantly building, building, client relationships, building new relationships, just running hard at that. But I really think that what's more important is bringing others along. bringing the second generation or even the third generation teaching others. Yeah. Teaching others, right. Cause they've, they've, they've achieved that, that fifth level of mastery here that we talk about. So rather than continuing to, be the, the lead on all of this new business stuff, they need to be mentoring others. They need to be making room, frankly, for those. Second generation or third generation team members to engage and then maybe occasionally screw up, right? Maybe fail, right? Get into a sales situation where the conversation didn't go right. The, the, the proposed solution or the, the, the pricing that they put forward was off the mark. Whatever it is, you know, failure is such a powerful learning tool and firms need to embrace. Thanks. That they need to embrace the opportunity for young, younger career or second generation leaders to get into a situation where they kind of stub their toe a little bit and learn from that, learn and grow. So they need to be, creating opportunities for younger folks to learn and to grow. So that's, super important.

John Tyreman: 27:49

Thinking back to, to that, I think touching on, on those two points in my examples, both of those mentors for me in my early career, that that's exactly what they were doing is they were trying to bring me along. and I failed so many times and I've learned from it and I've got the scars to prove it. so yeah, that's, that's a very good point.

Mark Wainwright: 28:08

Right. I, I think, you know, really the mindset hopefully with a late career professional is that there needs to be an urgency in developing these young, young experts, these young talents there, you need to be developing them likely faster than the firm realizes, or that they realize, or that they're ready for you, because, if you're just developing people, at a pace in which they're very comfortable, With it's likely too slow. They're not growing. Yeah, they're not growing right and I think people grow when they they they kind of reach or exceed that sort of comfort, you know that that comfort level and particularly in areas that are You know, more challenging, like, like sales. So yes, I think there needs to be some urgency in developing next generation leaders. You know, my big picture on this. And one of the things I talk about when I speak to senior team members is when you reach the point in your career where you're ready for this transition to happen, you want to turn around to your organization and see a wealth of sales expertise. You know, you don't want to turn around to the firm and say, Hey, I don't know what tomorrow is going to look like because none of these people really understand how to, you know, create and then, you know, close these, these, these new opportunities. They're just, they just don't understand the whole revenue generation thing. So that's not what you want. You want to be able to just write off, you know, into the sunset, with, with some, some comfort and confidence that the firm is well prepared for tomorrow.

John Tyreman: 29:40

Yeah. Bringing that farm system. I don't know why that's that that's sticking with me. I think we covered everything that we wanted to cover in this, in this episode. So, I think this is, this is a great kind of overview, of what, experts and practitioners can expect along their career journey and how they can contribute to business development and how they can move along the different levels of mastery. so I think that this has been a really, a really great episode. I think our listeners are going to get a lot of value out of it.

Mark Wainwright: 30:13

I think so as well, and I've enjoyed it and, and I've, I've been fortunate to be able to watch professionals move. You know, through these different stages in their careers, watch their development, and in some cases help sort of guide and advise them as they do so. So it's been a, it's been a wonderful experience for me. So John, this has been fun until next time, until next time.