The BD Blueprint: How Accounting Firms Create Sustainable Growth

Cassie Klayman: Hi. Welcome to Amplify, the podcast for Accounting for Growth. I'm your host, Cassie Klayman. This season we're focusing on business development and business development tech, and how bds are using tech to win. Today, we're discussing building a BD function for your firm. And in this episode, we're going to talk to Neal Barrow, founder of Enabled bd. We'll discuss how these tools can all come together, how our process is aligned to drive measurable, measurable results and more. This is an episode you don't want to miss. Neil, thank you so much for coming to the show today. Before we jump into our conversation, can you tell us a little bit more about you?

Neil Barrow: Sure. Thanks. Yeah, happy to. Uh, so I'm Neil Barrow. I'm the founder of Enable BD. So I spent almost 10 years in public accounting and business development as an originator, and then, um, went on my own to help firms build their business development function or enhance it. And so that's what I've been doing for the better part of four years now and worked, uh, with dozens of firms to do this. And some of the challenges that, um, everybody is facing is pretty common among it. It's like, what should we be doing for bd? What should we be tracking? What tools should we be using? So this will be a fun conversation.

Cassie Klayman: Well, let's jump in. What are some of those challenges that firms are facing?

Neil Barrow: Uh, so the main one is just recognizing where our opportunity lies. And what I mean by that is. Let me ask you a question. So at, uh, your, uh, firm, where does most of your new clients come from?

Cassie Klayman: Referrals.

Neil Barrow: Referrals. And out of those referrals, who are the main people referring?

Cassie Klayman: Current clients.

Neil Barrow: Current clients. You get a gold star, Cassie.

Cassie Klayman: Thank you.

Neil Barrow: That's it. And so when we think about the foundational things for business development, it, it's. We need our people to engage and build relationships with the people that they already know, like, and trust. And so at a foundational level, that's where a lot of firms that I work with start. Most of the firms that I work with are kind of in that ten to, uh, 75 million, a hundred million dollars range. And that's ultimately the main challenge that they're dealing with is how do we help our people generate conversations that matter? And we can solve that a lot of different ways. There's a lot of different solutions. We, uh, can implement tracking, we can implement CRMs, we can hire BD people, we can hire customer success folks, we can send out surveys, uh, do more Robust communication with our clients and our contacts. So there's not really a, uh, solid answer to solving that problem because every firm is unique. But ultimately we can get close to what we need to do by taking a small step.

Cassie Klayman: You just mentioned a bunch of different avenues that someone could take. So let's think about the entire population of the association for Accounting Marketing. We've got people who are solo marketers, we've got teams of one to two, we've got teams of 50 plus probably more than that. I can't even fathom what that's like. So uh, is it, would you be able to, I mean, I know you said every firm is different, but what would be some of your top recommendations for those, those avenues for any of those types of teams to take? Or if you're like one, a one person team would do better here. And a 50 person team, do you have any insight into that?

Neil Barrow: Yeah, so, so everybody's BD journey is different. So on a scale of one to 10, where you're at, you might be at a one trying to get to a one, or you might already be at an ah, eight or nine and it becomes more complex. And so at a larger organization, when you think about Those teams of 50, like you had mentioned, those large organizations, they have business development teams, they have internal training for their people, they have requirements and tracking, they have CRMs, they're doing multiple things to engage within the bucket of uh, where they need to be spending their time with who. And what I mean by that is thinking about we need to have a client plan, we need to have a referral source plan, we need to have a prospect plan. And then we need to have something that helps our brand. So how are we getting out to associations, organizations, conferences, like what's our webinars thought, uh, leadership content. So when we think about all these avenues of things we can do, those large organizations have teams that are dedicated to those things. At smaller organizations it's like, well we can't do all of that. We don't have time. So what is our easiest and highest roi? It's being a true advisor to our client. So helping our partners and managers and book of business owners do that. But then it's also we've got to spend time in our community, so what are we doing there? How do we even know where to start to like think about uh, how to identify what the ROI is on events in our local community or organizations there? Because we need to build relationships. Because like you said, most of our referrals come from Current clients. But where does the next bucket come from? It's external referral sources in the community. Right. People in our network. And so if we know that to be the biggest driver of referrals, then we need to spend time there. A lot of people, though, default to tech tools, automation Outbound, who's hired a lead gen agency, who's gotten a DM on, uh, LinkedIn that said, hey, we can get you 30 meetings in two weeks. It's like, well, do we need more leads? Do we know how many leads we're currently getting? Right now, the answer is probably no. So there's like these foundational things that the, uh, smaller firms can do, whereas if you're at a larger firm, it's very dependent upon the team you're working with. Because I talk to a lot of larger firms with their leadership teams around some of this and some of their. It's like key account planning, which is like, how are we working with our key accounts? How are we, uh, training our partners and what are we asking them to do as far as their business development? A lot of larger firms have taken the approach of, well, we have a part like a, a growth track and a technical track. So we can kind of get around the BD growth goals for everybody where it's a blanket statement. And so it's a little bit more nuanced and specific up on that end. But the majority of our AIM members fit in maybe the smaller category. And so that's like, it's the foundational building blocks around your clients and referral sources and managing inbound. Like that's coming in, like the referrals that are coming in.

Cassie Klayman: It's the people aspect of it. You just said, you basically just threw out a bunch of like, random acts of bd. And you've said a few times about tracking. So tell me a little bit about what you mean when you say tracking.

Neil Barrow: Yeah, so I think, I think the first step of what I mean by tracking is really understanding what opportunities are occurring coming into our, uh, firm today. So if they're calling 1-800-Topple- where's that call go? Who's getting the call? How are we managing it? So it's really this opportunity management tracking that a lot of smaller firms need to kind of get their arms wrapped around just to see, uh, if we can just win more opportunities. Do we need more opportunities? Then when you're looking at the tracking element of activity, that's different. It's setting expectations with our book of business owners or if we have BD Teams setting expectations on their activity level, on what they need to be doing and with whom, giving it, making it super easy to understand what my expectations are. And then the minimum viable tracking. So some of us have a CRM and it's a lot easier to track things in CRM. I don't really want to talk about CRM adoption because that's a terrible uh, thing that everybody has to deal with that has a CRM. But when we think about the tracking aspect, I want to track the activities that are expected that are at a minimum. So if we need to focus on for business development professionals, meetings with business owners, meetings with CFOs, meeting like if we're tracking meetings, we're tracking proposals, company proposals that we generate this month, which is not an ideal metric but it's really then what for our partners? Are we tracking client conversations? Are we tracking referral source meetings? Uh, obviously we're tracking the revenue growth or their new clients coming in. But like what are we actually tracking? And so before we talk about the tool like a CRM, uh, we need to talk about the what it's just what are we trying to get at? What do we need to know? And it's all in the spirit of setting proper expectations and then supporting them in delivering those expectations.

Cassie Klayman: Yeah, that makes sense. So what do you think or how do you think marketing, uh, at a firm like let's, let's think about a firm that maybe has zero to one business development professionals. Um, how do you think marketing fits into this, this business development world, this technology enabled or even not, um, um, world of business development and accounting?

Neil Barrow: Well I think marketing is super important to the entire business development process. And I think that what I've seen historically is a strong marketing team enables everybody to do better business development. And so when you have a zero business developer and the marketing team is really acting as the enablement for business development, it's providing those insights and the expectations and helping to manage those things. So thinking about um, our ideal client profile, who is our ideal client? Why? What stories do we have? What problems do we solve for them? Like getting all of that voice of client and all of the ideal client things out of the information and into our partners and book a business owner's hands and uh, even our staff and managers, are we speaking the same language? Do we know who we're chasing? Do we know who we need to, who we do our best work with? And then if I can then find events, organizations, conferences that where those people and the people in their ecosystem or orbit Live, then that's where I want to be spending our time and helping our people go and do those things. And so I think marketing plays a big role in that communication with the client, extracting some of that information and, and then helping organize where we need to spend our time doing business development activities.

Cassie Klayman: Yeah, that, that makes sense to me.

Neil Barrow: So, um, so but if you have, so let's, let's do your other scenario where you have a business developer.

Cassie Klayman: Yes.

Neil Barrow: Okay, so you've hired your first BD person. God love you that you're on the path. Right. But like, you've got the bd, you got the BD person. Let me stop, let me, let me take a moment to back up there. So if you're considering hiring a BD person or if you've hired a business development person, the disconnect that I see often is we expect this person to just go out and magically generate new clients. That's what we expect because they're a salesperson or they're uh, highly extroverted or they have a big network and it's not as easy as just going out and doing it. And so if we don't have proper expectations set on what this person needs to do, what real, less realistic, uh, success looks like for a business developer based on your firm size and mix and average client deal size, those types of things, like, it's very difficult to get alignment. Yes, sometimes it works and it can be super successful, but, but other times it doesn't. Uh, and it's because that we've created an environment where it's just not set up for success. And so if we have that person, then how marketing can help work with the business developer is what activities do we need to be doing and where and who do we need to be building relationships with that we're not as consistent as we could be and this person can help go supplement that. So if we know we're really good at real estate development companies, then we've organized where the our best clients in real estate and understand what problems we solve and have great client stories. And we have a plan for our book of business owners to talk to those people. Right. Deepen the relationships, then it's the same thing. Where did those clients come from who referred them? So if we understand, okay, it's really commercial, uh, bankers that focus on real estate or it's uh, commercial real estate brokers that focus on real estate. These are our best referral sources external from our firm, people like our clients. So we need to build relationships with Those folks. So who are they? Who's going to do that? Where do they hang out? Who are the best relationships? And then the last one is prospects. So who are the. If we could clone a client, a real estate client, what would that client look like and who are they? In our community we have those lists. We probably built a million of them. But do we know the top 10? And so if I, uh. And then where do all of those people, clients, referral sources and prospects, where do they hang out? Do they go to, uh, the Real Estate council? Do they go to ULI Urban Land Institute? Where are they hanging out? And so if I have that, all of that information, then I can assign or people can pick where they're going to spend their time within that orbit, within, within that ecosystem of real estate. And then that's where my business developer can come in and really go drive a lot of those activities that we need to do to meet those people and generate those conversations. So when you look at setting people up for success in a business development role, having a strong marketing team that's done all that work, like now we're set up for success because we, we can just say, hey, here it is, go. So like, that's how I think about working with a business development person, if you got one.

Cassie Klayman: When you were listing places where I was like, is he going to say a sports team? Is it going to what, what state? Is he going to say Dallas? He going to say Chicago? I was, I was on the edge of my seat and then you didn't even say a sports team. Uh, because a lot they're all hanging out at the TV watching, watching sports. What sports?

Neil Barrow: That's true.

Cassie Klayman: I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Um, so let's talk a little bit. So I think that something you're touching on is marketing, business development, client relationship professionals are all involved in this business development journey. What kind of recommendations would you have for. So like, let's say you've got some, some engagement from your client service professionals. How, you know, people are talking about like AI and tools to, uh, to keep accountability and like, what are some of these tools and tracking systems that you might recommend or that you've implemented to help them stay on track on this journey that they're on, being the client, you know, with all of those buckets that are sort of involved in this.

Neil Barrow: Yeah. So there's this great tool. It's. Maybe you've heard of it, it's called Excel.

Cassie Klayman: I use it for this.

Neil Barrow: So I think at, uh, a Base level, if you don't have anything like, Excel is a great place to start. And the reason I recommend it just like, hey, we don't need to look at tools yet, is because if I can't get people to enter in the stuff, then it's not going to get entered in the other stuff that we bring on, right? And so obviously there's some automation and there's some great tools out there that we all know of. Um, customer intelligence tools, automation and hookup tools that we can, you know, you're probably thinking of them right now. And so, um, there's these great tools that we can use. But again, it's. What is the outcome we're trying to achieve? So a lot of firms that I talk to, they're like, they recognize that they need to be doing more with their current clients, and so they'll start like this client development program. And it's really centered around retention and being a trusted advisor. And so when you, when you frame business development for what you're describing as your client relationship professionals, right, you're the practitioners within the firm that have the book of businesses. Like, that's like, we can frame it in those ways and then track those activities. And whether that's a CRM, whether that's a simple Excel spreadsheet with, hey, we need to touch. Because the 8020 rule applies wherever you go with anything. 20% of our clients generate 80% of our revenue. How many clients do we have at a firm? 3,000? 5,000. So that's enough to keep everybody really busy if we focus on clients, right? Even the. Just the top 20%. But then what are we getting at? Like, what are we asking them to do? And then if we're going to track it, um, I want to track notes, I need the information, right? So who. One of the big things that I advise my clients on is do we know their best partners? So do I. So if I'm meeting with, going back to the real estate example, I've got a real estate developer, hey, who's your banker? Who's your insurance? Who's your attorney? Who do you love? Like, those are people that are great referral sources and we need to know them. So are we, uh, do we understand that information? Are we tracking that? Do we have simple questions that we want them to ask for the, for the client perspective that we need to take notes on? Um, simply like estate planning. How's your bookkeeping? Right, like, simple things that we need to ask that we need to track. Oh, they said that they're with this outsourced bookkeeper. And so what, regardless of whatever tool you choose to use, um, any CRM or if you're using Excel, keep it simple and make it basic. And then if I'm going to start tracking activity around a uh, business development activity with referral sources, I want to really focus on the big stuff. So here's the top where uh, commercial bankers are great referral sources for us. So here are the top five bankers, banks in town that we do the most business with or would like to do more business with. We're going to schedule a bunch of learns with them. So can we track that? Yeah, we can track that. When did we do it? Uh, what did we talk about? What came out of it? Like that's what I want to focus on tracking. Not necessarily like oh I talked to this dude, I had lunch with this gal. Like that's not necessarily worth all of our time. So it's like what is the point? What are we actually tracking?

Cassie Klayman: Yeah, you know it's interesting uh, your thesis around everything is really foundational in a lot of ways. You know, human contact, track the details. I think you know, there was a study done by one of the AIM affiliates about you know, what type of business, how are people or how are firms getting all of their business. And it was a lot of that old school style stuff but. And that's kind of what you're talking about. But we live in an age where leaders want to use AI to, I don't know, for whatever reason they want to use AI or they want to use automation tools and you know, sometimes you have to just go down a path even if maybe you're foundationally not there yet. Um, I kind of throwing you for um, I didn't ask you this question but like what, what would you, what would you say to that? What do you have recommended? Not my recommendations for tools but like what's your, what's your perspective when you're kind of instructed to go down a path that maybe you don't feel like you're ready for from this foundational standpoint?

Neil Barrow: Sure. And I hear this a lot because AI is, it's here and it's only growing and we need to figure out how to use it. Right. And so the challenge is, is that this has happened every point. New technology has come out over the course of decades. And so the challenge is that uh, we want to automate business development. Like I don't, I want to boop. I want to hit the button and it's done and there is no silver bullet. There is no automation for business development yet eventually, which I'm, uh, hey, I'm excited, uh, about my. I'll send my avatar here and you'll send your avatar here and then they can have this conversation and we can just be, go sitting around on the beach somewhere, right?

Cassie Klayman: That's 20 degrees here.

Neil Barrow: Well, it's finally finance pro fest weather in Dallas Fort Worth. So uh, we're getting there. But when we think about realistically what can AI do for us today, it can record our calls with our clients and our prospects. It can get the voice of the client out. It can get testimonials, it can get client stories because we have the recordings. It can help us get better at having conversations in business development. I can quickly uh, understand, use it to understand a prospective client's business. I can learn more quickly about them. So pre meeting planning for prospective client meetings. Pre meeting planning for big client meetings. So thinking about news that's happened to them, thinking about what they might be dealing with, some uh, of the challenges, thinking about some of this ideal client profile development, where should we be spending our time? It's helping ideate through some of that right now. I think it's the change like the ease of um, automating or um, gathering of all of your information to be useful in having a conversation that's coming very quickly, which I'm excited about in business development. But it's going to start leaning towards inauthentic and that's, and that's where my thesis is. I think AI again all of it's going to, it's already changing the way we do our business and our accounting firm and it's only going to continue to develop. But this human element will still not be ignored, at least for a while. And I think there will be pushback. Uh, eventually the pendulum will swing the other way as it always has throughout history. So um, while I don't have a great answer for how do we uh, um, redirect on we can't automate business development. I think we can go down the path about how can we use these tools to help us be better or more focused around our business development activities.

Cassie Klayman: It's a very astute answer. Uh, I appreciated it. Um, okay, so you've mentioned a few times about the difference between like adopting tools versus actually doing this work. So what do you think separates firms who just adopt tools versus firms who are actually transforming their, who you call the BD journey or culture?

Neil Barrow: I think, yeah, the culture which is, that's that's a great way to describe it. Well, I think what I've learned through my work with firms is I, I used to do projects, so I'd come in and they would need something. Hey, we want to hire a business development person. Hey, we want to get more referrals, hey, we need more leads.

Cassie Klayman: Right.

Neil Barrow: So there were these projects that we would do and what I found was, is that they were looking for something to solve, they were trying to solve for something, when in reality the changes that they needed to make was uh, leadership's commitment to change. And without that piece, none of the other stuff actually works or it's very difficult to create change. And so when you think about the question that you asked, which is centered around like, how do we move to the next level in business development? The people that have moved fastest with their change by implementing tools, technology, hiring more people, it's because it's leadership's commitment to m making those changes. They're like, yes, we know that we need to invest in this and they're willing to do it. And so while, again, I don't have a, uh, here's the tip to do, uh, it's really coming upon us as the flag carriers of growth at our firms to lead the charge in how can we get the changes that we can. And so what I take the approach of is if we could, we can implement some of these practical things that we know we need to do that aren't going to require a heavy lift, maybe we can get the momentum going to then bring on the tech, bring m on the tool. Right. And so that's the approach that I take, which I think is a, ah, practical and realistic approach. It might not be jumping from three to seven on the business development journey, but can we get from three to three and a half in the next six months? Yeah, we can, absolutely. Without making huge changes.

Cassie Klayman: Nice. You answered my next question, which was about implementation. You know, like, is there, are there, are there any. So you talked about leadership and you talked about those, those flag carriers who, a leader doesn't necessarily have to be a partner or, you know, someone in that capacity. So are, can you think of any specific kind of cultural changes that might be needed to make this culture, this business development culture stick? Tell me about them.

Neil Barrow: Uh, so the, the big one is, are we having, uh, when we think about growth, is everybody on board with growth? Because we live in a capacity driven world, we've got some people that are holding, waving the white flag like I don't want any more clients, like I Can't take on anymore. And then we have some that are just out there driving it, driving new business. Right. And so can. Are we committed to having the business development conversation at a firm level? So are we committed to talking about business development? Do we have a BD meeting? What are we doing in it? What are we talking about? Right. So can we do that if we don't have that? If we do have a business development meeting, have we considered the small group so getting smaller groups, whether that's around industry or how are we integrating business development into our practice group meetings? Or if we have business development, how is business development helped driving some of these industry group or small groups that are pursuit teams around how we're going to go to market. And so if we can start with a BD meeting, then build these small groups on top of it and then we actually then have to invest in like training for our people. Because if we're setting some expectations around what they need to be doing for business development and then we have these people that are all out there doing things, then we also need to show that we're invested in training. So I've got great firms that they have a strong uh, you know, flag uh, holder for growth and they have, they're doing, they built internal trainings, right, which are great. I have some people that bring in external trainings. I'm not trainer, I uh, do consulting. I have to train some of my clients. I do trainings but for them. But like I'm not a trainer but there's some great trainers out there. Right. And so how are we thinking about the foundational business development meeting, pipeline meeting? Are we then segmenting those small groups that can go and pursue specific types of clients or specific, or for specific types of services and then do they know how to do that? Are we reinforcing that uh, and giving them the professional development they need along with culture and meetings, Are we tying it to their annual review? And I'm not advocating for compensation or adjustment or thinking about that. Every firm is different and I've seen all sorts of different types of reviews and compensation for growth. But is there a metric on there for BD for relationship development? And can we just say as ah, leadership we're like we want to, we're going to evaluate you on that and how things are going. So when we think about culture and the meeting, the implementation of that, it's with those group meetings and then it's with like accountability that's surrounding that.

Cassie Klayman: But everything you talked about was also it's all focused. Right. Like, it's not throwing spaghetti against the wall. It's very focused on whatever the. Whatever the goal is. Pick the path and do that.

Neil Barrow: Yes. And, uh, at the risk of devaluing what it is that I do, uh, I would just say that is whatever you choose to do, like, commit to doing it and go fully down the path because you will see results.

Cassie Klayman: That's good advice for anything in life.

Neil Barrow: Okay, that's fair, right? That is fair. That's fair. Is a life. Maybe a life. There's my, uh, life, uh, advice portion of the podcast.

Cassie Klayman: Thank you. Yeah. Listen. Well, thanks so much for talking with us as we wrap up. Neil, can you tell the people where they can find you or where they can go click to, uh, read about you?

Neil Barrow: Um, I'm on LinkedIn, post content. I post videos on LinkedIn around business development for professional professional service firms. A lot of it is related directly to accounting. Uh, and then I also host a podcast that's called I hope this email finds you well and you can find it anywhere. But it's basically, I'm interviewing business development professionals at professional, uh, service firms about how do they get business? And so it's.

Cassie Klayman: I'm a subscriber. I like that podcast.

Neil Barrow: Thanks, Cassie.

Cassie Klayman: Sure. Well, that's it for another episode of Amplify, the podcast for Accounting for Growth. A big thanks to all of you for listening today and again to Neil for the engaging conversation. If you like what you've heard, we'd love a review. Oh, yeah, thank you, Neil. If you like what you've heard, we'd love a review on the podcast platform you're listening to us on now. And be sure to listen to the, uh, other episodes in this season, our theme being business development and business development tech. You can learn more about Amplify and our past seasons on accountingmarketing.org look for the podcast under publications. You can also find us on any of your podcast streaming platforms. If you want to connect with me, feel free to reach out on LinkedIn. Thank you again and we look forward to having you join us for another episode soon.