Why Most BD Plans in Professional Services Don’t Work
- Ben Paul
- 1 day ago
- 4 min read
Most professional services firms have BD plans. In many cases, a considerable amount of time goes into creating them. They are discussed at the leadership level, documented carefully, and often aligned with the firm’s broader strategy. They outline target clients, priority sectors, and key areas of focus, usually supported by a list of activities designed to drive growth. On paper, they make sense.
However, in practice, most BD plans in professional services do not work. They are static documents that are written but never followed. In many cases, they are viewed by partners, directors and fee-earners as simply an exercise of ticking the box.
The problem with most BD plans in professional services
The issue is not that individuals are not planning. It is that the plans they create are rarely used in a meaningful way.
Most BD plans in professional services are too broad. They contain too many priorities, too many possible actions, and too little clarity around what actually needs to be done on a day-to-day basis. They tend to try to cover everything, rather than focusing on what will genuinely create meaningful and trackable BD actions.
The plan exists, but it does not translate into any discernible BD behaviour. It becomes something that is referred to occasionally, rather than something that actively guides how BD is actioned.
The disconnect between BD planning and behaviour
Most BD plans operate at a strategic level. They describe where the firm wants to go, what clients an individual wants, but not how that direction is followed consistently in practice.
The reality for most professionals is very different. Client delivery, internal responsibilities, and immediate priorities drive their working week. Business development has to fit around that. Without a clear and practical way of doing so, it is often pushed aside.
This is where most BD plans in professional services fail. They do not reflect how people actually work. Instead, they describe an ideal version of behaviour that is rarely sustained beyond the first few months of the year.
Why BD plans don’t work in practice
There are some consistent patterns behind why BD plans fail to gain traction.
The first is that they are not grounded in reality. They assume more time and capacity than most professionals actually have, particularly in busy firms where delivery comes first. This leads to plans that start with good intent but quickly fall away.
The second is that they lack ownership. Responsibility is often shared or loosely defined, without clear expectations around who is doing what. This leads to activity becoming inconsistent, and eventually stopping altogether.
The third is that they are not linked to behaviour. Without a clear connection between the plan and the actions people need to take each week, there is no mechanism for delivery.
At that point, the plan becomes a document rather than a driver of growth.
A BD plan is only useful if it gets used
The firms that get the most value from BD planning in professional services tend to take a very different approach. Rather than building detailed, comprehensive plans, they focus on a small number of priorities that tie directly to action. These priorities are linked to specific behaviours that can be delivered consistently, rather than a broad list of intentions.
They also align their BD plans with the time that is actually available. If a partner only has a limited amount of time each week, the plan reflects that. It is built around what will realistically be done, not what could be done in an ideal scenario. All my clients start by committing to an amount of time they will do BD each week, and their plans are developed around this.
This makes the plan usable. And more importantly, it makes it repeatable. Change in an individual’s behaviour drives actions, and actions drive outcomes, not BD plans.
At its core, effective business development in professional services is behavioural and action-oriented. It is not driven by how well a plan is written, but by whether the right actions are taken consistently over time. Conversations with clients, follow-up after meetings, staying visible with key relationships, and progressing opportunities are what ultimately generate work.
When senior leadership or BD teams focus too heavily on the plan itself, they risk losing sight of what actually matters. The document becomes the output, rather than the activity it is supposed to enable. This is where having a simple, practical BD Playbook can make a real difference.
What actually works for BD plans in professional services
The most effective BD plans in professional services tend to share a small number of characteristics.
They are simple enough to be understood quickly and used regularly. They focus on a limited number of priorities, rather than trying to cover all aspects of business development. They are built around the time and capacity of the people delivering them.
Most importantly, they are tied directly to creating the right behaviours and actions that can be followed. They define what good looks like in practice. Not just in terms of outcomes, but in terms of actions. What needs to happen each week to move relationships forward and create opportunities.
From BD plan to BD discipline
For most professional services practitioners, the shift that is required is not a new plan. It is a new approach. Rather than treating BD plans as documents, they need to be treated as a discipline. Something that becomes part of how professionals operate, rather than something that sits alongside their work.
Putting it simply, most BD plans in professional services do not fail because they are poorly written. They fail because they are not used.
The firms that achieve consistent growth are not those with better plans. They are the ones that create plans that align with how their people actually work and ensure that those plans translate into consistent behaviour and are actionable and measurable.
In the end, it is not the plan that drives growth. It is what people do with it.
