A Counterintuitive Approach to Maximizing Your New Business ROI

How pitching less will lead to faster, more sustainable growth

In our last article, we discussed measuring the ROI of your new business pursuits . For many organizations, it’s an eye-opening experience to learn that their new business development efforts are yielding such poor—and in some cases, negative—returns.

So, what can a company do to lower their new client acquisition costs and improve their margins?

One of the most important steps an organization can take to achieve these important objectives is to take a strategic approach to new business development.

Because:?strategic growth is quality growth.

Take a moment to let that soak in. It means that you must be selective when choosing your new pursuits. Do not choose to pursue any opportunity that isn’t going to enable you to grow.

For many organizations, this is counterintuitive and is diametrically opposed to their current approach of pursuing every RFP they can get their hands on. When I introduce the concept of pitching less to generate more wins, I often encounter initial resistance.

One client remarked:

“I get the math part. Fewer pursuits. More wins. But fewer pursuits means more pressure on us to win the projects we decide we’re going to go after. Seems like a lot of stress!”

I understand this point of view. There is safety in numbers. But the goal is not to rack up as many pitches as possible; the goal is to win more pursuits. And not just any pursuits—but only those that lead to the profitable growth of your company.

The fact is that by reducing the number of opportunities you pursue, you actually?increase?your chances of winning, rather than decrease them. This is because you are able to devote your energy and resources to put your firm in a stronger competitive position to win the pursuit. You’ll be pursuing from the front of the pack, not the rear. And if you’re not the lead dog in the race, I can assure you the view is terrible.

What if you built your new business development operation around the core principle stated above of “strategic growth is quality growth”? By pitching less and focusing on quality pursuits, you can enjoy myriad benefits including higher margins, improved team morale, and greater productivity.

Organizations can achieve quality growth by focusing their pursuits on three parameters:

• Clients you want to work with
• Work you want to do
• Profit you want to make

Not only are these requirements attainable, but they are likely—when you choose to focus only on pursuits that meet this criteria, and ignore opportunities that do not move your firm forward. In our next article, we will explore each of these areas in greater detail.