BD PLAYBOOK
REWRITING BEST PRACTICES
The Ask:
Rewrite, repackage, and reintroduce the business development best practices for a global brand consultancy
The CorporatE NEED:
Prophet had been growing at a rapid pace: since adding their Richmond office in 2009, they acquired their Berlin office in 2011, their Atlanta, Chicago, London, and Hong Kong offices in 2012, technology firm Altimeter in 2015, and digital media production firm Springbox in 2018.
There was a need to re-introduce a unified approach to business development on a firmwide scale, and to do that they needed to reexamine their current playbook, augment with new thinking, and create an activation plan to reintroduce these standard practices.
The REwork:
Surprise, surprise--even internally-facing, corporate work starts with research. Prophet does itself a favor, conducting Quality Assurance Practice (QAP) interviews with all clients we pitch, win or lose. The first step in identifying what makes for winning an opportunity was to analyze all interviews from the past year and pick out unifying themes and factors contributing to wins (and losses).
Once themes were identified, best practices were pulled from existing materials and interviews conducted with Senior Partners, Partners, Associate Partners, and Engagement Managers with extensive pitch experience to outline new strategies and winning tactics.
The PLaybook:
Ultimately, the resulting product was a biz dev bible in four parts:
Executions:
Because Reservoir Distillery's clientele responds to reviews, blogs, and YouTube personalities far more often than traditional print ads, all executions aimed to engage potential customers through their favored online communities. For this, I created a cost-effective way to introduce bloggers and online personalities to the full flagship line and Reservoir brand through a custom sample box.
In addition to engaging potential customers, I also recommended Reservoir to continue to dig into the Richmond community to build their brand from the inside out. This included a revision to their current tasting room offerings and suggested outreach to local mixology professionals.
What Did Lou Do?
1. This particular project is the Creative Brand Manager's senior Independent Study assignment. All work, research, and designs were created by me!
