5 Tips to Cut Your BD Costs and Improve Your Program

Does it seem too good to be true? Can you actually cut your BD costs and improve your BD program at the same time? Yes! Consider these five tips:

1. Speak or moderate a session at a conference. Often the registration fees are reduced (or waived) for speakers or session moderators.

2. Make decisions about conference attendance and exhibit opportunities early. We have seen registration fees and exhibitor fees almost double after the “early bird” registration period passes.

3. Plan conference dinner opportunities with clients and prospects early. Get the most out of your time away from the office with those important people who are there and also away from their offices. You won’t spend that much more money than you will for a dinner with your colleagues, but the return can be tremendous.

4. Standardize so you can customize on proposal write-ups. This may seem a contradiction of terms, but there is always a certain amount of boilerplate. For example, most resumes don’t change in the descriptions of the staff member’s college degrees or professional registrations. What does always change the exact role in the project being proposed. So standardize the unchanging parts of the resume and leave a block open for focusing on the individual’s role in the proposed project. Then spend important time customizing where it counts.

5. Focus on making quantum improvement in one aspect of the program at a time. Don’t spread yourself too thin. For example, if your general intro to your firm in your standard presentation is getting too long, spend quality time redoing that portion. Then make sure your staff knows that the improvement has been made. By making sizable improvements, you focus more energy and achieve better results with less expenditure of funds.


Keeping BD costs low will enable you to lower overhead and ultimately benefit your firm’s bottom line. For other great tips on how to manage your BD efforts, come to PSMJ’s 2011 A/E/C Marketing Bootcamp: THE Program On How To Get And Keep Clients. PSMJ is hosting only 2 more bootcamps this spring: June 9-10 in Chicago, and June 23-24 in Las Vegas. Get the tools and confidence you need to succeed in bringing in more work for the firm – register today!