Making the Transition from Associate to Vice President - Bringing in Deals
I'm currently a senior associate in a middle market boutique M&A shop. I'm looking to be promoted to Vice President in the next year or so. To date, my career has been pretty much entirely execution focus. I've been informed that when I get promoted to VP, my responsibilities will grow to include business development - I'll need to start getting meetings with potential clients and becoming a source of revenue for the firm. Has anyone here made a similar transition and have some words of wisdom?
What strategies did you use to find interesting companies to contact?
How did you initiate contact with a target once you identified it (Link'd in, email, cold call, etc.?)
How did you manage the relationship from introduction to winning a mandate?
How did you structure your daily/weekly schedule to incorporate Business Development (e.g. spent 1 hr each day looking for prospects, contacted 3 companies/wk, went to x industry events per month, etc.)?
You don't know how your firm's senior level bankers bring in clients? How's your deal flow?
I am not in M&A, but likely my experience will have some relevance for you.
First, you need to understand what your strength in value to client is. There are thousands of bankers trying to sell their services, but if you don't have a particular niche or specific value that will make you standout it will not help further your career.
Relationship development is key here, you need to attend industry conferences and networking to broaden your contacts. The hard part have not begin yet, it is after the initial greeting. You need to stay in contact with them by being a human being (not a fucking salesman) and at the same time provide value and build their trust on you. Share relevant industry info (not the insider shit) that might be of particular interest to the mark and always ask them for their thoughts.
One thing that most people don't talk about, but is a typical characteristics of success in higher level positions is being a weaver. Let's say, you specialize in M&A and you met this new contact who might have mentioned a different need in passing. This is your chance to shine as a person with great resource by introducing the new contact to anyone you know that can help with his issue even if it's to a different firm (provided your firm does not have what he need). You had just weave two lose strands together and now both of these contacts will more than likely return similar favors. This one strategy is how I am able to consistently get referrals and introductions to industry players in my niche.
I would not suggest a regimented schedule of cold calling. Cold calling is an art, not a process nor a task. Whenever you happen to come up with an unique idea that's when you should put a list of targeted companies to cold call because now you have a game plan and a vision. You'll sell 100X better than just being generic on a cold call. I broke a jr broker's phone out of anger once after I heard him just randomly cold calling firms we would like to do business with, but does not have a game plan or what the fuck those firms might need. I shared this with you to illustrate that you do not want a sr banker to walk by hear you cold calling with verbal diarrhea.
Best of luck bud. I gotta get back to my mid-day drink.
this is actually very, very good advice. Be a human being, have a plan, have real ideas. The weaving analogy was great. Doing things for people without expecting things in return often gets you paid back more than you were hoping.
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