The Challenge

After six months of unsuccessfully trying to recruit a Corporate BD Manager, the business needed immediate support. Momentum had slowed, plans were sitting dormant, and teams were struggling to prioritise their business development and marketing activity. I was brought in to provide leadership, structure, and clarity across several interconnected teams, ensuring that strategic priorities were refocused and progress reignited.

My Approach

The first step was to understand where things had stalled and what would make the biggest immediate difference. I focused on rebuilding confidence in the BD process, improving collaboration between teams, and getting plans and budgets working effectively again.

I worked closely with each team to identify quick wins, streamline plans, and create practical actions that aligned with overall business goals.

Employment Team: From Ad Hoc to Aligned

The Employment team had huge potential for profile building and cross-selling opportunities. To harness this, I:

• Established a structured content calendar and blog rota, using AI tools to generate fresh, relevant content ideas that the team could easily action.
• Facilitated a strategy meeting between the Employment and Corporate leads to realign revenue goals following staff changes, ensuring targets remained ambitious but achievable.
• Worked with the data team to identify cross-selling opportunities across real estate, retail and leisure, and tech sectors. Real estate developers and landed estates emerged as a key target group, and I coordinated collaboration between teams to pursue these opportunities.

Corporate Disputes: Focus, Visibility and Impact

The Corporate Disputes team had a comprehensive marketing and BD plan but no clear structure for delivery. I helped them:

• Streamline their activities, pause lower-impact initiatives, and prioritise high-value opportunities. Together with the Head of Team, we RAG-rated the tracker to improve visibility.
• Address underutilisation of a key membership budget, ensuring better ROI in future.
• Refresh their online profile, including case studies, testimonials, and credentials, to strengthen credibility.
• Support international relationship-building by launching the team’s first international arbitration newsletter, which achieved a 66% open rate and 24% click-through rate.
• Introduce a partner BD plan template to align individual and team goals, which also uncovered niche opportunities in aviation disputes.
• I was also involved with the Insolvency team, where I was working on their biggest repitch for client work.

Corporate Transactional: Listening and Learning

I was preparing to help introduce a client listening initiative after one of the partners expressed interest in setting it up. This would have replaced traditional NPS surveys and focused on identifying client leads, selecting interviewers, choosing clients, and integrating findings into the onboarding process.

I also assessed the team’s capability on LinkedIn, recommending refresher training to strengthen their go-to-market approach, and wanted to begin planning an M&A content series with a sector-specific focus (unfortunately, I left before this tool place).

Lastly, I was heavily involved in writing the awards submissions and providing critique on partner input for the South East Dealmakers awards. The firm was shortlisted for 7 awards.

Alongside this, I worked with the Banking and Finance team to initiate their BD plan and explored opportunities in M&A insurance BD.

PR and Communications: Defining a Clear Voice

While sector teams were well represented in PR, the corporate teams’ activity was largely missing. I reviewed the corporate priorities for the year and worked with partners to define key messages and discussion topics.

I developed a clear PR framework and content briefing sheet for the agency, which they described as “brilliantly clear” and used immediately to identify new media opportunities.

Budgets: From Guesswork to Control

There was no clear visibility of marketing and BD budgets, making planning and decision-making difficult. I reviewed financial statements to establish an accurate baseline, allocated spend to the right areas, and identified both underspend and overspend. This provided the business with a transparent overview that supported more informed budget decisions going forward.

Building Collaboration and Culture

I joined the cross-team BD Board for the corporate group to help rebuild a sense of shared purpose. Following a merger, it was important to encourage collaboration between sub-teams and develop a “one team” mentality. Through regular discussions, we identified new targets, shared ideas, and developed cross-selling initiatives.

Key Intermediaries: Creating Sustainable Relationships

For intermediaries, I started with one key relationship and analysed referral data to understand patterns and gaps. We added system functionality to track outbound referrals and trained the team on how to use it, enabling more reciprocal and strategic relationship management.

The Results

By the end of my engagement, the corporate division had:

• Re-established a clear BD structure and ownership
• Aligned marketing activity with business goals
• Improved collaboration and accountability between teams
• Clearer visibility of budget and resource allocation
• Tangible results from refreshed communications and international outreach

This project was about more than just reactivating plans; it was about re-energising people, rebuilding confidence, and creating a joined-up approach to business development across multiple teams whilst holding the fort for the permanent BD hire to come in.