Andy Baldwin and Erika Flowers sit down with Lori Langholz, Partner and Chief Business Development Officer at BDO, to explore what drives growth in professional services. Lori shares her journey from teaching to leading business development, highlighting the qualities that set top performers apart and the importance of building trust—both internally and externally. She discusses the evolution of sales teams, the value of genuine curiosity, and lessons learned from scaling growth operations. Lori also reflects on how collaboration, adaptability, and clear leadership mandates shape success in complex organizations.

Tom McMakin sits down with Walt Shill, former global strategy lead at Accenture and co-author of The Growth Engine, to unpack what really drives growth in professional services firms.

Walt shares hard-earned lessons from decades in consulting, including why most firms struggle with business development, how to build a scalable growth system, and the five dimensions that separate good from great.

Welcome back to Season Two of the PIE-Cast, where we will be diving into The Growth Engine, A Guide to Building a World-Class Business Development Function in Professional Services.

In this episode, TJ Dennis sits down with Jacob Parks, the President and Partner of Profitable Ideas Exchange and one of the four authors of The Growth Engine. Jacob talks through building a growth culture in professional services and what's missing post-pandemic, incentivization structures that work (and ones that don't work), and how AI should be used in professional services instead of how it's currently being used.

If you have feedback about the show or would like to learn more about working with PIE, please contact us at: connect@profitableideas.com. You can also learn more about our previous books, How Clients Buy and Never Say Sell, by visiting our website.

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