One Size Never Fits All: Business Development Strategies Tailored for Women (and Most Men)

Women have achieved equality in professional service firms by many metrics (graduates, new hires, new partners) but not in one crucial regard: women still are not rising to top leadership positions. In large part, this is due to a real inequality in the amount of business generated by female partners. Most firms continue to encourage the use of traditional business development strategies, but these strategies have failed women. Through her original research, detailed in the book, Dr. Arin Reeves discovered that women often are more successful in the early stages of business development (networking, establishing relationships), but are blocked by the final stage-asking for business. Reeves discovered why; explains why most women (and also most men) fall prey to this flaw in the traditional business development approach; and then offers a series of alternative approaches that both firms and individual professional women can adopt and institute. Reeves's research and solutions are groundbreaking, and have the potential to revolutionize business development for women-and with it, to finally propel women to the top of firms in numbers equal to their male counterparts.